Into the Beautiful North(82)

They pulled off for gas at a place called Kanorado. Nayeli kept the fisherman’s hood up, but the wind sliced through her clothes like scissors. A state trooper pulled up to the pumps just as a siren on a pole started to howl. “Come on!” he shouted. “Tornado warning!” They trotted into the small food shop behind him and everybody hunkered down and drank burned coffee.

“She’s blowin’ up a whistler,” somebody said.

The cop said, “Driving somewhere?”

“KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS,” Nayeli explained.

“Huh, how ’bout that.” The cup turned to the woman who worked in the shop. “Vicki—how ’bout that? A working American can’t afford to gas up his rig, but the illegals can just drive cross-country all they want.”

When nothing tornadic happened, they paid for their gas and drove away.





Chapter Thirty-one



It was 9:00 AM.

In Conference Room 1A of the Bahia Hotel, the “Pelican Room,” Tía Irma’s tribunal sat at the wide folding banquet table. The hotel workers—two guys from Tamaulipas who had entered the United States just south of Ajo, Arizona, on a cloudy night in 1998—set white paper tablecloths on the tribunal’s table, and they brought La Osa plastic pitchers of water and a cauldron of coffee. Atómiko could have just attached his mouth to the spigot, he guzzled so much of it.

“Oye, Tía,” he said. “Can’t you order some doughnuts? Maybe some pastry? Damn! Don’t be cheap!”

To everyone’s astonishment, she had the Tamaulipas boys bring in a tray of pastries and muffins. Atómiko nearly gagged when he bit into a bran muffin.

“Bird food!” he yowled.

However, when he discovered the exotic sublimity of cheese-filled Danish, he fell silent.

Irma herself sat at the center of the table, a yellow legal pad before her and an array of Bahia Hotel complimentary pens fanned out precisely on the cloth. To her right, the gleaming and suave Chava Chavarí n—now Deputy Mayor of Tres Camarones, Sinaloa. He had gotten a shave at a barbershop, and his skin was tight and shiny. To her left, Yoloxochitl. On the other side of Chava, La Vampi slumped in her seat and played with her hair. She was distracted—Atómiko and El Brujo were the tribunal’s security guards, and every time Vampi caught El Brujo’s eye, she giggled and blushed. She wore a short skirt and brazenly flashed her panties at him. He scowled and shook his head.

Atómiko did not notice. He was licking frosting off his fingers so his mighty staff did not get sticky.

In the corner, like bad boys in a sixth-grade class, Matt and Angel sat on folding chairs. Matt got himself a cup of coffee and wondered how Nayeli was doing on her trip. Good old Nayeli. Yolo, exercising her frightening Mexican woman’s psychic love powers, turned and glared at him.

“Whoa, dude,” Matt whispered to Angel. “She knows what I’m thinking.”

“Stop thinking,” Angel advised.

Chava had put ads in several newspapers. Atómiko and the boys had spread the news at taco shops and barrio stores. Nobody knew what would happen.

Hipólito, one of the Tamaulipas boys, peeked into the room.

“Applicants,” he said.

“Send them in,” Tía Irma proclaimed.

Chava felt a thrill. This was a moment for the history books! He nudged her knee under the table with his own. Irma smiled.

A small line of nervous men straggled in. Five, six, ten. Some had hats. Atómiko pointed at them with his staff and growled. They pulled off their caps. Grinned sheepishly.

Twelve. The door opened again. Thirteen. It was getting crowded in the Pelican Room.

“We seek seven!” Irma intoned. “Soldiers or policemen!”

The men murmured yes and sí.

“We have three. Of you standing before me, I can only take four more.”

The door opened. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

Hipólito looked in and shook his head.

“What is it?” Irma called.

“Men.” He shrugged.

“How many men?”

He looked out.

“Many.”

Irma signaled Atómiko.

“Yeah, boss!” he said and marched out to the lobby.

A line of men snaked out the door. The people at the front desk were perturbed.

“Brother,” one of the men said, “take us back to Mexico.”

“Please,” said another.

The voices rose.

“It is too hard. We want to go home.”

“We just need jobs.”

“Can they promise us jobs?”

“Maybe a house?”

“Are there girls?”

“I want a wife. Are there women I can marry?”

“Can I bring my family?”

“I want to move my mamá from Durango. Will they let me bring her?”

“Ask the boss-lady inside, muchachos,” Atómiko announced. “She’s the chingona here!”

“I hear they got fishing down there. Is that right?”

“I miss dancing in the street, man! I miss bullfights!”

“Did you ever do fireworks on independence day?”

Some of them started laughing.