Into the Beautiful North (8 page)

Sensei Grey stepped forward and bowed deeply.

He suddenly threw a punch at Nayeli. She blocked it and spun and laid her foot against his jaw. The master smiled and bowed again.

Tears.

Wails of sorrow.

The four warriors waved bravely to the crowd. The girls kissed their mothers and grandmothers. Father François blessed them again. They got into the Cadillac. They slammed the doors. Aunt Irma honked the horn three times, drove around the plazuela a few times waving out the window, and they were gone.

Pepino climbed onto the roof of the Fallen Hand, yelling, “Nayeli! Nayeli! Come back to Pepino, Nayeliii!”

Aunt Irma accompanied them into the Tres Estrellas bus terminal. Poor folks in straw hats shuffled around with paper bags tied with twine. Mothers fed their children beans from plastic containers they were carrying because they couldn’t afford the food on the road. Electronic voices echoed off the cement floors.

Irma bought their tickets.

“Four, one-way, to Tijuana.”

The ticket taker had seen this before.

He smirked.

“It’s not what you think,” she snapped at him.

He shrugged.

“I have no opinion,” he said.

She distributed the tickets like playing cards to her warriors. She bought them all cold sodas and bottles of water for the road. Vampi cadged a rock-and-roll magazine out of her. Yolo had a paperback book called
Caballo de Troya VI
. The cover announced, “Jesus Christ was a UFO pilot!”

The huge bus loomed outside the window. Their driver was a dark-faced fat man named Chuy. His uniform was crisp, and he wore his bus pilot’s cap at a jaunty angle. Chuy oversaw the loading of their bags into the bins under the bus, then he positioned himself at the door to take tickets.

He eyed the girls. And Tacho.

Tacho said, “¿Qué?”

“Nada,” Chuy replied. “Aquí nomás.”

He took Tacho’s ticket.

He looked at Irma, hovering about, fussing with the girls’ hair.

“I’ll take care of them,” he promised her. “No worries.”

He gestured for their tickets.

Tacho hopped aboard and never looked back.

“Remember,” Irma said. “Call Chavarín immediately. Don’t move one step without him.”

“All right,” Nayeli said, and went to board.

Irma pulled her back.

“Don’t forget—former cops. Or soldiers.”

“Got it.”

“But,” Irma said, “don’t dawdle. In and out. And call me.”

“I will.”

“If there’s any trouble, I’ll fly there and meet you.”

Nayeli stared.

“You’ll… come to Tijuana?”

“Why not?”

Nayeli was a bit put off by this revelation.

Irma blushed. Fiddled with her hair. “It depends,” she said. Her face was bright carmine. Her eyelids fluttered. “It depends, you know, on what Chava says.” She laughed a tiny little laugh.

Oh, my God!
Nayeli thought.
She’s in love!
This was all some kind of bizarre dating service for La Osa!

“You’d better get going,” Irma said.

“I intend to go to get my father,” Nayeli blurted.

It was a day of revelations.

They stared at each other: stalemate.

“We’ll see….” Irma muttered.

Irma would have kissed Nayeli, but couldn’t get herself to lay her lips on Nayeli’s cheek. She popped an air kiss beside her face and shoved her toward the steps.

Chuy took her ticket.

Irma gave Yolo a brief hug and pushed her toward the bus, too.

Chuy took her ticket.

La Osa smacked Vampi’s bottom and said, “Crazy girl.”

Chuy took her ticket and smiled.

“Are you crazy?” he said.

“I am a vampire.”

“Ay, Dios.”

“Make me proud,” Irma called, then hurried away before they could answer her.

They found two rows of seats, four across, near the back of the bus. Yolo and Vampi sat on the left side. Nayeli and Tacho fought over the window on the right. They were all amazed that there was a bathroom at the back of the bus. Then they immediately started to flirt when a flushed American boy got on. He was only going as far as Los Mochis, but that didn’t stop them from working their magical stares, pouts, and blinks on him. La Vampi sighed a lot. Yolo looked stern yet open to suggestion. Nayeli tried her most enigmatic smiles. Tacho—Tacho ignored him completely.

Chuy boarded and hit the microphone: “We are going to Tijuana, amigos! Via Culiacán, Los Mochis, Guaymas, San Luis, and Mexicali. With a few stops in between. If you think you are going to Guadalajara, get off now!” He laughed. He shut the door. He turned on the air-conditioning, which thrilled them all at first, then froze them until they burrowed under clothing and fell asleep to escape the chill.

He released the brakes.

They rolled into dusk.

Chuy drove for precisely forty-one minutes. He pulled off the highway. The bus tilted in the gloom as he drove it into an alley.

“What the hell!” Tacho demanded.

The American boy was asleep behind them.

Voices were muttering: “Where is he going?”

They brushed between bushes and banana trees. The bus rocked over potholes and ruts. Then Chuy pulled up behind a small house.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He opened the doors and hopped out. They craned at the windows to see what he was up to. The back door of the house opened and a woman appeared. Chuy took off his cap and gave her a ravishing kiss. They went inside and slammed the door.

“Ah!” somebody said. “His wife!”

“Or his girlfriend!” someone else replied.

“He’s having supper!” another called out.

“Or his girlfriend!”

They all laughed and waited.

They were already an hour off schedule once Chuy sauntered back from his layover and bowed when the passengers applauded him. They drowsed through Culiacá n—a rustling stop where peasants traded places with other peasants. They carried tin pots of hot beans for the road. Tart goat cheese. Then Chuy sped to Los Mochis, announcing, “Los Mochis, Sinaloa! The most beautiful city in the world!” The girls awoke and regretfully saw the American boy off the bus. He stepped into the moth-crazy night, bright in Chuy’s lights against the whitewashed trunks of trees on the street. Dog barks and donkey brays entered with the hot air, sounding oddly dull and dusty.

“Now leaving Los Mochis,” Chuy said, and slammed the doors shut.

PSSHHT! The brakes hissed.

They rolled.

They were deep asleep when the soldiers stopped the bus. Nayeli was the first to awaken. She sensed the bus braking, the startling lurch as it dropped off the blacktop and stopped. She nudged Tacho awake.

“What?” he said, sitting up. “What?”

Chuy was looking at them in the rearview mirror. He locked eyes with Nayeli and raised his eyebrows, shook his head slightly, made a small calming motion with his palms. Tacho poked Yolo, who snorted awake and elbowed Vampi.

Chuy opened the doors. Everybody on the bus was awake now. A soldier with an M16 slung over his shoulder stepped aboard.

“Lights,” he said.

Chuy clicked on the interior lights.

Everybody was blinking, covering their eyes.

A second soldier’s head appeared behind the first’s back, peering in at them from the steps. Nayeli saw soldiers standing around the bus, looking up at them in the windows.

The first soldier entered, and the second, then a third. They filled the narrow passageway. They looked as young as Nayeli.

They first stared at an old woman alone in the right front row.

“Drugs?” he said.

“¡Ay Dios, no!” she cried.

He nodded, but he was already looking beyond her.

They came down the aisle, poking travelers with the barrels of their weapons.

“¿Mojados?” the first soldier asked a small group of men in front of Nayeli and Tacho.

“Only when we get to the other side,” one of the men quipped.

“Oh?” the soldier said.

“We’re Mexicans! From Jalisco.”

He nodded.

Moved forward.

He paused and looked at Nayeli.

His eyes fell to her chest.

He smiled a fraction of a smile, then turned his eyes to Tacho.

“You,” he said. “What the fuck are you supposed to be?”

“Wetback,” Tacho said. “When we get to the border.”

“Where you from?”

“Tres Camarones.”

“Never heard of it.”

The soldiers looked at each other and smirked again.

The second soldier said, “This one looks like he’s carrying drugs.”

“Marijuana?” his partner said to Tacho.

“No.”

“Coca?”

“Hell, no.”

The soldier laid his rifle across the seat back in front of Tacho’s face.

“When you leave Mexico,” he said, “don’t come back.”

“Don’t worry,” Tacho said. “I’m on my way.”

What did he care? He’d never see this piece of crap again. But he knew better than to mouth off.

They looked at Yolo and Vampi, and were about to say something else, when they caught sight of a couple huddled in the rear of the bus.

“¿Y ustedes, qué?” the first soldier demanded.

“Nada,” the man said. “Vamos a Tijuana.”

“¿Deveras? ¿Para qué van?”

The man spread his hands.

“Trabajo,” he said.

The soldiers were jamming in at his seat.

They kicked him.

“¡Ay!” he said.

“You’re illegal,” the interrogator said.

“No!”

“You snuck into Mexico, cabrón.”

“No,” the woman cried. “¡Por favor!”

“We’re Mexicans,” the man said.

“You’re foreigners.”

“No!”

Nayeli was shaking. Tacho put his hand on her forearm. He looked at the two girls across the aisle and mimicked looking forward with his eyes.

The soldier smacked the man in the mouth.

The two travelers were both crying.

“Where are you from, cabrón?”

“Colombia,” he admitted.

Cursing, the soldiers dragged him from his seat. The woman was yelling. The second soldier grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her.

“It’ll go better for you if you keep your mouth shut,” he said.

The Colombians were dragged and bounced down the aisle and shoved down the steps, and the soldier said, “Get out of here” to Chuy, who made the sign of the cross and shut the doors and started the engine and bounced the bus hard as he got back up on the road.