The Only Road Page 8

  “Mira, Jaime, can you hold her? I want to look her over better.”

  Jaime reached over to accept the bundle, but Ángela stopped him.

  “Wait, take off your shirt first.”

  Good thinking—he only had one other as a spare. He handed Ángela the T-shirt, which she promptly folded, and took the wet, white-and-brown, bloody mess from Xavi. The dog was about the length of his forearm and weighed next to nothing. Not only had her previous owners subjected her to being ripped open, but they had barely fed her.

  The dog shivered but didn’t move beyond that. Against his chest Jaime could feel her intense body heat, as if she were running a fever. But that was good, right? Didn’t that mean she was still fighting?

  Their two heartbeats raced a thousand kilometers a minute to the point that Jaime couldn’t tell whose was whose.

  Xavi gently poked and prodded the dog all over. When he touched the skin around the open wound, she let out a loud whimper.

  “Can you save her?” Joaquín asked, his voice high-pitched and matching the dog’s whimper. “Please?”

  Xavi looked up at Ángela, who was still standing at a distance from them as if her job was only to keep guard. “Any chance you have a needle and thread?” he asked.

  Ángela put her hands on her hips. “What, you think just because I’m a woman I go around carrying a sewing kit?” But then she dug around the front pocket of her backpack. Of course she would, Jaime thought. Tía was a seamstress, after all, and had taught the whole family, including the men, how to sew. Jaime wished he’d thought of bringing something as practical as a sewing kit. Or that his mamá had.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” Xavi said, half to himself, holding the swath of cardboard with three needles of various sizes, a spool of blue thread, and a miniature pair of folding scissors. “People didn’t often come to my grandmother for stitches and I don’t know how to sew. I’ve butchered pigs, but this is the opposite, isn’t it?”

  “I can sew,” Jaime said.

  “Yo también,” Joaquín whispered.

  Xavi nodded and handed Joaquín the needles and thread. It took three attempts for him to thread the largest needle. He crouched beside Jaime, Xavi, and the dog. Jaime held the dog secure against his chest while Xavi pushed together the pieces of open skin. The dog whimpered again. Joaquín’s hand shook as he approached the flesh with the needle. He had barely poked the skin when the dog yelped, causing Joaquín to jump away.

  “I can’t do it,” he cried. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

  Jaime bit his lip. He agreed with Joaquín. He wouldn’t want to hurt her either. But they couldn’t leave her like this—they had to save her. Or at least try.

  Xavi opened his mouth to say something—that the dog would die if they didn’t or maybe to suggest that Jaime try instead—but Ángela beat him to it.

  “Give the needle here.” She bit into a lime to break the peel and squeezed a few drops of juice onto the needle before crouching down. “Whatever you do, don’t let it bite me, or I swear I’m drowning it in the river.”

  Jaime shifted his arm so that the snout was clamped between his bicep and ribs but still able to breathe. He held her still with his other arm before giving his cousin a nod.

  The dog wiggled and whined as soon as Ángela made the first stitch. Jaime held her tighter against his bare chest and Xavi, with his hands holding her belly together, helped stabilize her. A prayer to San Francisco, patron saint of animals and children, came from Joaquín.

  Ángela didn’t bat an eye. She pulled the needle in and out as if she were mending socks. Jaime was sure if he had tried sewing up the dog, he would have panicked like Joaquín. Ángela secured each neat stitch individually with a knot until the dog’s side was nothing more than wet fur with a ten-centimeter line of blue thread.

  With a gentleness that surprised him—it was a dog, after all—Ángela dabbed the wound with a wet rag before squeezing the lime juice onto the blue seam to prevent infection. The dog squirmed, but Jaime kept her tight in his arms, telling her it would be all right, and wishing he could believe it as he said it. What Ángela had done was truly a miracle. The other boys saw it too.

  “Thank you,” Xavi said softly. “You saved her. You saved her life.”

  “It’s fine.” Ángela shrugged away the praise. She stood up, wiping her hands with the rag and more lime juice. She shifted from one foot to the other as if she didn’t know what to do with herself. “Have they served breakfast already? I’m starving.”

  She took two steps and then stopped when she noticed the boys were still huddled around the dog.

  “What are we going to call her?” Jaime eased his tight hold but kept the dog against his chest as he got back on his feet. She no longer whimpered from the citrus sting, but her breathing remained heavy. Her white-and-brown–patched fur would look pretty once she dried. “How about Pinta?”

  The worry lines on Xavi’s forehead lifted as he took deep breaths of relief. “I was thinking of calling her Vida.”

  “Sí,” Joaquín said before Xavi had finished the words. “Vida.”

  Against Jaime’s bare chest the canine’s heart thumped with life-giving approval. A smile crossed Jaime’s face as he gave her a gentle cuddle. Ángela looked down, her face twisting with sadness and maybe regret. Jaime knew she was thinking about Miguel; he was. Then she blinked in agreement too. The other two seemed to be lost in the world of deceased loved ones as well; little Joaquín looked ready to burst into tears. But then he, too, relaxed when he looked at the recovered dog with promise and hope. Vida, life. That was a good name.

  Jaime stood next to Ángela as Xavi and Joaquín gathered the rags and bucket. Before Jaime could stop the patient, a pink tongue escaped the lips of the wounded mutt as she gave her seamstress a kiss of thanks on the palm.

  Ángela’s hand snapped back. For a second Jaime was sure she was going to swat the dog on the nose. Instead Ángela smoothed down the brown-and-white fur sticking up in the spot between the dog’s one ear and where the other should have been.

  CHAPTER TEN

  On Jaime and Ángela’s second day at Padre Kevin’s refuge, just as the sun was losing its battle with nighttime, a white Mercedes with black-tinted windows roared down the street and braked in front of the church with a huge cloud of dust.

  The fútbol players abandoned their game quickly to avoid getting hit. Jaime hugged his bag tight to his chest; the other kids who had possessions did the same. Ángela grabbed Joaquín’s hand, or maybe it was the other way around. Xavi scooped up Vida, who had been snoozing away her injuries while they played in the street. Rafa, who not only lost all his money at the dogfight but was also beaten up for trying to win it back, pulled his cap low over his face. Still, everyone, including Vida, watched the doors of the Mercedes open.

  From the driver’s seat, huge hands pressed against the open door and the roof to extract a body too large for the sleek sports car, like an oozing snail escaping a confining shell. The stench of expensive cologne wafted from the large man, reminding Jaime of rotten eggs preserved in alcohol. He almost didn’t notice a second man slip out of the passenger side inconspicuously.

  The giant slug was completely bald but made up for it with such a thick black mustache, it looked like an animal had stuck itself to his lip. He wore a white linen shirt and slacks with a polished black belt and shoes. The day’s remaining sunshine reflected off his clothes and shiny head.

  El Gordo had arrived.

  “Kevin!” he yelled, even though the padre had exited the church as soon as he heard the engine’s roar.

  Padre Kevin walked toward the giant. The men were similar, both large and bald, but the contrast between them was stark. Today the padre donned rainbow-striped shorts and a lime-green shirt that in six pictures showed the evolution from ape to saint. On closer inspection, El Gordo did look a bit like the first, Neanderthal-type image on the padre’s shirt.

  Padre Kevin nodded to the men as if t
o imply that he at least hadn’t forgotten courtesy. “Don Gordo.”

  El Gordo surveyed the crowd that had leaked out of the church and come from the growth along the river at the sound of his arrival. While yesterday there had been a hundred refugees sheltering at the church and some had already left, like the girl with the baby, now there were closer to a hundred and fifty, and most of them were present.

  “They breed like rabbits and infest us like parasites, don’t they?” El Gordo said to Padre Kevin, and laughed. Padre Kevin didn’t find the joke funny, nor did any of the people watching and listening.

  “So.” He clapped his hands. It was hard to tell with his mustache covering most of his mouth, but Jaime was pretty sure El Gordo was giving the crowd his widest grin as if he were about to devour them. “Which of you little pissants is getting on the train early tomorrow morning?”

  Jaime and Ángela looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Neither wanted to draw attention to themselves, let alone speak with this man. Maybe there was some way to get on the train without having to deal with El Gordo.

  Everyone else seemed to feel the same way. No one said a word, even after a minute of being stared down. Padre Kevin did nothing to encourage anyone to speak up. He kept his eyes averted from El Gordo as he muttered words that might have been prayers but could have been insults.

  Jaime shivered as El Gordo laughed again and surveyed the crowd. “I’m kidding! I love you guys. Twelve of you have already paid to ride the train. If you don’t tell me who you are, there are no refunds.”

  One man in a blue bandanna lifted his arm slowly, followed by a woman with two children, a girl about five years old and a boy about seven. A few others hesitated before raising their hands. Jaime had to force his arm up. Worse was when they had to give their names to confirm against the list that El Gordo kept somewhere in his thick skull. Jaime was sure something would go wrong. It did, but for someone else.

  El Gordo nodded as if he were bored when Jaime and Ángela told him who they were. It was the next man who wasn’t so lucky.

  “I don’t have a Gonzales,” the smuggler said. He tried to cross his arms over his chest. Except his arms were too large to complete the crossed X.

  The man bobbed his head uncontrollably. “Sí, Octavio Gonzales Peña.”

  “No Gonzales, no Peña.” El Gordo scratched his mustache. Jaime imagined fleas colonizing his monstrous mustache and knew how he’d draw El Gordo later.

  The man kept bobbing his head, an action that made him sweat profusely. “But my wife paid. We sold everything we own. Paid a man named Chuy, who was going to give it to you.”

  El Gordo shrugged. “I don’t know this Chuy and I didn’t get it. Maybe you need to get yourself a new wife.” He winked at Padre Kevin, but the padre made no response.

  “She did pay, she did!” The man’s face crumbled and he flung himself to the ground, crying on El Gordo’s shiny shoes. Huge mistake. El Gordo swung his leg and caught the man right on the ear.

  “I need four thousand pesos before I get you safe passage.” El Gordo turned away from the hysterical man and addressed everyone else. “That’s right, only four thousand pesos. That’s not very much for a guaranteed safe ride on the train, let me tell you. If you don’t go through me, half of you won’t make the train ride in one piece. Not with the immigration checkpoints, or the gangs that control the rail lines, ready to beat you up or throw you off the moving train.”

  A man with buzzed hair swallowed and limped forward. Two men who looked like brothers with matching round bellies kept their eyes down as they shuffled toward El Gordo as well. They extracted money from their pockets, socks, and underwear. El Gordo snapped his fingers at his minion. Until that moment, Jaime had forgotten about the second man, who now counted the crumbled and dirty notes before nodding to his boss that the right amount was there.

  When it looked like no one else had any money for a safe passage aboard the train, El Gordo turned back to his immaculate car. “We’ll come back for those of you who’ve paid or changed your mind at one o’clock in the morning. The rest of you who are going to face the Beast, thanks for feeding the vultures.”

  He laughed again and motioned to his minion, who popped open the trunk with the push of a button. From there the minion extracted a leg of raw meat. Jaime hoped it was pork or beef and not something more sinister. The minion went through the trees by the river and slapped the meat on the table outside the kitchen that held their meals.

  “For your troubles, Kevin.” El Gordo waved a fat hand at the food. “Always a pleasure doing business with you.” And once more his laughter rang across the street.

  “Of course, God thanks you,” Padre Kevin said through tight lips.

  It took a couple of minutes for El Gordo to squeeze himself back into the cramped driver’s seat, and then he and his minion were gone. A collective sigh, almost as loud as El Gordo’s satanic laughter, vibrated in the now-quiet street. No one’s sigh was louder than Padre Kevin’s.

  People shuffled back into the church or returned to their previous activities. Yesterday’s grumpy woman got César and some other boys to haul the meat into the kitchen and ordered some women to help her cook it. Jaime and his friends looked at the semi-deflated ball and seemed to agree the fútbol game was over.

  Three Honduran boys who had been playing fútbol with them shoved their hands in their pockets.

  “Four thousand pesos? Who does that fat cat think he is?” said Gusti, one of the best strikers Jaime had ever played with.

  Sebastián, who preferred refereeing to playing, grumbled, “I bet he just takes the money and feeds people to la migra.”

  “Any chance we can come up with four thousand pesos in six hours?” asked Omar, who had been their goalkeeper.

  “Sure.” Gusti smirked. “If a purse of money falls from the heavens.”

  The other two boys stared at the overcast sky for a few seconds, as if wondering whether there was any chance of that happening. As they headed up the street, Omar picked up an empty beer bottle lying in the bushes; they could get a couple of copper coins for the glass. At that rate they would need thousands of bottles to earn enough to pay El Gordo.

  “Our parents paid double that,” Ángela muttered under her breath. She took Jaime’s hand and they turned to walk back into the church with their other friends. Jaime worked the math in his head to figure out how much that translated into Guatemalan quetzales—about his father’s three-month salary. He hated thinking of the trouble he’d caused everyone.Their whole family must have chipped in; the women Mamá worked for must have given her loans; Tomás probably sent his wages too. All to be overcharged. But there was nothing they could do. They certainly couldn’t ask El Gordo for a refund.

  “Maybe they’ll give us nice seats with air-conditioning on the train,” he joked. He didn’t know what to expect—he’d never been on a train before—but he doubted El Gordo’s way was even legal. We’re lucky, he kept reminding himself. His family could pay for El Gordo’s train, and maybe, just maybe, they were better protected as a result.

  “I’m not surprised your parents paid more,” Xavi said. “There are middlemen to pay off and others who just take advantage. The ignorant are always the ones who pay more.”

  “Our parents aren’t ignorant,” Jaime defended quickly.

  “I meant ignorant in terms of smuggling costs. Someone told them a price and they didn’t negotiate it.”

  Xavi did have a point. Neither his parents nor Ángela’s had ever made this journey, nor anyone in the immediate family. Tomás had papers and sponsorship that allowed him to travel through México the whole way by bus without any complications. His parents could only go by what someone said or another recommended.

  If only his parents hadn’t had to pay so much. If only he and Ángela hadn’t had to leave Guatemala. He should have been nicer to Pulguita back when they were friends. He should have let the boy continue stealing from him. He should have stopped Mig
uel from telling Pulguita they didn’t want to be friends anymore.

  It all came down to Jaime, and the ways he could have stopped any of this from happening.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No one slept that night. And there was no bonfire.

  Only about fifteen of the hundred and fifty staying at the church were using El Gordo’s services. Inside the church the sheet that divided the men’s quarters from the women and children was pulled aside as more than half of the people gathered their things and made plans to face the Beast, or la bestia as it was nicknamed. Also known as the train.  Advice bounced around from the veteran train riders, and everyone else who liked to give an opinion.

  “Don’t travel by yourself,” said a man who had been deported twice back to Nicaragua.

  “Don’t trust anyone,” said a pregnant Honduran woman, wrapping a shawl tight around her shoulders.

  The grumpy woman who served them food grumbled, “You’re better off just going home. You’ll never make it.”

  A few others, particularly the old people, murmured in agreement. One man added, “If the train slows down, it could be an immigration stop. Or a trap.”

  “If you jump off, don’t be scared of the ground. It’ll hurt you less than the train wheels, or the gangsters’ gunshots,” the Nicaraguan chimed in again.

  César, who played fútbol with them and had been on the train a few times, told everyone they weren’t that bad. “Just give the gangs what they want. No big deal.”

  Of course it was a big deal, especially when the gang wanted your life.

  But warnings and opinions weren’t enough to change minds. Most people were determined to board la bestia anyway. They didn’t have a choice.

  “I’m still getting on the train,” Xavi announced as their group sat by the river, with Vida licking a bone from the meat El Gordo had brought. “Rafa, Joaquín, you’re coming too, right?”