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There is a saying, that when a man is about to die, his life flashes before his eyes. In the blink of an eye, his triumphs and faults are set before him, a map of his life. For Gustavo Fring, however, there was no such retrospective. Only a reminder of the quiet rage that had consumed his life ever since the day he first met Hector Salamanca, the man who so nonchalantly killed his partner, who left Gustavo splattered with Max Arciniega’s blood on the edge of a pool in Mexico.
So when the bell, both figurative and literal, tolled for Gustavo, it was not the wasted potential of the rest of his life that he thought of.
It was that he should have killed Hector Salamanca the first day they met.
Mexico, 1988.
The 1975 Chevrolet Cheville is not Gustavo’s. It is a car that he and Max have acquired just for today’s journey, borrowed from an acquaintance in hopes that they will be able to project an image of success when they finally meet Don Eladio. Gus has gone through an incredible amount of trouble to secure this meeting in the first place, and any small thing can do to assure that this meeting has a favorable outcome for them is worth doing, in Gus’s opinion. Max, who has a way of disagreeing with Gus in a way that often seems more pleasant than the subject should permit, insisted that they should have purchased the car instead of merely borrowing it, but despite the burgeoning success of Los Pollos Hermanos and Gus’s confidence that their newest venture will bring profits to all of them, he still remains cautious. The newness of their more legal business venture has not yet faded in the eyes of the public, and he would prefer if it they called as little attention to themselves as possible. For today, this will all suffice, but it’s the future of their business that Gustavo has in mind. If they mean to build the empire that they have often discussed, they will need to be careful.
Max drives. All morning, he has been nothing but nervous energy, and though Gus is sure he will deny it if asked, he has known the other man long enough that he can sense these things about him better than anyone else. The silence between them in the car is not the comfortable silence that has often filled their days, but something else altogether.
“Debemos parar,” We should stop, Gus says, the only words he has spoken in nearly an hour, the only sound in the car other than the sound of the engine as they speed through desert. “We should take one last opportunity to discuss how we plan to present ourselves.”
“Gus,” Max replies, and he turns to look at his partner briefly, though he does not stop the car, “We’ve been over this. He’ll applaud your ambition, will want to see the plan you’ve drawn up, and by the end of the day, all of your doubts will be just a bad dream.”
He takes one hand off of the wheel to reassuringly pat Gus on the leg, and Gus tries for a smile, though the emotion doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“I have a good feeling about about this, Gus,” Max goes on to say, “We are writing our destinies today, companero.”
It’s something that Max has said to him before, many times since they first met in Santiago. Even living in Chilean slums, before Gustavo financed his education, he possessed the same fresh-faced optimism. It’s a quality that Gus often struggles with, and in many ways, he feels as though he has found his other half in Max because of this. Truthfully, he is unsure of how he could have managed any of this on his own. Both with Los Pollos Hermanos or with their latest business venture.
“You would say the same words even with the walls of the world closing in around you,” Gus responds, and this time, he allows himself the smallest of smiles. Max is right; his business plan is completely solid, Max’s product is excellent, and there is a demonstrated demand for it. The samples they have provided Don Eladio’s men have been well received. And truly, Don Eladio, though Gus has not met him yet, must be a reasonable man. A reasonable man who will certainly recognize a lucrative business opportunity when it is presented to him.
By the time they pull up to the hacienda, Gus’s worries don’t quite feel like the stuff of bad dreams, but he’s already feeling better about today.
Less than an hour later, he is being escorted back to the Cheville, his eyes burning, Max’s blood on his face and on his shirt. Max, who had a wonderful feeling about today and this meeting, who was still and quiet by the pool’s edge when Gustavo last saw him. They dragged him away by his shoulders, without even offering the courtesy of arranging to have Max’s body sent back to him. Of course, Don Eladio can expect nothing but compliance, even as Max’s body is likely being prepared to simply be buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the Mexico desert.
Even as Gus finds that he can only drive a mile down the road before he stops the car, pulls the keys from the ignition and cries out in anguish. He shouts until he cannot any longer, until his throat feels raw and his head feels as though it might split open. It is not even that a man’s potential has been wasted, a brilliant man silenced because of another’s pride, his contribution to the world completed long before its time. It’s that he cannot help but remember the brilliant man he met so many years ago in Chile, a man too bright to be left to the future that usually awaited those in Santiago’s slums. Max was a man who should have been free to write his own destiny as he wished.
The sun is nearly setting by the time Gustavo looks for the keys again and continues his journey home. Though he isn’t quite sure that it can be called home now that the only family he’s known for many years is gone now, never to return. The book of his life has been completed, a novella meant to be an epic.
He hurts when he finally makes it home, through and through to his bones. It’s a pain that he is unaccustomed to, something that dwarfs anything he ever felt in Chile, even during his first days with the Pinochet regime.
Even so, he does not peel away his clothes right away, does not shower or wash the blood from his face. He pulls out a chair at the table in the kitchen, and sits. He looks across the table, to the chair that used to belong to Max, where he drank his coffee, where he often sat with a pad of paper and wrote out his ideas, talking excitedly about them as though he would never be able to get the words out quickly enough.
Perhaps that was where Max had faltered. Where Gus is prone to caution, Max had lived an immediate life. Likely, it was a product of his life in Chile, knowing that there was a chance that his life would not be a long one. Gus, however, had changed life’s course for Max. At least, until today.
When Gus finds one of Max’s pads of paper, a list of supplies that he hoped to acquire soon after their meeting at the hacienda, he makes a note of it and tears the sheet away, folding it over once, and then again before setting it onto the tabletop.
He begins a list of his own.
Don Eladio Vuente. Juan Bolsa.
Every member of the Juarez cartel that he can remember off of the top of his head. The list is not exhaustive, but he means to take plenty of time to make sure this is done thoroughly. To make sure that they all understand how it feels to know family and then to all at once have it ripped away.
He leaves one name for last: Hector Salamanca. The man who pulled the trigger, who stood over Max’s still body, who would kill another man’s family without pause or remorse.
Blood for blood, that is what this must come down to. For men without honor, blood is the only currency that they will truly understand. And one day, he will look at each one of them in turn, their worlds torn away, their empires ashes.
They will remember this day. And the last thing that they will feel is regret. Of that much, Gustavo Fring is certain.