by Pam Withers
But there is a hitch this time, and I do not like it.
“Boys,” Captain says, addressing the group with his deep voice in Spanish. “Because we lost so much money to the pirates that we can’t pay our kind hosts here, you each have a choice. When you call your parents to let them know you’ve arrived, you must request that they double the balance of money they are due to deposit —”
“What? No way!” some of the boys interrupt.
“As I was saying,” Captain resumes in a booming voice that makes the boys shrink back, “they must double the second half of the payment, in which case we will promptly release you, or you will be held in a nearby labour camp until you work off the extra money required.”
Not the work camp again. I sigh. It has been a while since Captain pulled this. But I know this routine as well as I know the usual one.
I scan their faces. Mouths ajar, eyes narrowed, arms crossed, bodies slumped in resignation. There is mumbling, there are a couple of protests, and one or two tears. And then there is Owen, who merely looks confused, since he does not understand Spanish. Captain does not leave the gringo in the dark for long. He switches to English.
“I will now pass the phone around. No funny business; we’re standing by listening and can cut you off. Everyone gets one call. Everyone except Owen, whom I’ve already volunteered for labour camp.”
I smile. That will teach Owen to stow away, play first mate with his mechanical skills, and get too friendly with the clients. But the moment that thought registers, I frown and lower my head. He has never done me any harm, and so what if he showed me up once on boat mechanics? The guy stumbled into our operation innocently. He doesn’t deserve what Captain’s about to dish out. No one does. “Owen will do so alongside Arturo,” Captain carries on as my jaw loosens and my chest clamps up, “who I know will set a great example with how hard he works. In other words, Arturo, you’ll be joining the labour operation for however many weeks it takes.”
What? Never before has Captain forced me into the work camp. Never! How dare he — I leap up, tingling at full buzz. But before I can say a word, Captain’s big hand comes down firmly on my back and steers me to the circle of distressed boys, then presses on my shoulders until I sit down on the butt-chilling concrete.
I consider leaping up and shouting at him, arguing, refusing to go. But one glance at Stanton and I know it’s just what he’s waiting for.
I try to reason it out: Captain is pissed off about Owen sneaking on board and about the pirate incident. My boss’s anger is irrational; he’s taking it out on me.
He’ll be more reasonable in the morning. I can let my defiance loose then. Timing is everything, I’ve learned in my three years with him. But whatever happens, he’ll be paying for this. In burnt meals or worse. I squint my eyes and give him a look as my fists ball up of their own accord.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
OWEN
A five-star hotel this is not. We’re handed a ratty blanket each, which we wrap around ourselves on the concrete floor. Pequeño sleeps between Danillo and Arturo, the first mate unable to hide a grim face ever since the captain left him with us. I’m on the outside of the circle. Like I always have been, I remind myself.
“Coffee. Rise and shine, kids.”
I prop open an eye as my nose determines that hot coffee is indeed in the room.
“Get up, now!” The goons’ voices drop any pretence of cheer.
“Must be morning,” Gabriel mutters.
I sit up fast as a coffee cup appears beside me. Ignoring the ripe scent of unwashed bodies, I sip it like I’m at the bakery cafe back on Horton Island.
We’ve barely finished our coffee when the guards jerk their heads toward the stairs.
“Up and out. Get a move on.” One points his gun to emphasize the order.
As we file past a small table near the stairs, I snatch a folded-up newspaper and stick it under my shirt. A dude’s got to keep up on what’s happening in the world while on extended vacation.
“Hey!” Lucas’s voice. Outside, the goons are pushing him apart from the rest of us. “Bye, guys. Text me when you can, okay?” he shouts as he’s shoved into a car.
“He’s free,” Danillo states with a grim face. “His parents paid up.”
“I wonder,” I say. All that’s clear is that we aren’t. I see no opportunity to bolt before we’re directed into the back of a rusty unmarked white van dimly lit by small holes in the walls and floor. No seats, of course. Just before the back doors slam shut, I look out at the water. No sign of Archimedes in the early morning mist.
Arturo sits apart from the others. I should feel sorry for him, but lack the energy for it.
“Sorry about your demotion,” Danillo baits the first mate as the engine roars and our ride jerks ahead. “But it’s only for a few days. Then your captain will come save you and put you back on the high seas to fleece more clients.”
“Stop being mean to Arturo,” Pequeño speaks up bravely.
“Or what?” Danillo flings back.
“Thought you’d be released,” I say to Danillo, “given your parents own a yacht.”
“Owned a yacht,” he says in a pinched voice. “Sold it to put me on Archimedes.”
“And you thought if you just showed up here,” I say, “no one would arrest you or send you back? You’d find a new school to go to, send for your parents, and live happily ever after?”
He hesitates. “Yes. That’s why our families sent us. Kids get a special break. Amnesty. They’re allowed in with hardly any questions, no punishment. They never get sent back.”
I shake my head. “That’s what the captain told your parents? And they believed it?”
Everyone’s staring at me except Arturo. The boys’ faces have gone pale. Arturo turns toward the rusty wall as if he needs to study it. He and the captain have done this many times; he must know that when the boys are turned over to authorities, they don’t always get to stay, nor manage to bring their parents in.
“Sorry, guys, but it’s not that easy,” I say. “The captain just wanted his money, so he said whatever your parents wanted to hear. If you’re caught you’ll be detained and maybe deported. Held until an immigration hearing, then —”
“But we won’t end up in prison or beaten?” Sebastian asks.
“No,” I reply, trying to think what else I’ve heard from Officer Olsen.
“Then it’s okay,” Sergio says. “Better than Guatemala.”
“And we might get to stay,” Gabriel adds with a smile.
It’s my turn to stare at my schoolboy companions, who seem altogether too relaxed. Then, for an instant, my eyes meet the first mate’s.
“Arturo, you’re a different matter,” I inform him.
The van takes a tight corner and we’re hurled against each other. My head bangs against the side of the van. My upper body lands in Arturo’s lap. He says nothing, just pushes me away.
“If you’re caught, you’ll get arrested and put in a youth detention centre for a while. But given your age, you have a chance of eventually being allowed to stay. It’s the captain who’d get his boat seized and sold. And he’d get major prison time.”
Silence.
I pull out the newspaper crumpled inside my shirt and tug my headlamp out of my pack.
“Where’d you get a newspaper?” Danillo asks.
“It was in the basement.”
“Catching up on your stock reports?” he sneers.
“Shit!” I say.
“What?” several voices ask, leaning toward me.
“Gulf Island Teen Boy Goes Missing,” I read the headline, heart sinking. “Search and Rescue is looking for me. My poor parents …”
“Like anyone’s going to come looking for you here,” Sebastian mumbles.
“Did you tell anyone you were leaving?” Gabriel asks.
“Did anyone see you go?” Sergio adds.
“Or do they think you’ve run away or drowned?” Danillo inserts.
I’m so sunk into myself that I’m barely aware of our vehicle as it lurches along a dirt road we glimpse only through a dinner-plate-sized, rusted-out hole in the floor. Soon enough, it gets used as a toilet, and later as a place to puke through.
“Oh man,” objects Sebastian, holding his nose.
It’s well after dark when the van jerks to a halt. Flashlights blinding us, we’re led over a soft carpet of pine needles through sweet-smelling forest to a shipping container, a rectangular steel box the size of a train car. We stand just inside the body-odour-infused space, holding our packs and the thin blankets given us at the safe house, gazing at a row of filthy foam mattresses, when the doors slam shut behind us and what sounds like a steel bar drops into place.
It’s pitch black until I fish out my headlamp.
“We’re hungry!” Sebastian shouts at the locked doors. “We need food.”
“And water,” Gabriel adds.
“And you have to let us out for the toilet,” comes Pequeño’s voice.
“Shh, Pequeño,” Arturo says quietly. “There is bucket for that; I find for you. Try to sleep. Here by me.”
A ripple of laughter outside, the crunch of boots walking away, then silence.
• • •
The screech of the bar lifting wakes us at dawn. Our throats parched, stomachs rumbling, still shivering from the night’s cold, we’re ushered out. I scratch the itchy red bedbug bites that cover my body.
A bearded guard wearing a gun in a holster points to the creek beside us. “Drink there.”
Some of the boys hesitate. “Water’s clean,” snaps the second armed guard, whose greasy, shoulder-length hair is crowned by a bald spot. Baldie, I name him.
I know better than to take the chance. As the others walk over and kneel beside the stream, I dash back into the shipping container to grab my water purification tablets. My hands close over the bottle before Baldie’s fingers close around the back of my neck and he hauls me out again. I fill my water bottle from the stream and pop in a tablet. I wish I had enough for everyone, but I don’t.
Arturo’s and my eyes meet. He resembles a cowed dog, tail between his legs, miserable but obedient. He has said little since we arrived and doesn’t look in the mood for communicating now, either. I wonder if this work camp thing happens all the time. Maybe, but from the way he reacted last night, I suspect he’s not usually forced to be part of it.
Our “camp” site is a mess. Piles of wood slash and garbage surround our unventilated shelter. Nearby, the two guards’ small trailer has a tarp strung up beside it, under which a picnic table, ice chests, propane barbecue grill, and more garbage lie. Beyond that are two other garage-sized shipping containers. One has a steel bar securing it, like ours.
Our bearded guard approaches the locked container, lifts the bar, opens the doors, and starts shouting.
More than a dozen sleepy-looking men file out, all in their early twenties. They’re in torn-up undershirts and trousers, and they’re as skinny and dark-skinned as the people on posters for starving people in Africa. They stare at us, then walk to the river to drink and wash like it’s a long-established routine. I catch some French words. French Africans, I decide. The other container, doors open, is filled with shovels, heavy-duty vinyl bags, and trays of seedling trees in paper cones.
Tree-planting camp. I’ve got cousins who’ve had summer jobs planting trees for forestry companies in back-of-beyond northern places. It’s hard work, but good money. They lived in tents, got fed really well, and gathered each evening around a campfire for guitar playing and singing.
This feels more like a prison camp, perhaps one specializing in illegal immigrants. And no one knows where we are. Five days since my parents took off. Three days since I stowed away. And the search for me is on.
“Line up!” the bearded guard barks.
Within thirty minutes, we’re outfitted with boots, gloves, and tree-seedling bags, which hang around us on suspenders like mailbags.
I smother a smile as I glance at Arturo and Pequeño. Being the smallest of the bunch, they’re wearing oversized boots and gloves with limp fingertips that hang halfway to the ground. Like small kids playing dress-up in adult clothes.
The men from Africa, who, like us, are handed bowls of porridge for breakfast, spoon the food into their mouths while watching us as if bemused at the arrival of novices.
After we eat, we’re handed shovels and trained to aim them at the dirt in front of us, form a neat hole, bend at the waist to plant a small tree from our packs, then stand up and kick the hole shut with our boot heels.
“If you don’t close the hole up all the way, we’ll make you do it over,” Beard informs us. “If you smush the seedling so the lower part is curved, you do it over and get an extra hour’s work. And if you plant it too deep or too shallow, same thing.”
Got it. Doesn’t sound too hard.
“Mierda,” Arturo mumbles under his breath.
“Fill your bags with seedlings,” Baldie orders, jabbing his thumb at the trays. “Plant eight hundred or more a day and you get extra supper. When you run out of seedlings, walk back to the vehicle for more.”
Arturo narrows his eyes and looks to the horizon, like he’s thinking of running.
“Not fair —” Gabriel starts to protest, but Beard pushes him along with the rest of us into the white van half filled already with stacks of trays. The African team piles into a Jeep behind us, Baldie in the driver’s seat. Doors slam shut and we’re off, I assume to the tree-planting site. Pequeño leans into me as if seeking comfort.
“We’ll be okay,” I reassure him. “We’ll work hard and get out of here.” Or I’ll find a way to disappear.
• • •
We plunge our shovels into the dirt, bend, and plant all day. The wind bites, the sun burns, the rough terrain trips us as often as possible. Hornets take turns with mosquitoes torturing us; soon our faces and ears are puffed up with bites and stings. Our boots rub till our feet are bleeding. We’re each given a stale bun with a microscopic slice of cheese for lunch. None of us comes near planting eight hundred trees.
Our sharp-eyed guards keep us and the African team well apart while leaving no one a chance to disappear into the brush. Unlike our African neighbours, most of us are ordered to redo about a third of what we’ve planted.
“Hey-ho!” We look up. It’s the French Africans packed into the Jeep, waving merrily at us as they head back to camp and we start our extra hour.
“Bastardos,” Arturo mumbles.
“They probably did lots of extra time when they started,” I try to reason.
“Yeah, we’ll be rubbing it in when the next group of slaves arrives. If we’re lucky enough to graduate,” Sergio says bitterly.
“Cheer up. We’re building muscles, experiencing the great Canadian outdoors, and adding to our resumés,” I say.
“Shut up, freak,” Sebastian replies.
And that’s the end of that conversation.
At dusk, the van delivers us back to camp and an over-salty, thin chicken soup. Then we fall onto our mattresses, asleep before the first bedbug bite.
• • •
ARTURO
The second night, squeezed up against the far wall of the steel container, I find it hard to breathe. The place reeks of mould, damp, unwashed bodies, creek-washed clothes strung above us, and human shit.
“If only we had more air in here,” mumbles Danillo.
“Doesn’t help that the stupid bucket is so close,” Gabriel complains, switching on his headlamp.
He means our night toilet.
I lift my fingers and run them down the wall beside me, shivering as they come away wet with condensation. Something uneven on the wall makes me sit up and reach for my headlamp. I feel six pairs of eyes watching in the dim glow as I identify two circles, each the size of a fist, several feet
apart on the back wall and only a foot above the floor. They are covered by circular plates screwed on tightly.
“For hoses?” I mumble in Spanish, and the boys are soon pressed around me. “Anyone have a screwdriver?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Breathing holes,” I announce, still in Spanish, and whip out my pocketknife.
“Do they know you have a knife?” Pequeño asks in a small voice.
“Of course not,” I warn.
Headlamp trained on the circles, knife blade applied to a screwhead, I work slowly, sweat running down my face, to oust the screws and free the plates.
“Ventilación,” I say with satisfaction as I finish and hide the screws and circles of metal beneath my mattress. The boys take turns putting their mouths up to the holes and breathing deeply like they are nicotine addicts having a smoke.
“Can we expand them into escape holes?” Danillo asks in Spanish.
“We wish,” Owen responds, obviously guessing the meaning of the Spanish word escapada.
It doesn’t make a huge difference to the airflow, but it puts smiles on the boys’ faces before they bed down again. I decide to screw the covers in place again, loosely, each morning.
• • •
Next day, I plant seven hundred seedlings, the second highest after Owen’s 760. For a split second, I am proud. Then I realize it is not enough to “win” extra supper.
Pequeño plants the least because he has diarrhea from the creek, even worse than some of the other boys. The creek water may not be pure enough for the delicate systems of private-school boys, but if the students do not keep drinking water, they will soon collapse from thirst, I figure.
“Drink from my bottle. I am not sick,” I urge Pequeño, and I plant a few of my seedlings on the boy’s assigned strip of land.
“Away from him!” Beard shouts.
I hustle back to my planting section.