by Nancy Farmer
El Patrón’s last wish was to take his entire family with him into the grave, probably because he considered them his property. He was to be buried with all his wealth in a secret place, like an ancient god-king. People like that can’t bear the thought of other people’s freedom, or of letting anyone else inherit their belongings. This kind of thing happens more often than you might think. When Hitler killed himself, he insisted that his followers, his followers’ small children, his newly married wife, and his beloved dog be poisoned as well.
Tam Lin followed El Patrón’s orders because they would bring down the Alacrán drug empire. He died because he wanted to atone for the wrongs he himself had done.
There’s another reason why, as an author, I had to let Tam Lin die. He is a powerful authority figure, someone who has taken the place of the father Matt never had. Matt cannot become the true ruler of the country of Opium as long as Tam Lin is alive.
Are any of the characters real people?
Characters are based on one’s life experiences. They are almost never portraits of a single person because an author can get sued for libel. When I first started writing, my fingers itched to do wicked descriptions of some of the swine I found around me. And I did portray a teacher who was mean to my son in kindergarten. This was in a short story published in Africa. Harold, my husband, lectured me about it because he’s a lawyer. He understood the kind of legal trouble I could get into. I worried for several months after the magazine came out. The African literary community is surprisingly small and it’s possible for news to travel around, but the teacher never found out.
Since then I have been careful. But some of the characters in The House of the Scorpion are based on real people. First, let’s discuss Celia. When I was twelve years old in Yuma, Arizona, I played hooky for an entire year. I spent the days with a friend called Angie. The truant officer never searched for Angie because he didn’t know she existed. She was what is now called an Illegal. The truant officer also didn’t search for me because I was hiding out in Angie’s territory.
We played on the banks of the Colorado River. We crept along the edge of the hobo jungle below the train bridge. Trains from California slowed as they approached the station, and men would jump from freight cars onto the sand beneath. We could see the smoke of their campfires rising above the salt cedars. Sometimes we climbed an old guard tower at an abandoned prison nearby. It was cool and shaded. We could look down on the ruined, stone cells and the prison graveyard, which had been partly washed away. Then we picked our way carefully under the shadow of the train bridge. The route was important because the shore was dotted with quicksand.
In the middle of an open space was the hotel where Angie’s mother lived. It was a gaunt three-story building that wobbled around on the mudflats like a rotten tooth. Angie’s mother was usually asleep, but sometimes she roused herself enough to buy us cokes from a machine in the hallway. The room was filled by a double bed and a large picture of Jesus with His heart pierced by five swords. Sometimes we opened the door at the end of the hall for fresh air. It looked like any other door, but beyond was a sheer drop to the river below. This was used to get rid of troublesome visitors.
Angie’s mother became Celia in the book. As you can see, the whole feel of the area around Yuma was used in The House of the Scorpion. It was a fairly lawless place in those days. Heroin, rather than marijuana, was smuggled across the border and there were many Illegals who came to work in the fields. People mostly looked the other way because there weren’t the vast numbers that flood across the border now.
Matt is based on my son, Daniel, and on my own childhood. No, I wasn’t thrown into a room full of sawdust, but it felt like that sometimes. I was an unexpected, and probably unwanted, child, born when my parents were too old. El Patrón has some resemblance to my mother.
Mr. Ortega, the music teacher, is based on a piano instructor I had who was completely deaf. She could tell when I was making a mistake by feeling the vibrations in the piano with her fingers.
Both Tam Lin and María come from too many sources to describe. I’ve known several men like Tam Lin who had murky pasts and a tendency to violence. They were also likable and courageous.
María is a little like myself, especially in her unswerving loyalty to Matt. The boys at the shrimp-harvesting factory are based on boys I went to school with in Yuma. The factory itself was copied from the Cargill Saltworks not far from where I live in Menlo Park. They had a wonderful open house where you could see brine shrimp and throw salt balls at one another like snowballs.
READING GROUP GUIDE
Discussion Questions
• Matteo Alacrán is the clone of El Patrón, the lord of the country called Opium, and lives in isolation until children playing in the poppy fields discover him. Why is he so eager to talk to the children, after he is warned against it? Why is María especially attracted to Matt?
• Describe Matt’s relationship with Celia. Why is she the servant chosen to care for Matt? Celia snaps at Matt when he calls her Mama. Then she says to him, “I love you more than anything in the world. Never forget that. But you were only loaned to me, mi vida.” Why doesn’t she explain the term “loaned” to Matt? Celia really believes that she is protecting Matt by keeping him locked in her cottage and ignorant about his identity. Debate whether this type of protection is indeed dangerous for him. How does Celia continue to protect Matt throughout his life on the Alacrán Estate?
• After the children discover Matt, he is taken from Celia and imprisoned in a stall for six months with only straw for a bed. How might prison be considered a metaphor for his entire life? Who is the warden of his prison? Discuss the role of María, Celia, and Tam Lin in helping him escape his prison.
• Rosa describes El Patrón as a bandit. How has El Patrón stolen the lives of all those living on his estate? Which characters are his partners in evil? Debate whether they support him for the sake of their own survival. Explain what Tam Lin is trying to tell Matt when he says, “If you are kind and decent, you grow into a kind and decent man. If you’re like El Patrón . . . just think about it.” Considering that Matt is the clone of El Patrón, debate whether environment influences evil more than genetics.
• El Patrón celebrates his 143rd birthday with a large party. Though Matt was “harvested,” and doesn’t really have a birthday, the celebration is for him as well, since he is El Patrón’s clone. How does Matt imitate El Patrón’s power when he demands a birthday kiss from María? Discuss how El Patrón encourages Matt’s uncharacteristic behavior. Why is María so humiliated by Matt’s demand? How does Matt feel the crowd’s disapproval?
• El Viejo, El Patrón’s grandson and the father of Mr. Alacrán, is a senile old man because he refused the fetal brain implants based on religious and moral grounds. Debate his position. Why does El Patrón consider Mr. Alacrán rude when he mentions El Viejo’s religious beliefs? Celia is also a deeply religious person. How is this demonstrated throughout the novel?
• At what point does Matt realize that Tom is dangerous? He remembers what Tam Lin had told him, “If you didn’t know Tom well, you’d think he is an angel bringing you the keys to the pearly gates.” How does Tom mislead María? Discuss why Tom takes Matt and María to see the screaming clones. How is this a turning point for Matt and María’s friendship? Why does Celia feel that Matt deserves the truth once he has seen the clones?
• What gives Celia the courage to stand up to El Patrón and refuse to let Matt be used for a heart transplant? What does El Patrón mean when he says to Celia, “We make a fine pair of scorpions, don’t we?” Explain why she is insulted by this comment.
• How does Tam Lin know that Matt’s future lies in finding the Convent of Santa Clara? Describe Matt’s journey to the convent. What does he discover along the way? Discuss Esperanza’s role in helping Matt gain his ultimate freedom—to live as a human.
MATT’S STORY DOESN’T END HERE.
Turn the page for your first
look at The Lord of Opium,
the riveting sequel to The House of the Scorpion.
THE OASIS
Matt woke in darkness to the sound of something moving past him. The air stirred slightly with the smell of warm, musky fur. The boy jumped to his feet, but the sleeping bag entangled him and he fell. His hands collided with sharp thorns. He flailed around for a rock, a knife, any sort of weapon.
Something huffed. The musky odor became stronger. Matt’s hand felt a metal bar, and for an instant he didn’t know what it was. Then he realized it was a flashlight and turned it on.
The beam illuminated a large, doglike face at the other end of the sleeping bag. The boy’s heart almost stopped. He remembered, long ago, a note Tam Lin had written him about the hazards of this place: Ratlesnakes heer. Saw bare under tree.
This was definitely a bare. Matt had only seen them on TV, where they did amusing tricks and begged for treats. The bear’s eyes glinted as it contemplated the treat holding the flashlight. Matt tried to remember what to do. Look bigger? Play dead? Run?
The flashlight! It was a special one used by the Farm Patrol. One button was for ordinary use, the other shone with ten times the brightness of the sun. Flashed into the eyes of an Illegal, it would blind the person for at least half an hour. Matt jammed his thumb on the second button, and the bear’s face turned perfectly white. The animal screamed. It hurled itself away, falling over bushes, moaning with terror, breaking branches as it fled.
Matt struggled to his feet. Where was he? Why was he alone? After a minute he remembered to switch the beam off to save the battery. Darkness enveloped him, and for a few minutes he was as blind as the bear. He sat down again, shivering. Gradually, the night settled back into a normal pattern, and he realized that he was at the oasis. He cradled the flashlight. Tam Lin had given it to him, to protect him from animals when he was camping. You don’t need a gun, lad, the bodyguard had said. You don’t want to kill a poor beastie that’s only walking through its backyard. You’re the one that’s trespassing. Matt could hear Tam Lin’s warm Scottish voice in his mind. The man loved animals and knew a lot about them, even though he’d been poorly educated.
Matt found the campfire he’d banked the night before and blew the coals into life. The flaring light made him feel better. In all the years of camping here, he’d never seen a bear, though there had been many raccoons, chipmunks, and coyotes. A skunk had once burrowed into Matt’s sleeping bag in the middle of the night to steal a candy bar. Tam Lin had burned the sleeping bag and scolded the boy for foolishness. Leave food about and you might as well put a sign on yourself saying “Eat me.” Matt had been scrubbed head to toe with tomato juice when they got back to the hacienda.
Matt heaped the fire with dry wood from the supply Tam Lin had always maintained. He could see the familiar outlines of an old cabin and a collapsed grapevine.
Tam Lin wasn’t with him. He would never come here again. He was lying in a tomb beneath the mountain with El Patrón and all of El Patrón’s family and friends, if you could say the old drug lord had friends. The funeral, three months before, had been attended by fifty bodyguards dressed in black suits, with guns hidden under their arms and strapped to their legs. The floor of the tomb had been covered with drifts of gold coins. The bodyguards had filled their pockets with gold, probably thinking their fortunes were made, but that was before they drank the poisoned wine. Now they would lie at their master’s feet for all eternity to guard him at whatever fiestas were conducted by the dead. Matt drew the sleeping bag around himself, trembling with grief and nerves.
He would not sleep again. To distract himself, he looked for the constellations Tam Lin had shown him. It was early spring, and Orion the Hunter was still in the sky. Heed the stars of his belt, said Tam Lin. Where they set is true west. Remember that, lad. You never know when you’ll need it. They had been roasting hot dogs over a fire and drinking cider from a bottle Tam Lin had cooled by submerging it in the lake.
What a grand existence it must be, mused the bodyguard, turning his battered face to the sky, to roam the heavens like Orion with his faithful dogs at heel. The dogs, Sirius and Procyon, were two of the brightest stars in the summer sky. Pinning Orion’s tunic to his shoulder was ruby-red Betelgeuse. As fine a jewel as you’ll find anywhere, Tam Lin had declared.
Matt hoped Tam Lin was roaming now in whatever afterlife he inhabited. The dead in Aztlán came home once a year to celebrate the Day of the Dead with their relatives. They must be somewhere the rest of the time, Matt reasoned. Why shouldn’t they do what made them happiest on earth, and why shouldn’t Tam Lin?
Matt found Polaris, around which the other stars circled, and the Scorpion Star (but that was so easy even an eejit could do it). The Scorpion Star was always in the south and, like Polaris, never moved. Its real name was Alacrán. Matt was proud of this, for it was his name too. The Alacráns were so important, they could lay claim to an actual star.
Matt didn’t think he could fall asleep again, and so he was surprised when he woke up in the sleeping bag just before dawn. A breeze was stirring, and a pale rosy border outlined the eastern mountains. Gray-green juniper trees darkened valleys high up in the rocks, and the oasis was dull silver under a gray sky. A crow called, making Matt jump at the sudden noise.
After breakfast and a short, sharp swim in the lake, Matt hiked along the trail to the boulder that blocked the entrance to the valley. In this rock, if you looked at just the right angle, was a shadow that turned out to be a smooth, round opening like the hole in a donut. Beyond was a steep path covered with dry pebbles that slid beneath your feet. The air changed from the fresh breeze of the mountain to something slightly sweet with a hint of corruption. The scent of opium poppies.
THE NEW LORD OF OPIUM
Matt had left the Safe Horse under a cliff the night before. It was still waiting, as it had been commanded, but its head was down and its legs trembled. “Oh no! How could I have been so stupid?” cried Matt, rushing to the trough. It was half full of water, but the horse had not been given permission to drink, and now Matt remembered that he hadn’t watered it the night before. It would stand there, mere inches away from relief, until it died. “Drink!” Matt ordered.
The horse stepped forward and began sucking up great drafts of liquid. Matt hauled on the pump handle, and soon fresh water was pouring over the horse’s head and into the trough. It drank and drank and drank until Matt remembered that Safe Horses couldn’t stop, either, without a command. “Stop!” he said.
The animal stepped back with its mane dripping. Had it had enough? Too much? Matt didn’t know. The natural instincts of the horse were suppressed by a microchip in its brain. Matt waited a few minutes and then ordered it to drink again for a short while.
He climbed onto a rock to reach the saddle. Matt had never ridden anything but a Safe Horse and wasn’t skilled enough to vault into a saddle. He’d been considered too valuable to risk on a Real Horse. “Home,” ordered the boy, and the animal obediently plodded along the trail.
As soon as the sun rose, the air heated up, and Matt took off the jacket he’d been wearing. They moved slowly, but he was in no hurry to return. There was too much to think about and too much to decide. A few months ago Matt had been a clone. Make that filthy clone, he amended, because the word wasn’t used without some insult. Clones were lower than beasts. They existed to provide body parts, much as a cow existed to provide steaks, but cows were natural. They were respected, even loved.
Clones were more like cockroaches you might find in an unguarded bowl of soup. Roaches made you feel like throwing up. Yet even they were part of God’s plan. They didn’t cause the deep, unreasoning hatred that a human copy did. A few months ago Matt had been such a being and then—and then—
El Patrón died.
The original Matteo Alacrán was lying in a tomb under the mountain with all his descendants. Esperanza Mendoza, the representative of the United Nations, had explained it to Matt. In international
law you couldn’t have two versions of the same person at the same time. One of them had to be declared an unperson, but when the original died, the clone no longer existed.
I don’t understand, Matt had said to Esperanza.
It means that you are reclassified as human. You are El Patrón. You have his body and his identity, his DNA. You own everything he owned and rule everything he ruled. It means that you are the new Lord of Opium.
“I’m human,” Matt told the Safe Horse as it plodded along, neither hearing nor caring. Now they came to the beginning of the opium fields. The crops were planted year round, and all stages of growth, from the first misting of green to brilliant white flowers to swollen seedpods, were visible. Lines of eejit workers, dressed in tan uniforms with floppy hats, tended the older plants. They moved in unison, bending to slash the ripe pods with razors to release sap or, if they were part of a harvesting crew, to scrape the dried resin into metal pots.
Here and there a member of the Farm Patrol watched from the back of a Real Horse. He would tell them when to rest, when to drink water, and when to start work again. For the eejits were just as mindless as Safe Horses. They, too, had microchips in their brains that made them content to do such grueling work. At evening the Farm Patrol would herd them to long buildings with small, dark windows. The ceilings were so low a person couldn’t stand upright, but this scarcely mattered. The eejits had no social life.
They were given food pellets from a large bin, and when they had finished eating, the Farm Patrolmen ordered them into the buildings to sleep. Matt didn’t know whether they slept on straw or merely stretched out in the dirt. He had never been inside an eejit pen.
