The Jaguar's Children

by John Vaillant

  “Who has five hundred and fifty dollars?” says the Zapotec man.

  “If you want to get delivered,” says the coyote, “you do.”

  “A man is badly hurt,” I say. “We need some help in here.”

  Outside, away from the truck, I hear the other coyote saying, “¡Flaco! A la chingada. Let’s get out of here.”

  There is another silence because we are turning a corner now and the Zapotec man whispers, “Does anyone have dollars?”

  No one will answer, but the truth is most of us have some. But this is our only money for getting where we need to go on the other side. Without it we are trapped. The older man says, “How do we know you won’t just take the money and leave us here?”

  Then, very quiet, like he is sharing with us a special secret, the coyote says, “You hear my compa—what he says? He is ready to leave right now. I want to help you, amigos, but I don’t have all day. We need to hurry if we’re going to find the mechanic and get you out of here.”

  The people talk between themselves. “What do you think? Do we pay? Can we trust him?”

  But what choice do we have?

  The older man is old enough to be the coyote’s father and he says to him, “Son, we paid so much already. Call Don Serafín and explain the situation.”

  This was a mistake.

  “Listen to my words, Señor Oaxaca. I am not your fucking son and Don Serafín doesn’t give a fuck about you or me or this truck. My compa is walking away now and all he is thinking about is cold beer and la conchita. If you want we can keep chatting until the Minutemen find us and burn the truck, or if Migra finds you first they’ll kick your country asses right back over the border. Either way you lose your money. I’m offering you a chance to make it. You have one minute.”

  How can we know what is true and what is not? So now people are taking their clothes off to get their secret money. I can hear seams ripping and the sound of Velcro and because we are getting used to the light it is embarrassing for the women. I have forty dollars my father sent me through the Western Union. It is in my sneaker and to get it I must move my hands from César’s head. I take off my sneaker and pass the money up to the front. After this I pull out the shoelace and tie Juquila’s dress to César’s head. I try to make the knot over the cut to make more pressure because the blood is still coming and there is a smell of metal more than all the rust in here. My hands are slippery with it and I wipe them on his jacket.

  The men in front are taking the money and pushing it through the slot. I can hear the coyote counting and then shouting, “No more fucking pesos!” But he doesn’t give them back. He stops counting at three hundred and fifty-five. “Doscientos más,” he says. “¡Pronto, pronto!”

  We are moving fast and we are afraid and no one knows exactly how much money we have given already. When it’s done the men in front look back at us to see if there is more. I hold up my empty hands and I am surprised how red they are. We look at each other then and the Zapotec man says, “That’s all we have.”

  “It’s not enough,” says the coyote.

  The older man claps his hands. “For the love of God, we’re not donating to the church here. Give it if you have it!”

  This is difficult because no one wants to confess that they are holding back. The baby-face man looks over at César. He is about twenty-five with a goatee and lots of gel in his hair. “What about him?” he says.

  “What about him?” I say.

  “His money. We need it now.”

  “You’re going to rob him?”

  “We’re not robbing him, we’re helping him.”

  Everyone is watching and I don’t know what to do, but I can’t let them touch him. “I’ll look for it,” I say.

  And I do this, go through César’s pockets, but there is nothing there, only some pesos and his bus ticket.

  “He’s got money, look at his shoes,” says the baby-face man. They are new ones, Pumas, and he pulls one off.

  “Don’t touch him!” I shout, and I kick his hands away, but he still has the shoe, shaking it and peeling out the inside. “Keep your hands off him!”

  He throws the shoe back.

  “Maybe he took it already,” says the baby-face man’s friend, looking at me, “when it was dark.”

  “Fuck off,” I say.

  “Maybe it’s in his chones,” says the baby-face man.

  “Look at him!” I say, and I put my phone screen by César’s face which is still wet with the blood. “He has enough trouble already. Leave him alone.”

  In that moment, the coyote hits the tank again with the metal thing and it rings like a broken church bell making everybody jump. “¡Ahora!” he shouts.

  Sitting near me is a young Maya from Chiapas and she reaches into her skirt then and pulls out a little pouch. She is crying as she passes it up to the older man. All of us are feeling this. He opens it, takes out the bills and pushes them through.

  “Four hundred and seventeen,” says the coyote.

  Everyone is staring at everyone else now, very suspicious. But no more money is coming. “That’s really all,” says the older man. “You cleaned us out.”

  “It’s too bad,” says the coyote. “With this I can’t promise anything.”

  “We need water,” says the man.

  “You’re going to need more than that,” says the coyote.

  “When are you coming back?”

  “It depends on the mechanic. If it’s not enough for him there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Let us out, motherfucker!” shouts one of the Nicas.

  “Listen!” I say again. “A man is badly hurt in here. We need help now!”

  “You can’t just leave us!” shouts the older man.

  Then there is the scraping noise and the tank goes black.

  “Open it! Open it!” screams a woman in the front. “¡No nos abandones!” Another woman is crying now and I can hear the voice of the older man: “¡Por el amor de Dios!” There is more shouting and cursing, and all of us who can are pounding on the walls of the tank.

  “¡Vámonos!” says the other coyote. Already he was walking.

  Vámonos was the last human word we heard out there, but even with the shouting I could hear the coyotes’ feet grinding past us over the rocks and sand, heading back from where we came. Some in the tank followed the sound, calling out and chasing after it until they were on top of me and César, pounding on the back wall and screaming. I stayed in my place, my back against the wall and my legs across César with my hands up, trying to keep people from stepping on him. I couldn’t hear the coyotes anymore, only one bird outside warning the others, because the sound in here was terrible, a frenzy. I was trying to get them off, shouting, pushing and kicking them away, but we were like a bucket of crabs with the lid on and no place to go. So many trying to get out in every direction—stepping on anyone in their way, trying to open the money hole, others praying or crying or trying not to be hurt. I heard the baker from Michoacán shouting, “Don’t panic! They’ll come back. They have to come back!” Naldo and the man from Veracruz had their phones on, using them for the light, looking everywhere for some way out. Faces came and went and the walls flickered with blue fire. Never have I seen so much fear in one small place, the eyes so wide and the pupils so big they looked like from another animal. I saw the young woman from Chiapas and she was holding her ears and rocking back and forth, saying something in Maya that sounded like a man was talking. Then, somewhere in the middle of the tank, the boy Naldo was sick. It was a loud and desperate sound, crying and gagging with everything coming out of him at once. This and the high sharp smell of it filled the truck and made everyone stop like they’d been slapped. Somehow I think it helped people to understand the situation—that panic would not save them.

  But that was yesterday and it is different now—more quiet—because everyone understands there is no escaping. In an ordinary truck we could maybe find a way, but because this is a water truck there are no crack
s or bolts or pieces that can be lifted or broken. It is the perfect prison, smooth inside like an egg. When I looked for the false water box the coyotes told us about, there was nothing up there—only a small round hatch, locked from the outside. The hole where we came in is welded all the way around. The baby-face man and his friend tried jumping on it after the coyotes left—many of us did, but it is too strong. The woman from Chiapas is sitting on it now with the older one who is always praying.

  The screen on César’s phone makes everything look cold and blue like we are underwater, or dead already—cruel jokes in here—and to save the battery I turned it down. Nobody has a flashlight or a lighter or even a match because who is planning for this? There is nothing to see now anyway and not a lot to talk about because here we are, you know, and what is there to say? No one has the spirit for Hola, where you from, how is your family?—only for crying and praying and cursing the coyotes. ¡Pinches coyotes! All the questions like Does anybody have a knife or some tool? are finished already. We know what everybody has and it is very little and not helping. The Zapoteco in the front with the older man had a knife, but he broke it trying to get through the money hole, trying to open the little door. He cut himself doing this and he is having problems now. I gave him my phone so he could look at the cut—to clean it and wrap it up. I know from his accent he is from the Sierra Juárez same as me. I’ve heard of his pueblo, but it is far from the highway and hard to get to.

  They say coyotes have their own name for a truck full of migrantes—they call it a coffin load. Before now, I thought this might be another story from the government to scare us, but not after seeing those faces all around me. They were the faces of people being buried alive. I tried not to look at them anymore because I knew none of them could help me. This is also when I became confused—between thanking God for pushing me to the back by the pipes and cursing Him for my misfortune. Es una blasfemia, I know, to say this, but you can also say a truck full of people who are tired of working and working, barely making enough to live while a man sits and watches from behind the dark glass of a BMW car es una blasfemia. Yes, and you can say the same of coyotes, no? Is it not a blasfemia to put our faith in these men who are criminals and even killers? And why do we do this? Does the Bible teach us this—to put our money and our lives into the hands of one we cannot see and cannot know? To pray that he will do as we wish or as he promised? The moment you climb into the truck the coyote becomes your god just as he was before the Spanish came. Your fate is in his hands, but Coyote does not know what a promise is. Maybe he speaks your language, but for him the words have no meaning, they are only so much barking—empty as a bowl of smoke. And he does not offer refunds. No, he does what Coyote has done for all time—plays tricks, eats as much pollo as he can and disappears into the hills until he is hungry again. I would prefer to trust a jaguar.

  My god, it is too hot to speak.

  I must give César some water.

  4

  Thu Apr 5—17:41

  It is better now—cooler, but the heat of the day is like a fever and all of us are feeling it. People’s clothes have been wet so long now they are having problems with their skin. It is impossible to be comfortable. The bottom of the tank is wet and the metal is so hard—in the night it pulls all the heat out of you and in the day some parts are too hot to touch. My pants are wet so I took them off and put them on my bag to dry. I am sitting on my shoes with my feet on my bag. I rolled César onto his side because the baker said it’s not healthy for him to stay in one position so long. I tried to make a bed for him from his backpack and a sweatshirt he had in there. I made him a pillow with his socks, trying to keep his skin away from the hot metal.

  Now it is only César’s phone that has minutes and a good battery together, and I am waiting for the deep night when maybe reception will be better. But I hope you can find us before then.

  It was an accident how we came here, César and me, and if it hadn’t happened we would still be in Oaxaca now, which can be its own prison. I wonder if you even know where Oaxaca is, because it is far—two thousand kilometers from the border. Maybe you heard of Puerto Escondido and the surfers who go there? That is in Oaxaca. Maybe you know Monte Albán, the great Zapotec city with the pyramids all around? Once I went up there with my school. My favorite part was the planes flying out of the airport—so close you can look in the windows, but when I waved no one waved back. If you never heard of Monte Albán and do not surf and are afraid to go to Mexico, I can tell you something about it. They say Oaxaca is the second-poorest state. We have fifteen indio languages and a hundred dialects. There are people in my pueblo—my Abuela Zeferina was one—who never learned Spanish. Not in five hundred years. But it doesn’t matter, the same Spanish families control Oaxaca now who controlled it since Cortés came. You don’t see them much, but when they come out for a wedding at the botanical garden in el centro, you can spy them through that gate on the corner of Reforma and Constitución. Very tall and beautiful women in there—blondes sometimes even—with the leg muscles shaped like diamonds and heels sharp enough to kill a man.

  Our capital—wait—there is a plane—

  Thu Apr 5—17:49

  The plane is gone. It never came close. But to hear such sounds is a reason for hope, no? If you want to live, there is no choice in here but to think this way.

  I was telling you about my home, where I lived until last week. Oaxaca de Juárez is a famous colonial city with many churches and busy markets and quiet plazas. It is named for Benito Juárez, our hero and liberator who stands on the Llano with the crown of Spain broken at his feet. Benito Juárez was a Zapoteco—one of us, and he took the power and the lands from the Spanish Church and gave them back to the Mexican people. At the same time you had slaves in el Norte, here was this dark-skin indio in charge of a country where power and white skin go together like beans and rice. He was even the friend of your Abraham Lincoln. Hard to believe it, no? It didn’t last because in my country we have learned to enslave ourselves.

  After Benito we had a dictator again—Porfirio Díaz, and he was the cause of our great revolution one hundred years ago. Porfirio Díaz was a Oaxaqueño too, and he was also part indio—mestizo—so his skin was dark. He put white powder on it trying to look like a güero, but it didn’t work, everybody knew what he was so he only looked like an ugly Michael Jackson. Of course many indios and mestizos wish their skin was more white. There are powders and creams you can buy just for this and they have been selling here a long time, but my mother will not do it, and she is even darker than me. One time we were looking at pictures of Michael Jackson in a magazine and she hit his face with the back of her hand, saying, “Look at him there—like a clown! Doing such things to yourself is an insult to God.”

  From the capital it is a day of driving through the mountains to Puerto Escondido and the Pacific Ocean. The road is not old, younger than my father, but so steep and winding it makes the tourists sick and always you will see an accident. When someone goes over the side it is so far down you find them only by the smoke. You never drive that road at night because you can be robbed. Even in the daytime you might come to a pueblo—dust, cement, banana trees and indio girls in la moda jeans that never fit right and their fathers in sombreros with machetes hanging from their shoulders and all of them standing on the roadside while two hard men draw a chain across to block your way and someone’s mother comes to your window with a bucket for money or you cannot pass. But if you are a pilgrim and your truck is decorated with flowers and a picture of the Virgin you will not be stopped, except by the police.

  If you keep going south you will get to Puerto Escondido and then to Juchitán where they have the windmills now and iguanas in the hair and those ladyboys dressing up like Frida Kahlo. It happens down there where the country is most thin and the wind blows from ocean to ocean so hard it will make you crazy. Maybe that is why they do it. And just past there is Chiapas—you know Subcomandante Marcos and his Zapatistas? Cigars and bala
clavas in the jungle? It is a fashion now. Those are our neighbors too, and then you’re in Guatemala. Purgatorio.

  If you ever come to Oaxaca I don’t think you want to visit my neighborhood. I think you would prefer to stay in el centro, on the Zócalo with the fountains and the bandstand and our enormous cathedral. You can have coffee and ice cream there in the shade of the laurel trees, and you will see everyone—the balloon seller, the millionaire, the tourist, and the campesina with a sign demanding justice for her murdered son. And you will see artists, many of them, coming from everywhere, not to see the magical realism but to witness the marvelous real.

  This is where me and César are from—different pueblos a couple hours driving from el centro. For one year we went to the same school, but back then I watched him more than I knew him. On the bus north he would not even sit with me but hid himself behind a new hat and sunglasses. Only waiting for the coyotes would he talk to me and that is when I told him my mother came from Santa Magdalena Tlapazetla, which is where they make the red pots shaped like animals. He said this was also the home of his grandfather and for a few moments we thought we might be cousins. We drank to this possibility and to our good luck in el Norte, but still he would not tell me the whole reason he must leave Mexico right now with a coyote and no passport.

  Thu Apr 5—18:09

  I hope to God, AnniMac, that you are the right person. I am putting my faith in you because it must go somewhere, no? And God has not been so helpful lately. I’m just telling you anything, I know, but what else can I do? There is a saying we have down here when things go bad—Canta y no llores. Sing, don’t cry. I hope you understand why I must try to make the connection, why I must keep singing. Besides the coyotes, no one knows we’re here, unless that one is you.