Into the Beautiful North (9 page)

Nayeli saw the palest ghosts in the night as the Colombians were tossed into a tan Humvee and then were swallowed whole by dust and darkness and were gone, as if it had all been a dream.

Their little bags were still in the overhead bin.

Nayeli caught Chuy’s eyes in the mirror again.

He shook his head. He shrugged. He turned off the interior lights.

Gunshots awoke them before dawn.

Tacho dove out of his seat and sprawled in the aisle. Chuy wove across the highway, and the big bus shuddered when he braked. They heard yelling, then three more shots, in rapid succession: POP-POP-POP. Everybody had heard guns go off before—it could have been a rabbit hunt, or a goat’s execution for a barbacoa. But it was on the long empty road.

Vampi was on top of Yolo, and she whispered, “Is it bandidos?”

Chuy was rolling slowly, peering out his side window, unsure about how he should respond to this ambush. Stop or speed away? Nayeli moved up to the sideways bench behind his seat.

“Who are they?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

A pickup wobbled around behind them. POP-POP. Men in cowboy hats, waving their arms in the dark.

Chuy decided: he put it in gear and sped up. The truck followed. Nayeli crouched behind him. Suddenly, the truck sped up and passed them. POP-POP-POP. The men held up banners that read: ¡pan! They hollered. They waved. They threw beer cans. They sped away.

Chuy exhaled and slowed down.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “A political rally.”

Nayeli started to laugh.

So did he.

“Are all your trips like this?” she said.

“Miss,” he replied, “if you want to see the damnedest things in life, drive long-haul trips in Mexico.”

By the time he had finished telling her stories of flaming car wrecks, armed bandits, UFOs, roadside devils chasing the bus, and the tragic story of Melesio, the driver who sneezed at the wheel and drove off a cliff, killing everyone but himself in the bus, the sun had come up.

Chapter Nine

A
relief driver boarded the bus in Huila, Sonora. Chuy staggered to a small bunk behind the toilets and fell asleep. The last thing he said before starting to snore was “Thirty-minute break!”

The girls and Tacho stiffly made their way off the bus and stood, overcome by the killing desert light. A melancholy little dog wagged its peg of a tail at them, and Tacho threw a rock at it at the same time that Vampi said, “He’s so cute!”

Alkaline dust moved through the flat white land like smoke. Far in the distance, a weak little dust devil whirled up and carried some scraps of paper over the sand to a rattling creosote bush. It dropped its small load of trash there as it fell apart. Immediately upon its demise, another rose and lurched away toward the far mountains that revealed themselves as a black clot of shadows on the horizon.

“Lovely,” Tacho noted.

Nayeli clapped her hands together. “Come on! Let’s go! Let’s have breakfast and freshen up!”

They trotted across the endless black two-lane, standing aside to allow a rusted fuel tanker to bellow past, its driver pulling the air horn chain about twenty times when he saw the girls.

“He could be honking at me, you know,” Tacho said.

“Dream on,” Nayeli replied, marching forcefully into the tiny bus station and diner.

The toilets were caked in feces. Yolo almost threw up. The girls watched the door as each took her turn peeing in the sink. Tacho, in the men’s room, was astonished to find no toilet at all, just a hole in the floor with a ghastly rind of brown stuccoed around its mouth. “Oh, well,” he said, and assumed the bombardier position. There was no toilet paper. He was forced to use the newsprint pages of a fan magazine that featured pictures of pop music bands.

Inside the diner, a harried woman was negotiating for bus tickets to Mazatlán. There were three tables on a concrete floor. Passengers from the bus sat outside eating their own beans. They occasionally stepped in to buy a paper cup of coffee or a Coca-Cola. At one table, an immensely overweight boy sat, grunting and wheezing. Nayeli was fascinated by him. Fat welled up off his neck, and his breasts were so huge they ran around his sides and seemed to hold his arms away from his body. His eyes were lost in folds—she thought he might be blind. His hair was so short that she could see his sweaty scalp shining in the neon lights. He had tiny ears that seemed perched on the neck fat, and he turned his head toward the sound of the woman’s voice and made little fluty noises at her. She was apparently his mother.

Tacho ordered arroz con pollo. The girls chose simple fried eggs and tortillas. Coffee all around.

The fat boy picked up the sugar dispenser. It was glass, with a slanted chrome top. Nayeli nudged Yolo, who glanced over. The boy tipped the sugar into his fist, put his head back, and poured the white crystals into his mouth. His mother walked over and gently took the sugar from him. He kicked his feet and squirmed. She whispered to him. He got up reluctantly and trudged toward the door.

“Life,” the mother said to them as she passed, “does not get simpler.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nayeli said.

Their meals came on paper plates.

Tacho’s food was watery and gray.

“Yum-yum!” quipped Yolo, whose eggs didn’t look too bad. How could you ruin eggs?

Tacho pushed at the rice with his plastic fork. There were two or three little dark blobs in there. He said, “I’ve never seen raisins in chicken and rice before!”

“Tachito?” Nayeli said. “Those aren’t raisins.”

“Oh, my God!” Vampi cried. “Tacho’s raisins have legs!”

“Arroz con cucarachas,” Tacho said. He raised his hands and looked at the cook.

“Qué,” she said.

“I give up,” Tacho announced. “I really do.”

“I’m not that hungry,” Nayeli said.

“Me, neither,” said Yolo.

Vampi was scooping up eggs with her tortilla.

“Why not?” she said.

When she was done, they threw their plates in the garbage bin and took their coffees outside and stood with the other pilgrims in the shadeless heat.

It felt like the bus was standing still and a dun blanket was being pulled past them, occasionally snagged up with bushes or a battered gas station. Suddenly, there would be an excitement of desiccated mountains, raw peaks exploding out of the hardpan and falling away again. The girls slept. Tacho had startled them all by pulling a radio out of his duffel bag. He was slumped in the seat, chewing gum like a cheerleader, his antenna extended and the tinny voice of a Mexican talk radio host buzzing like a wasp from the speaker: “What do we do about the Guatemalans? Have you seen the Salvadorans? ¡Por favor! Keep them out! Call me now and offer your opinion….”

Nayeli had made her way up front again, and she sat behind the new driver, looking out at the skeleton of the world.

“Look at that,” he said. Green highway patrol vehicles were parked at angles beside the highway; rescuers were prying open a charred vehicle that sat in a wide circle of ashes.

“Look at that.” An Indian woman ran along the highway, holding a triangular piece of cardboard over a baby’s face to protect it from the sun.

“Look at that.” Crumpled wrecks of cars far down ravines. Nayeli never saw water anywhere. Riverbeds and streambeds looked like long lines of baby powder to her, buzzards circling slowly above them. “Look at that,” the driver said.

A raven raced them.

Nayeli watched the cattle become more emaciated and spindly. They stood in the sun as if they’d already been slaughtered, as if they were being barbecued down to charcoal and just didn’t know it. They lost their color, went from the reds and creams she knew in Sinaloa to dull brown and dusty black. They hung their heads and nuzzled awful bony weeds and cacti. Their ribs showed—the farther north the bus drove, the more pronounced the cages. Soon the cows looked like old rugs thrown over woodpiles.

“That’s sad,” she finally said.

“What is?” said the driver over his shoulder.

“How they suffer.”

“Who?”

“The cows out here.”

“What cows?”

“Those cows.”

“Those there?”

“Yes, the cows. They hardly look like they have enough meat on them to eat. They must be too dry for milk.”

“What cows?” he said.

“Those cows,” she said.

“Where?”

Nayeli pointed.

“There! Everywhere!”

“Oh, those?” He laughed. “Those aren’t cows!” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Things must really be sad down south where you come from,” the driver said. “The animals must be midgets.”

“What?”

“Darling, those aren’t cows. Those are northern rabbits!”

He laughed and slapped the steering wheel and winked at her in the mirror and whistled the opening notes of “Cumbia Lunera.”

The aduana station outside of San Luis was squat and ugly in the setting sun. Chuy came back to them. He rubbed his eyes.

“Don’t say anything to these cabrones,” he told Nayeli. “Tell your girls to shut up. Be invisible. They usually hit people for bribes going south. But they’re watching for anything they can get. If you have marijuana, you’d better get rid of it.” He slapped the back of her seat twice and bounded down the steps, calling out to a uniformed Mexican customs official, “¡Mi capitán!” He laughed too loud and slapped the captain on the back.

“Great,” Yolo said. “It’ll be a miracle if we survive traveling through our own country.”

Nayeli said, “Did you know it would be like this?”

Tacho completed her thought: “I’m not worried about the Yunaites anymore.”

They laughed nervously.

“When we get back,” Nayeli said, “we have to tell them what it’s like up here.”

Yolo was already secretly planning her memoir—perhaps García-García would finance a small first printing.

The aduana officers waved them all off the bus and pointed at the station.

“Single file,” the captain said.

Chuy and the relief driver were getting all the bags out from under the bus.

Young Federales in aviator shades and Members Only jackets lounged outside and laughed.

As Nayeli walked inside, one of them murmured, “Buenóta.” Its implication was
Very good to have sex with
. She kept her eyes cast down and stepped into the smelly room. It was painted in two faded tones—the bottoms of the walls were green, and the tops were dirty yellow. Desks sat in the corners, and scattered aluminum kitchen chairs lined one wall. A fan turned slowly over their heads.

Two long metal counters cut across the room, and bags stood open upon them.

“¿Drogas?”

“No.”

Each traveler went through the same little charade.

“¿Drogas?”

“No.”

“¿Contrabando?”

“No, nunca.”

“Foreigner?”

“Mexican, señor.”

A cop sat in a corner, eating a sandwich. He was laughing into a cell phone. “¡Orale, pues, guey!” he said to his best friend, and snapped the phone shut. He watched Tacho. “Mira nomás,” he said. He pointed at Tacho, and several of his cohorts went to his desk and whispered. They laughed. They turned and stared at him.

Tacho could feel the tension in his jawbones. He started to grind his teeth. He didn’t mean to, but it just started to happen.

Nayeli dawdled, backing up to him.

He shoved her with his shoulder.

“Move on, m’ija,” he said. “I’m all right.”

But, of course, he wasn’t.

The cop stood, crumpled the wrapper of his sandwich, and tossed a long shot into a trash can. “Three points,” he noted. His cohorts laughed and patted him on the back.

“He’s the big star,” Nayeli whispered to Yolo. “You can tell. He’s the Jefe.”

“You,” the Jefe said.

He was staring right at Tacho.

“Me?” Tacho said.

“Me?” the Jefe repeated.

The other cops laughed.

“You’re a drug addict.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re on cocaine right now.”

“I am not!”

The cop walked over to him. Tacho could smell the Cholula hot sauce and ham on his breath. That and a liberal spritzing of Axe. Nayeli and the girls stood frozen, looking down but watching.

The cop walked around Tacho.

“Where are the drugs?”

“I told you, sir, there are no drugs.”

“Oh, really.”

He put his hand on Tacho’s back.

Tacho jumped like a nervous pony.

“Are you scared of something?” the cop asked.

“No.”

“Liar.”

He gripped Tacho’s upper arm.

“Are you a male prostitute?”

“No.”

“But you are a faggot.”

Tacho coughed.

Everybody watched him.

“It’s all right; we’re all amigos here,” the cop said. “It’s all right with us if you’re a faggot. Mexico is a free country.” He squeezed. “Faggot.”

Then, the most shameful moment in Tacho’s life happened, right in front of Nayeli, Yolo, and Vampi.

A single tear rolled down his cheek.

“I —” He cleared his throat. “I am not a—faggot.”

“What?”

“I am not.”

Nayeli turned around.

“He is my boyfriend.”

“Yes,” said Yolo. “We’re going to Tijuana for their wedding!”