by Don Winslow
The thirst is something different, but people pass around what water they have, usually in old soda bottles, and once, when the train stops for a few minutes near a village, Paolo hops down and begs water from some farmers.
“It’ll be different in Mexico,” he tells them when he climbs back up. “They don’t like us there.”
“Why not?” Flor asks.
“They just don’t,” Paolo says.
There’s nothing much to do on the top of the train but look at the scenery and talk, and hold on when the track dips one way or the other, or duck when branches are coming up. Nico begins to like the ritual of shouting “¡Rama!” when they see a branch—it’s like a game.
Paolo does most of the talking, taking on himself the role of a grizzled veteran.
“First thing to know,” he says, “is don’t trust anyone.”
“We’re trusting you,” Flor says.
“I’m different,” Paolo says, a little miffed. “Don’t trust the men, they’ll do things to little girls, do you know what I mean? Don’t go inside the boxcars, especially with the men. Sometimes the migra come along and lock people inside.”
Paolo is a font of information.
They’ll have to get off the train when they get to the border because the Mexican police will be waiting at the checkpoint. There’s a river between Guatemala and Mexico and they’ll need money to pay someone to take them across on a raft.
“I don’t have any money,” Nico says.
“You better get some.”
“How?” Nico asks.
“Beg.” Paolo shrugs. “Steal. You know how to pick pockets?”
“No,” Nico says.
Paolo looks at Flor. “Sometimes they’ll let a girl pay them by tugging their cocks but I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
But you don’t want to spend too much time getting across the river, Paolo tells them, because the town you have to wait in is full of bad people—thieves, gangsters, drug dealers, perverts. Some of them are people who tried to ride La Bestia but just gave up—victims once themselves, now they hang around the town and prey on other people.
“You’re just trying to scare us,” Flor says.
Paolo shrugs again. “I’m just telling you how it is. Do what you want.”
Nico is scared, but the sunset is beautiful.
He’s never seen a dusk unobscured by the city’s smog or the dump’s smoke. Now he looks at the brilliant reds and oranges and wonders if this is what the world looks like. It’s so beautiful.
When it gets black, he sees the stars.
For the first time in his life Nico sees the stars.
Flor shares a tortilla and a mango with him, and he starts to feel drowsy. But he’s afraid to fall asleep. The roof of the boxcar slopes toward either side and it would be easy to slide off. Then he hears singing. “El Rey Quiché” starts a few cars back but then spreads forward up the train as the migrants sing to keep each other awake.
Nico joins in.
Then Flor.
They sing and clap and laugh and it’s the happiest that they’ve been all day, maybe the happiest they’ve been in their lives. When the song ends, someone starts “El Grito,” and after that “Luna Xelajú,” and then the singing fades away and Nico feels himself swaying, about to drop off.
“Lean against me,” Paolo says. “I won’t fall asleep.”
Nico dozes off. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep when Paolo nudges him and says, “The border. We have to get off.”
Drowsy, Nico takes Flor’s hand and they follow Paolo down the ladder. Most of the migrants climb off the train, like ice melting off a metal roof, and flow into the brush along the tracks.
The area is a migrants’ hovel—remnants of plastic sheets, pieces of cardboard, torn socks, underwear, punctured bottles.
It smells of urine and shit.
Nico and Flor find a piece of cardboard and lie down on it. Snuggle with each other to stay warm. Exhausted, they fall asleep quickly but only for a little while because they have to get money to buy passage across the river.
But when they get up, Paolo is gone.
“Where is he?” Nico asks.
“I don’t know,” Flor says. “He left us.”
Walking into the little town, they see whores standing in doorways, other children leaning against walls with begging bowls in their laps, men who watch them like hungry coyotes.
Music comes from an open cantina and they walk in.
The bartender, an old woman with her hair dyed red, sees them and yells, “Get out, you little cunts! No begging here!”
They run out.
Walk farther down the street.
An old man sits on a cane chair in an alley. He smokes a cigarette, has a beer in his other hand, and openly stares at Flor. Then he unzips his fly, takes his dick out, and shows it to her.
“I’ll kick his ass,” Nico says.
“No, I have an idea,” Flor says. She looks back at the old man and smiles.
“What are you doing?” Nico asks.
“You just be ready,” she says.
She leaves him standing there and walks over to the old man. “You want me to touch it?”
“How much?”
“Five q,” she says.
“All right.”
“Give me the money.”
“Touch it first,” the old man says.
His cheeks are white stubbled, his eyes rheumy.
He’s drunk.
“Okay,” Flor says. “Pull down your pants.”
He weaves to his feet, loosens his belt, looks around and tugs his dirty khaki trousers down to his knees.
Quicker than a flash, Nicky Rápido swoops in, reaches into the old man’s pocket and pulls out money. Bills.
“Run!” Nico yells.
He grabs Flor’s hand and they take off down the street. The old man yells and tries to go after them, but trips and falls.
People watch.
No one tries to catch them.
Nico and Flor laugh as they run out of town into some trees.
“How much did we get?” she asks.
“Twelve q!” Nico says.
“That’s enough!”
It isn’t hard to find the river crossing; they just follow the flow of migrants. Some walk, others sit in carts pulled by kids pedaling tricycles. Nico and Flor walk because they don’t want to spend the money.
Paolo is on the shore.
“Did you get money?” he asks.
“Yes,” Flor says.
“How?”
He looks at them funny when they both crack up laughing. “Never mind. Come on, we need to get going. Give me your money.”
“Why should we give you our money?” Flor asks.
“Because they’ll cheat you,” Paolo says. “They won’t cheat me.”
They give him the money and he walks off to talk to a group of men standing by a raft made of planks strapped onto old inner tubes. They watch as he negotiates, waving his arms, shaking his head, showing money and then snatching it back. Finally, he gives some of the money and walks back.
“It’s all set,” Paolo says. “They’ll take the three of us.”
“Why are we paying for you?” Flor asks.
Nico frowns at her. “He’s helping us.”
“I don’t trust him.”
But Paolo’s already walking away and they follow him to the water’s edge, then wade in up to their knees and climb onto the raft, which bobs under them until they get their balance. One of the men gets on last and rows them across the river.
They get off the raft and set foot into Mexico.
“Now we walk,” Paolo says. “We can get on a train again outside of Tapachula.”
“What’s Tapachula?” Nico asks.
“A town. You’ll see.”
It’s a six-mile walk on a single-lane paved road that runs through fields and orchards. The local people just stare at t
hem, or shout out insults and call them names.
Nico trudges along the road.
Hungry, thirsty, tired.
Paolo walks them right past the train depot, where Nico sees other migrants stopping.
“Why aren’t we going there?” he asks.
“Too many gangsters,” Paolo says. “Mara 13 runs this whole area.”
He walks them to a cemetery.
It’s close to the tracks and a good place to hide.
The train comes early.
Nico’s legs feel like wood. His mind is wooly, his mouth dry.
He and Flor slept last night behind the cover of a headstone. Nico had dreams about the Canyon of the Dead, about bodies reaching out from the grave he was lying on to grab him for stealing that man’s gold chain.
The cemetery is crowded with the living. They rise from the graveyard in the silver mist of morning, shove what few things they own into bags or pockets, and march out toward the tracks like an army of the lost.
Trudging sleepily toward the tracks, they use stepping-stones to get across a sewage canal, then up the embankment, where they crouch and wait for a train they hope will take them to a home where they’ve never been.
The train speeds up as it comes toward the cemetery.
The rush starts.
Nico pushes Flor between him and Paolo. The older boy gets to the ladder first and reaches down to help her up. Nico scrambles up behind, they create a little space for themselves on top of the boxcar, and settle in for the ride.
It doesn’t last long.
Just a few minutes later, the train slows to a near stop and the maras get on.
They climb up the train three cars behind Nico’s. He looks back and sees the commotion, hears the shouts and screams.
“Where are you from?” Paolo asks Nico.
“Guatemala City.”
“I know that, dummy,” Paolo says. “Where?”
“El Basurero.”
“That’s 18th Street turf,” Paolo says. “You have a tat?”
Nico rolls up his pants leg, shows him the XVIII scarred into his skin.
“If Mara 13 thinks you’re connected with 18th Street,” Paolo says, “they’ll kill you. You better run.”
“Where?”
Paolo points toward the front of the train.
It’s moving again. The engineer had slowed down just to let the maras get on and now he speeds up to trap the migrants on top. Nico looks—the gangsters are just on the next car and moving up.
“Go!” Paolo yells.
Nico stands up.
So does Flor.
“Not you,” Paolo says. “You’ll slow him down. Nico, go!”
Nico runs.
Fourteen feet up, on a train moving forty miles an hour, the ten-year-old runs to the forward end of the car and jumps the four-foot gap onto the next boxcar. He lands hard, falls on all fours, then gets up and trips over a man’s legs. The man curses him, but Nico gets to his feet, looks back and sees the maras coming after him.
Like dogs that will chase something that runs.
Nico keeps going, stepping over feet, legs, toes. Two maras leap onto his car and come after him. He jumps to the next car and then the next and then—
The next car isn’t a boxcar, but a tanker.
The top is convex, curving sharply to the sides.
And the jump isn’t four feet—it’s nine.
Nico looks back over his shoulder and sees the maras coming. Grinning, laughing, knowing that he’s trapped. They’re close enough now that he can see the tattoos on their faces and necks.
If he stays, he’s in for a bad beating, maybe they kill him.
But if he tries to jump and doesn’t make the nine feet, he’ll fall between the cars and get crushed under the train’s wheels. Even if he makes it, he could slide off the curving surface and land on the tracks.
There’s no more time to think.
Nico takes a few steps back, runs as hard as he can, and then launches himself into the air.
“Why did that boy run?” the mara asks Paolo.
“I don’t know. I don’t know him.”
The mara looks down at Flor. “You? You know him?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
“Is he 18th Street?” the mara asks.
“No!” Flor says.
“I thought you said you didn’t know him,” the mara says, glaring at her.
Flor glares back at him. “I know MS-13, I know 18th Street. That boy, he wasn’t either.”
Around them, the maras systematically work their way through the migrants, stealing cash, taking clothing, demanding phone numbers of relatives who can send more money. They interrogate the boys and the young men—“Where are you from? Are you cliqued up? With who? Us? Eighteenth Street?” The maras strip them to check for tattoos. Wrong ink fetches a beating or a slashing before they toss the unlucky kid from the train.
“Do you have money?” the mara asks Flor. “Give it.”
“Please, I need it.”
“Maybe you need a good fucking more, niña.”
She hands him the few coins she has. The mara thinks about fucking her anyway, decides she’s too small, then slaps Paolo a few times in the face, takes his Yankees cap, and moves on.
Nico lands hard.
His fingers grab at the slick metal but he slips down the side of the tanker like a fried egg sliding out of a hot pan.
Falls with a thud onto a railing that lines the bottom of the car.
It drives the air from his lungs but he hangs on. Facedown, he sees the rails zipping past, hears the iron singing, knows that he’s inches away from being crushed or cut in half. A strut connects the railing to the car and he risks reaching out and grabbing it, then pulls himself along until he reaches a ladder in the center.
He clutches it, catches his breath, and holds on, panting from exertion, fear, pain and adrenaline. Afraid to move his legs for fear of falling off, he makes himself do it. Pulls his feet under him, stretches his right leg out and gets a foot on a rung.
The train slows down to allow the maras to get off, so Nico stays pinned to the side of the tanker, hoping they won’t spot him or at least won’t care. When the train starts to pick up speed again, he climbs slowly, achingly, up the ladder. A railing wraps around the fuel bay at the top and he holds on to that.
The single-track train moves north along the Pacific Coast of Chiapas.
Nico has never seen the ocean before and, with the resiliency of childhood, finds it thrilling and beautiful. The green mountains to his right and the blue sea to his left, he feels like he’s in a different world.
Light-headed from hunger and heat—the temperature is 105 and the sun beats down on the tops of the train cars, turning their metal into a stove top—Nico exists in a semihallucinogenic state, taking in the sight of plantain trees and coffee bushes as if they were strange imagery in a dream.
His body aches.
The fall from the train bruised and maybe cracked his ribs, the right side of his face is swollen from where it hit the rail. Still, he’d had enough presence of mind to climb down from the fuel car when he saw others getting off the train before it got to a government checkpoint at La Arrocera.
Flor and Paolo found him lying in the bushes beside the track, helped him walk around the checkpoint and waited with him until the next freight train came, then helped him get on board.
Now he sits atop the train and looks out at a wave breaking like a white pencil being drawn across a blue piece of paper.
Flor tears a tortilla in half and hands him a piece. “Can you chew?”
Nico puts the tortilla in his mouth and tries to chew. It hurts, but he’s hungry and it tastes good. “Do I look funny?”
“Kind of funny,” she says. “You’re talking funny.”
He smiles, and that hurts a little, too. “Funny how?”
“Like your mouth’s always full,” she says.
<
br /> He looks around. “It’s pretty here.”
“Very pretty.”
“Maybe someday we can live in the country,” Nico says.
“That would be nice.”
They talk for a few minutes about getting a farm, having chickens and goats and planting things, although they don’t know what.
“Flowers,” Flor says.
“You can’t eat flowers,” says Paolo.
“But you can look at them,” Flor says. “You can smell them.”
Paolo snorts in disgust.
Nico thinks he looks weird without his Yankees cap. His hair is short and chopped, like it was cut with a knife or something, and he holds a piece of a cardboard box over his head to protect it from the sun.
“We could grow corn,” Nico says. “And tomatillos, and oranges.”
Paolo shakes his head. “I’m going to own a restaurant. Then I can eat anything I want whenever I want it. Chicken, potatoes, steak . . .”
“I’m eating one now,” Nico says. He mimes cutting a piece of steak and sticking it in his mouth. “Mmmmm. Delicious.”
He’s never tasted steak, but his imagination makes him purse his lips and roll his eyes back in delight.
Even Paolo laughs.
The train runs past a series of large lakes that separate the mainland from a thin strand, then turns north away from the coast, through farms and past villages.
Nico is sorry to leave the ocean.
He thinks New York is by an ocean, but he’s not sure.
That night, they get off the train to go into a small town for something to eat, even though they have no money to buy food. And it’s dangerous—madrinas, local civilians who help the migra, patrol the areas around the tracks, looking for migrants. Sometimes they turn them in to the police, who demand a hefty bribe to let them go. Those are the lucky ones; the madrinas are known to beat, rape and murder others.
Paolo explains all of this to them. “There’s a safe house near a church. If we can get there, they’ll give us food, a place to sleep.”
Under a quarter moon, he leads them down a creek bed away from the tracks.
Nico can see flashlights in the distance, madrina patrols looking for victims. He keeps his head down and follows Flor, keeping his hand on her back, trying not to trip and make noise. They walk out of the creek bed to the outskirts of town, where Nico sees a small church, and beside it, a one-story cinder-block building.