La Linea

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La Linea Page 8

by Ann Jaramillo


  I stared at Javi. He started to open the packet of food. He tugged at the string around the package. He didn’t look at me, or Elena.

  “He’s just using us, Elena. ¿No lo puedes ver? ¿Estás ciega? He’s only thinking what’s best for him. He needs a ride. We don’t.”

  Elena probably thought she was being loyal, but Javi would leave us if he had to, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he do whatever he had to do, so he could make it for his family? Isn’t that what a real father would do, put his own family first? Elena was just too young to understand.

  “You just can’t stand it, Miguel. You can’t stand to have me be right. You’re so used to Abuelita just thinking you’re so great, that you can do no wrong. The money was mine, anyway. It was mine. Yours got stolen by Colmillo, remember?”

  “Cállate, Elena. Why don’t you see the truth for a change?” I snapped back.

  Elena didn’t back down. She looked me straight in the eye, just the way she looked at the goat before she hit it right on the head.

  “Or better yet, ask him what to do!” I pointed at Javi. “You seem to think he has all the answers. Well, ask him how we get a coyote with no money! Ask him how we’re going to get across the border!”

  “I have to ask Javi, don’t I? He saved us from Morales, didn’t he? You didn’t know how to get us on the mata gente, or about the train gangs. At least he got us a ride all the way to the border. You didn’t know anything. You didn’t do anything!”

  Elena moved up closer. She was small, but she stood toe-to-toe with me.

  “I used to lie awake at night in San Jacinto and pretend that Papá and Mamá came home to get us,” Elena went on, her voice quiet, but fierce. “Sometimes I even pretended they came home to stay.

  “When I finally gave up on that, I pretended that you’d take me across la línea. You’d be the one, Miguel, you. I thought I could count on you.”

  “Grow up, Elena.” Neither of us had moved. “Guess what? You want to hear something? Don Clemente told me he’d have sent us years ago to Papá and Mamá, but Papá wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t take a peso, not even for us.”

  Elena stepped back. She looked like I’d hit her full on, right in the mouth.

  “You had to read Mamá’s letters instead of having her there, right there, in front of you, all because of Papá’s stupid pride.

  “Do you get it, Elena? We never needed to wait. You never needed to pretend anything.”

  She’d hurt me as much as she could. I’d just hurt her back, because I could, because I was tired of her, of Javi, of everything—because I was tired of carrying the big load Don Clemente had dumped on me about Papá.

  I turned away from my sister and picked up my backpack. Elena didn’t think she needed me. Any idea I’d had about us being a team had vanished.

  CHAPTER 23

  “I don’t believe you, Miguel. You’re just saying that about Papá, just to make me feel bad.” Elena moved again in front of me.

  “Mamá wouldn’t have let that happen. She wouldn’t have.” Elena spoke to herself then, not to me, as if she was trying to convince herself it was true. Mamá was her savior, just as I’d always thought Papá was mine.

  “Believe what you want. Do what you want, Elena,” I finally said. “You always do, anyway.”

  I could give in to Javi and Elena’s plan. It was two against one. She looked up to Javi. She trusted him, like a tío or godfather, maybe even a father. All we had left now was part of Juanito’s money. Javi would probably find a reason to use the rest of it up, and Elena would just go along with him. Well, not me.

  I began to walk away, back into the forest. “Go with Javi. I’m hopping back on the train, tomorrow if I can. Maybe I’ll see you at the border. Or California.”

  Elena’s face fell. “Miguel, I didn’t mean—,” she began.

  I cut her off. “If you change your mind, I’ll be camped close to the train tracks.”

  I found my way back to the stream. I bent and started to wash the first layer of diesel stink and grime from the train off my body. I used the small pebbles from the bottom of the stream to scrub my skin. I smelled my hands and wrinkled my nose. I stunk. Even if I had soap, I couldn’t get rid of the mata gente. It had gone too deep, to a place nothing could clean.

  I tried to see my reflection in a small pool at the edge of the stream. But a breeze sent a series of ripples across the surface. My eyes looked crossed and my nose ran into my mouth. My face looked like a dozen different puzzle pieces. No matter which way I moved my head, the pieces wouldn’t fit together. If I ever made it across la línea, I probably wouldn’t even know myself.

  After dark, I pushed my way through the cornfield until I came to the rocky railroad bed. I found a grassy spot off to the side and lay down. But sleep wouldn’t come, so I sat up, my back against a stump, and stared out at the tracks. Every bad part of riding the mata gente came back to me. I didn’t want to get back on the train. I hated the mata gente. But it was free, and it headed in the right direction. And I’d be alone, just like I was when I first started the trip. Solo. All alone.

  I moved my hand slowly to Abuelita’s medallion, out of habit now, to be sure it was still there. I made little circles with my right index finger on the smooth metal back. I made the circles again and again, nonstop, until I couldn’t tell where my finger left off and the medallion began.

  I dozed, off and on. Then, late, very late, I sensed something near. The train gangs again? Soldiers? Other migrants, like me? A dog or a wild cat? I didn’t move, straining to hear. I got ready to run or hide. Something behind me rustled, ever so slightly. I turned, slowly.

  There was Elena, peering out from the edge of the cornfield. Her black eyes shone, like a wild animal watching and waiting. The tears running down her face, reflected by the light of the full moon, gave her away.

  Had she come to say good-bye? Had she come to say she was sorry? Was she thinking of coming with me after all? Did she finally realize that we’d be better off without Javi?

  I didn’t move. I was afraid I’d startle Elena, that she would bolt like a deer. I wanted one more chance to convince her I was right. I opened my mouth to speak, to just whisper, “Elena,” to coax her closer. Before I could say it, Elena’s face melted away and she was gone, without a sound. The night was still. If Elena was walking back through the corn, she was as quiet as a ghost.

  Maybe I’d imagined her. Or maybe she really had come. I didn’t know what was real anymore. Should I follow Elena? Should I go now, drag her back with me, make her get on the train? Would she do what I said, anyway?

  Elena, my sister, mi hermana. Who knew what was the right thing to do? Sure, Javier might look after Elena, but what if something happened to him? He already looked exhausted, or sick. So what if I didn’t know everything Javi knew. At least I was young and still strong. That had to count for something.

  What was our best chance of making it? Our best chance, I said to myself again and again. I realized I no longer thought about it as my trip north. I couldn’t stand the thought of Elena going north alone. I couldn’t stand the thought of me going alone, either.

  And maybe it didn’t matter why I did it, but before the sun was up, I ran to the road as fast as I could. An old red truck belching black smoke was just pulling away.

  “¡Esperen!” I waved my arms wildly above my head. “Wait for me!” Elena’s head popped up from the bed of the truck. A large, joyful smile spread over her face.

  “Stop!” she screamed. She banged with both fists on the rear window of the cab. “You have to stop! ¡Es Miguel, mi hermano!”

  The truck screeched to a halt. I ran to catch up and vaulted up over the back and into the truck bed. It was filled with burlap bags of coffee beans. The driver pointed to a large, bright blue tarpaulin.

  “If we knock on the window, put this over you and hold still. We’ll do our best, but if there’s a checkpoint, and they decide to check … well.” He didn’t finish his sentence. There
was only so much they could do. There was only so much we could expect.

  For two days and nights, the truck lumbered noisily down rutted roads, highways, through pueblitos. We drove around the edges of the big cities, traveling through a countryside that turned increasingly dry and arid. Elena made me a nest out of the coffee-bean bags, with an extra one for a pillow. She made one for herself, right next to mine.

  Once, the second day, Javi caught my eye. He nodded silently, as if to acknowledge something unsaid. It could’ve been a nod that said I’d made the right choice to not get back on the mata gente. Or maybe the nod was simply to say, “Okay, here we are again.” I couldn’t tell. Except for the nod, his face was blank.

  I stared out at the land and kept my thoughts to myself. The only thing that mattered was making it across la línea. If the stories were true, the worst was yet to come. Once we crossed la línea, everything would change. Everything.

  CHAPTER 24

  The border town was dust. It poofed up around our feet as we walked. The hoods of cars, windowsills, a tattered blue awning above a closed shoe store, a single droopy mimosa tree next to the police station—everything was clothed in light brown.

  Elena wiped her hand across the trunk of a parked taxi, then wrote “Lávame” with her index finger. Bright green paint showed through, glinting in the sun.

  We walked toward the mercado, where my contact could be found. Elena and Javier walked side by side. Javi limped slightly, favoring his right ankle. With each step, he listed slightly toward Elena. She moved a little to the left, closing the gap between them.

  We crossed the street and pushed our way onto the sidewalk on the other side. A crowd had gathered around the newsstand at the edge of the mercado. The headlines on three different newspapers screamed in giant letters:

  ¡SE DESCARILLA TREN!

  ¡CIENTOS MUERTOS!

  ¡EL MATA GENTE MATA A MUCHOS!

  Javi grabbed a paper and held it so Elena and I could see. The mata gente had derailed at a high speed, hours north of where we had jumped off. Many were killed, maybe hundreds. Many more were injured, and most were children. The photos were big and scary. Little bodies lay scattered, like twigs, across a grassy slope.

  “Was it our mata gente, Javi?” Elena asked.

  “I don’t know.” Javi closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It could’ve been. Or maybe the mata gente that came through the next day. Who knows?”

  We read every word of every article in each of the papers, but they all said the same things. Equipment failure. A tragedy. Children with no identification. A government investigation. Javi shook his head, as if the news confirmed what he’d already known. All I could think was that Elena and I had cheated death again. How much luck could we have left?

  We threaded our way through the shoppers. “Don Clemente’s instructions said to look for a guy in the boot stall, in the mercado,” I explained.

  There were the usual fruit and vegetable stalls. But there were others you’d find only at the border. One spot, El Coyote, sold supplies you needed to cross the desert: knives, snakebite kits, light jackets and pants, a dozen kinds of hats, and water bottles—hundreds and hundreds of blue and clear plastic water bottles.

  People crowded around, pawing through the items. An older man in a cowboy hat cradled an armful of water bottles. Two teenage boys grabbed several pairs of pants with drawstrings.

  “We need two pair each,” one said to the other. “They said it gets cold at night. Get one bigger pair to layer, and to protect against scorpions.”

  A man and a woman in matching bright blue Windbreakers stood off to the side of El Coyote. The words “Socorro Fronterizo” were stitched onto the front of each jacket. They held thick stacks of pamphlets, handing one to every person who left the stall.

  An older woman took the paper politely, folded it, and stowed it in her shirt pocket. “Si Dios es servido, llegamos,” she said. She thought it was all in God’s hands. Nothing the pamphlet said would make a bit of difference to her.

  Two young men about twenty years old each took one. They scanned the pamphlet briefly, shrugged their shoulders, and threw them to the ground as they walked off. Another looked at the paper quizzically. He frowned at the words but studied the drawings intently for several minutes.

  “Joven,” the man said. He pressed a pamphlet into my hand. His touch was warm and firm. Kind eyes met mine. “Here. Take one. Read it.”

  “Guía de Seguridad en el Desierto.” I glanced through the pages. Some of the advice was about desert safety, but most of it seemed to be about how to give yourself up, or how to get back to Mexico if you were lost.

  Tip #3: “If the Border Patrol intercepts you, keep your hands visible at all times.

  Never move them toward your pockets.”

  Tip #7: “Follow the power lines south.”

  “But the best thing is, don’t go,” the man cautioned. “Go back home. It’s very dangerous out there.”

  He spoke to me as if I were the only one he would talk to all day, as if I was his son or brother or best friend. He must talk to hundreds a day the same way he talked to me, but I bet he didn’t convince more than one person a day to not try to cross.

  “Gracias,” I said. “We just need one. We’re together.”

  I nodded toward Elena and Javi. A trail of warning pamphlets littered each of the pathways that led away from El Coyote, ground into the dirt by the heels of border crossers in a hurry. Elena took the pamphlet out of my hand and stuffed it in her front pocket.

  At the far corner of the mercado, we found the one and only botas stall. The scent of new leather filled the air. Some boots sat displayed on shelves in the back. Others hung from the ceiling, out of reach. These were pointy-toed boots made of fine black, brown, tan, and white leather, with lots of tooling. These were boots for misa, for baptisms, for weddings, quinceañeras, and funerals.

  A man sat in the middle of the stall on a short three-legged stool, hunched over a boot in his hands. He rubbed paste into the leather with his bare hands. He used a practiced, circular movement. With each pass, the leather became softer and more pliable. We watched the man silently for several moments.

  He finally looked up, continuing to work the leather by touch. He was not young, but his face was as smooth and unwrinkled as the leather he held. A carefully trimmed moustache covered his upper lip. His green eyes moved slowly from me to Elena to Javi.

  “What can I show you?” he asked. “I have a fine pair right here. They would be perfect for you.” He spoke to Javier first, out of respect, or practicality. Javi would be the one with money.

  “We are looking for El Plomero,” I replied quickly, cutting off Javier. I wanted to be the first to talk.

  “I make boots. If you need a plumber, I know a good one.” He bent once again to his work. I wondered if there was a code or a password or secret sign that Don Clemente forgot to tell me.

  “No,” I insisted, “I’m sure. He told me to ask for ‘El Plomero’ in the boot shop at the mercado. I’m sure that’s what he said.”

  The man’s head came up again. He raised one eyebrow ever so slightly. “Who told you?” he asked. He continued to soften the leather.

  “Don Clemente told me,” I said. “I was supposed to have been here days ago, but I was delayed.”

  “What’s your name?” he demanded. “And what do you know about Don Clemente?” He stopped his work now. I had his full attention.

  I didn’t want to say much until I knew who this man was. I needed to know if he really was “El Plomero” or if he knew him. Most of all, I needed to know El Plomero’s loyalty. Since Don Clemente’s death, did he now work for Juanito? If he did, I couldn’t trust him.

  “My name is Miguel de Cervantes. Don Clemente arranged for El Plomero to help me.” I didn’t say the obvious—that El Plomero was to help me cross the border.

  “I spoke to Don Clemente this morning.” His eyes locked on mine. He didn’t blink. “He said nothi
ng about you,” he continued. “Your name means nothing to me.”

  So he was El Plomero. That much was now clear. But what he said was a lie, and a test for me.

  “Don Clemente is dead. He died in an accident. Juanito told me so himself,” I answered.

  And then I took a risk, to see if I could trust the man or not. The most I’d lose was this one coyote. There must be others, lots of others.

  “Juanito either killed Don Clemente or had him killed,” I declared. This thought had been forming in my mind for days, but it wasn’t until I said it aloud that I knew it was the truth.

  The man’s eyes flickered. He stood up and placed the boots on the counter.

  “You can tell that to your grandchildren, but for now, keep it to yourself,” he warned. “Juanito is a worm, the lowest of the low. He’s trying to take over. I worked for Don Clemente for over twenty years. I won’t work for anyone else. And, yes, I am El Plomero.”

  He examined us again. “Is it the three of you, then, or just you?”

  “The three of us … me, my sister, Elena … Javier…” I paused. “Originally, it was just me, but—”

  El Plomero interrupted, “No matter. Be here at three. I’ll have it all arranged.”

  CHAPTER 25

  We returned to the boot stall at exactly three o’clock. Nothing so far had gone according to plan, but now with El Plomero, I allowed myself to feel a small bit of optimism. Maybe things would go the way Don Clemente had intended, finally.

  The iron grill had been pulled down and locked up tight. Javi rattled the metal with both hands. Elena poked her nose through the grating and peered into the darkness. I pulled at both of the giant padlocks.

  “Where is he?” Elena asked anxiously. “He said three. Do you think he’s not coming?”

  “Calm down, Elena,” I replied. “He’ll be here. He’s probably just running late. We’ll wait. At least it’s cooler in here.” It was a relief to escape the afternoon heat.

 

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