Amigoland (26 page)

“If you can stay in there, I can stay where I am.”

Don Fidencio considered what she was saying. He was sitting in a plastic chair against the far wall, as he had been doing
since four that morning, when he woke up in bed with his clothes still on. It was now close to eight. When he ducked his head,
he could see the very edges of her sandals under the door.

“And my brother?”

“He went back to the restaurant, but I know he’s worried.”

After a while he leaned on his cane until he could push himself up. He was wearing an undershirt and a bath towel, which he
was doing his best to keep knotted. A trace of light from under the door helped guide him. He shuffled in her direction, using
the cane to clear a path, first pushing his shoes to one side and then the pile of clothes to the other.

“Wait until I tell you when,” he said, then unchained the door and shuffled back to the plastic chair. “Ya.”

Socorro edged open the door as if he might have suddenly fallen back to sleep and she didn’t want to wake him. The bathroom
light was on and added to the sliver of daylight pouring in from between the curtains. The old man was sitting with an extra
towel on his lap, where he kept the plastic bag with his medicines. Once she shut the door, he leaned back so he could adjust
the position of the bag. Then the curtains blew open and the air in the room seemed to change.

“I better close the window,” she said.

“No.”

“Something smells bad.”

“But not from outside.”

She noticed then that the bed was stripped bare and the sheets were lying near the entrance to the bathroom. A dark stain
spread out from the center of the mattress, fading as it made its way toward the edges. She held her place as she glanced
around the dim space, trying to avoid the mattress and then understanding that the only other direction for her to look was
toward the old man.

“Don’t go telling him,” he said.

“He worries about you.”

“Say whatever you want, just not this.”

“You want me to lie to your brother?”

“It matters more to me than it does to him,” he said. “He only cares that I’m still alive.”

When she finally nodded, Don Fidencio thought about making her swear to this, but he let it pass when she pulled up a chair
and sat next to him.

“You should have called us.”

“For what, if it was too late?”

“It was an accident,” she said. “People have accidents.”

“But how many times?” he opened his hands to ask. “Old people who are supposed to be in nursing homes, those are the ones
who have the accidents.” He paused as he glanced at the bed. “He never should have taken me out of that place. He should have
left me to die there with the rest of them.”

“Please, stop saying those things.” She tried to reach out to him, but he pulled away.

“And why not, if this is only the truth — my body is useless, the same as I am. So young, what do you know about these things,
about your body not doing what you wanted it to do, what it was supposed to do?”

Socorro looked the other way, then down at her lap. She wanted to say something to him, offer some words of hope or a way
to restore his faith that things would get better, but instead they stayed like this, each of them realizing there was nothing
left to say.

“Let me help you,” she said, kneeling beside him.

He raised the sleeve of the undershirt to wipe at his nose. “I want to stay alone, without any help.”

“We can’t leave you here,” she said.

“So that he can take me back there, leave me like they did already once, this time for good?”

“Nobody’s going to take you back,” she said, now standing next to him. “Your brother promised to take you to Linares.”

“How, then?” he said, and with his chin he motioned toward the pile of clothes.

“Leave it,” she said. “Just clean yourself, and I can go buy you new pants and a shirt to wear, like if it was another trip.”

“And if it happens to me again?”

“It won’t,” she said.

“And still, if it happens?”

“It won’t, I told you.”

“Now you sound like me when I was trying to convince Amalia and her husband.”

“Maybe I do.” She helped him stand up. “Maybe you were right to call him that ugly name you like to call him.”

“The Son Of A Bitch?”

“That one.”

They ended up staying an extra day in Ciudad Victoria. Socorro explained to Don Celestino how his brother had been sick during
the night, probably from something he ate at the bus station, and was in no condition to be traveling. He hadn’t opened the
door because he’d been embarrassed for anyone to see him that way.

She spent the rest of the morning shopping for the clothes the old man would need for the next couple of days. By the time
she returned to the hotel, she found that Don Fidencio had used one of the plastic chairs to sit in the shower while he cleaned
himself. And meanwhile, Don Celestino had gone out for a walk and, as she discovered later that afternoon, located a pharmacy
that sold those little blue vitamins he was so fond of.

T
wo men, both short and dark, stood alongside the lonely highway. They wore straw cowboy hats, the bands soiled a dark hue
as evidence of their labor. Earlier it had drizzled, and their bright long-sleeve shirts, one yellow and the other red, were
still dripping from the cuffs. Next to them stood a nylon sack thick with bristling ears of corn. Empty soda bottles of various
colors, potato-chip wrappers, and cigarette butts littered the gravel patch where they had come to wait for their ride.

Don Fidencio leaned back against the headrest as the driver edged the bus onto the shoulder. This would be no less than the
tenth stop he’d made in the last two hours since leaving the station. They had missed the first-class bus earlier that morning
and, in order to not waste any more time, his brother insisted they take the next direct bus, which, as it turned out, was
direct but not nonstop.

Behind the two men, the shoulder dipped and then farther on extended toward what appeared to be a grove of some sort. One
of the men turned and called to someone behind them. A moment later, as the dust and empty wrappers were still settling back
to the ground, two young women emerged from where the earth dropped off. The same man held out his hand to a woman carrying
a baby swaddled in a pink blanket; the second woman carried a wet tarp and a pair of plastic shopping bags filled with groceries.
The four adults boarded the bus with the sleeping baby and the nylon sack. Once the bus pulled back onto the road, the old
man yawned and turned toward the window again. The bus slowed for a curve in the road and then accelerated again on the straightaway.
A wet goat stood tethered to a metal stake near the shoulder. Across the dense countryside there was no sign of a house or
a farm or so much as a dirt path leading to the metal stake. Just a goat getting sprayed with the rainwater still on the highway.

They crossed a truss bridge with only two lanes and a while later passed a sign that read,
BIENVENIDO A NUEVO LEóN.
At least they were getting closer; the next sign indicated that it was thirty kilometers to Linares. The clouds from earlier
had lifted, and what remained of them was covering the very tops of the mountains to the west. The blossoming huisache roused
the countryside with alternating splotches of green and a yellowish-orange. Less frequent were the yuccas’ lush white flowers
blossoming high above the rest of the scrubland. Even an old man with poor eyesight could tell the land had changed the farther
from the border they ventured. He wondered if his grandfather had ridden past these same thickets when he was taken from his
home. This thought sat with him for several kilometers until he tried to recall the last thing he had seen of his own house,
but he moved on when he realized that all he could recall was the dank hotel room he had been in the last two nights, which
he was trying his best to forget. They hadn’t arrived yet and he was asking himself what the point of it was. All this way
to wake up dirty in his own bed? It didn’t matter how far they traveled because this wasn’t going to change his condition.
Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or the day after, the same thing might happen again, and if not that, then something worse.
How far could he be from another stroke or from having to be fed and refed because he couldn’t so much as remember to swallow?
And more unbearable things, those that he had heard happening down the hall — he could only imagine what the shouts and gurgles
and sobbing were all about. If anything, the worst of it was probably more likely to happen than not happen. And so the shame
he felt that early morning in the hotel had since been replaced with the simple and irrefutable truth that this was where
his life was headed now; he had escaped one prison only to discover that there was no way of escaping his own failing body.

The old man had fallen asleep by the time the baby started crying. Only with the hum of the tires on the road and the soundtrack
to the most recent romantic comedy did he manage to sleep through the wails.

The baby was still sobbing when Socorro caught the infant’s attention by opening her eyes and mouth wider than he had seen
anyone do in his short life. He seemed confused now, not sure if he should return to crying or pay more attention to the lady
with the curious face.

“Did you hear me?” Don Celestino asked.

She ducked just below the seat back and then peeked over the top, which caused the baby to giggle and hide in his mother’s
shoulder before they started the game all over again.

“Socorro?”

“Why don’t we talk about it later?” This time she peeked around the side of the seat and sent the baby into a fit of laughter.
“I think we are almost there.”

“Because already it’s been two days since we left.”

“I called her once, she knows where I am. What more do you want?”

The baby’s mother turned to see what was so funny and then stared at Socorro until she sat back in her seat. The mother placed
the baby against her other shoulder, which did little to calm him. Finally she rearranged the blanket to cover the child and
give him her full breast.

“She’s going to think I wouldn’t let you call.”

“Why are you so worried?”

“You ask me that question when you know the woman doesn’t like me?”

“And you think a phone call is going to change that?”

“Maybe one of these days she’ll change her mind about us being together.”

“Let me worry about my mother, and you worry about your brother.”

Don Celestino turned away, as if he were gazing out the opposite window at something he had spotted on the countryside.

“I don’t know why you want to make it worse,” he said when he turned back.

“And I don’t know why you always have to worry about how things look to everybody else.”

He glanced over his shoulder, as if he might need to go to the lavatory. Then he turned back toward the seats in front of
him. At least his brother was snoring loud enough that he had little chance of hearing them.

“Sometimes it seems like you’re afraid,” she said.

“What is there to be afraid of?”

“Nothing.” And now it was Socorro who turned away. They were passing in front of a brick schoolhouse, long and narrow, with
a chain-link fence surrounding it. Schoolgirls dressed in gray skirts and white knit shirts gathered in a large circle near
one corner of the yard, while the boys, in their darker pants and white shirts, chased a soccer ball at the other end.

“How can you say I’m afraid?”

“Then tell me why it all has to be a secret with us.”

“How much of a secret can it be, if your mother knows and my brother is here with us?”

“And the rest?”

“We’re together,” he said. “Going places, seeing things together, like a couple. What does it matter, the rest of them?”

He was still searching for a way to make her understand when they pulled into the central station. They waited for everyone
to exit before he helped his brother to stand up and make it down the aisle and off the bus.

Don Celestino carried their change of clothes and the toiletries in a small backpack they had bought the day before. He would
have put his brother’s medicines in there as well, but the old man said he didn’t want to arrive in town with his hands empty,
like some trampa. They walked in halting steps as they avoided the direct path of the travelers exiting the terminal and the
candy vendors who were waiting for them with wicker baskets balanced atop their heads. As they entered the building, two little
boys wearing identical red-checked shirts raced around the rows and under the seats, neither one paying much attention to
their mother, who was yelling for them to come sit down. The bus driver, his tie loosened, entered the small, sparsely lit
café at the far end of the terminal. Most of the turquoise-colored seats in the sitting area were filled with travelers waiting
for their destination to be announced. Three bus lines operated out of Linares, but only two of these counters were open.
According to the schedules listed on the wall behind the counters, each of the companies offered service back to Ciudad Victoria
at least once every hour. If they were lucky, Don Celestino thought, they might be able to head back north as early as tomorrow
afternoon.

Socorro held his hand while he kept a close eye on Don Fidencio ambling forward with his cane. They had barely arrived at
the exit before a couple of taxi drivers began jockeying for their business, each offering to carry their bags for them. Outside,
a row of six taxis stretched the length of the building. The drivers let their conversations trail off when they noticed the
possibility of a new fare. Don Celestino led them toward a small green-and-white taxi with spoked hubcaps. The driver, a young
man no more than twenty-five, wore baggy blue jeans and a white T-shirt underneath his Chicago Bulls jersey. He was sitting
on the edge of his open trunk, talking to another driver leaning against the hood of his car.