by Noe Alvarez
Mrs. Kelly steps out from her office and locks the door behind her. “Prep the food for tomorrow, and lock up when you’re finished,” she says. I wipe my wet forehead with wet forearm over a pile of dirty dishes and watch the kitchen become eerily still as Mrs. Kelly leaves. She holds her husband’s hand, while I chop tomorrow’s vegetables.
Later, I rack the last of the dishes, turn off the machines, toss off my splotched apron, shut off all the lights, and walk out the back door, through the alley, and up the hill toward my bus stop.
One morning, when wanting to track the scent of my father inside the familiar layout of a hardware store, I come upon a day laborer by the name of Pablo. He combs the corners of the parking lot for work that often takes him to the city’s outskirts. He reminds me of my father. I buy him food. We talk. He’s quiet at first. Some days there is no work, he says. He and the other day laborers huddle on the curbside, hiding among the hedges, fiercely watchful of both police and slow-moving vehicles that solicit their services. It is what he knows.
After a while, Pablo tells me the following story:
One day not long ago, Pablo encountered a rusted truck that rolled up next to him. Inside, a gray-haired man in a green hat shouted, “Work? Tra-ba-jo?” Pablo nodded in affirmation. The driver reached over and opened the door. Pablo climbed into the passenger side, as he had done with many employers before. Routine.
In Puebla, Mexico, where Pablo is from, most of the townspeople cultivate beans. There is no getting ahead in that town, he says. His aging parents will need caring for soon. He left for the U.S. with plans to earn enough to return home, proudly open his own convenience store, and properly care for his parents. Never would he tell them that he sleeps under bridges at night—living essentially the same hard life as in Mexico, but in English.
Inside the truck were papers, trash, and old cassettes. It smelled of diesel and mold. The driver of the truck mumbled, tobacco under his lip. His hand covered a black bag to his side. His feet brushed against empty beer cans. When Pablo arrived at the worksite in a quiet suburb, he saw a sun-peeled brown house, two rusted junkers among tall grasses, and a black dog pulling at its chains and snarling. Still, Pablo waited eagerly for his assignment.
“See those trees?” the driver said. Young, lush, and about six feet tall. “I want you to uproot them. Here’s a shovel. I’ll be back at lunchtime with food,” he wrapped up and drove off in his rumbling truck. Pablo then hacked around the base of the first tree with the small, rusted shovel thrown at his feet earlier. He figured they would be transplanted and took care not to strike at the major roots. When he came across roots entwined around a large block of stubborn earth, he dug a circle around the tree to loosen its grip without damaging it. He worked fast, and was confident that his strength would not fail him. He piled dirt in a mound and dislodged rocks from the net of wooly roots. When the base of the first tree loosened, he pulled, pushed, and shook it until the tree fell over. The roots crackled like knuckles as the earth released them. He dug around the second tree and did the same. The grooved wooden handle of the shovel gave him splinters, and rubbed his palms until the skin blistered. His hands burned and his arms ached. By tree number three, Pablo’s forehead throbbed. His stomach grumbled. The day grew darker, and still there was no sign of his employer.
Late that evening his employer returned and found Pablo sitting on the trunk of one of the uprooted trees, chatting with an elderly neighbor lady. Pablo stood. He had never uprooted a tree before, but he felt positive about his work. His employer approached him, frowning, and said, “You didn’t go home yet? You said you’d take the bus home.”
“No, señor,” Pablo said and waited for further instruction.
There was a pause. The boss spit black chew over the mound of dirt and turned to his truck. “Come. I’ll take you back,” he said. Pablo waved at the smiling elderly lady. She had reminded him of his mother. She had promised to employ him soon for shoveling snow.
Pablo and the man drove along in the truck. Conifer trees surrounded the road. In a light drizzle, and in the woods, any city lights behind them soon disappeared.
“Cerveza?” the man offered.
“No, gracias,” Pablo said. Under a new moon, the hills appeared to grow taller. When the truck turned in the wrong direction, Pablo began to worry. Work had never taken him this far from the city limits.
The passenger door was unlocked. Pablo put his hand on the door handle. “Where are we going?” he asked. His heart raced. His throat tightened. Fear gripped him. The only sound along the dark and winding road was the grumble of the speeding truck. What was he doing with his life? He remembered a question once asked of him by a former employer: “Is life better here or in Mexico?”
It was moments like these, in the truck, or experiencing hunger under bridges, and standing long hours on corners, that made the question difficult to answer. But if asked, he still answers, “Life is better here. By a little.”
“Señor?” Pablo tries again.
Without answer, the driver scowled at the wet road.
“Señor, just pay me my money and drop me off here,” Pablo said. Then the truck slowed and turned onto a gravel road. Potholes shook the truck’s frame. Branches whipped the side of the vehicle. Pablo rolled his window down and wet leaves struck him. Pablo finally opened the door in desperation, put his foot inches over the moving road, and picked a spot among the weeds. “Dejeme aqui.”
Pablo jumped.
The truck came to a sliding halt and slowly reversed to where Pablo lay cowering. The driver reached into his back pocket, tossed something into the darkness at Pablo’s feet, slammed the passenger door shut, and sped off in reverse down the tight gravel road. The truck’s headlights became globes that faded through the dark trees. Pablo rose, took a deep breath, picked up what were seven wet dollars, and limped back along the dark muddy road.
40
Today
These days, Mazat is at work as a psychologist. He does temazcal—i.e., sweat and danza once a week with youth and adults with a history of substance abuse. Since first discovering PDJ, Mazat continues to dedicate his life to ceremony, running and traveling all over Latin America to teach and learn from others. “I live for ceremony,” he says. He’s an avid reader, leads workshops in the mountains, and is a student of poetry and kung fu.
Zyanya Lonewolf is at work with little kids reviving the old ways in her hometown in British Columbia, Canada, by teaching the traditional language of Dakelh at an elementary school and working with other women of her community.
Cheeto works in the Bay Area at a local YMCA. The run is still with him, as well as the memories of all the locals across North America who sacrificed their resources to receive us, offering whatever food and shelter they could. Cheeto never took that lightly and does what he can to pass it forward in his community.
Pacquiao lives in Phoenix, Arizona, managing a local nonprofit and helping bring resources to local Indigenous youth. He still works with PDJ.
Andrec is at home in Fresno, California. When his mother was dying, he took her a bundle of her favorite perennials—sage, soaked in water in a paño bandana because the hospital did not allow for burning. That was her favorite smell in the world. His mother breathed it in with Andrec at her side.
After the death of his mother, Andrec gave away his feathers, no longer needing them because, he says, “The strength is inside you. On the run, you just got to shed yourself of all those things. Your will is your true strength.”
Chula Pepper is back in San Diego, California, as a happy single mother of one son, Paz. She plans to circle back to the PDJ run in 2020, to run as mother with son.
Tlaloc passed away in a car crash. It killed him and his baby, Megcenetkew—a name that means “the Reflection of the Moon on the Water”—and hospitalized Crow.
The burial, which drew people from all corners of the earth, was a blend of different traditions. Native music and drums played while people lined up behind
four shovels and took turns moving earth over Tlaloc and sealing him and his baby to the spirit world. Rival gang members participated peacefully in the ceremony.
Crow is at home today in the wild mountains with her and Tlaloc’s twelve-year-old daughter, Malinali, currently fighting against the oil pipeline development threatening their clean water. Still a warrior. With her sister, Crow started a group that fights the ski lodges deforesting their land and bulldozing over homes. They began building houses on wheels that easily relocate, without losing their homes permanently. Malinali ran in PDJ in 2016 and is growing up to be part of the movement with her mother, to carry on the struggle of her people. “We fight,” Crow says, “so our children can have a better future.”
Ipana is working harder than ever to protect the caribou in Alaska.
Refugio continues to break barriers, still running with the staffs wherever they take him. He was last known to be living in Chiapas.
Trigger is raising a family with Kara in Canada.
Me, I work in Boston, a city of immigrants. When I’m not completing shifts as a security officer at the Boston Athenæum, one of the oldest independent libraries in the country, I wander.
On one such walk in the city, I come upon a faint Pepsi sign that hangs from rusted hinges on the side of an old brick building. At first glance it looks abandoned and, like a mesmerized moth to a lamp, I approach this small outpost of the past—still a believer that structures like these hold a certain wisdom. I decipher its dim lettering—bowling center—like I do the code of the streets: walk like you know where you’re going. I step into the pale light of a single bulb shining over the entrance where a chair is stationed outside. Inside, I hear the roar of men. I take a deep breath and push through two pairs of swinging doors, into thick, mildewed air. The smell of the past.
Three older men of seeming Italian and Irish descent, fit, are leaned over a counter, engaged in some dispute. They don track jackets, tattoos, and towels over shoulders. Between them: a stack of money and scratched lotto tickets. Sports stream from a nearby television and tacked to the faux-wood walls is an American flag and a Keno Lottery banner.
“Lemme tell you somethin’—” one man in a Boston accent exclaims to another in a corroded smoker’s voice. The grain of a shouter. Jewelry-adorned hands slam onto the counter in heated gesture.
They turn to me, straight-faced.
I feel like I should speak carefully but nothing comes to mind. “I’m looking for a place to—” They glance questioningly at one another. “A place to buy a drink, maybe do some work?” I’m nervous. It’s clear that I’m not from around here. I tell them that I’m looking for a home away from home, a place to moor myself among good and interesting people.
They laugh.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” they tell me. The ice thaws. “All sorts of characters here.”
For hours I watch these men from the sidelines—how they clasp candlepin balls to their chests as if in prayer and rub them for good luck like crystal balls. I can’t help but feel like I’ve been missing out on something special in my own life. The men’s eyes watch over the wooden floors as if reading an old roadmap to when they were younger. For me, to when I was nineteen years old, restless, and on the run with Indigenous people. In many ways, still on the run.
Before I part ways with everyone, I think about how here human connection thrives, just like it did on the run with Peace and Dignity Journeys. Where people on the community level are taking back their lives. Where people are prioritized and flaws are part of the human narrative.
“Come back and see us,” they say.
These days, my mother lives alone, content among a swarm of wasps in her backyard, in a small rental in west Yakima that she fills with picture frames of her old life when we were all kids and still in need of her. A house finely decorated the way she always wanted. Not a moving box in sight. She turns off the television—a Spanish religious channel, and as always, she receives us with food.
When I visit her, she gives me a tour of the kitchen, her cabinets, and refrigerator. Proud. “Look, all the best foods,” she says. “And my car,” she says, opening the garage door connected to the side of the house, “it’s all paid off finally.”
“I’m very proud of you, Amá,” I tell her.
We sit and eat warm tortillas on the back patio, beneath the bees, overlooking the lawn and the remnants of a burned-down house. She walks onto the lawn and spikes the water sprinkler into a new area before finally seating herself next to me. She touches my arm.
“Want me to call someone about the bees?” I ask her.
“No. They’re harmless. They don’t do anything,” she says. They’re her company, her protection.
“Tomorrow, very early, I’m taking Dad fishing,” I say.
“You’re still fishing, mijo?” She looks off into the distance. “I’ve prepared the bed for you. It’s there whenever you need it.”
My father continues to work in construction. For our fishing trip, I leave my mother’s house at an hour when the world is still sleeping, save the laborers, construction workers, and everyone else whose job it is to wake before sunrise. I walk a couple miles through crisp air to where my dad lives, fishing pole slung over my shoulder in its case. The air has a special smell at this hour, rewarding for only those who can wake up early enough to experience it. It’s the smell of coffee that first hits me when I meet my dad hunched over the sink in the kitchen. A smell that woke me so many times as a boy back when he worked in the orchards. The living room is dark.
“I have pan dulce,” he tells me while walking to his truck. He makes room for me in his truck—still his mobile office. Letters, papers, his carpentry tools and other equipment. I miss the clutter. He places a five-gallon bucket of tools at the feet of the passenger seat, and I squeeze in. Dust kicks up from the seat, and I am once again enveloped in my father’s smell. Happiness. I am like a kid again en route to the orchard. He starts the old truck and we drive into the blue light where the sun slowly rises, watching these old lands again, with renewed longing, through a cracked and bug-plastered windshield. He still keeps pennies in the ashtray, many pairs of sunglasses, camouflage trucker hats, and ear plugs.
“Can I wear these?” I put on a pair of his shades and his hat, look into the side-view mirror—proud to wear the look of a father I’m no longer ashamed of.
He drives me to Wapato to a lake accessible via a tight tunnel under a bridge. Here, I teach him to fly fish.
He retreats to a nearby tree and squats. “I’ll watch you.” I glance at his figure on my back cast. It’s been many years since I’ve seen him squatted like that, in that look, under a tree next to a large canteen of water. For years the trees were this family’s sanctuary. A family that congregated under apple trees with their children for lunch, took respite, and played music to mitigate long days.
“Come. You try now.” He comes and I give him the rod. “Hold it this way.” I teach him about the fly, the cast, and loading the rod. In minutes he catches a fish and he runs after it like a kid, holding the fish in his hand before releasing it.
The sun keeps pace with us.
“I know a better place,” he says after about an hour. “Get your things,” and we drive from place to place as if to catch up on the years we missed together.
We cast the river on Canyon Road, then a lake more like a watering hole for cattle, before finally settling on little Tjossem Pond. Again and again we shout, “Got another one!” I can’t remember the last time we caught so many fish. The day passes too quickly and the hour arrives when I have to leave again.
“Bus gets here in a couple hours,” I remind him. “Mom’s taking me to the station.”
I’m still often conflicted about the things I want and the things I need. I want to be in Washington State again, a place of soul, among family, nesting and healing on a land that has given me so much spirit. But what I need is to carry this spirit forward, into new lands, making de
cisions based on the future. To continue to run toward the best version of myself, even if it pains me to wander from a place I will always call home. I fool myself into getting onto a Greyhound bus to Seattle to board a flight back to Boston. No one knows me there. I can try on new faces, pursue new opportunities. Boston.
I return to my apartment in Boston to ready myself for work the next day where I will put on a suit and tie and ready myself for a shift as a security officer at the Boston Athenæum.
I enter the employee entrance of the museum through the security corridor and hang up my wet coat from rain. I set the morning’s newspapers onto a small table and access my locker where I surrender my wallet and collect my red notebook, earpiece, and two-way radio—radio number five. I clip it and an ID badge to my belt. I connect my earpiece and clock in. When all is 10-4, I review the CCTV camera footage and watch staff settle into their work spaces on chairs and desks, to be absorbed in the business of books.
I adjust my tie, unlock the front doors, and take post at the vestibule. I am a pillar among mainly white spaces, accompanied by the decapitated head of Zeus erect above an Athena statue, as well as a large painting of the flaying of Marsyas—the violent depiction of a man who’s skinned alive at the hands of Apollo. Members’ coats are stacked like shadowy remnants of their owners near the reading room that houses the marble statue of a paraplegic Greek man. Art is violent.
Here, I contend not only with the mental fatigue of museum silence, but the nervous reality that has haunted and pestered me all of my life: that I will always be working-class.
The clacking dress shoes over marble floors remind me that I am surrounded by people who know where they’re going in life. In these small spaces, even in the most trivial of conversations, I pretend that I matter, that people value my insight into random matters of life, literature, and local events.