‘I’m so sorry, Papi. Forgive me, Papi, please,’ she says over and over again.
Her legs feel shaky so she moves to sit on the curb, wondering vaguely how the news will travel up the mountain to the village. She wonders if Mami and Abuela already know. She wonders if she will ever see them or hear their voices again. Because Papi was the only hub connecting them, and now he’s gone. One of the other men from the mountain who works in the city will hear, she thinks, and in sorrow he will carry that unholy news on the bus, three hours up the narrow, disappearing roads into the clouds. He’ll deliver it to Mami and Abuela. She closes her eyes to that thought. She puts it away from her because Soledad has been through enough to know that she’s at her limit, that she can go no further into that anguish without vanishing forever. The only thing that matters now is Rebeca. She can still save Rebeca.
When she stands up from that curb, Soledad is already a ghost of herself. Perhaps very deep within her, there’s still some smoldering wick that was once the flame of her person, but she cannot feel it there. She opens the door of the apartment, and descends.
Chapter Thirty
They’ve all packed their scant belongings, prepared and eaten the remaining food, and are drinking instant coffee by the time the sun begins to slant toward the horizon and El Chacal returns. Beto has nothing to pack. Marisol has ditched her black wedges in favor of some Adidas trail hikers. No one talks as they ascend the staircase out of the apartment one last time. There are two open-bed pickup trucks parked outside, and the back of one is half-filled with several dozen plastic gallon jugs of water, painted black. Lorenzo approaches the white truck, so Lydia herds Luca toward the blue one. Beto, the sisters, and Marisol all climb in after them, among the water jugs. Nicolás, too. He sits beside Marisol.
‘So, do you have a girlfriend back at college?’ she asks.
Nicolás shakes his head.
‘You know, my daughter is a college student in San Diego. A sociology major. What’s your field of study?’
Nicolás’s eyebrows animate themselves across his forehead. ‘I study evolutionary biology and biodiversity in the desert,’ he says.
‘Oh.’ Marisol is unable to muster any appropriate follow-up questions.
‘What the hell is that?’ Beto asks.
Nicolás laughs. ‘It means I study how organisms evolve, and what environmental factors influence that evolution, and vice versa.’
Beto looks at him blankly.
‘Specifically, I study the migration patterns of certain desert butterflies, and the effect of those changing migration patterns on certain flowering shrubs.’
‘Desert butterflies, huh?’ Beto says suspiciously.
‘Yes.’
‘You study, like, where they go?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s, like, a whole job? That’s all you do?’
Nicolás grins at Beto.
‘Man, I want to go to college,’ the boy says.
El Chacal is securing the liftgate at the back of the other truck, and now he walks over to theirs. He looks at them individually, checking their gear. His own shoes are solid, lightweight hikers, dusty enough to appear as if they could belong to any migrant, albeit one with the means to buy himself boots for the trek. He’s dressed like he was the day he met them in the plaza – close-fitting jeans and a gray Under Armour T-shirt this time. His backpack, sitting on the seat in the cab, is tiny. His jacket, made of waterproof Gore-Tex, is light enough to tie around his slim waist. His cheeks, as usual, are a cheerful shade of pink in the light brown expanse of his face. Everything about his body seems designed for the wilderness. He is lean, muscular, compact, and he moves with efficiency as he steps from migrant to migrant, examining their footwear, their moods, the weight of their packs. Nobody with a sniffle or a sneeze will be allowed to make the journey. He stops when he gets to Beto.
‘Where’s your bag?’ he asks.
Everyone else is clutching their pack in front of them. Beto has nothing.
‘I don’t need no bag, güey,’ Beto says. ‘Everything I need is right here.’ He taps on the side of his head with one finger.
‘That crazy brain of yours going to keep you warm tonight?’
‘What are you talking about, warm?’ Beto says. ‘No manches, güey. We’re in the middle of a heat wave. It’s like a million degrees outside.’
It is April in the Sonoran Desert, and uncommonly warm this week. Today’s high was ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit.
‘So you don’t have a jacket? A coat, sweater, nothing?’ El Chacal asks.
‘I’ll be fine!’ Beto says.
‘Out of the truck.’ El Chacal unlatches and folds down the tailgate.
‘Órale, güey,’ Beto says. ‘For real, I’m fine, I don’t need a jacket.’
‘Out,’ El Chacal repeats. ‘I was very specific. I told you what you needed, I told you what would happen if you didn’t adequately prepare.’
‘But—’
‘And you find yourself a coyote who says he will take you across without the right gear? Don’t fucking pay him. Because he doesn’t give a shit about you, and you will die, understand? Come on, now. Out.’
‘But I’ll get one! I’ll get a jacket!’ Beto’s voice is rising to a frantic pitch.
‘It’s too late,’ the coyote says, slapping a hand impatiently on the bed of the truck. ‘Get a jacket and I’ll take you next time.’
Beto stands up and begins to move slowly toward the tailgate, reluctance in every cell of his body. Luca tugs on Mami’s arm, but she doesn’t respond. She should have checked with him. He seems a thousand years old, but he’s only ten, and he saved them; he bought their passage. So how hard would it have been for her to ask: Now, Beto, you have a good jacket, right? But she didn’t. And now it’s too late. There’s nothing she can do. She squeezes Luca’s hand, a meager apology for her failure of foresight, her scarcity of heroism. The rest of the migrants look helplessly at Beto, but Nicolás is unzipping his pack. Beto sits with a thump on the back of the liftgate, his feet dangling over, procrastinating. He riffles through his brain for an argument or plea he might make.
‘Here.’ Nicolás tosses a heavy, fleece-lined, zippered hoodie onto the boy’s lap.
Beto’s face brightens at once, and Lydia heaves a relieved smile. Luca grins. Beto snatches up the thick, brown fabric and scrambles back to his feet. He ties the arms of the hoodie around his waist while Nicolás zips his backpack again.