What’s worse, we know little more than we did when we left. Most people I know don’t have Internet in their house—Sr. Ortíz is no exception. He’s not even on the electric grid, so no TV either. None of us owns a cell phone, and even if we wanted to call someone, I doubt there would be any service out here. And the radio in the truck stopped working years ago.
But none of this really matters anyway. They don’t report much here about the narcos. To dig inside their world is to put yourself at risk. Journalists have seen firsthand what these thugs are capable of. These truths are only whispered. It’s for this reason that Sr. Ortíz volunteers to leave us, to head out into the night to listen to those whispers.
“Where is this bar?” Marcos asks.
“Nowhere you would know… People there talk.” He stretches out the space between the sentences. He does this often, as if the right words, no matter how simple or complex, are always just out of reach.
“What kind of people?”
“The kind of people who drink too much and talk too much.”
“Have you been there before?”
“Not in a while. I stay out here.”
“You can’t say anything about us. Anything.”
“I won’t need to. I’m just going to listen. Almost forty people died… They’ll be talking about it.”
“And you don’t think that your showing up will make anybody suspicious?”
“No. Why would it?”
“Are you sure you’re okay going?” I ask. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Look, I know you’re nervous. Nothing is going to happen. I’m an old borracho at the bar. A drunk. They don’t even see me. Why do you think I stopped going?”
For the first time since our arrival, I look beyond myself and see a different kind of sadness—his. I think of the chores he wouldn’t let us do today, and it occurs to me that this is a job he wants to take on. It’s a chance to break free from whatever keeps him out here.
“Okay. Thanks for going,” I say.
Minutes later, he unchains a rusty motorbike, which is leaned up against an equally weathered barrel. He climbs on and snaps his foot down on the kick-starter. Blue smoke peppers the air, popping in an irregular sputter. He waves and zips down the road, bouncing beneath a rising trail of dust.
“We’re really lucky we found him,” Gladys says.
Lucky.
It’s a strange word to use. I wonder if this is how it happens. If this is how you go on. If you simply decide that, in some small way, you got a break. That in spite of nearly everything that could have gone wrong, that did go wrong, a few of the cosmic dice have rolled in your favor. Enough to get by. Enough to leave you with a splinter of hope. And you build from there.
I don’t want to agree. I want to hold on to self-pity and loathing. They comfort me, warming me with the tearful memories of what was.
Still, I nod, like the others, and wonder if they’re thinking the same thing.
• • •
I’m nearly asleep when I hear a soft sputter in the distance. We all hurry outside and watch as the lone, dim headlight comes toward us, zigging and zagging more than is necessary to avoid the shallow trenches in the rutted road.
As Sr. Ortíz pulls into the yard, his bike slows down and begins to wobble. He puts both legs out to brace himself, but teeters too far to his right and tumbles into the dirt. We race over to him.
“It’s not good,” he slurs.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I’m fine. But it’s not good.”
Marcos pulls the bike off him and puts him on his feet, which are stable enough for him to stay upright in a continual sway.
“What’s not good?” Marcos asks.
“All the rumors. There are a lot of rumors.”
“What are they saying?”
“We need to go inside. I need to sit down.”
“No, tell us now,” Marcos insists.
“How long do you think I’m going to stay standing?” His words are drawn out, but they lack his normal hesitation. He speaks fluidly, as if the tequila has removed his filter.
We help him back into the house, then carefully guide him around the coffee table to the couch. We sit in the same places where we sat this morning, silent, fearing the worst. And Sr. Ortíz delivers it.
“The gang that did it was La Frontera…” he says, holding on to the slur at the end of the sentence, indicating there’s more. But this is enough bad news to process.
La Frontera. The Border. Among the cartels, they have a reputation for being the most violent and aggressive. They don’t just kill—they maim, they mutilate, they disrespect every aspect of their victims’ lives. And they don’t hide it. They flaunt it. They want the attention, the respect. Even their name is arrogant, as if they own and control everything in this unfortunate stretch of land we call home.
“And they’re looking for you,” Sr. Ortíz continues.
“Are you sure? How do you know?” Marcos asks.
“Because there’s a reward.”
“For us?” Arbo asks.
“Dead or alive.”
“How do they know who we are? There are four of us. Do they know all of us?” Arbo asks.
Sr. Ortíz reaches into his pocket and unfolds a page torn from a newspaper.
“It’s from the front page,” he says.
He holds it out for us to see. It features a picture of each of us below the headline DESAPARECIDOS. The edges are jagged where the paper was ripped, as if it had been tacked onto the wall in some narco den. Which it surely is somewhere. Not only do the narcos know our names, but they now have thousands of papers across Mexico helping them search for us. The headline might as well read WANTED instead of MISSING.
Maybe our photos were published in a genuine effort to find us, but it’s much more likely that the narcos run the newspaper or that they have influence over those who do.
The photos are our school pictures. I look at mine with envious eyes. I was a different person then, with a different life I desperately wish I still had.
None of us speak. A quiet whimper from Gladys is the only sound. Then Marcos grabs the sheet.
“Where is the article that goes with it?” Marcos asks.
“I just tore off the picture,” Sr. Ortíz answers.
“Why did they do it?”
“Because they’re narcos.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that nobody knows.”
“Somebody knows.”
“I’m sure they had some senseless reason, like wanting to show how tough they are. They’re narcos. They’re not like you and me. They don’t have morals. They don’t think, they just do, and they don’t care who they hurt.”
“Are you sure about the reward?” Arbo asks.
“I asked a few people, and they all said the same thing.”
“You asked?” barks Marcos. “You were only supposed to listen.”
Sr. Ortíz shrugs. “I asked a few people I know.”
“I thought you didn’t know anybody,” Marcos says.
“I used to. They’re old frien…people I used to know.”
“And you don’t think that coming out of your hut in the desert to ask them questions about what happened looks a little odd?” Marcos’s tone grows angrier.
“Here’s what you’re not getting—it’s what everybody is talking about. If I hadn’t asked, it would have been strange.” He flops his head back onto the pillow behind him.
“And what if you’re wrong?” Marcos asks.
Sr. Ortíz tries to stand, but a misplaced hand on the armrest lands him back in his seat. Unfazed, the kind wrinkles vanish from his face and he glares at Marcos.
“Look, you little pinche pendejo, this is my house. Not yours. You think you�
�re the only one in trouble here? If they come to get you, what do you think they’re going to do to me? I’m not a drunk idiot. I’m just a drunk. And I got you answers. So if you want help, then here’s what you should say: ‘Thank you.’ Then shut up.”
Marcos turns and walks out of the house.
Sr. Ortíz drops his head back onto the pillow again and that’s the end of it. Or nearly the end. One question remains.
“How much is the reward?” I whisper.
He doesn’t open his eyes to answer.
“Twenty-five hundred…dollars,” he says. “Per person.”
The reward for the four of us is more than some people make in an entire year.
I don’t sleep that night.
On Edge
The four of us sit outside, bleary-eyed, staring at the sunrise.
I doubt that any of us slept. I heard movement all night. Tossing, turning, getting up, walking outside, lying back down, sobs, sighs. Every time I was on the cusp of sleep, the noises would merge with my imagination and jolt me awake. At one point I could swear I heard a car approach. Sure that La Frontera was about to burst inside and gun us down, I stared at the door, trembling in the darkness, waiting for the end. But nothing happened. My eyes closed again. Then the cycle would repeat.
It was the second-worst night of my life.
“We can’t stay here,” Marcos says. “They have the whole country looking for us. They’ll find us. We may be in the middle of nowhere, but it’s also the middle of their hive. Somebody’s going to notice something. It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’”
He pauses. No one says anything.
“The way I see it, we have three options. One, we can go to whatever family we have left and hope…that things have calmed down…that they’ll protect us. But I don’t have that much hope, and I don’t want anybody else to get hurt.”
He holds up two fingers.
“That leaves us with two options—north or south. South is easier. A lot easier. Gladys and I have some cousins in Puebla who could help us, and I don’t think the gangs are strong down there. But we’d still be in Mexico. We’d still be within their reach. We’d have to live every day looking over our shoulder. I don’t want to live like that. Which leaves us with one option.” He points north. “We cross the border.”
“Aren’t they building a wall?” Arbo asks.
“Who knows. And even if there is one, then we climb it. Or we go underneath it. I don’t know how people get to the U.S., but they do it. Every day. And once we get there, we’re free. We leave this chingado country and the gangs behind.”
He looks at me, then Arbo.
“You guys need to decide for yourselves, but Gladys and I are going.”
“When?” I ask.
“I’d leave now if we could, but it’s too risky. We were on the front page of yesterday’s newspaper. I don’t like it, but we’re stuck. We have to chance it here for a few days.”
We both nod.
“Sleep on it,” he says. “But you need to decide soon. For now, we need a couple of rules. First, same as when we got here, no contacting anybody. No friends, no third cousins, nobody. If one rumor gets out, we’re toast. I don’t like that Ortíz was out hammered and chatting people up, but I guess it was necessary. Second, stay on the lookout. For anything. Nothing happens out here, so if something does, we have to act. If somebody drives up that road, we leave. At that moment. Car keys stay in the car. We keep an emergency bag packed—food, water, other supplies. Whatever you’re doing, be ready to run.”
• • •
Arbo and I sit with legs dangling out of the back of the truck.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“I’m not thinking. I don’t want to. I can’t,” I answer.
“I know.”
We fall silent, listening to the tiny squeaks from the lip of the truck bed as we swing our legs.
“This is home. It’s hard to—”
“Don’t worry,” he cuts me off. “No te preocupe-th.” Sometimes he makes fun of his lisp to lighten the mood. I think this is one of those times. “We’re good. We don’t need to talk about it. Any of it. Right now at least. We’re either dead, running for our lives, or we have a few days to decide.”
“I’m hoping it’s the third option,” I say.
We hear the hum of a small, low-flying airplane. We both jerk around and watch intently as it passes in the distance.
“Yup,” he answers.
• • •
I wake from a nap that afternoon and walk from the shelter of the house into a flood of sunlight, reflecting off nearly everything, smacking me like it always does at this time of day.
Gladys sits alone near the edge of the garden, beneath a slender overhang of shade from the roof of the well.
She has mixed fertile soil from the garden with other crushed leaves into three small piles of different colors. On the cracked dirt in front of her, she spreads these out with several small branches into a canvas of desert landscape.
As she does this, a beetle walks onto her hand. She slowly raises it to eye level and watches as the insect skirts through her fingers.
She isn’t like other girls. Not in a tomboy kind of way, she just seems free-spirited. And quietly confident about it.
Watching her, I’m reminded of a time a few years ago when a group of boys found a toad outside of our school. First, they put it in a girl’s backpack. She screamed until they removed it. Then, they chased other kids as the frightened animal peed in the air. And finally, they tossed it back and forth as if it were a ball. I just watched. Not Gladys. She stepped into the middle of their game, marched toward the boy who had caught the toad, and simply held out her hands. He handed it to her.
“Hey, where are you taking it?” one of the boys asked.
“It’s not a toy,” she said. She walked to the edge of the schoolyard and released the toad.
I always wished I had done what she did. It was the right thing to do. Gladys has her own compass. That’s not easy, especially where we’re from.
I snap back to the present. She’s looking at me. I have no idea how long I’ve been staring. But I’m busted.
I walk closer.
“That’s amazing,” I say.
“Thanks,” she answers. The beetle is gone, and she grabs a fistful of the darkest soil. She drops it in front of her, then brushes it upward with her finger into the sweeping arm of a cactus.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“My sister. She called it sand-scaping. I paint, so she wanted to find something of her own.” She pauses and looks down at the work. “She was a lot better at it.”
“I’m sure she was.”
Neither of us speak. All conversations now have these awkward pauses, when we mention someone we lost and none of us know how deep we want to go.
“But this is really beautiful. I can’t do anything like this,” I say.
“Sure you can.” She pinches a few fingers full of the lighter-colored soil and dribbles it into the corner of her piece. “Do what I did. You can put it right next to where I dropped that dirt.”
I lean into the shade and follow her instructions, creating a small pile of soil next to hers. She grabs a stick, flicks it out and upward from her pile about a dozen times, then hands me the stick and tells me to do the same.
When I finish, two wiry shrubs sit side by side on the dirt.
“The real talent is figuring out how to do it the first time. Once someone shows you, it’s not that hard,” she says.
“Says the person whose little shrub looks much better than mine.”
“They look the same.”
“What do you do with it now?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“You just leave it?”
“What else
can you do?” she asks.
“Nothing, I guess.”
“Right. So you keep it in here.” She points to her head. “That’s the only place you can hold on to some things.”
As if on cue, a small gust blows some garden debris across her earthen canvas, skidding through the scene as though the wind itself were now captured.
We both stare at the ground.
“Are you guys going to go with us to the U.S.?”
I pull out of the shade.
“I don’t know. I…” I still don’t know what to say, or how to think about it.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to push. Or maybe I was, and I shouldn’t have been. It’s a hard choice. Let’s not talk about it.” She’s quiet for a moment. “I’m doing this to take my mind off of everything. I mean, what else is there to do, other than go crazy, thinking about what happened, reliving it, regretting it? I’d rather create something and get lost in it. What do you do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t, I suppose.”
“So you just think about what happened?”
“Pretty much. Over and over.”
“I’d cry myself to death,” she says.
“That doesn’t sound so bad sometimes.”
“What do you like to do?”
“Play soccer, read.”
“Sr. Ortíz found a soccer ball. Marcos plays. Why don’t you play?”
“It doesn’t feel right to play. That’s something you do to have fun. I don’t want to have fun. I shouldn’t be having fun.”
“Do you think I have fun when I do this?”
“That’s different. It’s like…being creative. You can be sad and artsy, but you can’t be sad and play soccer. They’re different emotions.”
“Soccer isn’t an emotion,” she says with a slight smile.
I frown back. “But it’s enjoyment. That’s not where I’m at.”
“Can you be sad and read?”
“Yes.”
“Then read.”
“Show me a book and I’ll read it.” Sr. Ortíz is apparently not a reader. I haven’t seen a book in days.
The Border Page 4
