Into the Beautiful North

by Luis Alberto Urrea

  For the other film of his planned double feature, Garcí a-García was faced with a choice between The King and I and Westworld. He chose to keep the western theme as pure as possible and went for the killer cowboy-robot thriller. The movie office had promised him that both films were subtitled, not dubbed. They would hear the real voices—well, German-dubbed—of the actors. He would show Aunt Irma once and for all that Yul Brynner was not a Mexican from Puerto Vallarta! The robot movie would play first; second would come the great team-up, Brynner and McQueen. Second would come The Magnificent Seven.

  Many of the tropical movie houses had no roofs. Inside, they featured covered galleries along the walls, and when it started to rain, the moviegoers stood under the eaves and kept watching the films until the weather passed. The cheap theater in Culiacán was known as Las Pulgas because it was so filthy you could get fleas from going there. But Garcí a-García had put a corrugated-tin roof over his beloved Pedro Infante, leaving open only the last four feet between the tops of the cinder-block walls and the angled roof lest the overwhelming body heat condense on the tin and drop on the audience in a small salty squall. It was true that when the catastrophic summer rains hit every June sixth, the racket was so loud that the sound track couldn’t be heard, but those within remained dry. And, really, with subtitles, only the most spoiled moviegoer would claim to have lost the narrative thread.

  Inside, the seats were metal, and the joke was that everybody who went to the Pedro Infante was a wetback, because the seat backs made everyone sweat. In fact, the seats were all rusted red from years of back sweat. At either side of the screen stood two huge revolving fans. The blasts of fetid air these fans shot at the crowd occasionally knocked the bats from their roosts on the ceiling, and they fell, fluttering wildly over the heads of the people. Old-timers kept a handy newspaper or cardboard fan at their seats so they could shoo the winged rodents away—which they did without ever taking their eyes off Cantinflas or John Wayne.

  The house was filling fast. Nayeli, Tacho on her arm, paid her respects to Father François, as ever in the front row. “When are you coming to church?” he asked Tacho.

  “¡Por Dios!” Tacho said. “We would all be hit by lightning.”

  La Vampi was hanging out with two girls from the Secundaria Carlos Hubbard.

  “¿Qué onda, morra?” Vampi called.

  “Orale, rucas de la Secu Carlitos,” Nayeli shouted back.

  Yoloxochitl was with her mother and her grandmother.

  There was Garcí a-García, sitting with four of his five females. The shrimpers from the crabbing day at the lagoon had come with their wives. Tiki Ledón sat with her mother, one of Chava Chavarín’s conquests, the vivacious Doña Laura. Tía Irma studiously ignored her—after forty years, she remained an archrival.

  Everybody was there, even Pepino, the town simpleton, who seemed to be selling sodas on a tray. Nayeli and Tacho took a seat behind La Osa, who turned around and warned, “Don’t be saying stupid things while I’m watching my movie.”

  She turned back around and lit a cigarette.

  “What’s her problem?” Tacho asked.

  Irma snapped, without looking back, “What did I tell you, cabrón!”

  “The movie didn’t even start yet!” Tacho bleated.

  Nayeli signaled Pepino and bought each of them a soda.

  “Nayeli”—Pepino giggled—“marry Pepino!”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she replied.

  “¡Ay! ¡ Ay-ay-ay!” he enthused, then stumbled down the steps to deliver a Coca to Father François.

  Nayeli leaned against Tacho’s arm.

  “I hate Yul Brynner,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Tacho whispered back. “¡Viejo feo!”

  The lights went down.

  Uproar. Much clapping. Nayeli knew how to stick two fingers in her mouth and blow, unleashing a wail as loud as a passing train whistle.

  Garcí a-García had a treat for them: cartoons!

  He sat back and laughed out loud at the Roadrunner.

  The laughter was so loud that the startled bats launched from their perches and did a quick strafing run above the crowd—Aunt Irma simply set her lighter on high and blasted two feet of flame over her head.

  Westworld. The title in Spanish was Robot-Terror of the Psychopathic Bandido. Nayeli groaned. Tacho whispered, “I’ve seen this one on TV. They have sex-robots.”

  Irma turned and glared at him.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  Nayeli and Tacho giggled when Aunt Irma’s silhouette clearly fidgeted every time Yul “El Mexicano” Brynner appeared onscreen.

  She turned at one point and said, “Do you hear that accent? You can hardly tell he’s Mexican!”

  Nayeli snorted.

  It was over quickly enough. La Osa was obviously displeased that Yul had been shot down and had his face blown away by the gringo bastards in the movie. She was thinking: I would buy that robot!

  Intermission.

  Nayeli abandoned Tacho and made the rounds of all her girlies. They lounged and slumped in the aisles. A cumbia band hired by Garcí a-García entered the theater and revved up another mindless vamp about a handsome black-skinned girl whose dancing broke the bones of all the men watching her. The chorus was: “¡Calienete! ¡La Negra está caliente!”

  During the intermission, Father François told Nayeli, “Of course you know that The Magnificent Seven is based on Kurosawa’s classic sword-fighting epic, The Seven Samurai.”

  Hearing “epic”—epopeya—Yolo quipped, “Oh! Popeye is in it?”

  Angry, Father François continued: “The villagers are beset by bandidos. Overwhelmed and outgunned, they resort to a desperate plan—they go to Los Yunaites —”

  “And work at Burger King!” Yolo blurted.

  Father François returned to his seat. If he couldn’t teach these idiots catechism, what made him think they could be taught about world cinema?

  Nayeli followed him.

  “I’m listening, Padre. Ignore them.”

  He huffed.

  “As I was saying. They send a group of brave peasants north to Los Yunaites.” He cast an evil eye at Yolo and her homegirls.

  “What do they do there?” Nayeli asked.

  “They find seven gunmen. The magnificent seven, you see? Seven killers that they bring back from the border to fight for them.”

  In spite of herself, Nayeli felt tingles.

  “Chido,” she said.

  She hurried back to her seat to whisper to Tacho.

  When that music started, she got tingles again.

  The insanely picturesque color, the gigantic landscapes, even the pathetic Mexican village and the chubby gringo bad guy making believe he was a Mexican bandido, she loved it all.

  Tacho yawned. “I want to see a car chase,” he said.

  Irma: “SHH!”

  “I don’t like horses,” Tacho added.

  Irma: “SHHHHH!”

  When Yul Brynner strode into the picture, wearing the same outfit he’d worn as the killer cowboy-robot in Westworld, Nayeli nudged Tacho.

  “Oh, my God!” he said. “Can’t he afford new clothes?”

  Aunt Irma growled.

  They laughed behind their hands.

  Suddenly, there was Steve McQueen.

  “He has a stupid little cowboy hat,” Tacho noted, marking McQueen a few points down on his mental fashion scorecard.

  Garcí a-García kept his enthusiasm in check as long as he could, but when Mr. McQueen shot a bunch of bad guys out of windows while Yul Brynner merely drove the wagon they were riding in, he could no longer stay silent. ¡Era más macho, ese pinchi McQueen! That was what Tres Camarones needed! Real men doing manly things like shooting sons of bitches out of windows! He let out a yell:

  “¡VIVA ESTIP McQUEEN!”

  Irma could not believe this.

  “¡VIVA YUL BRYNNER!” she hollered back.

  “¡ESTIP!”

  “¡YUL!”

&nbs
p; All around them, people were shushing them.

  Tacho noted, “I thought you wanted quiet.”

  “Be quiet yourself, you fool. ¡VIVA YUL!”

  Someone threw a wadded paper cup at Aunt Irma, and she piped down with some grumbling. She was furious. She could see Garcí a-García down there, turning to his seatmates and explaining the many wonders of Estip McQueen. And McQueen wasn’t even a Mexican!

  Nayeli sat with her mouth open. Tacho was snoring softly beside her. She looked deeper into the theater and saw Yolo and her family calmly watching.

  Didn’t anybody else feel the electric charge she felt?

  She watched the rest of the movie in a daze. She hardly saw what happened on the screen—she had already sunk deep into her own thoughts. When the lights came up and the people clapped and Yolo whistled and Tacho snorted awake and Garcí a-García stood and accepted all the kudos, Nayeli remained in her seat.

  “M’ija,” Tacho said, “I’m tired. I’m going home.”

  He air-kissed her cheek, but she didn’t notice it.

  Nayeli pulled her father’s postcard from her sock and studied it. A cornfield with an impossibly blue sky, an American sky: she had seen it over and over again in the movie. Only American skies, apparently, were so stunningly blue. She turned the card over. It said: “A TYPICAL CORN CROP IN KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS.” She more or less understood the message. Una cosecha típica, she told herself. Don Pepe had written, “Everything Passes.”

  She rose slowly and drifted out the door.

  Yolo and La Vampira were waiting outside.

  “¿Qué te pasa?” La Vampi asked.

  Yolo said, “Are you all right, chica?”

  Nayeli waved them off.

  “Hey,” said Yolo. “We’re talking to you.”

  Nayeli gestured for them to follow her and walked to the town square.

  She absentmindedly swept off a bench and sat down. Her home-girls sat on either side of her. She held up a finger for quiet while she thought some more.

  She finally said, “The Magnificent Seven.”

  They stared at her.

  “So?” said Yolo.

  “Bo-ring,” said Vampi.

  “The seven,” Nayeli repeated.

  “What about them?” Yolo said.

  “We have to go get them,” Nayeli said. “We have to go to Los Yunaites and get the seven.”

  “¡Qué!” Vampi cried. “¿Estip McQueen?”

  “¡No, mensa!” Yolo snapped. “He’s dead.”

  “We have to stop the bandits before they come and destroy the village. Don’t you see? They’re coming.”

  “So?” said Vampi.

  “Who is going to fight them?” Nayeli asked.

  Yolo dug her toe into the ground.

  “Cops?” she said.

  “What cops?” Nayeli asked.

  Yolo shrugged one shoulder.

  “I guess… your dad would have.”

  They sat there.

  “We go,” Nayeli said. “We find seven men who want to come home. But they have to be—what?”

  “Soldiers,” Yolo suggested.

  “Right! We interview men. Only cops or soldiers can come.”

  Vampi held up a finger.

  “Perdón,” she said. “Where are we going, again?”

  “Los Yunaites,” Yolo said.

  “What? Are you kidding?”

  “We’re not kidding,” Nayeli said.

  “Oh, great,” Vampi complained. “There goes my week!”

  “We have a mission,” Nayeli said. “We’re only going there to bring the men back home.”

  Vampi said, “Maybe you can find your father.”

  Nayeli looked at her. She sat back down.

  “What about my father?” Yolo demanded.

  Vampi replied, “He’s not a cop.”

  They sat there, stunned by the enormity of Nayeli’s plan.

  “We will only be there for as long as it takes to get the men to come,” she continued. “The Americanos will be happy we’re there! Even if we’re caught!”

  “You’re crazy,” Yolo said.

  “Dances,” Nayeli whispered. “Boyfriends. Husbands. Babies. Police—law and order. No bandidos.”

  They sat there for ten minutes, looking at the ground.

  “Pin tenders, too,” Yolo offered. “Because, you know, I am tired of working at the bowling alley.”

  “Maybe, you know, we could get one gay boy,” Nayeli said. “For poor Tacho.”

  Yolo nodded wisely. “Tacho needs love, too.”

  “We should take Tacho with us!” Vampi cried.

  They turned to her with a bit of awe. It was the first really good idea La Vampi had ever had.

  The girlfriends had all seen Los Hermanos Blues at the Pedro Infante a few months earlier.

  “We’re on a mission from God,” Nayeli intoned.

  La Vampi turned to her and said, “I’m going.”

  Nayeli cried, “We can repopulate our town. We can save Mexico. It begins with us! It’s the new revolution!” She stood up. “Isn’t it time we got our men back in our own country?” She was slipping into Aunt Irma campaign mode. She sat back down.

  “Oh, my God,” said Yolo. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”

  They slapped hands.

  “To the north,” Nayeli said.

  “Al norte,” they replied.

  “We have to tell the old woman,” Nayeli said.

  “¿La Osa?” cried Yolo. “Are you crazy? She’ll never allow us to do it.”

  “I think she will.”

  “No, she won’t. She’ll bite our heads off.”

  “No,” Nayeli said. She stood up and brushed off her rear end. “I think she will give us her blessing.”

  She started to walk away, but stopped and turned back.

  “We are going,” she said, “to bring home the Magnificent Seven!”

  Late that same night, Irma was startled by a knock at her door. When she opened it, she was amazed to discover Garcí a-García standing there with a suitcase. His left eye was black, and he had blood trickling from his nose.

  “What the hell happened to you?” she demanded.

  “They came to my house.”

  “Who?”

  “Bandidos.”

  “Bastards!”

  “They threw me out.”

  “No!”

  “They took my house from me!”

  She stood there in her tattered nightgown and curlers.

  “Can I sleep here?” he asked.

  Irma had only been in charge of the town for scant days, and already the troubles were starting.

  “Sleep in the back room,” she said.

  He trudged in, forlorn and humiliated.

  “Hope you don’t snore,” La Osa added, and slammed her door.

  Chapter Eight

  Most of them were crammed into Irma’s kitchen. The over-flow stood in the street, with their faces jammed in Irma’s television window. The priest and several concerned grandmothers stood in the living room; the eldest of them took up regal space on the flowered couch. Poor Garcí a-García sulked in the backyard, trying to keep Irma’s turkey away from him with one foot.

  Of course, Tacho had always wanted to go north, but he wasn’t going to admit it. What was there for a man like him in Tres Camarones? Less than nothing. Maybe the girls. And there was no way he was going to let the girlfriends face the dangers, or the excitement, of going to el norte without him.

  In his mind, they would cross the border under a stack of hay in an old truck, like the heroes in Nazi movies always escaped from occupied France. Some Border Patrol agent might poke the hay with a pitchfork, only to be called away by barking German shepherds just as the tines came perilously close. Maybe Yolo or Vampi would get poked, in a thigh, and would heroically bite back her yelps of pain. Not Nayeli—she was the leader of the commando unit. Tacho saw her in some kind of hot shorts with a red blouse tied under her breasts. There w
ould be a close-up of the blood drops falling on the cobbles, but the impatient Border Patrol agents would wave them through, unseeing—in fact, their own boots would obliterate the telltale blood drops. And then he’d be there: La Jolla and its emerald beaches. Hollywood. Los Beberly Hills. Stars and nightclubs and haute couture. Tacho was ready.

  Aunt Irma had to promise to manage the daily operations of the Fallen Hand before Tacho would agree to go with the notorious girlfriends. Then came the tense negotiations between Irma and the mothers, grandmothers, and aunts. No one was willing to let her girl go into the maw of the appalling border. A long journey far from home, predatory men and Mexican police, bandits, injuries, car wrecks, kidnapping, slavers, pimps, drug pushers, illness, jails, Tijuana! The word alone speaking volumes about every border-fear they held within them. Coyotes and smugglers. Border Patrol and Minutemen. Rapists, addicts, dogs, robots, demons, ghosts, serial killers, racists, army men, trucks, spotlights. ¡Por Dios! they cried, these were just girls!

  Tacho helpfully informed them: “I am not a girl, thank you very much!”

  “If God is with us,” Nayeli pontificated, “what harm can befall us?”

  Tacho sipped his Nescafé instant and thought: How about crucifixion? Lions? Burning alive? He glanced at Irma. She wasn’t moved by the religious propaganda, either. But Father François stood at the back of the room and raised his hand over the girls in a benediction and said, “Benditas sean.” He looked at Tacho, who was irked that the girls got all the blessings. “And you, too,” François amended.