Chapter Twenty #3
“How’d he find the coyote?” Lydia is constantly reminded that her education has no purchase here, that she has no access to the kind of information that has real currency on this journey.
Among migrants, everyone knows more than she does.
How do you find a coyote, make sure he’s reputable, pay for your crossing, all without getting ripped off?
Thankfully, Rebeca is flush with insight. “Loads of people from our village used him before. He was recommended. Because you can’t just pick any coyote. A lot of them will steal your money and then sell you to the cartel, you know?”
Lydia has never met a coyote. It’s possible she’s never even met anyone who’s met a coyote.
“You should use our guy,” Rebeca says. “Unless you already have one lined up.”
Lydia shakes her head. “We don’t.”
Rebeca smiles. “So we can go together. Mi primo César—he says this guy is the best. It took them only two days of walking and then somebody picked them up in a camper van on the other side and drove them to Phoenix. Gave ’em bus tickets from there to wherever they were going. It’s a lot of money, but he’s safe.”
“How much money?” Lydia asks.
Rebeca looks to Soledad, who’s still lying down, her head resting in her folded arms. Rebeca continues rubbing her sister’s back. “How much, Sole?”
Soledad answers without lifting her head or opening her eyes. “Four thousand each.”
Lydia is startled by the sum. “I thought it would be much more than that, like ten thousand pesos at least.”
“Dollars,” Soledad says, her voice muffled by the sleeve of her shirt. “Four thousand dollars.”
Dios Santo. Lydia does a quick intake of breath.
She accepts dollars in the bookstore, so she’s familiar with the typical exchange rates, but not in these quantities.
She strains to do the math in her head. It’s a lot of money, but they have enough, they have plenty.
They will even have a small sum left, to get them started on the other side.
But then she remembers the padre’s pep talk in Celaya.
Every single one of you will be robbed. Every one.
If you make it to el norte, you will arrive penniless, that’s a guarantee.
But it’s good, anyway, to have a plan, to look beyond what they might eat today or where they might sleep tonight.
Lydia doesn’t feel ready for it, but she’s beginning to consider the future.
She’s definitely not ready to look back, though, and she hopes she may accomplish one without necessitating the other.
“So where do you meet this coyote? He’s expecting you?” she asks Rebeca.
“Yes, his name is El Chacal—”
Of course it is, Lydia thinks. Why would a coyote be named Roberto or Luis or José when he can be named The Jackal?
“—and he works out of Nogales. When we get there, we call his cell phone. Look.” Rebeca loosens the rainbow wristband she wears on her left arm and sticks her finger into a tiny hole on the inside. From there she unrolls a scrap of paper with the coyote’s phone number on it.
“Good.” Lydia nods. “Okay.”
So now they have a solid plan.
It’s amazing that riding on the top of a freight train can become boring, but it’s true.
The tedium is spectacular. The chugging of the engine and the squeal of the metal are so constant that the migrants no longer hear those things.
At towns where the train slows or stops, migrants get off, migrants get on, and they continue.
The sun hikes high into the sky and glares down on them until their skin is so hot they can smell it, a little charred, and the brightness of the light bleaches the colors out of the landscape.
They pass through Mazatlán without stopping, where the tracks run alongside the ocean for a while, and the existence of sand there and the blueness of the sea remind Luca of home, which makes him feel obliterated instead of cheered.
He’s glad when they turn inland and leave the beach behind.
But then it’s back to hours of tedium, blended brown and green and gray, so it’s almost a welcome diversion when, a few miles outside Culiacán, the monotony is broken by screaming.
A lone voice repeats the words over and over, like a siren: ?la migra, la migra!
All around them, migrants grab their things quickly; some don’t even bother with that—they look once at the dust trails kicked up by the tires of the approaching trucks, they choose the opposite side of the train, and they bail.
“Come on, Soledad, wake up,” Rebeca says, her voice tight with panic. “We have to go.”
The train is slowing but hasn’t stopped, and the men on top aren’t waiting. They scatter. They bolt.
“?A la mierda con esto!” Soledad curses, slinging her pack onto her shoulders.
“What’s happening, Mami?” Luca asks.
In theory, la migra is no threat to Lydia and Luca.
As Mexican nationals, they cannot be deported back to Guatemala or El Salvador, and unlike most of their fellow migrants, they aren’t in the country illegally.
They’re committing only the minor infraction of riding the train.
So perhaps it’s only the pervasive panic all around them, perhaps it’s contagious.
But no, Lydia just knows. She can tell that los agentes de la migra in their uniforms are not here to enforce law and order.
She knows by the bone-deep fear born only of instinct that she can’t rely on their citizenship now to protect them.
They are in mortal danger, she can feel it in her pores, in her hair.
The trucks converge like pack animals. The men inside are masked and armed. Lydia scrabbles frantically at the buckle on Luca’s belt, but her hands are shaking and she has to try three times before she can free him.
“Mami?” Luca’s voice is rising in pitch.
Hers is low. “We have to run.”