Silence is Emiliano’s only response. But that’s enough for Sara. She waits for his eyes to meet hers again, and then she tells him, “You know that you can never be the person those people want you to be. If you’re honest with yourself, you know that.”
Emiliano puts his arm over his eyes. Then he turns his back to Sara.
Sara watches him breathe. There’s no need to say anything else.
There is something about walking in the silence of the night with only the stars to light your way. It’s as if solitude finally feels right. Sara watches Emiliano ahead of her. His walk is different than before their afternoon rest stop. He seems fragile and vulnerable for the first time. She’s held herself back from continuing the conversation they had under the tarp. It’s clear that the words she spoke are working inside him like some kind of abrasive—eroding the old, she hopes, and making space for something new.
Emiliano stops. In front of him is the east-west road. They step on it and walk toward the place where it ends. His calculations took them to the exact spot they wanted to go. He lets Sara catch up with him. If they can walk a couple more hours, the trip tomorrow will be easier. But Sara is in pain. He can tell by the way she’s been limping and dragging behind him for the past three hours.
“Let’s find a place to sleep and rest your feet for a while,” he says.
“I’m okay, really. Let’s keep going.”
“No. We’ll stop. We’ve done more than what we planned on doing the first day. We need to find a place far enough from the road that no one driving on it will see us.”
“I can keep going,” Sara says again. But she’s glad that Emiliano does not believe her.
Two hundred yards from the end of the road is a declivity on the ground made by some past torrential rainstorm. Emiliano spreads the tarp on the pebbly surface and hands Sara a thermal blanket. From here, they cannot be seen by anyone driving on the road when they are lying down or even sitting down. Emiliano gives Sara one of the six bean burritos he is carrying.
“Doesn’t look all that appetizing, does it?” Sara says, looking for the edge of the cellophane wrapping. “What time is it?”
“Around ten,” Emiliano says, glancing at the stars. “If we sleep for five hours, we can walk a few hours before it gets hot tomorrow.”
“This has been one of the longest days of my life. It’s gone on forever.” Sara takes a bite of the burrito. “Is there anything worse than cold beans?”
When they finish eating, Sara fishes out the other long-sleeved shirt she’s carrying and puts it on. She carefully spreads antibiotic ointment on her blisters. There are three of them now, a new one on the right heel. The two on her toes are red and raw. She puts her socks back on and looks over at Emiliano to see whether he plans to sleep with his boots on. He’s taken them off.
“Should I sleep with my shoes on?”
“It would be better if you let your feet breathe.”
“What about scorpions and tarantulas?”
Emiliano is lying face up with his backpack for a pillow. “If you feel something crawling on you, just keep still. Nothing’s going to sting you if you don’t panic.” He sits up, turns around, and digs in one of his backpack’s pockets. He gives Sara two small, thick rubber bands. “Put these over your pants, around your ankles, so nothing goes up your leg.”
Sara looks at the rubber bands with horror, then grabs them and places them just above the hems of her pant legs. She pulls her socks up as far she can and puts her shoes back on. Her feet can go without breathing for a few nights, as far as she’s concerned.
They lie there gazing at the sky without speaking. Every time Sara looks up, there are different stars. Are the stars moving or is the earth moving? Or both? The whole mess of creation is just one constant never-stopping dance. It’s dizzying. For a moment it feels as if she’s going to fall into the void above, and she grabs the edge of the tarp, but then she remembers the scorpions and folds her arms like Emiliano. It’s cold.
“Settle down,” Emiliano says. He sits up and puts his thermal blanket on her.
“What about you?”
“Shhh.”
A few minutes later she hears him snore. She turns on her side and watches him. It’s like when they were children and shared a bedroom. Whenever she felt afraid, all she had to do was remember that Emiliano was there. She knew that as the older sister, it was her responsibility to be brave, but it was his presence that took away her fear. A little while later she feels herself sinking into sleep.
In his dream, Emiliano is driving the Vespa with Perla Rubi holding tight to him. He feels the wind on his face and Perla Rubi’s warmth on his back and he’s happy, so happy. Then he hears a scream, and when he turns around, he sees Sara tumbling onto the road. The scream came from Sara. Then a heavy weight slams into his chest, and when he opens his eyes, he sees one of the men from the black car—the one with a brown hat. He has a boot on Emiliano’s chest and is grinning. For a moment, Emiliano hopes that the man and the grin are part of the dream.
But they are not. Emiliano tries to writhe away from the pressure bearing down on him, but the man presses his foot harder into his chest. Next to him stands the man with the black hat, pointing a pistol at Sara’s face. Emiliano sees a roll of gray duct tape in the hands of the brown hat. He struggles again to get himself free from the man’s foot, but the man moves the sole of his shoe to Emiliano’s face.
“Relax,” the brown hat tells Emiliano.
It is early dawn. How could he have overslept? Ever since he can remember, he has been able to wake up without an alarm whenever he wanted. What a time for his internal clock to fail.
“It’s okay, Emiliano,” Sara tells him.
In one movement that seems almost too graceful for a man that big and heavy, the brown hat lowers himself to place one knee on Emiliano’s face. Before he can recover from the shock of the pain on his ear and cheek, the man has grabbed Emiliano’s hands. He wraps duct tape around the wrists first, then the ankles. Finally, he cuts a smaller strip and places it over Emiliano’s mouth.
“Why are you doing that?” the man holding the gun on Sara asks. “Let’s get what we came for and get it over with.”
Emiliano understands that the man on top of him is in charge. Why is he getting tied up and not Sara? The brown hat pats Emiliano’s pockets. He takes out the silver pouch with the cell phone and smiles gently at Emiliano, as if he had a bet with himself that Emiliano would be carrying the phone and he won. The man stands up and puts the cell phone in his pocket.
“Great,” the man holding the pistol over Sara says. “Hey, Lester. Let’s finish this and get out of here.”
“What’s your hurry?” the brown hat says, his eyes on Sara. He takes the pistol from the man with the black hat. “Go put the backpacks in the car.”
For the first time, Emiliano sees their faces clearly. The man with the black hat is Mexican, but he speaks perfect English. The man who was on top of him, the one in charge, is white and American. Emiliano makes a mental note of his name: Lester. Lester is calm and steady and clearly comfortable with a pistol in his hand.
Sara sits up and rubs her throat. She looks at Emiliano next to her. She can tell he’s trying to tell her something with his eyes. What? That quick flick of the eyebrows. What does that mean? Go away. Move away. Is that it?