Into the Beautiful North(33)

They all laughed.

After a while, a baby pig wandered in, followed by a yellow duckling. Porfirio tossed them bits of his rolls. He laughed again when the animals vanished under his bed for a good night’s sleep.



The outhouse was noxious, and nobody wanted to use it.

It was very hard to get comfortable on the narrow mattresses of the bunk beds, and Tacho gallantly insisted on sleeping at the foot of the bed, on a folded blanket. It broke Nayeli’s heart to see him lying in the dirt, but he was so rummed up he fell asleep quickly. He snored, but so did Porfirio and Araceli. They had hung a blanket between the two halves of the room to give the friends some privacy. Everyone slept in their clothes.

Yolo took the top bunk and refused to share it, so Vampi lay across Nayeli, on the bottom, whimpering and muttering in her sleep, sticking her foot in Nayeli’s back, laying her arm over her neck. No wonder Yolo was sick of sharing a bed with the Vampire.

At dawn, Nayeli rose and slipped her shoes on and stepped outside.

The dump was still. The light was the color of a winter ocean, and a thin pall of smoke lay over the village. Chickens clucked softly around her. She could hear snoring coming from the shacks on either side. Suddenly, a rooster down the block let loose his call. Pigs snorted and fretted.

The yard was a small patch of gray soil. Do?a Araceli had planted roses. Nayeli was startled by them. The fence was apparently made of bedsprings, tied together. The pig next door shoved its snout into the fence and wiggled its nostrils, trying to catch a whiff of Nayeli. All along the fence, rosebushes bloomed. Red roses, pink roses, yellow.

She stepped out into the dirt alley. A dog with peeling fur stood and wagged its tail at her. She waved her hand at it to try to make it back off. It trotted to her and put its filthy head against her leg.

Nayeli backed away from the dog and wandered down the alley to the edge of the cemetery. She was startled to see smoke rising from one of the graves. The crosses and painted furniture were stark in the morning light. Etched like charcoal drawings. Somewhere, a radio was playing—she recognized the song. Dave Matthews. She always liked that rola, the one where he asked the woman to crash into him, though now it seemed like the loneliest thing she’d ever heard.

It shook her, this place. It was awful. Tragic. Yet… yet it moved her. The sorrow she felt. It was profound. It was moving, somehow. The sorrow of the terrible abandoned garbage dump and the sad graves and the lonesome shacks made her feel something so far inside herself that she could not define it or place it. She was so disturbed that it gave her the strangest comfort, as though something she had suspected about life all along was being confirmed, and the sorrow she felt in her bed at night was reflected by this soil.

She stepped toward the graves. She had to touch them. She had to see the names painted on the crosses. She smiled. She was acting like Vampi—Nayeli, the Goth.

There was no one in sight as she passed among the graves. She picked a few blue flowers from the weeds and put them on the mounds. She picked trash off the cement slab of Uvaldo Borrego. She straightened the tilted cross of María Zepeda and braced it with stones.

She stood among the graves and looked back at the huts and shacks of the village. If she squinted, it almost seemed rustic—a sweet little town painted in all the Mexican primary colors. Somewhere, Tacho had found a store. She wondered if there might be a telephone there. She had Irma’s number memorized. And she had Matt’s card in her pocket. Should she call?

She heard a voice behind her say, “Psst!”

She glanced.

An awful young man was standing on a garbage mound above her. She turned her back on him.

“?Oye, morra!”

She moved away and stood by a fresh grave.

Nayeli had just about had it with badly behaved border men.

“?No me oyes?” he called. “I’m talking to you.”

“No,” she said. “I hear you. I am just not listening to you.”

He stared down at her.

“Your mistake, sweetheart,” he said.





Chapter Fourteen



There he stood, surveying his realm, the warrior Atómiko. King of the Hill. Baddest of the trash pickers. The master of the dompe, known by all, feared by many. He wore baggy suit trousers cinched tight at his narrow waist, a sleeveless white undershirt. His tattoos were exposed: Zapata on his right biceps, the yin-yang symbol on his left shoulder. Ever since he’d seen the movie Yojimbo on San Diego public television when he was stationed at the Mexican army’s dismal Seventh Battalion down the periférico, he knew he was a warrior. He’d formed a judo club in the barracks. He’d declared himself a samurai. And that’s what he was—his head was shaved and his brow was covered with an Apache red bandanna folded tight and tied just above his brows. His mustache drooped at the corners of his mouth, and his chin whiskers were getting thick, hiding the smallpox scars on his cheeks. Across his chest, a tight sash made from curtains he’d found before the dump was closed down. And beside him, his long samurai sword. Well, it was a staff. But it was noble and powerful in his hands.

Every garbage picker worth his salt had a staff of some sort. Most of them just had broom handles with a nail or two in the end. They had no vision. No pride. You had to have something to move the trash and fish for goodies; you had to kill the rats and chase off the dogs. For most of them, any pole would do. But not for Atómiko. He was a ronin—his staff was his pride and his weapon. It was an extension of himself. And there it was, beside him in the dawn light. Gripped in his right fist and forming a fulcrum upon which he leaned, like a Masai warrior (National Geographic special, Tijuana’s Channel 12), with his right foot propped against his left knee.