Into the Beautiful North(21)

Chapter Nine



A relief driver boarded the bus in Huila, Sonora. Chuy staggered to a small bunk behind the toilets and fell asleep. The last thing he said before starting to snore was “Thirty-minute break!”

The girls and Tacho stiffly made their way off the bus and stood, overcome by the killing desert light. A melancholy little dog wagged its peg of a tail at them, and Tacho threw a rock at it at the same time that Vampi said, “He’s so cute!”

Alkaline dust moved through the flat white land like smoke. Far in the distance, a weak little dust devil whirled up and carried some scraps of paper over the sand to a rattling creosote bush. It dropped its small load of trash there as it fell apart. Immediately upon its demise, another rose and lurched away toward the far mountains that revealed themselves as a black clot of shadows on the horizon.

“Lovely,” Tacho noted.

Nayeli clapped her hands together. “Come on! Let’s go! Let’s have breakfast and freshen up!”

They trotted across the endless black two-lane, standing aside to allow a rusted fuel tanker to bellow past, its driver pulling the air horn chain about twenty times when he saw the girls.

“He could be honking at me, you know,” Tacho said.

“Dream on,” Nayeli replied, marching forcefully into the tiny bus station and diner.

The toilets were caked in feces. Yolo almost threw up. The girls watched the door as each took her turn peeing in the sink. Tacho, in the men’s room, was astonished to find no toilet at all, just a hole in the floor with a ghastly rind of brown stuccoed around its mouth. “Oh, well,” he said, and assumed the bombardier position. There was no toilet paper. He was forced to use the newsprint pages of a fan magazine that featured pictures of pop music bands.

Inside the diner, a harried woman was negotiating for bus tickets to Mazatlán. There were three tables on a concrete floor. Passengers from the bus sat outside eating their own beans. They occasionally stepped in to buy a paper cup of coffee or a Coca-Cola. At one table, an immensely overweight boy sat, grunting and wheezing. Nayeli was fascinated by him. Fat welled up off his neck, and his breasts were so huge they ran around his sides and seemed to hold his arms away from his body. His eyes were lost in folds—she thought he might be blind. His hair was so short that she could see his sweaty scalp shining in the neon lights. He had tiny ears that seemed perched on the neck fat, and he turned his head toward the sound of the woman’s voice and made little fluty noises at her. She was apparently his mother.

Tacho ordered arroz con pollo. The girls chose simple fried eggs and tortillas. Coffee all around.

The fat boy picked up the sugar dispenser. It was glass, with a slanted chrome top. Nayeli nudged Yolo, who glanced over. The boy tipped the sugar into his fist, put his head back, and poured the white crystals into his mouth. His mother walked over and gently took the sugar from him. He kicked his feet and squirmed. She whispered to him. He got up reluctantly and trudged toward the door.

“Life,” the mother said to them as she passed, “does not get simpler.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nayeli said.

Their meals came on paper plates.

Tacho’s food was watery and gray.

“Yum-yum!” quipped Yolo, whose eggs didn’t look too bad. How could you ruin eggs?

Tacho pushed at the rice with his plastic fork. There were two or three little dark blobs in there. He said, “I’ve never seen raisins in chicken and rice before!”

“Tachito?” Nayeli said. “Those aren’t raisins.”

“Oh, my God!” Vampi cried. “Tacho’s raisins have legs!”

“Arroz con cucarachas,” Tacho said. He raised his hands and looked at the cook.

“Qué,” she said.

“I give up,” Tacho announced. “I really do.”

“I’m not that hungry,” Nayeli said.

“Me, neither,” said Yolo.

Vampi was scooping up eggs with her tortilla.

“Why not?” she said.

When she was done, they threw their plates in the garbage bin and took their coffees outside and stood with the other pilgrims in the shadeless heat.



It felt like the bus was standing still and a dun blanket was being pulled past them, occasionally snagged up with bushes or a battered gas station. Suddenly, there would be an excitement of desiccated mountains, raw peaks exploding out of the hardpan and falling away again. The girls slept. Tacho had startled them all by pulling a radio out of his duffel bag. He was slumped in the seat, chewing gum like a cheerleader, his antenna extended and the tinny voice of a Mexican talk radio host buzzing like a wasp from the speaker: “What do we do about the Guatemalans? Have you seen the Salvadorans? ?Por favor! Keep them out! Call me now and offer your opinion….”

Nayeli had made her way up front again, and she sat behind the new driver, looking out at the skeleton of the world.

“Look at that,” he said. Green highway patrol vehicles were parked at angles beside the highway; rescuers were prying open a charred vehicle that sat in a wide circle of ashes.

“Look at that.” An Indian woman ran along the highway, holding a triangular piece of cardboard over a baby’s face to protect it from the sun.

“Look at that.” Crumpled wrecks of cars far down ravines. Nayeli never saw water anywhere. Riverbeds and streambeds looked like long lines of baby powder to her, buzzards circling slowly above them. “Look at that,” the driver said.