Читать книгу The Iguana Tree - Michel Stone - Страница 9

“I WANT to show you something, amigo, to be certain you understand.”

He looked Héctor in the eyes. He was a man to be feared, confident, calculated, experienced. He knew far more than Héctor. His pulse would not quicken when he stabbed a man to death. He would take no pleasure in the act, nor would it haunt him. His dark eyes gave no indication of a soul. Héctor turned away, watched the passing landscape.

Then he saw it.

“The border, friend,” the coyote said.

Héctor looked at the border, then back at his driver.

“You wonder why you need me, heh, friend? You see this simple metal fence, rusted and worn and easily transversible, and you say to yourself, ‘This is nothing. I do not understand. One could walk across that line right now and be in America.’”

Héctor said nothing, confused by what he saw, and suddenly wondered if he had, indeed, no need for a coyote after all, if this were all a trick, a scam to lure innocents to the border, to steal their money.

But seeing the border and the desert wasteland beyond it answered no questions. The mystery remained, grew. He saw no guards, no guns, no watchdogs, no border patrol. He saw men, women, and children now, dotted all along the shabby wall. He had not noticed them at first. They waited, watched, though for what Héctor could not possibly know.

“They are pollos, chickens, friend,” the coyote said, jutting a finger toward a small cluster of men crouching near a gap in the metal. This was a term Héctor had not heard before regarding those heading north. Héctor thought about chickens being led by a coyote. That did not fit. A coyote would devour a chicken.

“They are foolish, and they will cross on their own, or with some cheap, inexperienced coyote,” Héctor’s smuggler continued. “They will all be back in Mexico within a day. The rare few who are not caught will likely die of thirst in the desert.”

He nodded toward a group of six, huddled by another gaping hole in the metal fence.

They seemed to have nothing with them, no provisions, no bags.

“They will need at least two gallons of water a day to survive out there. Look at them,” he said in disgust. “They carry maybe a gallon or two among them all. Sometimes the ones who make it deep into the desert find a mesquite tree, hang themselves by their belts, preferring death to come quickly and surely rather than slowly and with uncertainty. Do you know about death in the desert, friend?” he asked.

“I can imagine it,” Héctor said.

“No. You cannot imagine it. But I will tell you about it. The heat bears down unlike any you have experienced. The desert has no ocean breeze like you have in your village. The sun scorches your skin and your tongue, and breathing is an agony. Lips crack, bleed. Dried blood cakes in your nostrils, and you ask God why your tongue has grown scales.” He stopped, as if he wanted Héctor to consider his words before continuing.

They rode in silence, Héctor dutifully studying the Mexican side of the border, just as the coyote wanted him to do. He had dreamed of it for so long, he could not feel certain he really saw it now.

“Your parched insides curse your mouth for singeing them with each hot breath you take,” the coyote continued. “Slowly you realize you will not survive. That the desert is going to win, only it is in no hurry. Then your prayers change, friend, and you no longer pray to the Virgin for water, but for a tree to hang yourself or a rattlesnake to strike your ankle. The trees are few, but the rattlesnakes, they are plentiful,” he said, a rising pleasure in his voice when he spoke of rattlesnakes.

He slowed his truck to a stop, and pointed to the desert beyond the six-foot-tall metal sheet that separated the men from America. “A fool’s graveyard.”

He began driving again, turning the truck around, heading in the direction from which they had just come. His tone remained the same when he said, “You shall not suffer such a fate, friend. You will reach El Norte. Your bones will not find their final resting place there,” and he raised his chin toward the desert.

Héctor said nothing. He watched the chickens along the border. Most had nothing with them except for a woven sack and a water jug. He saw children, some as young as five and six, crouched near their parents, watching the desert as if it were the ultimate prize. A lump formed in Héctor’s throat. He had not cried in a long time, and he would not do so now in this coyote’s presence. He felt like a traitor to his fellow countrymen when he prayed that the border patrol would catch them before they walked far into their journey. God deliver you. Two men slipped through the fence and disappeared.

Within minutes Héctor and the coyote arrived at a small, one-room shack made of corrugated tin. Héctor followed the coyote inside. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the sudden darkness of the interior. A man sat on the floor in the corner smoking a cigarette, his back against the wall. The room contained no furniture, the floor littered with newspaper, bottles, and cigarette butts. The unmistakable stench of urine permeated the place.

The smuggler didn’t acknowledge the man in the corner. He said to Héctor, “You will wait here until we cross,” and he walked out, locking the door behind him.

Héctor didn’t know if the man in the corner was a pollo or a coyote. The man sucked one last drag off his cigarette, then snuffed it out on the concrete floor.

“How’s it going?” the man said, exhaling smoke with his words.

Héctor nodded a silent greeting, then shoved his hands into his pockets to still them.

Suddenly the stranger burst into laughter. Héctor’s fingernails dug into his palm as he made a fist, unsure if his companion were a lunatic or if Héctor were just missing something terribly amusing. He stared at the floor, not wanting to look at the man in the corner. Finally the laughter subsided enough for Héctor’s companion to speak.

“I see why they call us pollos, amigo. You look scared shitless, just like a baby chick the hen has left alone in the yard. Ah, but take no offense,” he said, lighting another cigarette and offering the pack to Héctor. “I am sure I looked like you when I arrived here. I am Miguel.”

Héctor took a cigarette and accepted Miguel’s offer to light it. “I am Héctor,” he said, still unsure of the stranger’s sanity. “How long have you been here?” Héctor asked, blowing smoke away from his new acquaintance.

“Four days,” Miguel answered, flicking the match across the room toward a green plastic bucket that smelled like a makeshift toilet. “I may die of cancer from these before we go. Though they are good to help with the waiting. I do not know how long we will be here. Perhaps the coyote was waiting for you to arrive. Maybe now we will go.”

Héctor looked about the sparse room, attempted to calculate the many hours of waiting represented by the cigarette butts surrounding him. He wondered about the fate of those who had waited before him, the only hint of their presence here the squashed remains of their smokes and the scent of their urine.

“I am going to South Carolina,” Miguel continued. “Where are you heading, Héctor?”

Miguel was a small, lean man, maybe a head shorter than Héctor. His coal black hair was cropped close to his round, dark head, and his broad nose and wide forehead revealed his Indian heritage.

“I have not decided. I have no destination other than America,” Héctor said. “I’ll see where work takes me.”

“A man needs a plan, Héctor. Come with me to South Carolina. My cousin has a house and a good job as a foreman on a tomato farm. He will find us work.”

“Perhaps I shall join you, if work is available there. Where do you come from?” Héctor asked.

“My people are from the mountains, the Tarahumara.”

Héctor had heard of the Tarahumara Indians, but had not known any in Puerto Isadore.

He wondered if they were all like Miguel, in manner and in looks.

Miguel continued when Héctor remained silent. “Most of my people remain in the Sierra Madres forever, preferring not to mix with others. I am an outcast, I suppose.” He chuckled when he said this and sucked on his cigarette as if his survival depended on the smoke sinking deep into his lungs.

“I have never met one of your people,” Héctor said. “But we are all Mexicans. Your people prefer to stay in the mountains. My people stay by the sea in Oaxaca State, in Puerto Isadore. People are comfortable with what they know, I think.” Héctor had not realized how much he missed conversation.

“So, Héctor, you and I, we are not comfortable men then. We are leaving what we know,” Miguel said.

Héctor nodded, running both hands through his hair, letting his cigarette dangle from his lips.

The sun descended outside the lone, small window on the western side of the shack, casting shadows across the wall and floor. The men ate nothing, for they had no food. They talked until Héctor could no longer see Miguel’s face.

“My people are athletes. We are very strong runners for great distances. When my tribe plays rarajipari, I am the best in my community,” Miguel said.

“I do not know of this rarajipari,” Héctor said.

“You are missing out, Héctor. I will tell you about it. I am not keeping you from something, am I, amigo?” Miguel said, and Héctor imagined Miguel’s smile, though it was lost in the darkness.

“We have teams, you see, and we play this game in the mountains, running along the slopes, kicking a wooden ball for great distances. We wear huaraches on our feet and the matches last for days. My teammates called me a mountain goat. I could go all day.”

Héctor said, “I am not much at running up mountains.”

Miguel seemed to be turned away from Héctor now, his voice falling distant.

“These cigarettes. I am probably not good at running the slopes any more, either.”

Héctor heard Miguel lie down, rustling in his corner, then grow silent, except for his breathing. Their conversation for this day was over. Héctor stretched out on the hard concrete, closed his eyes and thought of mountain goats running wild and free along green slopes. How pleasant to live as a goat with all the berries and vegetation his family could ever want to eat growing where they lived and played, with no worries about the future, with no thought of what may lie beyond their lush, green slope, and no concern with trying to cross difficult obstacles to keep the family fed.

When sleep came, Héctor dreamed not of contented goats, but of a withered corpse swinging in the hot wind.

ONCE EACH DAY the door opened and a coyote delivered sandwiches or fruit with drinking water. During the thirteenth night, Héctor awoke to someone kicking his boot.

“Get up. Get up! Let’s move. Quickly now!” a man barked, his voice unfamiliar.

Then Héctor heard Miguel say, “I am awake, mister.”

The stranger in the room held a flashlight, and in the shadows Héctor could see Miguel stumbling to his feet, as if he were not quite awake. The room, aside from the narrow shaft of light from the flashlight, remained dark, and Héctor felt certain the morning light was yet hours away. In seconds he and Miguel stood fully alert. He caught a glint of metal across the stranger’s chest, no doubt a gun strapped there.

“Follow me. Do not speak, but move quickly,” he said. “Piss before we leave.”

How strange this all was. The faceless stranger commanded their complete obedience, yet they had no way of knowing who he was. Héctor felt like a schoolboy being told to piss, but both he and Miguel did as they were told. When they finished, they followed the stranger a few meters to a pickup truck. He motioned to the back, and the men climbed in. In seconds they were racing down the road. The wind chilled Héctor, and he pulled his knees to his chest.

Miguel spoke first, “I guess this is it, Héctor. This night we will cross into America.” He paused, then added, “Or maybe we are about to be killed. Who can know these things until they happen, heh, pollo?” He laughed at his attempt at humor, but Héctor did not smile. He had been wondering if this man with the gun was part of the plan. Perhaps he was a lawman. Perhaps the coyote had been killed, and this man planned to take Héctor and Miguel into the desert and kill them. How could he know? He was a pollo, indeed, a scared shitless little chick, just as Miguel had said when they had met.

The truck slowed and turned into the parking lot of a large, nondescript building, perhaps a warehouse. The driver flashed his lights three times, and immediately the huge door to the building rose. The truck entered the building before the door fully opened, and in seconds it closed behind them.

Miguel prodded Héctor with the heel of his boot and whispered, “Knowing you has been a pleasure, Héctor.”

Miguel’s face wore no expression, no hint of seriousness or humor, excitement or fear. This Miguel fellow could joke his way through a firing squad to hide his emotions.

Inside the warehouse florescent lights glowed bright. Héctor eyed a large delivery truck and counted fifteen men. Most sat in a group on the floor along the left side of the large, open room. A few busied themselves around the delivery truck, and Héctor wondered if it would deliver him across the border. The building appeared to be a storage facility for toys. Crates and bins of dolls, puppets, toy drums, and other children’s playthings overflowed onto shelves along the high walls. Héctor thought of little Alejandra. Perhaps he could keep a doll for her, present it to her when she and her mother arrived in America.

The stranger who had driven them here got out of the truck, and Héctor saw him for the first time in the light. A gun strapped across his broad chest, he looked like the professional wrestlers Héctor had seen in comic books and on posters along the streets in Mexico City. His upper arms were the size of Héctor’s thighs, and Héctor thought this man had no need of a gun. He wore canvas pants, black boots, and a green shirt with snaps up the front. His straw cowboy hat, white and spotless, seemed oversized, as if his commanding figure called for a hat bigger than anyone else wore.

“Go over there with the others,” he said, motioning to the group sitting along the wall.

Héctor and Miguel did as they were instructed. How strange to be in a room with so many men without speaking. The men who were not seated, the ones in charge, moved quickly and smoothly without any words. Each seemed to have a job to do, and each had done his job many times before. Héctor looked around at the men among whom he sat. He saw in them what Miguel had claimed to see in him just days before. They looked nervous mostly. To sit silently and do as other men commanded was an odd and humbling way for a man to behave. But each of them knew they had chosen to be here, and each would do as he was told in order to achieve his dreams. Héctor felt a strong connection to these strangers. He thought about their ride to America in the back of the delivery truck. Perhaps there they would talk of their loved ones, of what they were leaving behind and of the places they planned to go in El Norte. Perhaps some would become friends, and maybe even settle in the same town in Texas or South Carolina or Arizona. These thoughts calmed Héctor’s nerves, and thrill replaced the dread he had felt over Miguel’s talk of impending death.

In less than four minutes, the back of the truck had been completely loaded with crates of toys. One of the men slammed shut the back of the delivery truck, and with it Héctor’s hopes of riding smoothly into America vanished. So, he and these pollos would not be riding in this truck after all. He felt his shoulders droop.

Then, “Okay, pollos. Here, now. Let’s go,” the man with the gun said.

The men rose to their feet, and shuffled over to the truck where the man stood.

One at a time a worker took a man underneath the truck and came out alone. Héctor could not understand what was happening. When his turn came, he crawled under the bed of the truck with the man. A small hole, no bigger than the lid of a barrel, opened above Héctor’s head.

“Climb in, and lie flat. Your head goes that way, your feet at this end. Pack in tight. We have many of you. Now go,” he said, guiding Héctor, helping him disappear into the dark underbelly of his deliverance.