Lost Children Archive: A Novel

by Valeria Luiselli

  So at the sound of the third siren, they’d stood still, feeling the hot gravel below them, trying not to think, not to remember, not to pray. But time passed quicker than their minds could wonder or flake, and so did the train. The first, the second, and the third child were on board before the fourth could spot a ladder. He’d missed two ladders, and had almost missed a third, but the man in charge had slapped him across the head, and he’d finally reacted. He’d darted after the ladder, both arms held out “like a sissy playing tag with a motorbike”—as was later recounted to the others by the man in charge. The fifth and sixth children had managed as well as the first three had, even though the man in charge had pushed them so hard against the ladder bars they’d almost bounced off back to the ground speeding below them.

  And there at last stood the seventh boy. He was the oldest, and the only one who could read well and do numbers. While the man in charge was working his way up the line toward him, he’d checked off in his mind first boy, second boy, third boy, and he’d also begun reading the strange words written on the train passing before him: Car Equipped, Gross Weight, Container Limit, End, Inch, Tread Con, Shoes On, Container Limit. Then, when he noticed the fourth boy was having trouble and maybe would not make it aboard, he started to read the words aloud, openly disobeying the instructions given by the man in charge, Noninterchange Cars, Equipment Register, Container Guides Must Be, Inch, Tread Shoes, Jack Lift Here, Jack Lift Here, Hand Brake Only Applies on the End Track, Interchange Cars. He read them louder and louder as the man in charge approached him: Equipment Register, Plate H, Containers Max Weight, Plate I. They sounded to him like the pages of a strange and beautiful book: Container Guide, Remove All Debris, Dock Here, Minor Inch Tread, Container Guide, Exceeds Plate, Container Guide. And when it was finally his turn, he spotted the upcoming, still blurry side ladder, reading Use Shoes, Pull Release Load, Trucks, Controlled Interchange, Car Equipment. He was now screaming the words out and the man in charge was running behind him, asking what the fuck was wrong with him, to which he only replied with more train-words, Special Break Beam, See Badge, Special Break Beam, See Badge. He was sure he would not make it, but suddenly, like a bird spreading out its new wings, he opened his arms outward, Plates, Container, Special Break Beam, Carrier Net, 20 Feet Container Limit, and then grasped and gripped a bar, flung closer, Special Break Beam, Next Load, felt a push on the bottom of his right sit bone, Any Load, Break Beam, Container Guide, and pulled himself inward, pulled hard against an unexpected kind of centrifugal force, thinking and no longer speaking the last spotted words: Remove All.

  The siren blared again, and the train reached full speed. All seven of them were now clinging to ladders on different train cars. A dark exhaustion overtook the seventh boy, still clinging on to a bar by the inner bend of his elbows. The wind was beating fresh on his face, and he forgot for a moment there were others he needed to look after. He forgot there were six others who were gripping bars like he was, some closing their eyes, some smiling softly, the two girls howling at the sky in a wave of relief and maybe joy—because they had made it, they had all made it.

  The seventh boy suddenly remembered the man in charge, who was running breathless behind the caboose. He looked back and spotted him, running behind the train looking like a terrified rabbit. He was sure, for a second, that the man in charge would not make it, not ever come back up to their gondola, and he hoped so hard that he almost started praying, but he remembered that strange wise man in the first train yard who had told them they should never pray to any god when they were riding trains. So he just bit his lower lip and watched.

  The man in charge kept running behind the train—thinking, as he ran, “Always be ready”; hearing, in the back of his mind, the far echoes of bugle blares in early morning; telling himself, “I was always the first one up, always awake before daybreak, motherfuckers,” knowing he could not spell or read the words bugle or blare or reveille, but could run after trains like no one else. And as the man in charge sprinted the last final steps, he promised himself that once he was atop that gondola, he would find that smart-ass boy, the seventh one, the little reader of words, the fucker. And oh, how slowly he would damage him, first his mind, then his body. He’d squeeze all the smart words out of his mouth, then cut his tongue off; he’d force him to see nightmares with his sharp little eyes, then scoop them out of their sockets; with his bare hands, he’d rearrange the boy’s nimble bones and derange his pretty face until there was nothing recognizable left of him. Then, finally near enough, the man in charge clung onto a metal handle, and flung himself up, as the train sped through the barrenlands toward the northern deserts.

  ITEMS

  I dug my face into my crossed arms and shut my eyes. I did not want to read the next elegy, and I did not. I was too afraid to read more, afraid that the man in charge would find the seventh boy and punish him. What would he do to him? I thought, in my mind, of what I would do if I were that boy, and how I’d try to get away from the man in charge. I made escape plans, imagined ways out, jumping off the train, or pretending I was already dead so he wouldn’t kill me again. Until, I think, I fell asleep and started dreaming similar dreams.

  I’m sure I was dreaming because I had a pipe in my mouth, and of course I don’t smoke, even though I have wondered about it before. I had a pipe, and you slept next to me and sucked your thumb. I didn’t have a lighter or matches so I didn’t actually smoke, not even in the dream. I only wanted to smoke. It wasn’t so much like a dream but like a thought or feeling that kept coming back to me, needing to be solved but staying not solved. What I kept thinking in the dream was: Where will I find the matches or the lighter? Pa and Ma always had one or the other, in his pocket and in her bag. So I looked in my pockets in my dream but there were only rocks, coins, a rubber band, crumbs, no matches. Then I looked in my backpack and instead of all my stuff, there was only The Book with No Pictures. In real life, you used to laugh when we read it to you. So in the dream I woke you up and read it to you. And when I read to you, still in the dream, you laughed so hard it woke me up for real.

  When I woke up, what I thought was there was not there anymore. I looked around for the neon lights spelling Maverick Room, but none of that was there. The sun was rising. It took me a moment, but I realized that the boxcar of the train on which I had been reading, and dozing off now and then though I tried not to, was moving. I felt the wind blowing against my face, and then my blood rushing to my cheeks, and a hollow inside my stomach. I felt horror.

  I forced myself back into my mind. I forced myself to think again. To imagine. To remember. To rewind that train that was moving so fast, to rewind it in my mind, and understand. I took my compass out of my backpack, and the needle showed the train was moving west, which was the right way. Then I remembered I had told you, right before we’d gone inside the diner on that day we’d got divided, that the plan was to climb atop the train outside the diner and ride that train to the west toward Ma and Pa in Echo Canyon, and all of a sudden I knew. I knew you had to be there, too, somewhere, on that same train, which actually was moving. And though I couldn’t see you, I knew you were okay ’cause I’d heard you laugh inside my dream. I knew I would have to wait for the sun to come out first, but I’d find you.

  LIGHT

  And when the sun was up, higher than the peaks of the mountains far away, I knew I had to start looking.

  You wouldn’t be on any of the gondola rooftops, because it was too hard to climb the metal ladders. Also, because I was up on the roof of a gondola, I could see across the rooftops of all the other ones, and I took my binoculars out of my backpack and looked through them, to double-check, and they all were empty. Nothing in the many gondolas in front of me, toward the train engine, and nothing in the three gondolas behind me, toward the caboose. This train was different from the lost children’s train, because it was people-less. If you were going to be anywhere on it, it was either going to be on one of the connecting platforms or inside one of
the gondolas. But you’d probably be too afraid to climb into a gondola, even if you’d found one that wasn’t locked, because who knows who or what was inside those dark spaces. So I thought if you’d be anywhere, it had to be on a connecting platform between two gondolas.

  I had to choose between walking toward the back of the train, across only a couple of gondolas, or walk around ten gondolas toward the front.

  Ma had a silly superstition, which was that when we rode trains or subways, she’d never sit on a seat that faced the back of the train. She thought that facing backward on a train was bad luck. I always told her I thought her superstition was ridiculous, and unscientific, but one day I started doing the same thing, just in case. Ma’s superstitions were like that, they were contagious. You and I, for example, collected pennies we found on the sidewalk and put them inside our shoes, like she did. We didn’t miss a single penny. Once I got into trouble at school because I was walking strangely, limping across the classroom all day, and the teacher made me take off my shoe, and she found like fifteen pennies in there. At pickup time, when she told Ma what had happened, Ma told her she would talk to me about it, but then, when we were far enough down the block, she congratulated me and said in all her life she’d never met a more serious and professional penny collector.

  I decided to head toward the front of the train and slowly started walking on the roof of the gondola where I’d slept. The train wasn’t moving that fast, but it was still difficult to walk there, it was true that it felt like walking on the spine of an enormous worm or a beast. I wasn’t too far from the edge of the first gondola, and when I reached it, I decided not to try to jump to the other gondola, like the lost children did sometimes, which may have been cowardly of me, but who would even know. I stood there, looking down at the gravel that was moving underneath the train like a fast-forwarded movie, and had to sit down for a moment on the edge to catch my breath, because my heart was beating hard inside my chest but also inside my throat and head, and maybe also my stomach. After a little while, I still felt my heart everywhere, but I took a last deep breath, and then inched on my butt toward the ladder in the right-hand corner of the gondola’s rooftop, put my feet on the second step, turned my whole body around until I felt the hot edge of the roof pressing against my chest, slid down a tiny bit more, holding on tight to the sides of the ladder, and finally started climbing down, slowly, toward the connecting platform. The whole beast rocked from side to side as it moved forward, and it rocked especially hard on the connecting platforms.

  The first few gondolas were very difficult. I walked across the roofs, taking slow steps and opening my legs apart for balance, like I was a walking compass. When the train jerked and I lost balance, I let myself fall to my knees and crawled the rest of the way. The sounds the train made were scary, like it was about to fall into pieces. When I reached the edge of a gondola and was either on my knees or on all fours and looked down to the connecting platform, I could see in my mind the face of the seventh boy, and I was afraid to see his body sweeping past underneath me, even though I knew he wasn’t going to be there. But at the same time, when I reached the edge of a gondola, I got hopeful, then I looked down to the connecting platform, and it was empty.

  I don’t know how many gondolas I crossed, I don’t know for how long, it was so hot and I was getting desperate, and especially I was dizzy, maybe trainsick, because everything looked blurry and tilted, and I felt like throwing up except there was nothing to throw up.

  I don’t know how to explain it to you, what I suddenly felt when I reached the end of one of the gondolas and was about to sit on the edge and repeat the same looking down, inching, turning, climb-downing, but then I saw something beneath me, on the connecting platform, first a heap of colors like rags bundled together, but then I focused and made out feet, legs, body, head, all curled up into a ball. I screamed so loud: Memphis! Memphis!

  You didn’t hear me, of course, because of the sound of the train. I realized then it was so loud, much louder than my voice, and also the wind was blowing in my face and snatched my words right out of my mouth, and they flew backward toward the caboose. But I had found you, Memphis. I was right, and my dream was right! You are so damn smart! More than smart, you are wise and ancient, like the Eagle Warriors.

  I had found you, and I was so out of my mind and felt so strong and fearless that I forgot all about the dizziness. I started climbing down the ladder to you too fast and almost slipped, but I didn’t. I made it all the way down and stepped on the last step, then put my two feet down on the connecting platform, and took a few steps to kneel down next to you. You were fast asleep like nothing had happened, like you always knew everything was gonna be all right. I wanted to shout in your ear and wake you up, saying something like Found! Like we’d been playing hide-and-seek all along. But I decided to wake you up gently, instead. I crawled around you and sat with my backpack resting against the metal wall of the gondola. Your head was touching my leg. Then I lifted your head slowly with my two hands and slipped my leg under it, and it felt like the world was coming back together.

  I realized that I was riding backward on the train now, and shadows, haystacks, fences, and bushes kept sweeping past me, shocking me a bit each time, but I decided not to care about it, ’cause I’d found you, so there was no way that riding backward could mean bad luck this time, right now. I scratched your head a bit, your wild curls all tangled, until you opened your eyes, and looked at me sideways. You didn’t smile but said, hello there, Swift Feather Ground Control. So I said, hello there, Major Tom Memphis.

  SPACE

  When you finally sat up, you asked me where I’d been. I lied and said I was just out getting food and water. Your eyes opened wider and you said you wanted some, too, so I had to say I hadn’t found any yet. Then you asked where we were, how many more hours or blocks to Echo Canyon, and I told you we were almost there. To distract you for a while, I suggested we could climb up to the roof of the gondola together and play the name game, said if you could spot any saguaros, I’d pay you a penny for each. But you said, no, I’m thirsty, my stomach is burning, and then flopped down again like a dog, your head on my leg. The train moved on, and we were quiet for a while, and I rubbed your belly, making circles with my hand, clockwise, the way Ma did when we had bellyaches.

  Finally, the train stopped. You sat up again and I tiptoed to the edge of the connecting platform. Holding on to the wall of the gondola, I leaned out to check if I could see anything, and I did. There was a bench, and behind it a small ice-cream stand, which was closed. But between the ice-cream stand and the bench was a sign, and it said Bowie. I looked back at you and said, this is it, Memphis, here is where we get off! You didn’t move, you just looked at me with your black eyes, and asked me how come I knew we had to get off at this place. I said, I just know, that’s the plan, trust me. But you shook your head. So then I said, remember, Memphis, Bowie is the author of our favorite song. You shook your head again. So then I told you the only thing I actually knew, which was that Bowie was the place where Geronimo and his band were forced to get on a train that deported them someplace far away, and Pa had told us about it. You didn’t shake your head this time, maybe because you also remembered that, but you didn’t get up or move either. So I had to make up the rest of the explanation, said Pa had told me that to get to Echo Canyon, we first had to jump off the train in Bowie.

  He said that? you asked. I nodded. You got up and walked to the edge of the connecting platform, dragging your backpack behind you. I jumped off and helped you down, and then helped you put on your backpack. The gravel was hard and hot under our feet, and though we weren’t moving anymore, it felt like we still were, like we were still on the train. We walked over to the bench and sat down, with our backpacks on our backs. Just a few seconds later, the train whistle sounded and slowly the train took off again. I wasn’t sure if we should be glad we’d got off in time or if we had messed up, and before I’d made up my mind, you asked again where Ec
ho Canyon was. So I took my backpack off my back and took Ma’s big road map out, and you asked, what are you doing, and I said, shhh, wait, let me study the map for a moment.

  I concentrated hard, looking for names I recognized. After a while, I found the name Bowie and the names Chiricahua Mountains and Dragoon Mountains all in the same fold in Ma’s enormous map, so I knew at least we had to be looking at that fold. From Bowie, I finger-walked a route down south, across the big dry valley, and then east to the Chiricahuas, but also I realized that the walk was longer that I’d imagined.

  I told you, okay, we have to get up and walk a little more now. You looked at me like I had punched you in the belly. First, your eyes got teary, a red line around the bottom edge. But you held in the tears and you looked at me with a kind of crazy look, full of angry thoughts. I knew it was coming, and it did. You had a meltdown. No, no, Swift Feather! you shouted, sitting up from the bench. Your voice was trembling, roaring. And then you said, Jesus Fucking Christ, and I almost laughed but I didn’t because I could tell you were being serious about this and using the expression like an adult, that you finally understood it, or maybe had understood it all along. You told me I was the most terrible guide, and a terrible brother, that you would not move until Ma and Pa came to find us there. You asked me why I had even gotten us here. I replied the way Ma and Pa used to, said something like, when you’re older, you’ll understand. That made you even more angry. You kept on screaming and kicking the gravel around. Until I stood up, too, and took you by the shoulders and told you that you had no choice, said I was all you had right now, so you could either accept that or stay on your own. You were probably right, I was a terrible brother, and even more terrible guide, not like Ma, Lucky Arrow, who could find anything and never get lost, and not like Papa Cochise, who always took us everywhere and kept us safe, but I didn’t say that part. I just looked you in the eyes, trying to look angry and at the same time kind, like they sometimes looked at us, until you finally wiped your face and said, fine, okay, fine, I trust you, though for a long time after that, you refused to look me in the eyes.