Жанин Камминс - American Dirt

Lydia remembers a show from her childhood, not like these slick, indistinguishable cartoons Luca watches, shows that are beamed into televisions worldwide with their big-eyed, squeaky-voiced monsters of backtalk. It was a memorable show, an incredible low-budget job with handmade puppets and real junkyard magic. Lydia remembers the theme song, where all the characters would zoom around the earth in this rackety dumpster, except the dumpster was like a chariot, but only when all the friends were onboard, because if even one of them was missing, it was just a regular old dumpster, with hovering flies and sticky puddles. But when all the friends were together, the dumpster would glimmer and shoot off into the sky, and then stars would burst from its exhaust pipes, and don’t ask Lydia why a dumpster had exhaust pipes, she was only six when she watched that show, but Dios mío, it was something.

She doesn’t know why she’s remembering that show right now – she hasn’t thought of it in years, and this blue pickup truck is no magic dumpster. But Lydia has that same swooping, rocketing feeling she used to get when she watched that eruption of scrap-heap stars, when she saw how tightly the friends would curl their fingers around the lip of their vessel to keep themselves safely inside, never mind gravity or physics or the fiery reality of planetary atmosphere. Anything was possible.

‘Do you remember that show, from when we were kids?’ she asks Marisol in the blackness. ‘The one with the flying dumpster?’

Marisol remembers.

During the second hour of driving, there’s a light on the path ahead, and the trucks roll to a stop at a checkpoint. There is light enough, just, for Soledad to recognize the uniform of los agentes federales de migración. Immediately, Rebeca begins to cry. She scrapes her heels along the bed of the pickup and writhes back into her sister’s arms. Soledad shushes her and wraps an arm around her forehead. She presses Rebeca’s face into the hollow of her neck and tells her to close her eyes. She hums softly to her sister in the comfort of their ancient language.

‘Soon this will all be past. Soon we will be safe. Close your eyes, sister.’

Rebeca breathes deeply into Soledad’s neck, and her tears wet the soft brown curve of her sister’s skin without sound. El Chacal gets out of the truck and steps toward the two guards, who are armed with flashlights and AR-15s. They greet him in a familiar manner, and he hands them an envelope. They talk for perhaps two minutes, and when the coyote returns to the truck, los agentes approach, shining their flashlights onto the faces of each migrant in turn. Rebeca does not lift her face from Soledad’s shoulder when the beam touches her skin. Soledad sets her jaw and grits her teeth and stares directly into the light. Her eyes water, but she does not blink.

‘ Oye, jefe, maybe we’ll keep this one,’ one of the guards says to El Chacal, whose window in the cab of the truck is rolled all the way down.

The coyote is leaning out, but before he has a chance to answer, Luca stands bolt upright, startling Lydia, who lunges for him.

‘You cannot keep her!’ he shouts. ‘You cannot have her, no one is allowed to have her. She is her own person, and she is coming with us!’

The beam of the flashlight swings toward Luca and the circle of light finds his face in the dark. His black eyes glimmer and his hands are balled into tight little fists.

‘¡Mira, el jefecito!’

‘Luca, sit down!’ Lydia grabs him and wrestles him into her lap.

But the guard is laughing. He leans into the bed of the truck, and Soledad tightens her grip on Rebeca.

‘Don’t worry, little man,’ the guard says to Luca. ‘I was only joking.’ He swings the light back to Soledad. ‘You are lucky to have such a brave and fearsome bodyguard, señorita.’

‘Yes,’ Soledad says mechanically.

He returns his attention to Luca. ‘You keep fighting, little man. That’s the kind of mettle you’re going to need in el norte .’

Lydia begins to breathe again but doesn’t loosen her hold on Luca. When it’s her turn to endure the beam of light on her features, she doesn’t breathe. She keeps her eyes open and low, and prays these men don’t work for Javier. She prays that her face isn’t lodged in a text message on one of their cell phones. The flashlight lingers, and then swings across to Marisol. Lydia breathes.

‘Godspeed!’ the agent calls out, as he steps backward away from the truck.

‘¡Nos vemos pronto!’ El Chacal salutes the men with a parting wave as they continue their trek.

More than three hours after leaving the apartment in Nogales, the two pickup trucks, now with their headlights off, and covered in a thick layer of desert dust, pull to a stop. Without the ambient light of the trucks’ dashboards and taillights, the migrants find themselves in absolute darkness. They are half a mile’s walk from Estados Unidos. El Chacal lines them up outside the trucks and tells them they need only be aware of the person in front and the person behind them. It’s too dark to see him, but his voice takes on such a warm animation it’s almost visible itself, a shot of color against the black of night. He’s all safety and faithful authority. He is perfectly contagious energy. With his guidance, they all believe this is possible. They don’t even know his real name, but they entrust him with their lives. He tells them they’re going to move quickly and it’s vital to keep up. It’s paramount that no one gets separated from the group.

‘If you hear this noise, freeze.’ He makes a short, low-pitched whistle. ‘If I make that noise, it means you have to be absolutely still and silent until I say it’s time to move again. This is the signal that it’s time to move again.’ He makes a double-clicking noise with his tongue that’s impressively audible. ‘If we get caught – is everybody listening? This is important. If we get caught, do not tell them which one of us is the coyote. Understood?’

‘Why?’ This is Lorenzo.

‘You don’t need to know why, but I’m going to tell you why, just so you don’t get any stupid ideas,’ El Chacal says. ‘If we get picked up, and they find out I’m the coyote , you’ll all be deported without me, right? I’ll get arrested, and you’ll get sent home. If los carteles find out who squealed on the coyote and interrupted their income stream, you’ll have hell to pay. You have enough troubles from los carteles, yes?’

Lorenzo makes some noise that passes for an affirmative.

‘So you keep your mouth shut. If we get caught, we all get deported together, we come back and try again. You get three tries for the price of one. Agreed?’

Everyone agrees, and then El Chacal lights a low lamp and spends a few minutes preparing. He unscrews the lid from a jar of minced garlic and instructs everyone to smear some on their shoes as a rattlesnake deterrent. The smell reminds Lydia of cooking, of home, but she’s even more afraid of snakes than she is of nostalgia, so she’s generous with her new boots and with Luca’s. Then the coyote outfits everyone with the water they must carry. The jugs are heavy and awkward, but nothing’s more critical. Lydia uses one of her canvas belts, looping it through the jug handles and then through the bottom straps of her backpack. The bottles slosh and bang against her hips as she walks, so she tightens the straps to fix them in place. Luca carries only one bottle; he can barely manage the weight of that. The men carry four gallons each, and Nicolás also has a fancy hiking backpack that’s filled with water he can drink from a long tube over his shoulder. They all try not to think about the heat of the desert, the distance they must walk to reach safety after they cross, and the quantity of water they carry.