by Nina Revoyr
Todd shook his head. “I don’t know that it’d do any good. I think we should just go back.”
“Oh, come on,” Tracy said. “It can’t hurt to look around a bit, can it?”
They faced off now, quietly, but in clear disagreement. “What do you guys want to do?” Todd asked the others.
Gwen shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m following you.”
Then Tracy asked, “Oscar?”
“I’m not sure, either. The only thing I know for sure is that I have to take a piss.”
He unclipped his hip and chest straps and dropped his pack; it hit the ground with a leafy thump. He trudged off into the woods, not looking back. This was bullshit, he thought. This was ridiculous. Here they were, lost on some stupid-ass trek that was making them tired and confused, when they could have been on one of the established trails, they could have been with other people, they could have enjoyed the camaraderie and key valuable information that comes from traveling a popular trail. But no, they had to come out here, in the middle of fucking nowhere, where there were decapitated owl heads and random murderous fish hooks, and wander down a stupid path that was probably a black bear superhighway.
He kept walking until he was out of sight, energized by his anger, unzipped, and let loose against a tree. The release of his piss felt incredible; he enjoyed the sound of it hitting the bark. That was better. He stood there holding himself, with his eyes closed in tired relief. He was relaxed now in a calm, mindless way. The others all seemed far away and he didn’t care what they were doing. He wasn’t in any hurry to get back.
A piece of cold metal touched the back of his head. His heart skipped a beat and he blurted out, “What the—?” But he knew what it was even before the firm shove and the male voice that said, “Don’t move.”
He shuddered—as if the gun had shot him through with ice. “Uh, okay, okay,” he managed, raising his arms. He saw the pattern of a bug’s slime lining the bark; he saw a squirrel scurry into his vision and then away. “I don’t have any money, okay? I don’t have anything. I’m just passing through.”
There was no answer, just the gun against the back of his head, and the quick, harsh breathing of whoever was holding it. Now he thought of something, and repeated what he’d said in Spanish: “No tengo dinero. Sólo estoy pasando.”
“No me importa el dinero,” the voice replied, wavering. “¿Qué estás haciendo aquí? ¿Quién eres?”
“Mira, yo no quise molestarte. Cualquier cosa que estés haciendo, a mi no me importa.” And he didn’t care what the man was doing there. He didn’t even want to know. He just wanted the gun to be removed from his head. But if it was, that would scare him too, because the man might be stepping back to shoot. He wondered if this tree with its bug-stained bark was the last thing he’d ever see. An image of Lily flashed before his mind—laughing, her fat cheeks dimpled.
“¿Quién está contigo? ¿Estás con la policía?”
“¿La policía?” Oscar said. “No, sólo estoy aquí de excursión.”
“¿Entonces quiénes son los demás?”
Oscar had thought that maybe he could pretend he was alone, that he could somehow spare the others. But it was too late; this man, whoever he was, already knew they were a group. He might have watched them approach from wherever he’d been hiding. He might have even followed them down. Oscar had to convince him they didn’t mean him any harm.
“Sólo otros excursionistas,” he said. “No la policía.”
“No te creo,” said the man. “Nunca viene ningun excursionista para aqui.” He jammed the gun into the back of Oscar’s head again. “Regresate con ellos. Los quiero a todos juntos.”
Oscar was still shaking and even though he’d just relieved himself, he felt like his bladder was loosening. He was aware that his zipper was open, his penis still out, soft and vulnerable. He reached down to close his shorts and this brought another jab to the head.
“Sólo estoy cerrando mis pantalones,” he said.
“Okay, hazlo rápido.”
Once he’d zipped up the man said, “¡Ándale!” and Oscar started to walk with his hands up, as commanded, back to where the others were. I should make a break for it, he thought. But if he did he knew the man would shoot. Maybe with all of them together the odds would be better; maybe they could overpower this guy.
Oscar tripped over a rock and almost fell. When he recovered the man said, “¡Ándale!” and he kept walking. But in that moment when he was twisting to regain his balance, Oscar caught sight of his captor. He was just a kid. Maybe sixteen, maybe eighteen, with shiny black hair that needed a cut, sand-colored skin, bright eyes that were lit with excitement. Only about 5'6", 5'7", and skinny—not a big kid, not at all. It was strange to see him on the other side of a gun, dressed in camouflage. The kid didn’t seem hard or cold or particularly tough. Mostly he looked scared. But this was probably the most dangerous state of all. Any false move and he could shoot.
Oscar walked until he saw flashes of Todd’s blue-gray shirt, Tracy’s gray and red pack. Under his breath he said, “I’m sorry.”
“That must have been an epic piss!” Todd called out when they heard him coming.
But then Oscar stepped into the clearing with his captor behind him, the gun to his head, the kid now holding him by the shoulder. Oscar didn’t say anything. What was there to say? But he saw the others’ faces as they took in the scene. It was all so surreal, and if he hadn’t been gripped with fear he would have found their reactions comical. Todd’s face was slack; he looked completely confused. Gwen stayed frozen on the log where she’d been sitting. Tracy’s face was the strangest—animated, angry, as if annoyed that this kid had disrupted their plans. And maybe just a tiny bit excited.
“What the hell do you want?” she asked aggressively. Was she trying to get them shot?
“He doesn’t speak English,” said Oscar brusquely.
“¿Qué dijo?” the kid asked him.
“Ella sólo quiere que sepas que no queremos causarte problemas,” Oscar lied.
“Vete pa’lla,” the kid said. “Ve y parate con ellos.”
And so Oscar stepped away from him, half-glad to escape the pressing mouth of the gun, half-scared that he’d now be facing it. He went and stood at Gwen’s side and now all four of them were together. The kid swept the gun back and forth in front of them, wild-eyed, his hands and arms shaking.
Chapter Nine
Todd
When Oscar first stepped out of the woods, Todd thought he was seeing things. That couldn’t be another person behind him. That couldn’t be a gun at his head. But it was, and it was, and now they were all facing it. The gun waved before them in a big messy arc, and Todd could tell by how the kid held the weapon that he hadn’t used it much, if ever. This only made him more dangerous—like those once-a-year hunters on opening weekend who fired at anything that moved. Todd thought of Brooke and Joey but pushed the thought away; he needed to focus. Now the kid yelled something in Spanish, which Todd didn’t understand, but the urgency did not need translation.
“He says to get closer together,” Oscar said, and they all stepped toward each other.
“What does he want, money?” Todd asked. The kid did look pretty disheveled, his camouflage clothing caked in dirt, large sweat stains under his armpits. “I don’t have much but he can have what I’ve got.”
“I don’t think so,” Oscar said. “I don’t know what he wants.”
Now the kid reached behind him and produced a walkie-talkie, which he brought to his mouth and shouted into, voice urgent and high.
“He’s trying to connect with someone,” Oscar said.
“No shit.”
“I mean someone close by.”
The kid kept pressing the button on the side of the device, yelling into it, but he only got the buzz of failed reception.
“Vámanos,” he said finally, and gestured to his left with the gun.
“He wants us to go that way,” Oscar said.
“Where?” Todd asked.
“He hasn’t said.”
“Well, what if we don’t?” Tracy asked. She lifted her arms aggressively.
As if to answer, the kid pointed the gun at her head.
“All right,” she said, so calmly that for a brief wild moment Todd wondered if she’d known about this, been part of it somehow, had set it up as another test of their mettle.
Gwen reached for her pack but the kid shook his head no, and so she straightened up again, face slack with fear. Wherever they were going, they’d have to leave their stuff behind. This wasn’t good. They were in their hiking clothes, which were still a bit damp. It was after four and the sun had already dropped behind the ridge. Everything was in shadow and the air was cool. What would they do as the temperature fell?
Todd, walking first, started straight into the woods where the kid was pointing, but a few translated commands adjusted him to the right, until they came to a small creek and a solid rock wall jutting out into the water. The boy gestured for him to step onto a boulder a couple of feet out in the creek, and when he did, he saw that a trail continued beyond the rock face. Grabbing the wall for balance, he swung out and stepped back onto the shore. He walked, tripping over some black PVC piping which ran across the trail. Three dead fish lay half-submerged in the shallow creek, lifeless tails swaying in the water. What looked like a car battery lay directly in the creek. After a quarter-mile, they saw a thick field of knee-high plants, lush and green and fernlike, growing in a clearing amidst a dozen sawed-off trees.
“No wonder,” Tracy said.
“Yeah, huh?” said Oscar.
“What?” Todd asked.
“It’s weed,” Gwen said, disbelieving.
“A whole lot of weed,” said Oscar.
“No wonder,” Tracy said again. “We’ve stumbled into a fucking pot farm.”
Now the boy yelled again and walked up beside them. Oscar answered something swiftly in Spanish. And then to the others: “He wants us to shut up and keep moving.”
Todd held up, waiting for the others to pass; as Tracy and Oscar stepped by, they looked at him questioningly. But he knew what he was doing. He wanted to be in back, closest to the gun. It looked like a Glock—he’d shot these himself at the shooting range. If the kid tripped or got distracted, if there was a lapse in his attention, Todd wanted to be within arm’s reach so he could turn and grab it. He didn’t want the women to be closest to the gun, not even Tracy. She might spin around and try to pull the gun from his hands, endangering them all. And Oscar, he wasn’t sure about him, not after seeing how much he’d struggled these last two days; not after he’d let himself get caught off-guard, ambushed while he pissed in the woods. He knew this wasn’t fair, but he couldn’t help but feel it.
They walked slowly up to, and then around, the field of marijuana, which gave off a skunklike odor. Todd stared absently at Tracy’s back, wondering if each sight he took in would be his last. Soon they reached a makeshift camp—a brown tarp roof anchored to the top of a boulder and covered with branches, the corners stretched and attached by rope to trees. Underneath was a sleeping bag and a pile of clothes, as well as a backpack, canned foods, some plastic storage bins. Beside the shelter, in the open, there was a camp stove set up on a large sawed-off tree trunk, a chainsaw, and several bottles of propane. There was a folding table with machinery Todd didn’t recognize. Trash was everywhere—empty cans of refried beans and corn, crushed beer cans, plastic wrappers; crumpled, greasy tin foil and tamale wrappers; empty bottles of hot sauce and whiskey. It was strewn about in a semicircle forty feet wide, as if a tornado had hit. There were empty plastic containers of pesticide, as well as half a dozen fertilizer containers, painted green and brown. There was tray after tray of rat poison.
Todd got it now. The kid was living out here, tending to this field. He might have been here a week, he might have been here a month, but either way, they’d surprised him, he hadn’t expected anyone, and now he was as freaked out as they were. What a fucking disgusting mess, Todd thought. He was sure that the kid was illegal. This is what we get for not protecting our borders. A gunman in the forest, interrupting our trip, and enough pot to supply the state for a year.
The kid made them stand together in front of his shelter while he tried again to rouse someone on his walkie-talkie. But all he got was more static. He hit the instrument against a tree, trying to jolt or punish it back into functionality. Todd thought about rushing him, but the gun was still in his other hand. This wasn’t the moment, not yet.
“Who do you think he is?” Gwen asked softly.
“I think he’s just tending the garden,” Oscar replied. “But I worry about who he’s working for. Probably one of the cartels.”
Todd couldn’t quite take this in. He’d smoked pot a few times in college, and he knew it came from somewhere. But a Mexican drug cartel, out here in a national forest?
“This has got to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Tracy said.
“Maybe millions,” said Oscar.
“I can’t believe we stumbled onto this.”
“I can,” Oscar retorted, voice rising. “We should have stayed in the park. We should have stuck with one of the trails that people actually hike.”
“Hey, hey, stop it,” Todd said. “This doesn’t do us any good.”
And now the kid stepped close again, drawn by their elevated voices. His breathing was fast and shallow and his cheeks were flushed. He held the gun up with more authority, but Todd still wasn’t convinced he could use it. You’re just a boy, he thought. Come closer, just two steps closer, and look away for a second, and I will have that gun out of your hand before you know it.
The kid unleashed a string of sentences and Oscar replied, trying to talk in calmer tones. Todd’s annoyance at Oscar vanished now; he was glad that one of them could talk with this guy. The kid took a few steps backward, eyes and gun still on them, toward his shelter.
“He’s telling us to go with him,” Oscar explained.
And so they walked over to within ten feet of the shelter and stood while the youth rifled through a couple of bags and then opened one of the bins. A look of relief came over his face and he pulled out something black—a phone, bigger and bulkier than a standard cell. A satellite phone, Todd realized.
The kid stood up and pressed the phone to his ear. He watched them, eyes darting back and forth, as if they had cornered him and not the other way around. Then he brought the phone down and punched in a number, put it back up to his ear. After two or three attempts, he spat out a curse. He lowered his head for just a second, taking his eyes off them, but not quite long enough for Todd to take advantage. Then he looked back up.
“Vámonos,” he said again, waving them away.
“He wants us to move,” Oscar said. “I think so he can get reception.”
And so they started walking again, Todd still in back, Tracy, then Oscar, then Gwen, who was leading the way. They continued upstream past the end of the garden, where something smelled so horribly foul that Todd had to hold his breath. Then the canyon wall receded, changing from a vertical face to a tree-lined slope.
“Maybe one of us pretends we need to pee,” Tracy said to Todd in a voice that was a little too loud. “I mean, you or me. And when he turns to keep watch, the other can jump him.”
“Let’s wait and see where he takes us,” Todd replied, whispering. “There might be a second when he’s distracted with the phone.”
“Whatever we do, we need to divert his attention.” Tracy’s body was tense, taut, ready to explode—like a cocked gun—and Todd raised his hand to calm her.
“¡Cállate!” the kid yelled, and Todd felt the muzzle of the gun against his shoulder. He shut up. But he knew that Tracy was right. They had to wait until he was distracted, or distract him themselves. Then they had to wrest the gun away. And they needed to do this before his cronies arrived and all hope of escape would be lost.
“¡A la izquierda!�
�� the kid yelled out now, and Oscar turned around and looked at him.
“¿Aqui?”
“¡Sí, pa’lla!” the kid yelled, and so Oscar turned left, heading through a small break in the trees and up a wooded slope.
“Where is he taking us?” Gwen asked, voice shaking.
“How the hell do I know?” Oscar said, but they all scrambled up the slope, reaching out to grab trees to keep their balance. The footing was tricky. The slope was a tangle of strewn-about branches, fallen logs, loose rocks, and dense trunks. The hill had eroded so much that some of the roots were exposed. One tree’s roots looked like an old man’s crossed naked legs; another tree had wrapped its dry gray branches around a small green sapling, as if trying to suck the life from it. Todd glanced behind him a couple of times to see if the kid was struggling. But he was doing okay; he slipped and slid like the rest of them, but never lowered his gun. Sharp fallen branches and broken-off twigs stabbed Todd in the legs with every step. He couldn’t avoid them, couldn’t stop to tend to one bad scratch even as the blood trickled down his leg.
After about ten minutes they reached a bare rock shelf with a fifty-foot wall of granite behind it; for the first time since they’d left the junction on the ridge, they could see clear through to the sky.
When all of them had gathered, the youth made them stand on one side of the ledge while he stood at the other end and pulled out his satellite phone. He punched in the number with his left hand, gun still in his right, and this time he got through. They could hear the phone ringing on the other end, even from ten feet away. After three rings a loud male voice answered.
“¿Hola, José?”
The boy’s face went slack with relief. His eyes brightened and almost welled with tears. “¿Miguel? ¡Gracias a Dios que te alcancé!”
“¿Qué pasa, José? ¿Hay algún problema?”
“Un problema, sí, Miguel. Tengo aqui a unas personas. Se acercaron mucho a las plantas.”
“¿Es la policía?”
“No, no la policía. No creo. Nomas gente, excursioneros. Pero nos encontraron, Miguel. ¡No sé qué hacer!”
