Photo by Larry Costales on Unsplash
The priest had had enough of us. Three nights into our bellringing antics, he went on the offensive, bolting from the church doors with a broom he swung like a birthday boy who couldn’t land a good hit on his piñata. For a moment, as we ran laughing and shouting to each other to run faster, he looked like he was about to jump on the broom and fly toward us. I pictured the priest kicking out his leg and hitting Luis or the groomsmen. I imagined the sharp and dusty bristles slashing my face, drawing gush loads of blood. But as the priest swung and swung and shouted some English curses I doubted anyone understood, he tripped on his slippers and ate a mouthful of ashy grass and dirt.
Luis said he was from England. Bobby claimed Italy. From his accent at the service last Sunday, I would’ve guessed Eastern Europe, some former Soviet country with alphabets as thick as concrete. But he spoke in Spanish, and he never strayed from his priestly duties. He looked at Luis, seated next to his bride-to-be in the front row, and said love knew no borders or boundaries, that he was glad that a boy from Texas had found his one-and-only right here in Santiago, Nayarit. He said he was happy this young man had made such a wise decision to get married at his age. He said nineteen was the perfect time to settle down. He said to the groomsmen—Juan, Bobby, El rockero, Chuy—that they should follow in Luis’s footsteps, at least find a companion before they spent a quarter of a century on this earth. And he said to me, from what I could gather from his labored Spanish, that being a Best Man meant I was a Best Man for life.
He was heartfelt. He was kind. He had eyes that looked like brand-new marbles, bright, bold, and strangely beautiful. But after a few drinks, after downing Pacificos, Buchanan’s, and anonymous bottles of fiery liquid late into the evening because this was Mexico and there was a wedding, no facial or personal characteristics could dissuade us from coming up with the most random ideas.
“Just once. One time,” said Bobby, passing the tequila bottle back to Luis. Luis took a swig with his right hand, held the steering wheel steady with his left. His bride-to-be was entertaining extended family at her uncle’s home and understood that ‘guy time’ was important, especially with his groomsmen. Luis moved through the Santiago neighborhoods like a cop on patrol, slowing down and pointing out to Bobby and me where so-and-so was shot, which house was robbed, which family was suspected of having narco relatives. He passed the bottle to me that first night, and I passed it to Chuy, who passed to Juan, then El rockero. We repeated the cycle for what felt like hours.
“You’re gonna wake up the whole damn neighborhood,” said Luis.
“Who cares?” said Bobby. “Your wedding’s next week.”
“Tu boda, compa,” said El rockero, agreeing with Bobby that his wedding sanctioned everything we could think of: drinking and driving, cruising the town in circles, ringing the church bell that was so conveniently hanging right outside the church doors.
I could see Luis’s smile in the rear-view mirror.
“Fuck it,” he said, and we coasted to the church. Luis took another swig, swerving between the road’s empty lanes, and when we arrived—all of us stumbling from the car, swaying like clowns until we had mastered gravity again—we stared at the church bell, like it was a relic we had come to steal.
“You gotta be quick, Bobby,” I said.
“Who said he was gonna ring it?” said Luis. “It’s my damn wedding.”
Chuy and Juan, Santiago natives, knew very little English, but they seemed to agree that Luis should be the one to ring it.
“Rock, proper, scissors,” said Bobby.
“Que es eso?” asked Juan.
El rockero made some motions with his hands. Luis told me his biological father was from California. El rockero had met him only once.
Juan made a face, still confused.
“It’s gotta be me,” said Luis, bending over to tie his shoes.
“It was my goddamn idea,” said Bobby.
“When you get married to Volga or Vodka or whatever the hell her name his, we’ll ring that bell on the Transylvania tower,” said Luis, referring to Bobby’s on-again, off-again relationship with Varvara, a sophomore who looked like she competed in wrestling or shot put in high school. She was in our Intro to American Lit class. Her arms were as thick as conveyor belts. Her legs and waist as bold and boxy as a communist apartment complex.
“She’s from Maryland, dude,” said Bobby.
“Yeah whatever,” said Luis.
“No, let’s do rock, paper, scissors. It’s only fair,” I said. Luis was my friend first. There was an understanding that we had to listen to each other.
“Fine,” said Luis, getting his hands battle ready. But three quick strikes in and he lost. He didn’t ask for a rematch though. No best of three. He took a swig of tequila, swallowed hard. “But I got tomorrow,” he said.
“Now we’re talking,” said Bobby, sprinting toward the church. He jumped and pulled the rope, swinging around. The bell rang, loud and medieval. It was the size of a toddler, but because its purpose was to call out the start of mass, its echo carpeted every corner of Santiago silence. Bobby stumbled when his feet hit the ground, then stammered toward us and took the bottle from Luis’s hand. Like kids, we clapped, jumped, shouted like Bobby had just accomplished something important. Juan reached into the car, turned up the music. We passed the bottle around. The bell echoed to a slow death. The window at the back of the church lit up. Bobby claimed he didn’t see the priest pass by the window. I told no one I thought I saw a set of horns sprouting from his silhouette.
***
The thing about Mexico is that there’s always a reason to drink. The morning after our first bellringing crusade, we drove to Santiago’s only cemetery. Like a band of nomads, Juan, Chuy, El rockero, Luis, Bobby and I trudged through row upon row of graves, hauling an ice chest full of beer and bags of candy and chips. We arrived at the grave we came for. There were yellow flowers in a vase resting on top of the headstone, and the name Sammy chiseled below. There was a quote from the Bible, but I was too distracted by the chipped edges and the dust that had settled over the gray surface to read it. Luis said it had been a year since Sammy’d been buried, and yet his gravesite had already weathered to this condition. We set the ice chest down. It looked like every headstone here had shared the same fate.
“A celebrar,” said Juan, cracking open a Pacifico.
Luis handed me one. He grabbed another from the ice chest and raised the bottle above his head. The groomsmen raised their bottles too. I raised my bottle, but when Luis said his dead friend’s name, and his groomsmen repeated in unison—with Bobby echoing their somberness—I stayed silent, sure that the syllables and his memory didn’t belong in my mouth.
We drank. “Eso,” said El rockero. Juan smiled, mumbled something to himself and took another swig. Juan and El rockero sat on the ice chest, Chuy on the ground. Luis leaned on a headstone, and Bobby and I did so too, convinced this was a sign of respect not only to Luis’s dead friend, but to everyone buried here.
I took another swig, settled against the side of the headstone next to Sammy’s.
El rockero downed his beer and asked me, “You ever know someone who died?” He tilted his head to his side and stuck out his tongue. The group turned to me. El rockero repeated his question in Spanish. I thought of my grandfather, of how I knew him only as a body reclined on the La-Z-Boy in the corner of my grandparents’ living room. With the skin beneath his neck sagging like a wattle—nap drool dripping from the wrinkly folds—my grandfather sat like some king on the verge of having to give up his kingdom to a wife and children he despised.
“Mi abuelo,” I said, then took a sip. The group nodded with an understanding that it’s always the grandfather who dies first, never the grandmother.
The air grew hazy after another beer, and because the Pacificos were a step above water, I drank more and more.
The sun hung heavily above us. The clouds swelled with no real promise of rain. The sky swirled, and when it settled a few beers later, Luis and the groomsmen started crying. El rockero stood and threw his bottle at the ice chest and yelled that life was a bitch, nothing but a bitch. He said that bus rides so late in the countryside should be outlawed in Mexico. Every country for that matter. He said Sammy should’ve called one of them, that he shouldn't’ve let his pride get the best of him, that no one should be embarrassed if they didn’t have a car. He cursed the long winding roads on the mountains of Nayarit. He cursed the need to travel so far for work, the economics that led to Sammy’s death. I couldn’t remember if he said any of this in English or Spanish, but I kept drinking, wondering if the eighth—or was it tenth?—Pacifico would finally push me into that darkness I’d remember my mother, when I was still in elementary, would edge closer and closer to on Friday nights after a long work week, hoping, as she sat on the couch and watched a marathon of Law & Order, that the wine coolers she was chugging would make her forget that she was single with two children, that there was a possibility that every Friday would be the same for the rest of her life.
Though I was starting to feel sleepy like my mother would, I stood and surveyed the cemetery like I knew what losing a friend felt like. Everyone raised their bottles, downed whatever they had left. The headstones began to melt. Part of the ground started to cave in. I wasn’t sure if when I returned home after the wedding, I’d remember slogging through the broken cemetery gates when we were done mourning, feeling warm, welcomed, whole.
***
Luis rang the bell the second night. Chuy the night after, when the priest had tried to chase us down.
On Thursday, we had our dress rehearsal. The priest begged forgiveness for the cavity that was paining him between his right front tooth and incisor. It seemed to have grown since we last saw him. I thought of a black hole. A well. A tunnel where darkness festered. He ran his tongue over it all throughout practice, muffling the instructions. We followed his slobbering commands, and that night, when we returned to what was starting to feel like a habit, it felt as though our bellringing was the priest’s punishment for such poor oral hygiene.
The priest was prepared though. El rockero got one good ring in before we were pelted with chunks of candle wax, the kind found on the altar no doubt. That shower of melted terror rained over us, but we did our best impressions of soldiers, zigzagged back and forth and back, and made it to the next street over where we flung our bodies in the car.
“You think he saw us though,” asked Bobby, adjusting the lucha libre masks Chuy had passed out to us the next day.
We spent that Friday morning drinking. The afternoon drinking. We drove around from house to house, greeted family Luis’s bride-to-be hadn’t seen in ages or had never met before. Everyone congratulated everyone on the wedding. We drank into the evening.
“Nah,” said Luis. “Didn’t you see the priest’s eyes?”
“His eyes,” said Bobby, pulling down the eye holes to see better.
“They’re like foggy and shit.”
“Glaucoma,” said El rockero, leaning over and tightening his mask.
“No way he could’ve seen us,” said Luis.
“And you think these are gonna help?” I asked, pointing at my black and red mask.
“At least yours isn’t glittery,” said Bobby. I could finally see his eyes through the baby blue glitter, soft and welcoming.
“If he does catch one of us,” said El rockero, “we can body slam him.” He mimicked the motion on Juan, who in response feigned grabbing El rockero in a headlock and flinging him to the ground.
We must’ve looked like amateur thieves driving around Santiago, but the few people who were out in the streets so late at night must’ve been used to this kind of thing. They either waved or pretended not to see us at all.
We stepped out of the car close to midnight, agreeing that after I had rung the bell a few times, everyone else would get a turn too.
We slithered from lamppost to building corner to bush, came up behind the church and stared at the bell the priest had clearly raised higher. It wasn’t high enough though.
Juan and Chuy patted me on the back. El rockero and Bobby said good luck. Luis gave me a hug, as if he’d never see me again. I had asked him before the wedding if he had planned to return to campus for the spring semester. He said his first priority was going to be his wife. His second making money. January was the last thing on his mind.
“See you on the other side,” I said, never one to use such phrases.
I tugged down my mask and walked into the church yard. The light on the top corner of the church beamed at the bell. I didn’t doubt the priest moved it in that direction. I ran toward the bell, ready to put my high school basketball skills to use once again, but when I was a few feet away, with my arms raised and my legs ready to catapult my body toward the rope, the priest appeared, swinging what appeared to be a scythe.
“The hell!” I yelled, sidestepping the priest and running toward the church.
The priest yelled something in Latin, a curse damning me back to the hellhole I came from.
“Run!” I yelled, hoping Luis and the others could hear me.
I looked back. The priest swung wildly. He was dressed all in black, with a large cross that, in the chaos of his running, got caught in the chain and became angled upside down.
“Corra!” I screamed, unsure if that was the correct conjugation for demands in Spanish. “Corra!”
I heard a car start in the distance. I heard the priest begin to laugh, but as if something were gurgling at his throat. I ran around in another circle, but the priest, suddenly nimble and athletic, anticipated my route and swung where my feet should’ve stepped. I jumped back.
The Latin he was spewing now sounded like babble, a gibberish I couldn’t make out. The light from the corner of the church rendered his body into a silhouette. But I could see his face, the anger in the folds of his skin. He bared his teeth and it looked like the cavity that was eating away at this front tooth had spread and eaten enough of his teeth to look like he had a mouthful of broken glass jutting from his gums. He swung the scythe-like weapon above his head, but I got up and ran toward the church before the blade came down.
Inside, I locked the doors. The priest banged on them, shrieking his babble and calling out to some force that would come to provide reinforcements.
I backpedaled down the aisle, watching the door rattle, listening to the priest screaming, until I found myself at the steps of the altar. I turned around and saw a large wooden Jesus on a cross hanging from the ceiling. He was staring down at me.
I took off my mask and placed it on the steps.
In a few days, two people who loved each other would get married here. There’d be laughter. There’d be joy. I kneeled, placed my hands together and bowed my head. The priest’s screams turned into growls, turned into screeches that seeped into the church and scratched at the walls, the pews. I repeated what prayers I knew, but the ringing in my ears only grew louder.
Esteban Rodríguez is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Lotería (Texas Review Press 2023), and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us (Split/Lip Press 2021). He currently lives in south Texas.