by Nancy Farmer
Matt waited.
“Maybe you wouldn’t get into so much trouble if people explained things to you,” she said with a sigh.
“I didn’t poison Furball.”
“You didn’t mean to, darling. I know your heart is good.” Matt badly wanted to argue his case, but he knew Celia wouldn’t believe him. His fingerprints were on the laudanum bottle.
“I grew up in Aztlán,” she began, “in the same village where El Patrón was born. It was poor then and it’s worse now. Nothing grew there except weeds, and they were so bitter that they made the donkeys throw up. Even roaches hitchhiked to the next town. That’s how bad it was.
“As a girl, I went to work in a maquiladora—a factory—on the border. All day I sat on an assembly line and put tiny squares into tiny holes with a pair of tweezers. I thought I’d go blind! We lived in a big gray building with windows so small, you couldn’t put your head outside. That was to keep the girls from running away. At night we climbed to the roof and looked north across the border.”
“Our border?” asked Matt.
“Yes. The Farms lie between Aztlán and the United States. You couldn’t see much because the Farms are dark at night. But beyond, where the United States lay, was a great glow in the sky. We knew that under that glow was the most wonderful place. Everyone had his own house and garden. Everyone wore beautiful clothes and ate only the best food. And no one worked more than four hours a day. The rest of the time people flew around in hovercrafts and went to parties.”
“Is that true?” asked Matt, who knew almost nothing about the countries bordering the Farms.
“I don’t know.” Celia sighed. “I guess it’s too good to be true.”
Matt helped Celia clear the dishes, and together they washed and dried. It reminded him of those days, long ago, when they lived in the little house in the poppy fields.
Matt waited patiently for Celia to pick up the story again. He knew if he pushed her too hard, she’d stop talking about her past.
“I lived in that gray building forever, getting older and older. No parties, no boyfriends, no nothing,” she said at last after the dishes were put away. “I hadn’t heard from my family in years. Maybe they were all dead. I didn’t know. The only change in my life happened after I learned to cook. I was taught by an old curandera, a healing woman who took care of the girls. She taught me all kinds of things.
“I was the best student she ever had, and soon I got off the assembly line and started cooking for the whole building. I had more freedom; I went to the markets to buy herbs and food. And one day I met a coyote.”
“An animal?” Matt was confused.
“No, darling. A man who takes people over the border. You pay him and he helps you go to the United States. Only first you have to cross the Farms.” Celia shivered. “What an idiot I was! Those people don’t help you go anywhere. They lead you straight to the Farm Patrol.
“I packed everything I owned, including the Virgin I had brought from my village. About twenty of us crossed into the Ajo Mountains, and that’s where the coyote abandoned us. We panicked like a bunch of scared rabbits. We tried to climb down a cliff, and a woman fell into a gorge and died. We abandoned most of our belongings so we could move faster, but it didn’t do us any good. The Farm Patrol was waiting at the foot of the mountains.
“I was taken to a room, and my backpack was dumped out. ‘Be careful!’ I cried. ‘Don’t hurt the Virgin!’ That’s how She got the chip on Her robe—when the Patrol dumped Her on the floor.
“They laughed, and one of them was going to crush Her with his foot when someone shouted ‘Stop!’ from the doorway. Everyone snapped to attention then, you better believe it. It was El Patrón in his wheelchair. He was stronger in those days, and he liked to check up on things personally.
“ ‘Your accent is familiar. Where are you from?’ he asked. I told him the name of my village, and he was very surprised. ‘That’s my hometown,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me the old rat’s nest is still there.’
“ ‘It is,’ I said, ‘only the rats have moved on to a better slum.’
“He laughed and asked if I had any skills. From that moment on, I belonged to El Patrón. I’ll always belong to him. He’ll never let me go.”
Matt felt cold. It was good that Celia had crossed over the border. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been around to care for him. But there was something so bleak about her last words: He’ll never let me go. “I love you, Celia,” Matt said impulsively, putting his arms around her.
“And I love you,” she said softly, hugging him back.
It felt so safe then. Matt wished he could hide in her apartment forever and forget about the Alacráns, the scornful servants, and MacGregor’s clone.
“What happened to the other people who crossed the border?” he asked.
“Them?” Celia’s voice was flat and expressionless. “They were all turned into eejits.” And she refused to say any more about it.
OLD AGE:
12 TO 14
15
A STARVED BIRD
The days passed with unvarying sameness. Now Matt could no longer look forward to María’s visits. Both she and Emilia had been sent to a convent to turn them into proper young ladies. “María’s the one they’re trying to tame,” Celia said. “Emilia’s about as wild as a bowl of oatmeal.” Matt asked Celia to send María a letter, but she refused. “The nuns would only hand it over to Senator Mendoza,” she said.
Matt tried to imagine what she was doing, but he knew nothing about convents. Did she miss him? Had she forgiven him? Was she visiting Tom instead?
With María and Emilia gone, Benito and Steven went elsewhere for their vacations. Mr. Alacrán was away on frequent business trips, and Felicia and El Viejo stayed in their rooms. The halls and gardens were deserted. The servants still went about their duties, but their voices were muted. The house was like a stage with all the actors missing.
One day Matt ordered a Safe Horse from the stables and waited tensely to see whether the request would be denied. It wasn’t. An eejit brought out the animal. Matt, uncomfortable, cast his eyes down. Few eejits worked in the house, and he preferred not to think about them. He reached for the reins and glanced up.
It was Rosa.
Matt felt that old thrill of terror, as though he were still a small boy and she his jailer, but this woman posed no threat at all. The hard, bitter lines of her face seemed unconnected with anything going on inside. Rosa gazed straight ahead with her hand outstretched. It was unclear whether she even saw him.
“Rosa?” Matt said.
She looked at him. “Do you wish another horse, Master?” The voice was the same, but the old anger was gone.
“No. This one is fine,” Matt said.
Rosa turned and shuffled back into the stables. Her movements were jerky compared to what he remembered.
Matt rode away from the house. The horse walked steadily. It would move in a straight line until Matt told it to go right or left, and it wouldn’t pass the boundary implanted in its brain. Like Rosa, Matt thought. For the first time he realized what a terrible thing it was to be an eejit. He hadn’t known any of the others before their operation. They were simply there to do boring jobs. But Rosa had been a real, though cruel and violent, person. Now she was merely a shadow with the life sucked out of her.
On an impulse he turned the animal west rather than east and skirted the poppy fields to where he thought Celia’s little house lay. He shaded his eyes to make out its shape. This part of the Farm was at an early stage in the growing cycle. The plants were hardly more than a gray-green shadow, and a gentle mist wafted up from sprinklers in the ground. The air was sharp with the smell of wet dust.
A few eejits bent over the earth, tweezing up weeds and squashing bugs. This was their country, the country of the eejits. Matt wondered what would happen if they suddenly woke up. Would they turn on him like the villagers in that movie about Frankenstein? But they wouldn’t wake up. They c
ouldn’t. They’d go on weeding until the foreman told them to stop.
Matt couldn’t find the little house. It must have been torn down when he and Celia moved. Sighing, he turned east toward the oasis in the mountains.
When he got to the water trough, Matt alit and filled it from the pump as Tam Lin had always done. “Drink,” he told the horse. Obediently, it slurped until Matt decided it had had enough. “Stop,” he said. He led it into the shade and told it to wait.
He felt a whisper of fear as he walked into the mountains. This time he was alone. This time no one would come to his aid if he fell off a rock or was bitten by a rattlesnake. He got to the hole in the rock and climbed through. The pool was low since it was the end of the dry season and the thunderstorms of August and September were yet to come. The branches of a creosote bush trembled on the other side as some animal slunk into hiding. Wind whistled through the bare rocks with a lonely, keening sound.
Matt sat down and took out a sandwich. He didn’t know what he was doing here.
At the upper end of the little valley was the grapevine sprawled over its man-made arbor. Someone had lived here long ago, and the vine had grown so heavy, part of the arbor had collapsed. Matt walked carefully into its shade, keeping his eyes peeled for snakes that also liked the cool dark.
He saw a large metal chest on the ground. On one side was a roll of blankets and a cache of water bottles. Matt halted. His heart started to gallop. He glanced around to see where the intruder was hiding.
There was nothing except the keening wind and the rasping call of a cactus wren somewhere in the rocks.
Matt retreated into the cover of a creosote bush. The oily leaves broke against his skin and released a pungent smell. Who had dared to invade his special place? Was it an Illegal trying to the reach the United States? Or had one of the eejits woken up?
As Matt considered the possibilities, he realized that no Illegal could have hauled a metal chest through the dry hills and canyons Celia had described. And no eejit ever woke up.
Heart thumping, Matt ventured from his hiding place and examined the chest. It was secured by two metal clasps. Carefully, he undid the clasps and lifted the lid.
On top of neatly packed parcels was a note. Deer Matt, it began. Matt sat back in the dirt and breathed deeply to contain his shock. This stuff was for him. When he’d calmed down, he took up the note again.
Deer Matt, it said. Im a lousy writer so this wont be long. El Patron says I have to go with him. I cant do anything about it. I put supplise in this chest plus books. Yu never know when yu mite need things. Yor frend Tam Lin.
It was written in a large, childish scrawl. It surprised Matt to see how poor the man’s writing was, when his speech was so intelligent. Tam Lin had said he’d never been educated, and here was the proof of it.
Matt eagerly unpacked the chest. He found beef jerky, rice, beans, dried onions, coffee, and candy. He found a bottle of water purification pills, a first-aid kit, a pocketknife, matches, and lighter fluid. Pots in blanckets said another note halfway down. Matt immediately unwrapped the blankets and found a nest of cooking utensils and a metal mug.
At the bottom of the chest were books. One had foldout maps and another was titled A History of Opium. Two more were manuals on camping and survival. A note at the very bottom read, Keep chest clossed. Koyotes eat food. Books tu.
Matt sat back and admired the treasures. Tam Lin hadn’t deserted him after all. He read and reread the last words of the note and it was like drinking many cups of fresh, cool water: Yor frend Tam Lin. Then Matt packed everything up, stowed the chest in the shadows, and made his way back home.
• • •
The house was in turmoil when he got there. Hovercrafts landed, servants ran to and fro. Matt found Celia waiting anxiously inside the apartment. “Where have you been, mi vida?” she cried. “I was about to send out a search party. I’ve laid your suit on the bed.”
“What happened? Why is everyone running around?” he asked.
“No one told you?” She distractedly pulled off his shirt and thrust a towel at him. “Take a quick shower before you get dressed. El Viejo is dead.” Celia hastily crossed herself and left.
Matt stared at the towel as he collected his thoughts. The old man’s death wasn’t a surprise—he hadn’t emerged from his room in months, and he’d clearly been very sick. Matt tried to feel sorry, but he hardly knew the man.
Matt showered and dressed as rapidly as possible. “I didn’t tell you to wash your hair,” wailed Celia when she saw him. She combed it down frantically. She was wearing a fine black dress with jetbeads sewn on the front, and Matt thought she looked strange without her apron.
“El Patrón insisted on us being present,” Celia said as they hurried through the halls.
They came out to the salon. The statues had been replaced by pots of flowers. Black crepe hung in swags around the walls, and hundreds of holy candles glittered in a rack at one end of the room. The smoke and pall of incense made Matt break into a coughing fit. Everyone—and there were at least fifty people in the salon—turned to frown at him. Celia handed him the inhaler she always carried.
Presently Matt’s wheezing subsided and he was able to look around the room. In the center was an elegantly carved coffin with brass handles. Inside, looking more like a starved bird than anything else, was El Viejo. He was dressed in a black suit, and his sharp nose stuck up like a beak against the ivory silk lining.
Celia wept softly, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, and Matt felt bad about that. He hated to see her cry. The mourners kept their distance from the coffin. They clustered against the walls and made low conversation. Matt saw Benito, Steven, and Emilia. Steven and Emilia were holding hands.
The crowd thickened. MacGregor entered, looking thirty years younger than the last time Matt had seen him. Now he really did look like Tom, and Matt felt an unreasoning surge of dislike. The hot, close smell of burning candles made his head swim. He wished he could go outside. On the far side of the house was a huge swimming pool that was hardly used by anyone except Felicia, when she was sober. Matt thought about the swimming pool now, with its cool blue depths. He imagined himself skimming along the bottom.
“Don’t say anything,” whispered Celia in his ear. If she hadn’t waked him, he would have missed María’s entrance on the far side of the salon. She was taller and thinner, and she looked very adult in her slim, black dress. Her hair fell in a shiny veil over her shoulders. She wore diamond earrings and a small, black hat trimmed with more diamonds. Matt thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
She was holding hands with Tom.
Matt felt Celia grip his arm. He stared at María, willing her to look at him, willing her to drop Tom’s hand or (even better) push Tom away. María melted into the crowd without once glancing Matt’s way.
El Patrón was rolled into the salon by Tam Lin. Mr. Alacrán was with them, and for the first time Matt saw signs of real grief on someone’s face. Mr. Alacrán went up to El Viejo’s casket and kissed the old man on the forehead. El Patrón looked annoyed and signaled Tam Lin to wheel him along the crowd so he could be greeted by people.
Matt waited tensely. He wanted desperately to thank Tam Lin, but now was obviously a bad time. Somehow Matt knew the contents of the metal chest were forbidden. He didn’t want to get Tam Lin into trouble. But everything stopped when a door opened and the officiating priest entered. He was followed by boys swinging balls of fuming incense and a children’s choir.
Their sweet voices stilled the conversation in the salon. They were dressed in white robes like a troop of angels. Their hair was neatly combed and their faces scrubbed and shining. They were all about seven years old and they were all eejits.
Matt could tell by the empty look in their eyes. They sang beautifully—no one was more able to appreciate good music than Matt—but they didn’t understand what they were singing.
The children took up their station at the head of t
he casket. “Stay,” said the priest in a low voice. Matt had never seen a priest except on TV. Celia went to a small church a mile away through the poppy fields. She walked there early on Sunday mornings, along with a few other servants. She wasn’t allowed to eat or even drink coffee before setting out, which was a great hardship for her. But she never missed a service. She never took Matt along, either.
“Be still,” said the priest to the children’s choir. They fell silent at once. He intoned a prayer and ended by sprinkling holy water over El Viejo. It didn’t eat holes in El Viejo’s suit, the way the Flying Priest’s holy water ate through demons on TV. Matt had the vague idea it was something like acid.
“Let us remember the life of our companion,” the priest said in a deep, impressive voice. He beckoned to the audience, but no one responded. Finally, Mr. Alacrán said a few words, and then the priest told everyone to file past to say their final goodbyes. Matt looked up at Celia, hoping they could go now. She seemed grimly determined. She pushed him ahead as they joined the long line of mourners shuffling past the casket.
What am I supposed to do now? Matt thought. He tried to see what other people were doing when they reached the casket. Most merely nodded and hurried out of the salon. When Matt and Celia arrived, Celia crossed herself and murmured, “May God be merciful to you.” Matt felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder and pull him out of the line.
“What . . . is this?” growled the priest. He was a lot bigger close up than he was at a distance.
“El Patrón wanted him to come,” Celia said.
“This does not belong here!” the priest thundered. “This unbaptized limb of Satan has no right to make a mockery of this rite! Would you bring a dog to church?” The people in line had halted. Their eyes glittered with malice.
“Please. Ask El Patrón,” begged Celia. Matt couldn’t see why she wanted to argue. They weren’t going to win, and he couldn’t bear all those eyes watching him be humiliated. He looked around desperately, but El Patrón had already gone.
