Into the Beautiful North(40)

“Welcome to Palestine!” he yelled.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Nayeli said.

“I love it,” Atómiko replied.

Tacho hawked and spit.

“You don’t see this on TV,” he said.

“Sábado Gigante,” said Nayeli. “Today, we feature Chinese jugglers, the song stylings of Ricardo Arjona and Juanes, and border war!”

The girls laughed, sort of, more nervous than amused. They had stepped into the apocalypse and wanted nothing more than to be bored in Tres Camarones.

It took about a half hour for the gas to fade and drift away. The runners, wiping their eyes, moved back to the fence. The coyote signaled them and walked back to his spot.

It was as dark as Nayeli had ever seen it. Far to the west, she could see the eerie hazy glow of searchlights on their tall poles. She coughed, dust clogging her throat, small tendrils of the gas still lingering in the air. They huddled on their haunches behind the coyote, hands on one another’s backs like monkeys. She clutched the coyote’s shirttail. He slapped her hand away. “Don’t mess up my clothes,” he said. There was no whispering. She’d thought there would be whispering.

Behind Tacho, Atómiko squatted with his staff across his knees.

“If we get separated and you get caught,” he said, “I’ll meet you where they drop off the deportees in Tijuana.”

“What do you mean, meet us?”

“Nobody’s catching Atómiko,” Atómiko proclaimed. “I’m not going in a Border Patrol cage! Never been in a cage, and will never go in a cage!”

Nayeli was suddenly scared to face the border without the Warrior.

“I will be there,” he said. “Come back to me, brown girl.”

“Where will you be?” Nayeli said.

“Don’t worry—they all get left in the same spot. I’ll wait for you there. Nobody will touch you.”

“Our hero,” said Yolo, perhaps not completely sober yet, but so scared that her buzz was evaporating through her pores.

“Listen,” the coyote said.

They heard an engine approach. Headlights made pinholes in the wall light up like stars. The engine receded. The truck moved on.

“Let’s go. We have about fifteen minutes,” the coyote said.

He squat-walked to the fence and knocked the dry bushes aside and yanked a section of fence loose. It squealed loudly.

He popped through and was gone.

Nayeli followed, trying to make herself small, but she caught her scalp on the edge of the metal and cut a small wound in her forehead. Blood ran into her right eye, and though she wiped it away, it looked like she was weeping blood.

Vampi went through on her hands and knees. “My rose!” she cried. “I dropped my rose!” Yolo shoved her. She followed. Tacho crawled through and panicked for a moment when he saw no one on the dirt road. Then he remembered the arroyo across the way, and he ran and plunged through the creosote bushes and came flying down upon the group like a cat falling off a roof. “Hey, idiot!” the coyote cried as he crashed into them.

Atómiko stepped through the gap, bent back to the doorway, and kicked the metal back into place. He might as well have rung a bell, it was so loud. He raised his staff over his head and yelled, “Atómiko is in the house!” in trash dump English. He swung his staff all around, then laid it across his shoulders and strolled across the road.

“So much for secrecy,” the coyote said.

And he was off.

Nayeli had to run to keep up. She clutched a tattered wad of tissue to her forehead with one hand and knocked branches out of her face with the other. Vampi yelped and trotted after her, and Yolo grabbed the back of Vampi’s shirt to hang on. Vampi took the brunt of the whipping branches Nayeli charged through. She cried out a hundred times as she got smacked. She was alarmed to see a pregnant woman running beside her. Where did she come from? The woman held her belly up with both hands and charged ahead. Tacho was a few paces behind them all, watching the pale ghosts of the running girls. They seemed to vanish. He knew they’d found the left turn. He passed it, fumbled back, and heard them breaking through the brush in the dark. He never saw any gap. It was all just more shadows. Headlights suddenly cut across the valley from the road along the fence. Tacho plunged into the darkest clump of shadow and prayed he didn’t step on a rattlesnake or fall into some pit full of tarantulas. Atómiko had completely vanished.

Vampi was out of breath. “?Ay, ay, ay!” she gasped as she ran. The ground was rough. They tripped, twisted their ankles. The pregnant woman suddenly grabbed Vampi and held her up. Vampi was startled at first, then leaned on the stronger, older woman. She might have been an angel. She might have been the wraith of a murdered paisana come from the shadows to save them. Vampi surrendered to her fate and ran.

Nayeli had to slow down for the coyote—he was a smoker, and he wasn’t really in shape. She could hear him wheezing. If she’d known the way, she would have pushed him aside. Her legs were like steel springs—she could run cross-country all night. She was pretty sure Yolo could keep up. But she was trapped behind this slow, malodorous, coughing male.

“Hurry up,” she said.

He rounded a curve, Nayeli right on his back—the moon made the sandy path glow a faint violet gray. They came in sight of the bridge the coyote had told them about. It was low, and the coyote dove under it and clutched his chest and gasped as if he were dying. Nayeli crawled in beside him, then received Vampi and the mystery woman. Yolo dove in next. After about a minute, Tacho was heard announcing, “Oh, God!” outside as he staggered in and fell in the sand.