Джойс Оутс - Prison Noir

At the time, he thought the old man was just being dramatic. But when Marichuy could no longer hide her pregnant belly, and Celso came home to find the severed heads of his guard dogs laid out on his doorstep like some sort of ritual sacrifice, his father put him on the first train to Nogales.

The cellblock stood four tiers high. Celso and the other new arrivals waited in line as a young CO read off their numbers and directed them to their cells. When Celso’s turn came, the officer told him to wait.

Celso sighed — more awkward translating, more confusion.

Down the block, a chubby CO was tearing down a barricade of yellow tape so an inmate porter could mop the area. The CO headed toward them, wadding up the tape into a ball.

“Fadeaway!” he shouted, as he jumped back and shot at an open trash can next to Celso. The ball came undone in midair and spilled into a tangled web of tape all over the mouth of the can. “Damn,” he said.

The CO led him to an empty cell, next to where the porter was mopping, and locked him inside.

As he left, he said something that made the porter laugh. It was a high-pitched, girlish laugh. On a second look, Celso realized the porter was a woman. (An ugly woman, with greasy hair, pitted skin, and tiny breasts.) Celso looked at the floor she was mopping — a huge puddle of dried blood.

The woman caught him staring. “Hi,” she said, waving her hand.

She asked him something else, but he didn’t understand her. He just nodded and smiled, nervous, hoping it was the right response.

It wasn’t.

Confused, she raised her overly tweezed eyebrows at him.

“Don’t talk to that maricon ,” an unknown voice said in fluent Spanish.

Another inmate with a mop and bucket walked over to the cell door, this one male, Hispanic. His neck tattoo said AZTECA in big, bold letters. “Mexican?” he asked.

Celso smiled. “Yes.”

“Guerrero?”

“Chiapas.”

“What’s up, brother?” the man said, extending his arm through the bars to shake Celso’s hand. “I’m Flores. Listen, man, you got to watch who you talk to around here. People see you hanging with these mariquitas and they start to wonder.”

Celso was puzzled. He looked back at the female porter. She seemed suddenly muscular. Her chin seemed stubbly. It was all so obvious now.

Flores could read his face.

“Aw, fuck no, vato !” he said, laughing. “What? You thought you were going to get some chocha in here, didn’t you? Ha!”

Embarrassed, Celso tried to change the subject. “What happened there?”

Flores glanced over at the blood. “Somebody jumped, I guess. So how long have you been in Michigan?”

“Not long,” he said, staring at the streaks the mop left behind. “Where are we, exactly?”

“This here is Jackson.” He held up his right hand and pointed to the base of his palm. “Right here.” People from here were always doing that hand-as-state-map thing.

“So how much time you got?” Flores asked.

Celso shrugged. “They said I can go home when I’m twenty-two.”

“How old are you now?”

“Eighteen.”

Flores lowered his voice. “So what did you do?”

“Oh,” Celso said, “I didn’t do anything, really. I was just there.”

“So what happened then?”

“A couple of people got killed.”

Flores peered at him suspiciously. “Man. . what? ”

Down the block, the CO yelled at Flores to get back to work. He stepped away from the bars.

“Listen, vato ,” he said, grabbing his mop bucket. “When they break the doors for yard, come find me. And bring your paperwork with you.”

“Okay,” Celso replied, unsure of what he was agreeing to, but too afraid to refuse his only source of conversation in months. “Hey, wait!” he said, before the other man left.

Flores stopped.

“How do you know the guy wasn’t pushed?”

Flores shook his head. “Not likely. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you can get killed in this bitch. But this is quarantine , man. This is where it starts. When that door closes, and you start thinking about all the time you got left to do. . For some guys, it’s just easier, you know?”

The sun in the desert was so much hotter than back home. Its blinding rays pierced right through the chaparral, making it a constant struggle to stay in the shade, to sleep.

Celso was exhausted. His mouth was parched and dry. But the thought of waking his cousin Eleonel for another drink of water was too embarrassing. He had already made an ass of himself the night before.

They had set out from Nogales at dusk in groups of twenty-five. They walked all night, stopping for fifteen-minute breaks every four hours. By the second break, Celso had drunk all of his water. (Meanwhile, his cousin, having made the trip before, had barely broken a sweat.) When they finally stopped before sunrise to make camp, Celso almost collapsed.

“Here,” Eleonel said, handing him an extra bottle from his backpack. “But go easy on this one.”

Celso didn’t dare mention how hungry he was either. But he didn’t have to: as if on cue, the coyote pulled out a bulb of garlic, broke it, and passed the cloves among the migrants. Everyone took a clove.

A strange meal, but Celso was too famished to complain. He frantically peeled off the skin and started chewing. He’d never eaten one whole before, and this was probably why: it had an acrid taste that burned all the way to the top of his skull and made his eyes water. It didn’t so much sate his appetite as it castigated him for having one at all.

Eleonel hadn’t eaten his yet. Instead, he stood up and pulled off his shirt. He took the clove in his palm, mashed it into a paste, and proceeded to rub it all over his body.

Celso swallowed. All around him, everyone was rubbing themselves with garlic.

“Did you drop yours?” Eleonel asked.

Celso pretended not to hear him.

His cousin started laughing. “Well,” he said, as he lied down under a tree to sleep, “at least the snakes won’t try to kiss you.”

It seemed everyone was sleeping soundly but Celso, even the nosy little kid from Jalisco. Miraculous, really, because the kid didn’t seem like he’d ever slow down the night before. When everyone else was taking their water breaks, the boy was kicking dirt at tarantulas and throwing rocks at lizards. He ran circles around everybody.

Eleonel thought it was hilarious. Celso couldn’t have thought it more annoying. The kid kept pestering him with stupid questions: Where are you from? Where are you headed? Have you had pizza and french fries before? I have. And hamburgers. Do you know who Harry Potter is? My mom says they have roller coasters in every city in the States. Do you know what a roller coaster is?

Still, it was the kid who spotted the drone. At night, the buzz of countless rattlesnakes drowned out most every other sound. Everybody was focused on the horizon, trying to spot the patrol trucks before they could spot them. But the kid kept pointing to the sky, saying he heard something. When the coyote figured it out, he yelled for everyone to take a sharp left and start running. They managed to evade the drone by running parallel to it. Later, they watched the desert light up a few miles east as one of the other groups was found and captured.

The kid hadn’t moved all day. He was still dead asleep.

When the sun finally set, the coyote stood up and announced that it was time.

“Everyone get your stuff,” he said. “One more night until Phoenix.”

When Eleonel got up to take a piss, Celso stole a deep swig of his water. The garlic had been fermenting on his gums.