Cummins Jeanine - American Dirt - A Novel (2020)

Copyright © 2019 Jeanine Cummins

The right of Jeanine Cummins to be identified as the

Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in the United States by Flatiron Books

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law,

this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted,

in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing

of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in

accordance with the terms of licences issued by the

Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published as an Ebook in 2020 by Tinder Press

An imprint of Headline Publishing Group

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 6138 0

Jacket design by Julianna Lee

Jacket art: floral tile © Akbaly/Shutterstock.com;

watercolor © oxygen/Getty Images;

wire © winston flavor plus/Shutterstock.com

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Contents

Title

Copyright

About the Author

Praise

Also by Jeanine Cummins

About the Book

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Author pic © Joe Kennedy

Jeanine Cummins is the author of three books: the novels The Outside Boy and The Crooked Branch and one true crime work, A Rip in Heaven . She lives in New York with her husband and two children.

Praise

‘A perfect balancing act with terror on one side and love on the other . . . It’s marvellous’ Stephen King

‘From the opening page your heart will be in your mouth . . . it will change your view of the world’ Kirsty Wark

‘Made me understand better why someone would give up the home they know and love to survive’ Tracy Chevalier

‘Electric, important, heartbreaking and joyous’ Kate Hamer

‘A roaring human triumph’ Laline Paull

‘A dazzling accomplishment’ Julia Alvarez

‘Leaps the borders of the page and demands attention’ Sarah Blake

‘Relevant, powerful, extraordinary’ Kristin Hannah

‘Harrowing and necessary. As pacey as a thriller but full of deep compassion’ Julie Cohen

‘Not simply the great American novel, it’s the great novel of Las Américas ’ Sandra Cisneros

Also by Jeanine Cummins

Fiction

The Outside Boy

The Crooked Branch

Memoir

A Rip in Heaven

About the Book

She feels every molecule of her loss and she endures it. She is not diluted, but amplified. Her love for Luca is bigger, louder. Lydia is vivid with life.

Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop.

Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist.

Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world.

Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left.

For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg.

For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high-speed train.

For him, she will find the strength to keep running.

For Joe

Era la sed y el hambre, y tú fuiste la fruta.

Era el duelo y las ruinas, y tú fuiste el milagro.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.

There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

—Pablo Neruda, from ‘The Song of Despair’

Chapter One

One of the very first bullets comes in through the open window above the toilet where Luca is standing. He doesn’t immediately understand that it’s a bullet at all, and it’s only luck that it doesn’t strike him between the eyes. Luca hardly registers the mild noise it makes as it flies past and lodges into the tiled wall behind him. But the wash of bullets that follows is loud, booming, and thudding, clack-clacking with helicopter speed. There is a raft of screams, too, but that noise is short-lived, soon exterminated by the gunfire. Before Luca can zip his pants, lower the lid, climb up to look out, before he has time to verify the source of that terrible clamor, the bathroom door swings open and Mami is there.

‘ Mijo, ven, ’ she says, so quietly that Luca doesn’t hear her.

Her hands are not gentle; she propels him toward the shower. He trips on the raised tile step and falls forward onto his hands. Mami lands on top of him and his teeth pierce his lip in the tumble. He tastes blood. One dark droplet makes a tiny circle of red against the bright green shower tile. Mami shoves Luca into the corner. There’s no door on this shower, no curtain. It’s only a corner of his abuela ’s bathroom, with a third tiled wall built to suggest a stall. This wall is around five and a half feet high and three feet long – just large enough, with some luck, to shield Luca and his mother from sight. Luca’s back is wedged, his small shoulders touching both walls. His knees are drawn up to his chin, and Mami is clinched around him like a tortoise’s shell. The door of the bathroom remains open, which worries Luca, though he can’t see it beyond the shield of his mother’s body, behind the half barricade of his abuela ’s shower wall. He’d like to wriggle out and tip that door lightly with his finger. He’d like to swing it shut. He doesn’t know that his mother left it open on purpose. That a closed door only invites closer scrutiny.

The clatter of gunfire outside continues, joined by an odor of charcoal and burning meat. Papi is grilling carne asada out there and Luca’s favorite chicken drumsticks. He likes them only a tiny bit blackened, the crispy tang of the skins. His mother pulls her head up long enough to look him in the eye. She puts her hands on both sides of his face and tries to cover his ears. Outside, the gunfire slows. It ceases and then returns in short bursts, mirroring, Luca thinks, the sporadic and wild rhythm of his heart. In between the racket, Luca can still hear the radio, a woman’s voice announcing ¡La Mejor 100.1 FM Acapulco! followed by Banda MS singing about how happy they are to be in love. Someone shoots the radio, and then there’s laughter. Men’s voices. Two or three, Luca can’t tell. Hard bootsteps on Abuela’s patio.

‘Is he here?’ One of the voices is just outside the window.

‘Here.’

‘What about the kid?’

‘ Mira, there’s a boy here. This him?’

Luca’s cousin Adrián. He’s wearing cleats and his Hernández jersey. Adrián can juggle a bal ó n de f ú tbol on his knees forty-seven times without dropping it.