by Don Winslow
“I know.” Pulga will, because he has to collect a certain amount of money every week and has to pass it up not only to his bosses in the mara but to the police as well. If he doesn’t do either, he’s done—dead or in jail.
And Pulga has to prove himself—he’s not even a full-fledged Calle 18 member, but a paro—an associate. He has to make money to pass up the ranks to a sicario, who passes up to a llavero, who passes up to the ranflero, the boss of the clica, the local cell of Calle 18. And the ranflero, Nico thinks, probably passes up to his bosses, who also have to pay the police to stay in business.
It’s the way of the world, Nico thinks. Everyone passes up to someone. Maybe somewhere at the very top, there are men who just collect and collect, but he has no idea who those people are.
“Pulga will hurt you, too,” Flor says. She already knows what men do to women, what some men do to kids.
“I know,” Nico says.
“I can borrow a knife,” Flor says, “and go kill La Buitra.”
“She’s already sold the metal.”
“Then I’ll kill Pulga.”
“No,” Nico says. “You get me the knife, and I will. It’s a man’s job.”
But they both know that neither of them is going to kill the gangster, even if they could. More mareros would only come, and the punishment would be worse.
“There’s one other thing you can do,” Flor says.
Nico knows.
And he’s terrified.
“It’s okay.” Flor reaches out and takes his hand. “I’ll go with you.”
Waiting until the sun is low in the hazy sky, the two children go down into the Canyon of the Dead.
Getting down is dangerous in itself.
The path is narrow, steep and muddy, alongside a sheer cliff that falls a straight hundred feet into the canyon. Nico doesn’t want to look down—it makes him dizzy and sick to his stomach. He’s heard people joke about falling off the trail—“Well, at least you land where you belong”—but he doesn’t think it’s funny now. And his feet slip inside his shoes—an old pair of Nikes he got from the Cayalá truck a year ago. They’re way too big for him and the soles are worn away to almost nothing, and now as he makes his way down the slope, his toes press painfully against the shoes.
When he gets down into the canyon, Nico gags.
His eyes, already teary, water even more from the horrible stench, and he fights to keep down what little food is in his stomach.
Some of the bodies are old—just skeletons, empty rib cages, skulls with vacant eye sockets. Others are fairly fresh, fully clothed, and Nico tries to tell himself that they’re only sleeping. The worst are the bodies that have been there for a few days—bloated with gases, rotting, foul.
Hungry dogs flank Nico and Flor warily, waiting for a chance to dash in and grab a meal. A vulture lands on a dead man, pecks a hole in his stomach and flies away with his intestines in its beak.
Nico hunches over and vomits.
Wants to run away but makes himself stay.
He has to do this, has to stay and find something with which to pay the mareros. So he steps over rotting corpses and skeletons looking for valuables someone else might have missed. The footing is tricky, and he trips and stumbles, sometimes falling down on a body, other times on the hard ground.
But he picks himself up and keeps looking. Makes himself touch the dead bodies, go through their shirts and their pockets looking for loose change, handkerchiefs, anything that other looters haven’t already found and taken.
He trips again, falls and lands with a blinding pain. He’s nose to nose with a dead man’s face. The eyes stare at him accusingly. Then he hears Flor yell, “Nico!” and looks over to where his friend kneels by a man’s bloated body.
“Look!” She’s smiling as she holds up a chain.
It’s thin, delicate, but it looks like gold and it holds a medal at the end.
“Saint Teresa,” Flor says.
They make their way up out of the canyon.
Some thirty thousand people are crammed into the ravine around the dump. Their shacks and shanties are made of old crates, signs, sheets of plastic, odd bits of wood—the lucky have some corrugated tin for roofs, the unlucky sleep in the open.
The streets—muddy dirt paths with rivulets of open sewage—wind in a maze of warrens that Nico and Flor navigate easily as they run to find a junkman who will buy the chain. It’s dark now and El Basurero is lit by fires in trash cans and charcoal stoves. Here and there an electrical light glows, illegally wired into the power lines that run above the barrio.
Gonsalves is still in his “shop”—a half of a C-container set on its side and lit with a jerry-rigged power line. He sees the children come in and says, “I’m closed.”
“Please,” Nico says. “Just one thing.”
“What?”
Flor holds up the chain. “It’s gold.”
“I doubt it.” But Gonsalves takes the chain and holds it up to the naked bulb. “No, this is fake.”
Nico knows the old man is lying. Gonsalves has made a living cheating everyone—buying cheap and selling dear.
“Because I am a kind man,” Gonsalves says, “I’ll give you eight quetzals.”
Nico is crushed. He needs twelve q to pay Pulga.
“Give it back,” Flor says. “Herrera will give us twenty.”
“Then take it to Herrera.”
“I will,” Flor says. She holds out her hand.
But Gonsalves doesn’t give the chain back. He peruses it carefully. “I suppose I could do ten.”
“I suppose,” Flor says, “you could do fifteen.”
No, Flor, no, Nico thinks. Don’t drive too hard a bargain—I only need twelve quetzal.
“You said Herrera would give you twenty,” Gonsalves says.
“It’s a long walk over there.”
“Well, if one more q would save you a walk . . .”
“Three,” Flor says. “Thirteen and it’s yours.”
“You’re a mean little girl,” Gonsalves says. “Very hard.”
“Herrera loves me.”
“I’ll bet he does,” Gonsalves says.
“Well?”
“I’ll give you twelve.”
Take it, Nico thinks. Flor, take it.
“Twelve,” Flor says, looking past Gonsalves to a counter made of a two-by-four stretched over sawhorses, “and that chocolate bar.”
“That’s worth a whole q.”
“Are we going to argue all night,” Flor says, “or will you just throw in that chocolate bar?”
“If I cheat myself like that,” Gonsalves asks, “will you promise to sell to Herrera from now on and never come in here again?”
“With pleasure,” Flor says as Gonsalves counts out twelve quetzals and hands it to her. “The chocolate?”
Gonsalves takes the candy off the shelf and gives it to her. “You’re never going to find a husband.”
“Promise?” Flor asks.
“We have to run,” Nico says when they get outside.
As they trot through the barrio, Flor tears the wrapper off the chocolate and hands Nico half. He shoves it down as he runs and it tastes wonderful.
When he gets home, Pulga is already there.
His mother, sitting on the floor, is crying.
“I have your money,” Nico says. He hands Pulga what they owe him. “Now we’re caught up.”
“Until next week,” Pulga says, shoving the money into his pocket. “Then I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be here,” Nico says, summoning up his courage.
The man of the family.
Pulga looks at him closely. “How old are you now?”
“Ten,” Nico says. “Almost eleven.”
“That’s old enough to sign up,” Pulga says. “You want to protect mi barrio, don’t you? I could use a fast kid to deliver packages.”
Drugs.
Crack cocaine. Heroin.
Pulga says, “It’s time you did your
duty to the mara, Fast Nicky. Time you became Calle 18.”
Nico doesn’t know what to say.
He doesn’t want to be a marero.
“Sit down,” Pulga says. He pulls out a knife. “I said, sit down.”
Nico sits.
“Stick out your legs.”
Nico sticks his legs out in front of him.
Pulga holds the blade to the charcoal brazier until it’s red hot. Then he squats over Nico, grabs his left leg and presses the blade into the flesh above his ankle.
Nico screams.
“Be quiet, be a man,” Pulga says. “You scream like a girl, I’ll treat you like a girl, you understand?”
Nico nods. Tears stream down his face but he keeps his jaws clamped shut as Pulga burns the XV and the III into his ankle.
The smell of burned flesh fills the shack.
“I’ll be back,” Pulga says, getting up. “To beat you in. Don’t look so scared, Fast Nicky, it’s just eighteen seconds. A tough kid like you can take that, can’t you? You took this, you can take that, can’t you?”
Nico doesn’t answer. He swallows back a scream.
“I’ll be back,” Pulga says. He smiles at Nico’s mother, makes a kissing sound, and leaves.
Nico falls to his side, grabs his ankle, and sobs.
“He’ll be back,” Nico’s mother says. “He’ll make you join them. If the Numbers don’t, the Letters will.”
The “Numbers” are Calle 18, the “Letters” are Mara Salvatrucha.
Nico knows she’s right but he doesn’t want to leave. He cries. “I don’t want to leave you.”
What will she do without him?
To keep her company, to wake her up when she screams in her sleep, to go to the dump and find the things that give them money to eat?
“You have to leave,” she says.
“I don’t have anywhere to go.” He’s ten years old and has never been out of El Basurero.
“You have an uncle and aunt in New York,” his mother says.
Nico is stunned.
New York?
El Norte?
It’s thousands of miles away, through Guatemala, all the way across Mexico, and still hundreds of miles into the United States.
“No, Mami, please.”
“Nico—”
“Please don’t send me away,” Nico says. “I promise I’ll be good, I’ll be better. I’ll work harder, find more things—”
“Nico, you have to go.”
His mother knows the facts.
Most of the mareros die violently before they reach the age of twenty. She wants what any mother wants—she wants her child to live. And for that she is willing to give him up forever.
“First thing in the morning,” she says, “you will go.”
There is only one way to go.
On the train they call La Bestia.
The Beast.
Nico lies in the weeds by the track.
He’s not alone; a dozen others hide in the dark and wait for the train to come. Trembling—maybe from cold, maybe from fear—he tries not to cry as he thinks about his mother, about Flor.
He went to see her last night.
To say goodbye.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“El Norte.”
She looked terrified. “On La Bestia?”
He shrugged—how else?
“Oh, Nico, I’ve heard things.”
They all have. Everyone knows someone who has tried to ride the train north through Mexico to the United States. The train has many names: El Tren Devorador—“The Train That Devours”; El Tren de Desconocidos—“The Train of the Unknowns”; El Tren de la Muerte—“The Train of Death.”
Most people don’t make it.
They get caught by the Mexican migra and sent back on El Bus de Lágrimas—“The Bus of Tears.” But they’re the lucky ones—both Nico and Flor know people who fell under the train and had both their legs cut off; they roll around now, pushing little carts with their hands.
Some die.
Or at least that’s what the kids guess, because they never hear from those people again. And yet the kids know people who have tried to make the trip five, six, ten times.
A few have made it to El Norte.
Most never do.
Flor wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. “Please don’t go.”
“I have to.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too.”
“You’re my best friend,” Flor said. “My only friend.”
Sitting on the dirt floor of her shack, they held each other for a long time. Nico felt the wet of her tears on his neck. Finally, he pulled himself away and said that he had to go.
“Please, Nico!” Flor said. “Don’t leave me!”
He could hear her crying as he walked out in the street.
Now he lies in the weeds, turns his head and looks at the boy lying beside him. The boy is older, maybe fourteen or fifteen, tall and skinny, with a white pullover shirt, jeans and a New York Yankees baseball cap pulled down low on his head.
“This is your first time,” the boy says.
“Yes,” Nico says.
The boy just laughs. “You have to run fast. They speed up so we can’t climb on. Go for a ladder at the front of the car, so if you miss, you can maybe catch the one at the rear.”
“Okay.”
“If you fall,” the boy says, “push as hard as you can so your legs don’t fall under the train, or—”
He makes a slicing motion across his legs.
“Okay.”
“My name is Paolo,” the boy says.
“I’m Nico.”
He hears the train coming, rattling along the tracks. People start to stir, rise up from the wet grass. Some carry satchels, others plastic bags; some have nothing at all. Nico has a plastic grocery bag—inside is a bottle of water, a banana, a toothbrush, a T-shirt and a sliver of soap. He’s wearing an old jacket, his Messi shirt, his holey sneakers.
“Tie that bag through your belt,” Paolo tells him. “You’ll need both hands. And tie your jacket around your waist.”
Nico does what he says.
“Okay,” Paolo says, getting to his feet in a low crouch, “follow me.”
The train is here—a long freight train with maybe twenty boxcars and hoppers. The engine belches black smoke as it speeds up.
“Come on!” Paolo yells.
He breaks into a sprint.
Nico has a hard time keeping up with the long-legged, athletic boy but he does his best, telling himself, You’re fast. You’re Nico Rápido, you can do this. You can catch the train. Everywhere around him, people are running for the train. Most of them are teenage boys, but there are some grown-up men, and a few women. Some families, with little girls and boys.
He runs up the embankment to the track and is scared by the whoosh of hard metal flashing past him. Paolo jumps and grabs a ladder at the front of a boxcar and pulls himself up as Nico runs and tries to keep up and isn’t going to make it, but Paolo reaches a hand down.
Nico grabs it. Paolo hauls him onto the ladder.
“Hold on!” Paolo yells.
Looking back, Nico sees an older man trip and fall.
Some people have made it onto the train while others fall behind, give up and stop.
But I made it, Nico thinks. Nothing can stop Nico Rápido.
Paolo starts to climb up the ladder toward the roof of the car. “Come on!”
Nico starts to follow but then he sees—
Flor.
Running for the car.
She’s yelling, her arm is stretched out.
In a glimpse, Paolo takes it all in. “Leave her!”
“I can’t! She’s my friend!”
He starts back down the ladder.
Flor runs toward him, but she’s out of breath and losing ground.
“Come on!” Nico yells, holding out his hand.
She grabs for it.
Misses.
Nico goes down to the last rung and leans out, his body just a foot from the tracks that rush past faster and faster. His grip on the ladder is loosening as he reaches out again with his other hand. “I’ll catch you!”
Flor lunges.
He feels her fingertips, slides his hand down and grabs her wrist as she jumps.
For a second she’s suspended in the air, just above the crushing wheels.
Nico can’t hold on.
Either to her or the ladder.
He starts to fall but he holds on to her hand, then—
Nico feels himself being pulled up.
Both of them being pulled up.
Paolo is immensely strong, with taut muscles like wire, and he pulls them both onto the ladder and yells, “Now come on!”
They follow him to the top of the car, fourteen feet above the ground.
It’s crowded up there.
People sit and squat, hold on where they can. Paolo pushes a space for them to sit, then says to Nico, “I told you to leave her. Girls are worthless. Only trouble. Does she have food? Money?”
“I have two mangoes,” Flor says, “three tortillas and twenty q.”
“That’s something, I guess,” Paolo says. “Give me a tortilla, for saving your life.”
She pulls a tortilla out of her bag and hands it to him.
He wolfs it down and says, “I’ve made this trip four times. Last time I got all the way into the United States.”
“What happened?” Nico asks.
“They caught me and sent me back,” Paolo says. “My mother is in California. She works for a rich lady. This time I’ll make it.”
“So will we,” Nico says.
Paolo looks them over. “I doubt it.”
Because to get to the United States, they have to go through Mexico.
The tracks head west through the Guatemalan mountains and then take a sharp turn north toward the border.
Nico doesn’t really comprehend this, his knowledge of geography basically stops at the edge of El Basurero. He’s never been out in the countryside before, never seen the greenery, the little villages, the small farms. For him so far this is a grand adventure as he sits atop the club car with Flor and Paolo.
He’s hungry, but he’s used to that.