The King Is Always Above the People

Copyright

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018

Copyright © 2017 Daniel Alarcón

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Cover images © plainpicture/Mira/Conny Ekstrom

Daniel Alarcón asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

The following stories have been published previously, in slightly different form: “The Thousands” (McSweeney’s); “The King Is Always Above the People,” “The Provincials,” and “The Bridge” (Granta); “Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot” (Zoetrope); and “República and Grau” (The New Yorker).

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007517367

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780007517374

Version: 2018-01-02

Praise for The King Is Always Above the People:

‘Alarcón is an empathic observer of the isolated human, whether isolated by emigration or ambition, blindness or loneliness, poverty or war. His stories have a reporter’s mix of kindness and detachment, and perhaps as a result, his endings land like a punch in the gut … His purpose isn’t to approve or condemn, or to liberate. He’s writing to show us other people’s lives, and in every case, it’s a pleasure to be shown’

NPR

‘Superb … Throughout the collection, Alarcón writes with a spellbinding voice and creates a striking cast of characters. Each narrative lands masterfully and memorably, showcasing Alarcón’s immense talent’

Publishers Weekly

‘Alarcón is a truly impressive writer’

Boston Globe

‘Alarcón throws his characters into high-stakes situations to draw out humanity where it seems little hope is left’

Washington Post

‘Polished and poetic’

Vanity Fair

‘Elegant’

San Francisco Chronicle

‘Smart, political and incredibly engaging … Alarcón introduces readers to countless unforgettable characters along the way’

Nylon

‘Dynamic novelist and journalist Alarcón delivers a collection of loosely affiliated short stories, each buzzing and alive … Alarcón’s gift for generating real, tangible characters propels readers through his recognizable yet half-real worlds’

Booklist

‘Showcases his talent as a master storyteller’

Buzzfeed

Dedication

FOR THE THREAD™

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The King Is Always Above the People

Dedication

The Thousands

The Ballad of Rocky Rontal

The King Is always Above the People

Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot

The Provincials

Extinct Anatomies

República and Grau

The Bridge

The Lord Rides a Swift Cloud

The Auroras

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Daniel Alarcón

About the Publisher

THE THOUSANDS

THERE WAS NO MOON that first night, and we spent it as we spent our days: your fathers and your mothers have always worked with their hands. We came in trucks, and cleared the land of rock and debris, working in the pale yellow glow of the headlights, deciding by touch and smell and taste that the land was good. We would raise our children here. Make a life here. Understand that not so long ago, this was nowhere. The land had no owner, and it had not yet been named. That first night, the darkness that surrounded us seemed infinite, and it would be false to say we were not afraid. Some had tried this before and failed—in other districts, on other fallow land. Some of us sang to stay awake. Others prayed for strength. It was a race, and we all knew it. The law was very clear: while these sorts of things were not technically legal, the government was not allowed to bulldoze homes.

We had until morning to build them.

The hours passed, and by dawn, the progress was undeniable, and with a little imagination one could see the bare outlines of the place this would become. There were tents made of tarps and sticks. There were mats of woven reeds topped with sewn-together rice sacks, and sheets of pressboard leaning against the scavenged hoods of old cars. Everything the city discarded we’d been saving for months in preparation for this first night. And we worked and we worked, and for good measure spent the last hours of that long night drawing roads on the earth, just lines of chalk then, but think of it, just think … We could see them—the avenues they would be—even if no one else could. By morning, it was all there, this ramshackle collection of odds and ends, and we couldn’t help but feel pride. When we finally stopped to rest, we realized we were cold, and on the soft slope of the hill, dozens of small fires were built, and we warmed ourselves, each taking comfort in it, in our numbers, in this land we had chosen. The morning dawned pale, the sky scoured clean and cloudless. “It’s pretty,” we said, and yes, the mountains were beautiful that morning.

They still are. The government arrived before noon and didn’t know what to do. The bulldozers came, and we stood arm in arm, encircling what we had built, and did not move. “These are our homes,” we said, and the government scratched its febrile head. It had never seen houses like ours—our constructions of wire and aluminum, of quilts and driftwood, of plastic tarps and rubber tires. It came down off its machines to inspect these works of art. We showed the government the places we’d made, and eventually it left. “You can have this land,” it said. “We don’t want it anyway.”

The newspapers wondered where the thousands had come from. How we had done it. And the radio asked as well, and the television sent cameras, and little by little we told our story. But not all of it. We saved much for ourselves, like the words of the songs we sang, or the content of our prayers. One day, the government decided to count us, but it didn’t take long before someone decided the task was impossible, and so new maps were drawn, and on the empty space that had existed on the northeastern edge of the city, the cartographers now wrote The Thousands. And we liked the name because numbers are all we ever had.

Of course, we are many more than that now.

THE BALLAD OF ROCKY RONTAL

1

Let’s say your given name is Adrano Rontal, but they call you Rocky. Let’s say you’re a poor boy growing up in a poor city in a poor region of a very rich country. The richest in the world, or so they tell you. Let’s say there’s no evidence of that, at least not any that you’ve seen.

You have five brothers and a little sister. You’re not the oldest, but you are the bravest. Brave, even though you’re small. Brave, even when you shouldn’t be.

Let’s say the welfare check comes on the first and the fifteenth. Your father gets his cut first. For whiskey. No one sees him until night falls … And then, it isn’t your older brothers who protect your mom.

Instead, it’s you. Let’s say they dress you in layer after layer of clothes: extra sweaters, long-sleeve shirts, jackets, an ad hoc suit of armor, so stiff you can barely bend your arms. And your father, he beats you with a nightstick, like the kind cops use. And still you don’t cower.

Life has a way of punishing brave boys like you. Life has a way of making brave boys like you punish themselves. Particularly here. Where you live. You already know that.

One night your father gets carried away. He locks you in the closet, and your mother spends the night sleeping with her back to the door, to protect you.

In the morning, she sneaks the keys out of your father’s pocket. Let’s say she opens up the closet. And you’re caked in blood.

And so she kicks him out. A not insignificant act of bravery for a young woman with little education and few prospects, suddenly alone, with six children to feed.

You don’t know it yet, but you’re full of guilt. Full of hate.

Within a year, your older brothers are in juvenile. Now you’re ten years old. Now you’re the man of the house.

Let’s say one day a social worker comes by to check on you and your brothers. There’s no food in the pantry. You’re humiliated. You and your baby sister and your younger brothers are sent to a children’s shelter. You escape that same night and come home, but it’s your mother who convinces you, with tears in her eyes, to go back. “Don’t you wanna be with your younger brothers?” “Yes, jefita.” So you spend three months there, in a foster home, across the street from a methadone clinic. You recognize the junkies when they come by. You know them from the neighborhood. “Hey, Rocky,” they say. You can’t wait to go home.

You promise yourself you’ll never let the food run out again.

So when you come home, you start stealing. The first time you ever get busted it’s for breaking into a fruit stand. But before long you move on to bigger things. Let’s say you burglarize houses, taking anything that can be sold, but paying special attention to the food. You fill your father’s old duffel bag with cereal, with bread. You’re obsessed with the pantry. Obsessed with keeping it full. A week before the food runs out, you’re already in motion.

And then: at thirteen you’ve got your first .38. It’s the year you graduate to boosting cars. Let’s say you get a list, three or four a week. Make, model, year, color. You’re going to school now and then, but it’s like you’re not really there. You have other business.

At fifteen, you get picked up and sent to juvenile, like your brothers before you. You see friends from the neighborhood, tough, unsmiling boys just like you. You meet others, from all over California. And this is the first time you realize what you are. Or rather, this is the first time you realize what the world thinks you are.

Let’s say you’re sitting in a group meeting when the counselor calls you a gang member.

You’re offended. You hang around with people of the same cloth, the same experience, the same sufferings. These are your friends, like family. You don’t think of yourselves as gang members, but of course, technically, that’s what you are.

And let’s say you embrace the label.

When you get out, you start doing robberies. Holding up liquor stores, convenience stores. Let’s say you carry a gun, and every night you wave it in the faces of frightened cashiers. You don’t just take the bills; you take the change too. And at the end of the night, when you come home, let’s say you empty your pockets, slipping these coins under the pillows of your little brothers and your sister. It’ll make them smile when they wake up. They’ll know it was you who left the coins, even if they won’t know where they came from.

2

This is a story of three terrible crimes. The first is your childhood.

Here’s the second. Let’s say you’re seventeen when a crew of Sureños come up from Los Angeles. They’re called Vicky’s Town, or VST, and it isn’t long before they’re tagging in the neighborhood.

“Kick on back,” you say. You let it be known. This is how wars begin.

Your house is sprayed with bullets one night when you aren’t home. Your mother tells you, and then immediately regrets it. You know what to do. She begs you not to. Let’s say you do it anyway.

This is it. It’s two in the morning when you drive to your victim’s house. Let’s say you shoot him at close range with a sawed-off pump shotgun. Let’s say his mother and his little sister are in the house.

You don’t let your mother come to the trial. Let’s say you tell your brothers not to let her near the courthouse, not under any circumstances. But she’s your mother, and she comes. Years later, she’ll tell you, “You were always a good boy, mijo …” And you’ll find it astonishing she could say that, much less believe it.

But she does.

Let’s say the day she comes to the courthouse is the day the coroner testifies about your victim’s wounds. You’ll remember this for a long time. He’s on the stand, giving a detailed medical account of what happened, and your mother is sitting behind you, hiding her face with both hands. And on the other side of the courtroom, your victim’s mother is doing the same.

It’s the first time you feel ashamed of what you’ve done. If someone had intervened, right then, let’s say you could’ve been saved.

You’re sentenced to twenty-seven years to life.

You’re inside a year and a half when your little sister and a friend of hers disappear. It’s 1982, and this is the third terrible crime. Your sister’s name is Renee and her friend is named Nancy, and they’re both thirteen years old. Let’s say they were last seen on the avenue, getting into a car with two men. The two girls are found a week later, facedown in a ditch on the outskirts of town.

Let’s say you wonder if your sister paid for what you did. Now you’re sending out messages, lists of people you want executed. You don’t know who did it, so you want them all dead. You want to see bodies stacked up high, a monument to the pain you’re feeling.

Let’s say you want to murder the world.

And then one of the men is caught and tried, and sentenced to death. And one day you see him, across the yard, separated by two fences, and you get him a message. One day, you tell him, after the system kills you, I’ll get out. And I’m going to kill your family. You mean it. He knows you mean it, and that’s the only satisfaction you have.

Let’s say every time you come across someone inside, someone who hurt a child, you think of him. And you make them pay.

But the other man who killed Renee and Nancy gets away. Let’s say his name is Reyes. He gets away and stays away. Let’s say he vanishes somewhere in Mexico.

One decade, two decades, three. Reyes has a life. He gets married. He has children. He’s divorced. He marries again.

And all that time, while the man who raped and murdered your sister is walking the streets, you’re in prison, and your hatred is something sharp in your chest. Something darker, more toxic than rage. You don’t let your family call you. You don’t let them reach you. This is something you have to do alone.

3

Let’s say sometime during your second decade in prison you begin to think about the true meanings of simple words. Words like compassion. Understanding. Consideration. Forgiveness. Simple words.

No one you grew up with could have defined any of them.

Let’s say one night, on the block, you wake up wondering who you are. What right you have to hurt anyone. Is this an eye for an eye? Didn’t you take a life?

You ask yourself why you turned out the way you did, but you know you’ll never arrive at a satisfying answer. But let’s say you resolve to stumble on.

Let’s say in 2012 you’re released. All told, you’ve spent thirty-two years inside.

Let’s say you emerge into a world that’s disappointingly familiar. Your town is the same, only more so. The violence you loosed has become routine, and the kids have learned from you. Perfected what you taught them. Your mother’s dead. Your homies are dead. Some of your brothers have died too.

You go around town and tell everyone you’ve hurt that they don’t need to be afraid of you anymore. It’s a long list. You visit the mother of the boy you killed.

The last time you saw her was in the courtroom, when you were on trial for the murder of her son. Now she has salt-and-pepper hair, and sits in an armchair, both her hands resting atop a cane, her head bent down toward the floor. She’s still afraid of you. You get on one knee, and with all your might you give her an explanation of why you did what you did.

You don’t ask for forgiveness. You accept responsibility. When you’re done, she clears her throat, and says that no one in her family had anything to do with Renee’s death.

She’s afraid of you.

She says she’s seen you in the neighborhood talking to the youngsters. She knows you’re trying to make amends. Then she says she forgives you. It takes your breath away.

Then she changes the subject: “What else have you been doing?” she asks.

“Construction,” you say.

“So do you know how to fix cabinets?”

“Yeah, señora.”

“That’s good, mijo. Do you know how to fix fences?”

“Yeah, señora.”

“That’s good, mijo,” she says. “So now you’re gonna fix my cabinet and my fence.”

4

And then you get a call. Alfredo Reyes has been caught. Before you know it, they’ve brought him back from Mexico, and the trial has begun.

Let’s say you weren’t prepared to see the paunchy, middle-aged man before you, his slouch, his thinning hair. He tells the court that no, he never spent much time thinking of Renee or Nancy. Very rarely did he remember what he’d done.

You spent decades inside remembering what he did.

“It was consensual anyway,” Reyes tells the court, and your heart rate quickens.

“It was the other guy who killed those girls,” he says, and you clench your fists.

But you aren’t the person you were. And still. Let’s say you spent years dreaming of killing this man. And now you’ve sat through weeks of his trial, watching him. Thinking, repeating to yourself: Compassion. Understanding. Consideration. Forgiveness.

These words you’ve taught yourself. Words that suddenly seem meaningless again.

And then you find yourself, at your sister’s grave site, full of rage. And then you find yourself climbing a wall across the street from the courthouse, and up a ladder, to the roof of an old theater. Let’s say from here you can see the garage where the bus pulls in from the county jail. From here you could have a clean shot.

He says it was consensual. He described it.

And let’s say you find yourself on the roof, holding a rifle, the feel of it like an old friend. Let’s say you can imagine the bullet hitting Reyes, and the image of him falling is so clear in your mind, it’s like a movie you’ve watched a thousand times.

You’re watching, you’re waiting for the bus to come.

What happened on the roof of that theater?

Let’s say you saw the man you used to be.

THE KING IS ALWAYS ABOVE THE PEOPLE

IT WAS THE YEAR I left my parents, a few useless friends, and a girl who liked to tell everyone we were married, and moved two hundred kilometers downstream to the capital. Summer had limped to a close. I was nineteen years old and my idea was to work the docks, but when I showed up the man behind the desk said I looked scrawny, that I should come back when I had put on some muscle. I did what I could to hide my disappointment. I’d dreamed of leaving home since I was a boy, since my mother taught me that our town’s river flowed all the way to the city. My father had warned me, but still, I’d never expected to be turned away.

I rented a room in the neighborhood near the port, from Mr. and Mrs. Patrice, an older couple who had advertised for a student. They were prim and serious, and they showed me the rooms of their neat, uncluttered house as if it were the private viewing of a diamond. Mine would be the back room, they said. There were no windows. After the brief tour we sat in the living room, sipping tea, beneath a portrait of the old dictator that hung above the mantel. They asked me what I was studying. All I could think of in those days was money, so I said economics. They liked that answer. They asked about my parents, and when I said they had passed on, that I was all alone, I saw Mrs. Patrice’s wrinkled hand graze her husband’s thigh, just barely.

He offered to lower the rent, and I accepted.

The next day Mr. Patrice recommended me to an acquaintance who needed a cashier for a shop he owned. It was good part-time work, he told me, perfect for a student. I was hired. It wasn’t far from the port, and in warm weather, I could sit out front and smell the river where it opened into the wide harbor. It was enough for me to listen and know it was there: the hum and crash of ships being loaded and unloaded reminded me of why I had left, where I had come to, and all the farther places that awaited me. I tried not to think of home, and though I’d promised to write, somehow it never seemed like the appropriate time.

We sold cigarettes and liquor and newspapers to the dockworkers, and had a copy machine for those who came to present their paperwork at the customs house. We made change for them and my boss, Nadal, advised those headed to customs as to the appropriate bribe, depending on what item they were expecting to receive, and from where. He knew the protocol well. He’d worked for years in customs before the dictator fell, but hadn’t had the foresight to join a political party when democracy came. His only other mistake in thirty years, he told me once, was that he hadn’t stolen enough. There had never been any rush. Autocracies are nothing if not stable, and no one ever thought the old regime could be toppled.

We sold postcards of the hanging, right by the cash register: the body of the dictator, swaying from an improvised gallows in the main plaza. In the photo, it is a cloudy day, and every head is turned upward to face the expressionless dead man. The card’s inscription reads The King Is Always Above the People, and one has the sense of an inviolable silence reigning over the spectators. I was fifteen when it happened. I remember my father crying at the news. He’d been living in the city when the man first came to power.