Peña Peña had been week-day sober for three months now. That was the deal he’d made with his older brother at the beginning of the year.
“I got you a job at the port,” Martin Felipe had told him. “I’ll give you the Starlet If you can stay clean during the week and keep the job for a year.”
“So avoid being poor, black, and drunk at the same time,” Peña Peña had joked to downplay his excitement.
Having a car would spare Peña Peña from the public transportation in Santo Domingo, and more important for him, it would give him a bump in status; car owner. He’d agreed and they shook hands on it, looking each other in the eye for the first time since the funeral.
After three months of the proposed work-to-alcohol ratio, he left his apartment early on a Monday to begin his commute. Outside, the smells of salt, fermented sugar cane, and shit, all coalesced into an olfactory crime scene. Every morning as a pedestrian meant walking past a garbage dump that sat between the ocean and a brewery, it was his daily reminder to stay on course.
He walked to La Independencia and flicked his wrist twice to hail a ride. His watch happened to beep in sync with each gesture and it made him smile as he climbed into the vehicle. Following the events of the previous three years; the death of his father who he replaced with a devotion to rum, a break up, and a bald head at only twenty two, he’d developed a fondness for coincidences. They made him feel more fortunate than foredoomed, like life was showing him grace.
After a sweaty nine kilometer ride, Peña Peña climbed out of the carro publico and took the sidewalk in Ciudad Nueva. It was only March and already the heat clung onto him like a second body from inside his uniform. He wiped his brow with his dad’s old handkerchief, readjusted his shirt, and inspected the shine of his boots before continuing south towards the port, where he and his brother both worked.
They shared a boss but Martin Felipe served in the public sector and Peña Peña in the private one. The colonel in charge of port security for the government, also owned a company that supplied inspection agents for the commercial cargo that moved in and out of the Country. Like many lines in Santo Domingo, the one that separated corruption from corporation was at best blurred; at worst it washed away along the shore.
“We found one!" a junior shouted at him as he entered the complex.
“Again!?” Peña Peña shouted back, disbelieving. Now In his office, an abandoned shipping container repurposed with electricity, he laid his head on his desk.
“How many is that this month?” the junior asked, in a yuca-thick accent after following him in. Peña Peña stood up from his desk and both men leaned against the cut-out windows.
He calculated it was the third polizón that month; illegal human cargo who snuck onto the ships desperate to escape the Island. They were an impediment, a strain on an otherwise easy occupation. Weeks into the job, he'd started dreaming of them. They were tiny barnacles dragging down the boats he oversaw. In the dreams he saw himself not as the captain, but as the ship itself - something once floating that had now been given direction.
A polizón was a loss for everyone involved. For the port crew it meant staying late for additional reporting and secondary inspections. For the colonel, delays and a thirty thousand dollar fine if the polizón reached foreign shores. For the polizón, it meant death. The boat crew would throw a man overboard before being on the hook for an illegal. It was an unspoken rule of the seas, spelled out by bodies on the bottom of its floor.
“Why the fuck are you bringing him in here?” Peña Peña demanded as two other juniors escorted the suspect into the office with his hands zip-tied behind his back.
“We found him in the steering compartment.”
“Do you even know where the hell the ship is going?” Peña Peña asked the man, knowing the destination didn’t matter. The only goal was to get away from Santo Domingo, a place in constant hunger in spite of ground fertile enough to sprout food from any crevice in the cement wide enough to fit a seed.
“Es un mudo,” said one of the juniors. Peña Peña sighed. “A mute can’t scream when he’s drowning,” he told the man. “Get him out of here,” he ordered, then sat at his desk to start the paperwork as his mouth watered for a drink.
El Mudo took an eager step towards the door with the juniors holding him by the arms. The sound of boots hastily marching towards them crescendoed until the door slammed open as they were about to exit.
“Where is he!?” Martin Felipe barged in, shoving the juniors out of the way.
“¡Martin! ¡No!” Peña Peña raised his voice. He knew polizones got more than spoken to. He personally had resisted the urge to slap him upside the head for the inconvenience.
Martin Felipe rushed towards the mute, grabbing him by the t-shirt collar. The man’s expression shifted from annoyance to worry once he registered who had him by the neck. His forehead wrinkled save for the diagonal scar that crawled across it like a worm.
“¡Hijo de puta! What the hell did I tell you last time!?” Martin Felipe screamed.
“¡Martin! We got it from here. Leave him alone!” Peña Peña ordered. He wasn’t pulling rank on his brother, nor showing sympathy for El Mudo because he had neither. What he did have, was firsthand knowledge of how his brother’s temper made matters worse.
Martin Felipe grabbed the walkie talkie from his waist and raised it over his head in an elliptical motion. He struck the mute across the forehead causing blood to shoot out like from a valve directly onto Peña Peña’s desk, his shirt, his face, and on the floor.
“¡COÑAZO!” Peña Peña screamed.
“Try again and I’ll drown you myself!” Martin told El Mudo, then stormed out.
The man lay on the floor squealing while Peña Peña unbuttoned his now bloodied uniform shirt. A patch with both his last names was sewn on the shirt pocket. The first day he wore it, he liked it so much that he made everyone start calling him Peña Peña instead of by his first name.
Now kneeling on the floor next to El Mudo, he freed the man’s wrists and handed him the shirt so he could apply pressure on the wound himself.
“Call the medics,” he told the juniors, and stepped outside in his undershirt to smoke a cigarette and pray for Friday.
–
“¡Gracias a Dios!” Peña Peña said out loud on his first Saturday morning with the Starlet. He’d completed a year at the job and his older brother had come through on his promise. At two in the afternoon, peak time for foot traffic on his block, he gave the car a thorough wash on the sidewalk.
After sunset he drove the nine kilometers East to Ciudad Nueva, to celebrate at his favorite bar not far from work. He whistled along to the radio as he looked for parking, the streets were dark from another power outage save for the few restaurants that owned small generators. He searched on La Billini, and on La 19 De Marzo, before circling back to La Jose Reyes where he found a spot a few blocks from the bar.
The moment he turned the key to shut off the ignition, the power came back on and brought to life the street lights above him. It made him smile. Cheers came from all around, keeping with the Dominican tradition of celebrating things most don’t give a second thought to; when lights turn back on, when a plane lands, that Christ is always coming tomorrow.
He climbed out of the Starlet still whistling and turned away from the car.
“Heh-hefe,” someone called out from behind him.
He felt in his pocket for loose change, assuming it was a parqueador offering to look after his car in exchange for a tip. He’d set the coins aside before leaving the house, running through the checklist of things he needed to consider as a car owner.
“Mira socio, here you go,” he said, turning to extend the four coins.
“¿Pe-peña. Pe-peña?” the man asked, stuttering his way through the name and walking closer.
“¿Si?” he responded, putting his hand back in his pocket as the man stepped under the street light.
“¡Pe-peña Pe-peña!” The man repeated, laughing.
It was the scar that reminded him. The worm-size laceration across the man's forehead had grown to the size of a centipede after it healed from its most recent collision with his brother’s Motorola. El Mudo wasn’t a mute, he was a gago; a stammerer.
“Oh.” Peña Peña said, and moved his left foot behind him to center his weight, rolling his hand into a fist inside his pocket. “¿Cómo estás?”
“Tran-tran-quilo.” El Gago said. He put both his hands up, palms out, to show no intention of harm. “In the ah-office. Gra-gracias.”
“Tu sabe’... Gotta do the right thing.” Peña Peña said, pausing between each word, suddenly nauseous at the thought of the polizones he’d smacked around in the recent months.
El Gago lifted his t-shirt and revealed his waistline so Peña Peña could make out the machete that was tucked inside his pants. He pulled it up by the handle just enough to show off its rusted blade.
“You-you goo-good. You-you Lucky. ” El Gago laughed again. He tucked the machete back and let the shirt fall over it.
“Keep an eye on it for me,” Peña Peña said gesturing at his car. He took his hand out of his pocket and handed El Gago the coins, his only shield against a man with nothing to lose.
“Gra-gracias,” El Gago said. He took the money, then walked towards the sidewalk and past Peña Peña’s car to go crawl back into whatever sinkhole of the city from which he’d emerged.
Peña Peña adjusted his hat then lit a cigarette, taking drags while leaning against the door of a shuttered business. Maldito Martin, he thought, wondering if his brother would admit to remembering the man, or pretend he didn’t. He finished the cigarette and walked towards the bar on streets now thickening with people and stray dogs, all restless.
“Adelante,” the bouncer greeted him, holding the door open. Peña Peña scanned the dim interior from the sidewalk. He recognized a few other regulars who had assembled across the bar, and saw his favorite stool still open. He hesitated, patting his pockets as if he’d forgotten something.
“Gracias,” he finally told the man, but turned around and retraced his steps back to the Starlet. On the ride home, the smell of pine cleaner on worn leather comforted him as he drove the coastline with a full tank and a dry throat.