Work In Progress - Prologue #1 of Sequel

As I mull how and where to take the sequel, the only thing I know for certain is I will be violating Elmore Leonard's Rule #3 - No Prologues. Of course he immediately finds an exception (some guy named Steinbeck). I like prologues, particularly ones that don't track with the narrative until the very end, the big reveal answering a question you've already forgotten about from the first five minutes of the movie. In a previous post, I shared a prologue for Gone To Ground that I ditched. Below is another prologue for my sequel that appears headed for the orphan file.

Imelda Jiminez received her first set of boning knives a year prior to her first communion. She’d flayed and dressed over four thousand pounds of beef and pork a week for the past thirty four years. When the tendons wore out on her right shoulder at the age of 28, she learned to swing a cleaver using her left. She was missing most of her index and middle fingers on her left hand as a result of a band saw accident, and her L1 and L3 discs in her back had turned to sponge, the physical toll of hoisting sides of beef all day onto her shoulder. It wasn’t until she started experiencing chronic respiratory issues that she reached out to someone from church, a young guy with round wire rimmed glasses, who took an interest in these types of things. Si tuviera un centavo...If I had a nickel. He knew the plant and held out his palms like Jesus the merciful. Then in English, “We need someone to step forward.” 

That was two years ago. 

When she spotted the line of men in masks clutching automatic weapons approaching the main entrance in a half-crouch, Imelda put her knife down and split the air with a whistle she’d learned from her father back in Jalisco. The other dozen or so employees in the abattoir looked up from their work like startled markeets.  

“Estan aqui.”  They’re here, she shouted, just as the first line of soldiers appeared through the double doors like they were clearing homes in Falouja. None of workers had green cards, and in fact, their employer, Genesis Meatpacking, wholly owned subsidiary of Genesis Foods, a division of SynGro, underwrote the coyote fees to bring them over the border where they would be indentured until their cost of relocation was repaid out of their wages. 

One of the younger workers took a few quixotic steps toward an open window before he shot his hands up then did a double take as the agents ignored him and moved past the others until they came to Imelda still clutching her six inch fillet knife pink with blood. The first agent got within twenty feet of her, stopped, took aim, and then took his sighting eye off the barrel. She knew then that this was no sweep. She was being spear-fished.

A year ago, the attorney had promised her something called whistleblower protection. “Come forward, and your employers won’t be able to retaliate,” this last word requiring the translator to step in and explain. Since then, it had turned into open season on immigrants, and the men in masks were quite literally on a quota in this part of Southern California. Imelda placed her knife on the table but not before sending the agent, his identity stashed behind a ski mask and sunglasses, her best eye-fuck.

Her son, Javier, had been on a six hour flight from the east coast when the raid took place. By the time he landed in Los Angeles, called an attorney, and drove himself to the holding facility in Adelanto, his mother was already in the air back to Mexico. 

Soy alérgico a los cacahuetes was the last thing his mother said which drew blank stares from her captors when they peeled the foil wrapper off her one and only meal on the plane. The peanuts to which she was allergic had been ground into flour and masked with four types of chilis. Both epi-pens in the medical kit had been emptied and filled with saline. The pilot didn’t request an emergency landing because no one informed him that someone had gone into anaphylactic shock, and by the time they wheeled Imelda’s inert body into the ER at Dr. Enrique Cabrera General Hospital in Mexico City, the attending physician didn’t even call for the crash cart.

Javier flew to Mexico, identified his mother’s body, and then took care of the paperwork to bring her back to Pacoima where she was buried a week later. Once the service had concluded and the last of the well-wishers had left the funeral parlor, he stood staring at his mother’s casket and pulled out his phone.

Someone picked up on the first ring. “Yes, Javier.”

“Change of plans.”