The Border

by Don Winslow

  “This is it,” Paolo says, sounding relieved. “It’s run by a priest, Father Gregorio. The madrinas won’t go in because they’re afraid of him. He threatens them with hell.”

  They go inside.

  A few bunk beds line the wall and mattresses are spread across the open floor. Pots of stew and beans simmer on a small kitchen stove. Tortillas are stacked on a side table. A dozen or so migrants are either sleeping or eating.

  Father Gregorio is a tall silver-haired man with a long jaw and a hook nose. He stands by the stove with a ladle in his hand. “Come in. You must be hungry.”

  Nico nods.

  “You look hurt,” Father Gregorio says to him.

  “I’m all right.”

  Father Gregorio steps up to him and looks at his swollen face. “I think you need a doctor. I can walk you to the clinic. No one will bother you, I promise.”

  “Just some food, please,” Nico says.

  “Eat first, then we can talk about it,” Father Gregorio says. He ladles out bowls of soup, pours beans over the top and gives them tortillas.

  Squatting on the floor, Nico starts to eat.

  “Cross yourself first,” Flor whispers. “You’ll make the priest mad.”

  Nico crosses himself.

  The food is hot and delicious. Even though it hurts to eat, Nico wolfs it down. Then Father Gregorio walks over and asks, “What about that doctor?”

  Seeing Paolo slightly shake his head, Nico says, “I’m okay.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Father Gregorio says, “but all right. All the beds and mattresses are full, you’ll have to sleep on the bare floor. There’s a shower out back if you want to wash up.”

  After eating, Nico goes outside and finds the shower, a spigot that comes out of the wall behind a wooden slat door. The water, more of a trickle, is unheated but tepid in the summer heat. He stands under it and uses the sliver of soap on a plastic tray to wash himself, then uses a communal towel, damp from other users, to dry off as best he can.

  He touches his right side and winces—it’s a massive bruise—and he struggles to raise his arm and get his shirt back on. Then he climbs back into his jeans and steps outside.

  Paolo is waiting to use the shower.

  “It’s good you’re not going to the clinic,” Paolo says. “The migra watch it like hawks, swoop in as soon as Father Gregorio leaves.”

  “Thanks for warning me.”

  “You’d never make it without me.”

  “I know.” Nico steps aside and lets Paolo get into the shower. But instead of going back in, he sits on a small patch of grass to enjoy the air and the stars. But then through the slats, he sees something amazing—Paolo unwrapping tape from around his chest.

  Nico sees Paolo’s breasts.

  Paolo, he realizes, is a girl.

  When the water stops running, Nico sees Paolo—he guesses now it’s really Paola—carefully wrap the tape tightly around her chest, hiding her breasts under her shirt. When Paola gets out, she sees Nico sitting there and looks startled.

  “What are you doing?” Paola asks.

  “Just sitting here.”

  “Spying on me?”

  “I won’t tell, I promise,” Nico says.

  “You won’t tell what?” Paola asks, advancing on him. “You won’t tell what?!”

  “Nothing!” Nico says. He gets up and runs into the house.

  But lying next to Flor later he whispers in her ear, “Paolo is a girl.”

  “What? That’s silly.”

  “No, I saw—”

  “What?”

  “You know.” He cups his hands over his chest. “Why would—”

  “Don’t be so stupid.”

  “Well, why?”

  “Because of what men do to girls,” Flor says.

  “Don’t tell I told you.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I won’t,” Flor says. “Now go to sleep.”

  Suddenly he’s asleep and just as suddenly it’s morning.

  It’s hard to get up. Nico’s ribs burn as he pushes himself first to his knees and then to his feet. Father Gregorio gives them each a tortilla, two slices of mango and a glass of water. As Nico chews his tortilla, he glances at Paola, who glares at him and then looks away.

  A few moments later, Paola says, “We have to go. Come on.”

  Nico is sad to leave but doesn’t really know why.

  He can’t realize that it’s one of the few places he’s ever received kindness.

  Kids on bikes suddenly appear on the dirt roads that run through the cornfields and then start pedaling beside the railroad tracks.

  They smile and wave and call out hellos.

  Nico waves and hollers back, then the bikes speed ahead and he loses sight of them. A minute later he looks toward the front of the train, where a copse of trees stands beside the track. There’s something odd in the trees, something he can’t quite make out.

  Are those balloons in the trees? White balloons?

  Or are they piñatas?

  No, he thinks, they’re too big for that.

  The train starts to slow down.

  What’s going on? Nico wonders. He looks at the trees again and then realizes that what he’s been seeing are mattresses.

  Mattresses balanced on the tree limbs.

  He doesn’t understand.

  Then he sees the kids on bikes under the trees, yelling and pointing back at the train. Men lift up off the mattresses and start to drop from the trees like heavy fruit. Then the train stops under the trees and the men, holding machetes and wooden clubs, are all around them. They’re not maras—no tattoos, no gang colors, they just look like farmers—but they’re bandits, sleeping in the trees until the local kids told them the train was on the way.

  Paola yells, “Run!”

  She pushes her way through other migrants and scrambles down the ladder, jumping from the fifth rung. A bandit grabs Nico by the front of the shirt but he twists away, grabs Flor’s hand and pulls her to the ladder.

  They climb down and run into the cornfields.

  The corn is taller than they are and they can barely see around them, but Nico thinks he catches a glimpse of Paola running through the stalks.

  Maybe it’s Paola, but Nico can’t really see.

  Screams of pain and fear come from the train.

  Out of breath, they stop and crouch, hiding in the cornstalks.

  Nico feels his heart pounding, is afraid the bandits will hear it. He hears feet crashing through the stalks toward them and puts his hands over his ears. They get closer and closer and he can’t decide whether to run or stay still and hope they don’t see him.

  He’s frozen with fear.

  Then he hears shouts. “Got one! Come here! I’ve got one!”

  “Leave me alone! Get your hands off me!”

  It’s Paola.

  Nico thinks he should go try to help her but he can’t make himself move. Can only sit and hear the struggle, the voices . . . there are four of them, maybe five—shouting and laughing, and then one says, “Look! It’s a girl! You think you can fool us, you little whore?!”

  Go help, Nico tells himself.

  You are Nico Rápido.

  Nico the Fast.

  Nico the Brave.

  Go fight them.

  But he can’t move. He’s a ten-year-old boy and he can’t make his legs move when he hears Paola scream as they rip the tape off her chest. Can’t move as he hears them yell, “Hold her down!,” as he hears her scream and struggle, and then as her voice is muffled under a man’s hand.

  Nico is from El Basurero.

  He knows the sounds of sex, knows the sounds of men fucking women, the grunts, the moans, the dirty curses, and now he hears all of that and he also hears laughter and shouts and muffled cries and sobs as they take turns on her, use her in all the ways he knows from a childhood spent in a garbage dump.

  The boy wants to be a hero, wants to help his friend, w
ants to knock the men off her and kill them and save her, but his legs won’t move.

  All he can do is crouch and listen.

  He’s ashamed.

  And then it’s quiet.

  For just a moment, and then Nico hears the men walk away, and he’s ashamed that he’s glad that they’re walking away and haven’t found him, and he sits and listens to Paola whimpering and her feet kicking in the dirt.

  A few minutes later he hears the train engine.

  Flor moves first.

  She crawls through the stalks toward Paola.

  Nico sits for a few more seconds and then follows her.

  Paola stands in a small clearing, the cornstalks flattened where they laid her down. She’s pulling on her jeans, and Nico sees blood trickling down her legs. She bends over and picks up her shirt, puts it on and starts to button it. Then she sees them and says, “Go away. Leave me alone.”

  She starts to walk toward the railroad track.

  When they follow her, she looks back over her shoulder and yells, “I said leave me alone! I’m fine! You think it’s the first time?!”

  The train is gone and there’s nobody by the tracks except two bodies—one’s head is crushed, the other has been chopped up by machete blows. Garbage—plastic bags and empty water bottles—is strewn around, but everything of value has been taken.

  The children sit by the track and wait.

  A few hours later, another train comes and they get back on the Beast.

  The train heads north, through Oaxaca and toward Veracruz.

  Paola sits alone, silent.

  She won’t look at them or speak.

  The train descends into Veracruz and they pass through fields of pineapple and sugar cane. The people get warmer, too—some even wait by the track and toss food up to them.

  Paola won’t eat, even when Flor tries to give her some of the food.

  The train crosses more mountains in the Pica de Orizaba.

  As it passes through the mountains, the scorching weather turns to cold, and Nico and Flor huddle together, shivering. At night, the danger of freezing to death is very real; when dawn comes, the faint sun is barely enough to warm them.

  It’s outside of Puebla, as the train heads toward Mexico City, that Paola finally talks to them. She stands up, looks toward the front of the train, then turns back to Nico and says, “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Then Nico spots the high-tension wire ahead and yells, “Get down! Paola, get down.”

  She doesn’t.

  Paola turns to the front again and flings her arms out. The wire hits her in the chest and she becomes a flash of lightning on a sunny day.

  Nico puts his arm over his eyes.

  When he takes it away, she’s gone, leaving only a faint trace of burned flesh that quickly blows away in the cold northern wind.

  The train comes to a stop on the outskirts of Mexico City.

  More gangs are waiting.

  As patient and sure as vultures, they jump on the migrants as soon as they get off the train, and make them pay to walk the twelve miles to the shelter in Huehuetoca.

  “We don’t have any money,” Nico says.

  “That’s your problem, not mine,” the gangster says. He runs his eyes over Flor.

  “I have this shirt,” Nico says.

  “‘Messi,’ huh?” the gangster says. “Okay, Number Ten, give it to me. It’s probably worth more than the girl.”

  Nico strips the shirt off, hands it to the gangster.

  Then he and Flor trudge to the shelter.

  The volunteers there find a T-shirt for him. It’s way too big and hangs down close to his knees, but he’s glad to have it.

  In the morning, he and Flor walk back to the train tracks. Nico knows from talking to veteran migrants at the shelter that a number of tracks run north from the terminal. The Ruta Occidente goes up to Tijuana, the Ruta Centro to Juárez, the Ruta Golfo to Reynosa. He wants the last one, because it’s the farthest east, the closest to New York.

  The tracks outside the terminal are a confusing puzzle, but finally he finds the one he thinks is the Ruta Golfo, and they walk along the tracks until they find a safe place to jump on board, and wait for the train.

  It’s been raining off and on, but now it’s stopped, and the sky is a pearl gray.

  “What will we do when we get to the border?” Flor asks.

  Nico shrugs. “Cross the river.”

  Although he doesn’t know how they’re going to. He’s heard the stories by now—about people drowning, “coyotes” demanding money to get them across, about the American migra waiting on the other side.

  He doesn’t know yet how they’re going to cross, he just knows they will, and there’s no point in worrying about it yet, because first they have to make it there.

  Five hundred more miles on La Bestia.

  “Then what?” Flor asks.

  “I’ll call my aunt and uncle,” he says. The phone number is written on the waistband of his underwear. “They’ll tell us what to do. Maybe they’ll send us tickets, we can ride on the inside of a train.”

  She sits quietly for a moment and then asks, “What if they don’t want me?”

  “They will.”

  “But what if they don’t?”

  “Then we’ll go someplace else,” Nico says. If my aunt and uncle don’t want her, they don’t want me, he thinks. They don’t own New York, we’ll find a place somewhere.

  It’s America.

  There’s a place for everybody, right?

  He sees the train coming.

  There are fewer migrants here and the trains are different. They carry less produce and more industrial goods, like refrigerators and cars.

  “You ready?” Nico asks.

  Flor gets up. “I miss Paola.”

  “Me too.”

  They start to run alongside the train.

  The rain has made the creosote on the wooden rails slick and it’s hard to gain footing, but they’ve gotten good at this with practice. Nico is still a little slowed from his injured ribs and Flor gets ahead of him to grab the ladder and help him up.

  She gains the car, reaches for the front ladder and holds her hand out for Nico.

  He reaches for it and slips on the creosote.

  Falls on his face.

  Picks himself up and tries again but now her hand is yards away and the train starts to pick up speed.

  “Nico, hurry!” Flor yells.

  He keeps running but the train is faster.

  “Nico!”

  She hangs from the ladder, thinking about jumping down, but the train is too fast now and she’ll get hurt and he waves for her to go ahead.

  “I’ll get the next one!” he yells. “I’ll meet you in . . .”

  But she’s farther away now, getting smaller, her voice fading as she screams, “Nicooooooo . . . !”

  For the first time in his life, the boy is alone.

  Nico rides the train alone, keeps to himself, trusts no one, speaks little, and when he does, it’s to ask about Flor. When he gets off the train to look for food, he asks about her. She’s not at the first stop or the next. He asks about her at the shelters, the clinics. He has no photo of her, he can only describe her, but no one has seen her, or at least they’re not saying.

  He gets back on the train and rides north.

  Lonely, sad, afraid.

  He makes no friends, doesn’t try, because he can’t trust anyone and besides, friends just disappear—in a flash of lightning or on a train fading into the distance.

  Finally, the Beast stops.

  Nico knows that he’s in Reynosa, but little more than that. Paola had told him about a shelter where he could spend the night before trying to cross the river, and he finds his way to the Casa del Migrante, run by the priests.

  There he gets a simple meal and news about Flor.

  She was arrested, a woman tells him. Yes, a little girl matching that description was taken away by the Reynosa Police just by the trai
n.

  “You saw this?” Nico asks.

  “I saw,” the woman says.

  “What do they do with them?” Nico asks. “The people they arrest?”

  The people who have no money to pay bribes.

  “Send them back,” the woman says.

  So Flor is on El Bus de Lágrimas, heading all the way back to Guatemala City and El Basurero.

  At least she’s alive, Nico thinks, at least she’s safe.

  He falls asleep on the concrete floor.

  The river, the Río Bravo that the Americans call the Rio Grande, is wide and brown. With swirls and eddies.

  Nico stands at the edge.

  He can’t swim.

  He’s come a thousand miles to get here and now he doesn’t know how to get across the last hundred yards. The coyotes charge a hundred dollars or more to get someone over, and Nico doesn’t even have one.

  Now he watches as coyotes take groups of people across on inflatable rafts and drop them in the brush on the other side. The people get out of the boat and run before the American migra come and find them.

  Nico finds a spot in the mesquite brush and waits for sundown.

  When it finally comes, when the water turns black, he walks a quarter mile upstream, away from the rest of the migrants waiting to cross, and crouches by the riverbank. He’s been watching this spot all day and it looks shallow—he’s seen people cross by foot with poles to balance them.

  Nico has a small branch.

  As it gets darker, when the figures crossing upstream are just silhouettes, he walks down to the water’s edge and looks across. He doesn’t see the headlights of the migra’s cars, doesn’t hear engine noises. It’s a quiet part of the river, a narrower part on a curve, and he’s sure he can make it across, scramble up the steep bank, and hide in the mesquite on the other side.

  Crouching, he waits for darkness, then steps into the black water.

  It’s cold, much colder than he thought, but he makes himself keep going, feeling the rocky bottom with his feet, trying not to trip over stones and sunken branches. Twice he almost falls, but leans on his stick and stays upright.

  The water gets deeper.

  First to his knees, then to his waist, and it’s only then he figures out that the people he had watched fording the river were grown men and not ten-year-old boys.