This is part three of If God Will Give Us License a story set in the rancho where my father grew up. And, if you're wondering, no, my big bro and I did not run down some kid while we were in Mexico. If you haven't read Part One, click here. Here's Part Two.

If God Will Give Us License, Part III 

13.
    They drove through Jerez to a tire shop on the northern end of town. David noticed many small boys who looked poor and homeless walking the streets. That child he had left up on that hill could have disappeared among these children. David would have to find a way to float the idea that the missing child was probably a runaway who had left home to find work.
    At the tire shop, David took the lead, requesting four new tires and that the best of the originals be thrown into the back of the truck to be used as a spare. The mechanics drove the truck onto the hydraulic lift and loosened the tire bolts. David and Benjamin and their uncle leaned against a fence and watched them work, though Uncle Luis was near tears, had to keep covering his face with his hands and force his body to stop from being wracked. Benjamin moved away from them, out to the edge of the street. David went to his uncle and stood in front of him.
    "Uncle, you have to control yourself."
    Uncle Luis looked up at David, thinking that he was unfathomable, unfathomable and, it had turned out, monstrous. "Don't talk to me!" he said and pushed David away. "What did you do, David? What did we do together?"
    Uncle Luis went to shove David again, but David caught his hands. He squeezed them, said, "Uncle, listen to me. It's fucked, if we make it fucked. We're in front of this."
    Uncle Luis tried to shake his hands free, but David squeezed them harder. "We go in three days, uncle. Three days," David said, and let go of his uncles reddened hands.
    The mechanics finished and one of the men went to collect the money from Uncle Luis. Benjamin walked back, pulled the money from his front pocket, and handed it to the man, leaving his uncle clutching the crumpled bills that he had worked so hard to save. Nobody seemed to notice that this should have been a horrible moment. It paled and slid by.

14.
    That night, as he and Benjamin lay in their beds, David started planning an early departure from Puerta De Chula. "I could say that I need to get back to do some work, maybe some more scheduling for when school starts up again," he said into the darkness.
    Benjamin was wide-awake, listening to the sound of the wind in the trees, looking at the shadows of their leaves swaying in the window, but he didn't want to take any part in this. He was already complicit enough without helping to plan. If he stayed quiet, he hoped that David would leave him alone.
    "But, if we take off early, that'll be weird. And dad might not want to go."
    Benjamin pretended to sleep. If he stayed quiet, David would make all the decisions by himself.
    "Do you think dad could handle flying back by himself?" David asked. He knew Benjamin wasn't asleep. "Benjamin, goddamnit, are you listening to me?"
    "Huh, what?" Benjamin said, pretending to yawn.
    "Can dad fly back by himself?"
    "No. No way."
    "Yeah, you're right."
    Benjamin started running through various scenarios in which the right thing might be done, ways for the child to be found. Benjamin understood that for that to happen, for Benjamin to talk to their father and uncle and make some plans of their own, David would have to be gone. "You can take off now, if you want. I'll stay with dad."
    There was silence then, as David realized that Benjamin was not to be trusted, as Benjamin sensed that David and his relationship was fraying.
    Benjamin went back to listening to the wind, glad that his brother had stopped talking.

15.
    The boy's parents were from one of the small houses that occasionally appeared along one of the dirt roads in this part of Mexico. They lived three miles outside of Puerta De Chula and they walked there the morning after their child disappeared because it was the closest of the surrounding towns. They went from house to house and asked if anyone had seen Cesario, their seven-year-old son. They had started at the store, so talk of who they were and why they were in Puerta De Chula preceded them.
    Nestor, David and Benjamin's cousin who had picked them up from the airport, went by Aunt Christina's to deliver ground corn for that night's tortillas. He mentioned to her, as he dropped the sack on the kitchen table, that a couple might be stopping by looking for their boy. Nestor said that he had probably run away, as occasionally happened in families who were desperately poor, a child seeing that there was not enough food and then leaving to try to survive on his own in a surrounding city.
    David was sitting at an outdoor table with Benjamin and some of their female cousins, talking about American boys. He overheard Nestor and his aunt and was glad that the boy was starting to be talked about as a runaway. That was probably how everyone, including the parents, was thinking of the boy. That would mean that whatever searches developed, they would not involve the police, just family and friends going into neighboring towns when there was time and a way to get to them, then just keeping an eye out for a missing child. Benjamin had also heard what Nestor had said. Against his will, he felt relieved.
    David wanted to get out of Puerta De Chula before the parents arrived at his aunt's house. His uncle would be out working in his peach orchard; the parents probably wouldn't talk to him. David stood up quickly and said that he was going to go for a run. He asked Benjamin if he wanted to come along. David wouldn't crack, he could sit with the parents for hours, listen to them describe their child while they all drank coffee, but Benjamin might. He might give them away just by acting nervous, by acting guilty.
    Benjamin said that he was tired, that he didn't want to come. "I think I'll take our cousins to Jerez so that they can show me the bookstores."
    "You sure?" David said, turning sideways toward their room, already unbuttoning his shirt.
    "Yeah, I'm beat, bro."
    "Okay. Just be careful." David looked at Benjamin until he looked up. When their eyes met, David walked away.
    Benjamin knew what t David was trying to communicate to him. David didn't trust him now. That was ruined. Their love for each other was ruined, Benjamin thought. They would never be able to talk to each other because they couldn't ever be honest with each other anymore.
    David came out of their room a few minutes later. They all watched him jog on the dirt roads that headed into the foothills. He started up the first hill and he became smaller and then started to blend into the cactus and the bushes and the earth and then he disappeared.

16.
    The boy's parents knocked on Aunt Christina's iron gate. She had been sweeping the front courtyard, and they talked to each other over the gate. Benjamin was glad that they wouldn't be coming in to sit down at the table with him where they would spill out their fear and their grief and he would have to pretend that he could not help.
    Benjamin could see the parents through the gate's bars. The man had a mustache and short hair, probably, by how it looked, cut by his wife with scissors. He wore black shoes, jeans, a green shirt. He held his black, felt hat in his hands. He nervously played with the brim as he talked.
    His wife wasn't talking, was standing a little bit behind him with her head down. She wore a long, faded purple and burgundy long-sleeved dress and she had a blue scarf tied around her head. Benjamin could see her sneakered feet under the gate. He was surprised that they weren't carrying a picture with them, but then he realized that they probably didn't have a picture of their child.
    Benjamin felt like vomiting, like he was going to pass out. He wanted to get up and go into his room, but would that be suspicious? He steeled himself. He wanted to look away from them, but he forced himself not to. This is what he had done, what he had helped to get done. It was his burden. If he were going to let this happen, he wanted to understand, to feel how much it would cost him of himself.
    The woman lifted a hand up to one eye and then the other. Aunt Christina extended her hand over the fence and touched the woman's shoulder. The couple walked away, and a few moments later Benjamin heard a knock on a gate further down the road.

17.
    That night, the entire family came over for an outdoor dinner. Earlier in the day, some of David and Benjamin's male cousins had slaughtered a cow, tying it to a pole, slitting its throat with a long knife and catching the blood in a tub. Everybody was eating barbecued meat wrapped in fresh tortillas, used napkins littering the table and spilling onto the floor.
    Benjamin and his uncle moved away from the table, near a fire that had been lit for warmth. They looked at the play of the fire on each other's faces as they talked.
    "Benjamin, what do you think David is going to do?" Uncle Luis said.
    "There's only one day left before we leave, Uncle Luis," Benjamin said, looking back toward where David was sitting, "There's still time, but I think David already made his plans, that everything is finished."
    "Have you talked to your father?" There was a pleading tone to Uncle Luis' voice, a sense of desperation, a sense that they were near the point where momentum and the passage of time would make what was probable into what was inevitable.
    "What do I tell him?" Benjamin said, his own voice full of pleading, pleading and confusion. "That David killed a boy? That I, that we two, want to turn him in? I can't think of how to do it. It's impossible, Uncle." Turning his brother in, that was what they were thinking of now, now that they knew that David would not turn himself in, that David was probably not even considering it, had probably not considered it at all.
    "If your father knows, he'll fix it." Uncle Luis said. He also knew that if his brother knew, all the weight of what they had done would be taken off of them and fall on him. Santiago would take charge and all the decisions would be his.
    "Then, you tell him."