‘Mami,’ Luca says as the train slows enough that some of the men on their car begin to climb down the ladders and jump to the gravel below.
Lydia is rolling up her canvas belt, and she looks at Luca with her what? face.
‘I don’t need the belt,’ he says.
‘You need the belt.’
‘Mami.’
This time she does the more aggressive version of her what? face.
‘If I’m able to jump on and off a moving train, don’t you think it’s a little silly to buckle me in like a toddler?’ Luca juts out his chin at her. She grabs that chin in her hand, pulls her face down to his. The unchanged nature of her temper when he’s ill-mannered is a comfort like a hot bath.
‘It is not silly,’ she says. ‘We ride these trains because we have no choice, but they are extremely dangerous, Luca. Did you learn nothing back there when that man fell—’
‘Okay,’ he says, irritably. ‘Fine.’ He tries to wriggle his chin away from her, but she only squeezes harder. He still has control of his own eyeballs, though. She can’t squeeze those. He moves his gaze away from her face, to her left ear.
‘Don’t interrupt me,’ she says. ‘And look at me when I’m speaking to you.’
He looks at that earlobe.
‘Luca. Look at me.’
He returns his gaze to her face momentarily and then moves it away again.
‘Listen. I know this is all crazy. It’s reckless and wild, riding these trains, sleeping in strange places, eating strange things. And I know I haven’t said it before now, but, Luca, I’m so proud of you.’
He looks her briefly in the eye.
‘I am,’ she says. ‘It’s incredible, how strong you are, that you’re able to do these inconceivable things.’
Luca has an unexpected thought. ‘Can you imagine what Papi would say?’
Lydia lets go of his chin and smiles at him. ‘Papi would say we are both crazy.’
Tears spring into Luca’s eyes, but he doesn’t want them there, so he makes them disappear. Lydia drops her voice to a whisper. ‘Papi would be so proud of you. You’re capable of things I had no idea you could do, Luca.’ She squeezes his knee. ‘I never knew.’ She reaches across the landscape of their tangled legs to grab Luca’s hand. ‘But you are still my boy, do you understand?’
He nods.
‘Y por Dios, if anything happened to you, Luca. I couldn’t bear it. I know how much you’ve grown in these last days. But your body is still only eight years old.’
‘Almost nine,’ he says.
‘Almost nine,’ she agrees. ‘But please, please listen. Never be complacent. Never assume you’re safe on this train. No one is safe, do you understand? No one.’ She squeezes his hands. ‘Machismo will get you killed.’
Luca nods again.
The train has slowed to a placid roll beneath them, and Soledad and Rebeca both tie up their hair to disembark. They’re wearing their backpacks, and they’re turned, talking with the group of four men who’ve been in front of them since Celaya. One of the men has made this journey before – he’s been deported twice from San Diego, so this is his third pass through Guadalajara. He’s warning them. Lorenzo eavesdrops.
‘You have to get off before El Verde,’ the man tells the sisters. ‘You have to walk the next part of the tracks.’
‘Why?’ Soledad reaches up to tighten her black hair in its fixed coil.
‘The people in this city are kind to migrants, God bless them. You will find a good welcome here. But first you have to get past la policía. They clear the trains at El Verde, and if they catch you—’ The man finishes only with a shake of his head.
‘Don’t let them catch you.’ Soledad fills in the blank for him.
‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘And stay with a group. You can come with us if you want.’ His friends, one by one, begin moving toward the ladder, and he follows.
Rebeca relays all this information quickly to Lydia and suggests going with them. Lydia hesitates. She knows how dangerous it is to trust anyone on La Bestia. There are thugs and rapists and thieves and narcos hidden in the ranks of la policía in every town, but it’s not only the police who deserve their suspicion. It’s every single person they meet – shopkeepers, food vendors, humanitarians, children, priests, even their fellow migrants. Especially their fellow migrants. She glances at Lorenzo’s clean, expensive sneakers. It’s a common tactic for bad actors to ride the trains posing as migrants, working to gain the trust of unsuspecting travelers, so they can lure them into a secluded place where they can commit some violence against them. Lydia understands the increased probability of that violence being leveled against the sisters. Any gesture of kindness, any valuable nugget of shared information, any pitiful story of heartbreak may be only a well-designed trap. A prequel to robbery or rape or kidnapping. Lydia’s brain makes her do the work of considering all this before she decides. But there’s no time. The train rolls on and the men are getting off. In fact the whole train seems to be emptying.
These four men seem kind. They have the steep accents of Central Americans. They’re probably Central Americans, right? Lydia has to decide. Lorenzo’s waiting for her to decide, too. Why is he waiting? His lingering presence makes the decision. She unbuckles Luca and stuffs his belt into her pack.
‘Let’s go.’
Lorenzo follows.
For the first while, it’s all warehouses to one side of the tracks, and all dirt and grass and open sky on the other, so Luca has the impression of walking just outside of something, like the warehouses are a kind of border, fencing something better beyond. They stick to the tracks, where dozens of migrants walk ahead of and behind them, in a sort of miniature caravan. The boy Lorenzo hangs close, not walking with them exactly, but following only a few feet behind, matching his pace to theirs. Luca is worried about that boy, but he’s distracted by the unmistakable smell of chocolate, which adds to the sense that, nearby, there’s something much better.
‘Do you smell that?’ Luca asks Rebeca.
‘¿Chocolate?’
He nods.
‘Nope. Don’t smell it,’ she says.
Luca laughs. ‘Well, I sure do.’
They trudge ahead, passing behind the Hershey’s factory without ever realizing it’s there. Luca presses a fist against his stomach to discourage the groaning. They haven’t eaten since breakfast at the casa in Celaya, and now it’s late afternoon.
‘Hungry?’ Mami asks.
He nods.
‘Me, too.’
When the warehouses give way to brick and cinder block homes, the migrants are cheered by the appearance of two pigtailed girls in school uniforms, one slightly larger than the other, one with dimples, and one with a scab on her knee. Their mother sits at a wooden stall nearby, with a cooler of drinks and a small grill. She’s selling lemonade and hot ears of grilled corn. A fat baby sleeps in a stroller by her side. There’s a large basket there, to which the girls return in swoops, retrieving armloads of little white paper bags. These they pass out to the migrants with their blessings.
‘Bienvenidos a Guadalajara,’ the girls say, ‘and may God bless you on your journey.’
The one with the scabby knee presses a bag into Luca’s hand and one into Rebeca’s.
‘Thank you,’ Luca says.
The girl skips away, the hem of her blue plaid skirt brushing against her brown legs as she goes. Luca rips into the bag.
‘Mami! It’s chocolate!’ There are three Hershey’s Kisses inside.
As the city grows dense around them, people come and go across the tracks, carrying lunch boxes or bags of groceries. Kids with brightly colored backpacks hold their mothers’ hands and clamber across the rails. Many of them look Luca and Mami right in the eye, and say, ‘God bless you,’ and they smile. Luca would like to smile back, but he feels peculiar, too. H
e is unaccustomed to pity.
At El Verde, there’s a bench outside a neat, walled-in garden. The bench is painted orange, pink, and yellow, and a sign on the wall behind it reads migrantes pueden descansar aquí. Migrants can rest here. A large, mustached man is sitting on the bench, and when he sees the migrants approaching, he stands, fixes a cowboy hat over his bald head, and retrieves a bat-sized machete from the ground beneath him. He walks toward the tracks with the machete still in its sheath, and keeps it tipped back over one shoulder.
‘Amigos, hoy es su día de suerte,’ he says loudly so they can all hear. Today is your lucky day. ‘I will walk with you.’
The migrants in front of Luca and Mami cheer, but Rebeca and Soledad exchange worried glances. The man falls in step beside them.
‘You are right to be afraid,’ he tells them. ‘But not of me.’
Rebeca sticks her thumbs under the straps of her backpack and says nothing.
‘You have come a long way, yes? Honduras? Guatemala?’
‘Honduras.’ Rebeca is first to relent.
‘Your journey has been okay so far?’ he asks.
Rebeca shrugs. They walk for a few moments in silence, only the sound of their jeans swishing beneath them as they go. Luca holds Mami’s hand, but he strains against it, pulling her arm nearly taut as he tries to hear what the man is saying to the sisters.
‘Well, I want you to have happy memories of Guadalajara.’ He smiles, and catches Luca looking at him. He’s so large he could use that machete as a toothpick. Luca shies back to Mami’s side. ‘My name is Danilo, and when you get to wherever you’re going, when you find a job and a good house, and you meet a beautiful gringo boy and you get married and have your children, one day, when you’re an old lady and you’re tucking your nietos into bed, I want you to tell them that long, long ago, you met a nice man in Guadalajara named Danilo, and that he walked with you, and that he swung his machete around to make sure the knuckleheads didn’t get any ideas.’
Rebeca laughs now; she can’t help herself.
‘See? I’m not so bad.’
Soledad is still apprehensive. ‘Where are all these knuckleheads hiding out?’
‘Oh, amiguita.’ Danilo frowns. ‘I am afraid you will meet many of them in short order.’
Soledad raises her eyebrows but doesn’t respond.
‘It’s like the good, the bad, and the ugly in this city,’ Danilo says.
‘And the beautiful!’ Lorenzo adds, gesturing toward the sisters.
Lydia cringes. Why is he still here? Walking just behind them and listening in on every word. She shudders at his remark, noting how the girls draw their bodies closer in instinctive response. Danilo continues as if Lorenzo hasn’t spoken at all.
‘It’s a long walk from here into the migrant places,’ he says. ‘And there are many dangers.’
‘What kind of dangers?’ Lydia asks.
‘The usual kind,’ Danilo says. ‘La policía, railroad employees, security guards. Especially dangerous for you two.’ He looks at the sisters briefly. ‘It’s better to get off the tracks before you get to Las Juntas – go into the streets and make your way to one of the shelters. There are signs for them, or shopkeepers will point the way. If anyone says they will take you there, don’t go with them. If anyone offers you a job or a place to stay, don’t go with them. If anyone talks to you first, don’t speak with them. If you need directions, ask only the shopkeepers. I will go with you as far as La Piedrera. A few miles.’
‘Why?’ Soledad asks.
‘Why what?’
‘Why walk with us?’
‘Why not?’ Danilo says. ‘I do this at least three times a week, a walk with the migrants. It’s my hobby. Good exercise.’
‘But if it’s as dangerous as you say, why do you it? What’s in it for you?’
Danilo has the kind of eyes that protrude slightly from beneath his lids, so there’s no possibility of hiding their expression when he’s in conversation. Luca can see that he’s not annoyed by Soledad’s inquiry. He appreciates her skepticism. ‘I will tell you the truth,’ he says. Then he pauses for a moment to smooth down his mustache with his thumb and index finger. ‘When I was a teenager, I stole a truck. My father died in a work accident, and I was angry with his employer, so I stole that man’s truck. I destroyed all the windows and the headlights using my father’s hammer. And then I slashed its tires and I drove it into a sewer ditch.’
‘Seems reasonable to me,’ Rebeca says.
‘I drank for three months, and I did terrible things in my grief. But I never got caught, and God provided me with a good life anyway, despite my sins. So this is my penance. I am like the guardian devil for migrants who pass through my little neighborhood. I protect them.’
Soledad looks up at him, narrowing one eye as she searches his expression for indications of deceit. She finds none. ‘Okay.’
Danilo laughs. ‘Okay?’
‘Yes, okay,’ Soledad says. They are quiet again for a few moments.
‘You ever have any trouble?’ Lorenzo asks from behind them. ‘Ever get beat up or anything?’
Danilo turns without removing the machete from his shoulder and looks back at him. ‘Not anymore,’ he says.
Lorenzo nods and jams his hands into his pockets. ‘Cool, cool.’
Luca begins chatting with Danilo and the sisters, so Lydia drops back to walk beside Lorenzo. She’s both repelled by him and drawn to the information he might be able to provide. Maybe he knows which cartels have alliances with Los Jardineros, which routes present the greatest dangers of her being recognized. She doesn’t know how to begin the conversation, because in her mind, every question sounds like an accusation. Finally she speaks one out loud.
‘How is it that you came to be traveling alone? Don’t you have family in Guerrero?’
‘Nah, not really.’ Lorenzo has plucked up a blade of dry grass from beside the tracks and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. He speaks past it. ‘My mom got married a few years ago and her husband didn’t really want me around, so I split.’
Lydia glances over at him. ‘How old are you?’
‘Seventeen.’
Younger than she thought. ‘And how old when you left home?’
Lorenzo looks up from his feet and snags the grass blade from his mouth. ‘Pssh, I dunno. Thirteen, fourteen. Old enough to look after myself.’ Lydia takes care not to contradict him, but he feels it anyway. ‘Not everybody has a mami like you, all right? Some mothers don’t give a shit.’ He tosses the grass at his feet.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lydia says.
‘Whatever. No importa.’ He slings his hands into the pockets of his baggy shorts. ‘I was traveling with my homeboy anyway. We left together because he wanted to get out, too, but then we got separated in Mexico City and I haven’t heard from him since.’
‘But you have a cell phone,’ she says.
‘Yeah, his stopped working.’
‘Oh.’
They walk quietly for a few minutes, and then he says, ‘Yo, it was really sad what happened to el jefe’s daughter, but for real, what he did to your family? Eso fue de locos.’
Lydia frowns. ‘What?’
‘La Lechuza. What he did to your family, it was too much. When I saw that girl on the news in her quinceañera dress—’
That girl. ‘My niece.’
‘Yeah—’
‘My goddaughter. Yénifer.’
‘Yeah, when I saw her on the news, I mean for real I was already thinking about leaving, but that was it for me. Shit is out of control down there.’
Lydia cannot discuss this with him. They are only bodies to him, strangers on the news, people like the ones he has killed himself. That girl in her quinceañera dress. But then Lydia’s mind snags on a previous detail, an exit ramp.
‘What happened to his d
aughter?’ she asks. Lorenzo looks confused, so Lydia clarifies. ‘Javier’s daughter, La Lechuza’s daughter. You said it was sad, what happened to her.’
‘Yeah, you didn’t hear?’
‘Hear what? What happened?’
On the day Sebastián’s article was published, Javier read it in the backseat of his car while his driver shuffled him through the sluggish morning streets of Acapulco. All his life, Javier had enjoyed an almost preternatural ability to predict incidents and their outcomes. When he was eleven years old and his father was diagnosed with colon cancer, Javier knew that death would be swift; he knew that his mother, who’d previously been a good mother, devoted and affectionate, would handle it poorly, that she’d medicate her grief with alcohol and new men. He foretold and accepted her abandonment well before it came to pass. As a result of that aptitude, Javier was almost immutably composed. Nothing ever really surprised him.
So it was uncharacteristic that he failed to see the article coming. He wondered if his love for Lydia had blinded him to the inevitability of it, and that possibility caused him to feel a faint wrinkle of resentment toward her. Even before he read it and even with the anonymous byline, Javier, who read the article with his usual equanimity, presumed the article was the work of Lydia’s husband, whose journalistic expertise in the drug trade was well-known. Initially, he didn’t need to measure his response, because the article didn’t provoke much feeling in him. On the contrary, Javier regarded it to be a mostly fair depiction of his life. There were, of course, some marginal inaccuracies, one or two instances of exaggeration. There was more righteous condemnation than Javier was prepared to accept, but that was to be expected. Beyond those details, Javier thought, Sebastián had managed to apprehend something true about the essence of Los Jardineros in Acapulco. And he was bewildered but unexpectedly pleased by the inclusion of his poem. Javier presumed that Lydia had somehow given it to her husband. Had she memorized it? (A flattering notion.) Secretly photographed it with her cell phone during a moment of lapsed judgment? Though the poem revealed something intimate about him, it also illuminated his humanity, he thought. He therefore portended that it might make him beloved by the people. He neither smiled nor scowled as he folded the newspaper and set it in the sunbeam on the leather seat beside him.
American Dirt : A Novel (2020) Page 22
