The weighted line hisses as it snakes through the air.
The baited hook plops into the trough between two waves.
Luis lifts the fishing rod as line unspools from the reel, only stopping when the red-and-white bobber dips below the surface and comes up again. It’s his custom to wait a few minutes, hoping that a sizeable fish will take the bait. If nothing bites, Luis will slowly wind the line in, still hoping for a strike.
His young wife Aurora stands beside him, leaning on the top beam of the wooden pier. She wears cheap sunglasses, a long-sleeved shirt, and a wide, floppy hat to protect her skin from becoming even browner. The plastic bucket at their feet holds four tilapia; enough for dinner.
The Rosarito Beach pier stretches a quarter-mile into the ocean. Mostly Mexicans fish, along with a few gray-haired gringos. Lovers stroll by holding hands. Children fish with droplines wound around beer cans, excited to catch tiny sardines.
The sun dips down to the horizon and high tide waves crash on an outcropping of black rocks. Reggaeton music reaches the pier from a nightclub on the beach.
Aurora leans close to Luis’ ear. “I have to pee.”
Luis grins. “One more cast. For luck.”
He moves down the pier so he can cast near the outcropping of rocks. There’s always the danger of snagging your hook and it’s a cast he only makes when it’s time to leave.
His line whips past the rocks—a perfect cast. In seconds, he feels the hook jerk. The line goes slack for a second, in the grip of a wave, and then pulls taut. There’s something huge on the line—monstrous. But it’s not alive.
A second wave lifts the catch—a brown bulk. A live fish this huge would have snapped the line.
Luis lifts the rod but the line doesn’t pull free.
A third wave carries the bulk on its crest.
A dead sea lion.
Everyone’s pointing now and anglers make way for Luis as he hustles along the pier toward the shore, carefully reeling in slack line and ducking under the rods of the other fishermen. Aurora follows behind, with the bucket of fish and the tackle box.
“Cut it loose,” hollers one fisherman.
Luis ignores him. He caught this. He’ll bring it all the way in. Pose for pictures. Be important, even if it’s only for a moment.
He hustles down the wooden stairs, angling his line so there are no obstructions between him and the monster he’s reeling in. He jumps to the sand and begins plodding through the sand, which pulls at his feet. Adrenaline pumps as he reaches the wet sand at the tideline. He has a following now: kids jumping this way and that, men with beer cans in hand, brown women wearing t-shirts and shorts wet with ocean water.
One of the children shouts, “It’s a whale!”
“It’s not a whale,” says an old man with a creased pot belly.
The incoming tides carries the beast to shore. Finally, a wave bigger than the others brings it far enough onto the beach that it lies there in the rays of the fading sun, not rolling back into the surf.
For a moment the smell of saltwater fills the air.
Then comes the stink of decomposition. Rotting meat and stomach gases, A smell of wet dog. Voided bowels. A mingling of odors penetrating deep into Luis’ nostrils. A stink that refuses to blow back out.
There’s a crowd now. Kids hold their noses. Some men and women back away, to put distance between them and the stench.
The sea lion is three meters long and easily a few hundred kilos. Its body intact; its muzzle half gone; chewed. It’s body shifts in the sand and a wet, open eye stares up at the sky.
Luis stands with the rod still attached to the beast. He points to the tackle box in Aurora’s hand. “Cut the line.”
She dips into the box and comes up with a small knife. She pulls the line taut and cuts it free.
Everyone who has a phone is taking pictures—mostly grinning selfies. Like big game hunters in Africa, posing in front of dead lions.
From the north end of the beach comes a white pickup with two men standing in its bed. It drives in low gear, tires churning sand. The driver cuts the engine and all three men gather round the dead sea lion, looking down, as though the answer to their problem will appear in blazing letters on the hide of the animal.
“The cabron’s too big,” says the driver.
One of the men says, pointing at Luis, “It was you?”
“I caught it,” says Luis.
“Chinga tu madre,” says the man. “You should have left it in the ocean. More work for us.”
By now there’s an even bigger crowd. They watch as one of the men ties a rope around the front flipper of the beast. The other end of the rope is tied to the truck’s bumper.
The workers wave people out of the way as the truck rolls off toward the far edge of the beach, where people rarely go. With the beast in motion, the stench assaults the crowd as though physical. Everyone covers their nose and mouth. Some groan. Others hurry away.
The truck hasn’t traveled more than a few meters before the flipper pulls loose from the body Still tied, it flops and bumps along the sand.
The truck brakes and two of the men heave the flipper into the bed of the pickup and then set to with vigor, tying the sea lion’s bulk in a triangulated truss that holds strong as they drive off.
That’s enough for the crowd. They go back to whatever they were doing. But it’s not enough for Luis. He watches the truck until it comes to a stop a hundred meters away.
“I want to see,” says Luis. “Let’s go.”
Aurora is used to following her husband and they trudge through the sand. The workers ignore their arrival. Two of them are busy with shovels, digging a hole in the sand. A huge hole. It’s sweaty work in the last rays of the sun and the driver takes the shovel from time to time, to spell the other two.
Luis watches as a Mexican rides up on an agitated horse. The rider is dressed like a charro, with a sombrero and a belt with a large silver buckle. He reins his horse in at the edge of the hole and next to the dead sea lion. The horse stutter steps sideways and the rider barely maintains his control. The frightened horse kicks and bucks a foot away from the grave’s edge.
Luis thinks: The horse can smell death in the air. Luis watches as a Mexican rides up on an agitated horse. He reins his horse in at the edge of the hole and next to the dead sea lion. The frightened horse kicks and bucks a foot away from the grave’s edge.
Luis thinks: The horse can smell death in the air.
When the grave is two meters deep the driver tosses an end of the rope to the rider. The charro expertly ties it around the pommel of his saddle. He digs his heels into the horse’s flanks and his steed pulls the sea lion into the hole. When the sea lion thuds into the bottom of the makeshift grave there’s a soft explosion of gas expelled from the corpse.
The horseman gallops away, his job done.
The hole isn’t deep enough and the ravaged snout of the sea lion and a single eye sticks up through the sand.
Aurora nudges Luis, and says softly, “This isn’t right.”
Luis nods, and says to the workers, “You can’t leave it like that.”
The driver says, “Mind your business. We’ll be back tomorrow with a backhoe to make a proper job of it.”
The truck drives off into the evening shadows and Aurora says, “They’re never coming back.”
Luis shakes his head. “Of course not.”
The dinner is a simple one: steamed tilapia, tortillas, and water from the garrafon. Luis watches his wife eat, using her fingers to pull a pin bone from her piece of fish. She tosses the bone on a small plate between them.
“I am going to sleep early,” she says. “This day was too much.”
“No,” says Luis. “We have something to do.”
They trudge across the sand in the darkness, toward the sea lion’s grave. The nightclubs are lit up and music plays. Luis carries an empty hominy can. Aurora walks beside him, with a votive candle in her hand. She looks out toward the black ocean and stifles a yawn.
The beach is empty except for a scattering of homeless sleeping in shabby tents. There’s no one camping by the sea lion’s grave. For good reason: the air has a palpable odor of putrefaction.
Aurora takes a box of kitchen matches from her pocket and lights the votive candle, which is decorated with the image of the Virgin of Guadeloupe. She places it near the sea lion’s grave and covers her mouth and nose with one hand.
Luis uses the hominy can to scoop sand. He tosses the sand over the sea lion’s still visible snout. It’s more work than Luis expected, since the sand slides away and progress is measured in millimeters. The effort makes him sweat and he breathes harder, inhaling the reek of decomposition. From time to time, he glances at Aurora, at her smooth brown thighs clad in shorts, at her black bra strap slipping from the shoulder of her pink T-shirt.
Luis pauses and peers at the stars above and imagines all sorts of creatures swimming under the surface of the ocean, all feeding on each other—even the sea plants deriving nourishment from the dead.
When he is done, and the sea lion’s snout is covered, he tosses the can away, watching it clang and roll across the sand.
“What’s wrong?” asks Aurora.
“Do you feel it, too?” asks Luis.
Aurora looks away.
“No one will see,” says Luis.
Luis bends down and blows out the candle.
Aurora’s eyes dart side to side as her husband steps closer. Luis pulls his wife’s shorts down around her feet. Then her panties, the faded ones washed a hundred times.
He lays her down in the sand. She’s already wet and he slides into her in one motion, going in deeper than he ever has before, holding her ass above the sand, charging into her like he’s swimming underwater, holding his breath until he’s about to explode, then drawing the reek deep into his lungs, both orgasming together, stifling their cries, Aurora’s hand over her husband’s mouth.
Aurora and Luis’ parents had wondered for years: When will these two start a family of their own?
It’s not that they hadn’t tried. They had. But nothing had caught hold.
After that night on the beach, within days, Aurora knew she was with child. Was Luis happy? It seemed he was, but he was distant at the same time. Money was minimal, but enough to go to the least expensive hospital in Rosarito, the Red Cross. Midwives and brujas would have been cheaper, but Aurora flinched when Luis would speak of them.
It was Luis’ parents who gave them the money for the first ultrasound at three months. The baby was little more than a walnut, but they saw its beating heart.
At seven months, the ultrasound showed a fetus more developed, and Luis walked close to the monitor, staring into the baby’s eye, wet with amniotic fluid. Seeing and knowing his son for the first time.
It was at eight months that the heartbeat disappeared.
Days later, Aurora went into a form of truncated labor, and the baby was pushed out dead.
Luis stared down at the stillborn child, its weight pushing against the fabric in the enamel pan.
Why did they show me my boy this way?
The night before the funeral, Luis kissed his wife’s salty shoulder and then got out of bed. He took one of the infant socks they had purchased a week before, blue socks with yellow crescent moons.
Aurora roused herself and raised her body up from the mattress. “Where are you going?”
“I won’t be long.”
“But where are you going?”
“Go back to sleep.”
Luis could have called for a ride but something like this, it was better to walk. The moon had reached its height and had now begun it’s arc back down.
He walked the quiet streets, past the used tired stores, the OXXO, and the taco shops. He passed over the overpass, briefly looking down at the night traffic on the highway.
My heart is on a string.
Luis had never made this walk before—it was longer than he thought. When he reached the beach, he was tired. He shuffled toward the grave. Was there still a smell? He didn’t know.
He swept his hand over the mound of sand and in seconds the sea lion muzzle and head were revealed. The creature’s eye was no longer shiny. There was an opaque skin over the eye, the kind of skin that occurs over a pot of boiling milk. Luis imagined the eye wet inside—still alive.
He took out his son’s sock and scooped up a handful of sand.
Aurora walked to the funeral with a limp, with Luis holding onto her.
Their families were there—everyone—even small children. Even infants. There was a folding table covered with single roses
The coffin was tiny but the hole was deep as usual.
When the priest was done, Luis raised his hand.
Aurora whispered. “What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, Luis reached into his pocket and took out the blue sock decorated with yellow crescent moons. He held the sock over the open grave and let the sand fall.
Luis stepped back and watched as one-by-one the roses fell upon the coffin.
But Luis knew.
It was the sand that reached his son.
