Chapter Thirty-Three #2
Even though they’d been near the front of the line, Choncho and Slim and their sons are still below in the gulch because they stayed to help the others.
The migrants on the ledge step back to make room for the stragglers to scramble up.
They spread out, hasten to scale the ascendant ledges, to reach higher ground.
And now Slim is up on the first ledge below, and he reaches back for his nephew David, and their thick forearms slap against each other as they grab wrists and Slim hoists the boy up.
And now Choncho is up, too, but Ricardín is last, Slim’s son.
And the water is so fast and so high that it doesn’t reach Ricardín’s ankles first and then engulf his legs, but rather it hits the entire back of his body at once and knocks him forward, and he’s dragged along in its maw like a ragdoll, and they all shout and yelp, and El Chacal and the two brothers run and leap from ledge to ledge after him, or after his backpack really, because that’s all they can see now, his large and floating backpack, the same one that was Lydia’s redemption in the darkness, and then Ricardín’s arms come flailing out of the water and he manages to flip himself somehow, and then the backpack is immediately dragged from his body, his arms slip right out and it’s gone, and Ricardín makes one perfunctory effort to reach for the pack, and then realizes immediately that the pack is not the priority, so he returns his attention to his own flagging body, his unusually large frame, whose strength has never failed him before.
His papi and tío are on the embankment above him, and the coyote is there, and no one can believe how fast this happened, how the water came out of nowhere, and how fast and strong and deep it is.
They’re reaching for him, and yelling for him, and he can hear his father’s voice but he can’t do anything because the water has his arms pinned, and his legs are churning and he keeps spitting out mouthfuls of water, but as soon as he spits out one, his mouth is already full again, and it’s not only water, but water and soil and sticks and debris, and he’s going to drown in it.
Ricardín knows he’s going to drown, and he has the thought that it would be almost funny to drown in a flash flood in the desert, and then he realizes that he doesn’t want his death to be funny, or even almost funny, so he focuses all his energy on his abdominal muscles, on bending himself in half, so the top part of his body comes up out of the water and once, twice, he reaches for his father’s hands and misses, and then—wham!
—just like that, he bangs into a rock with his head, and then another right after that, and now he can taste blood, his tooth—his front tooth is sharper than it’s always been, and his lip is bleeding.
But he is not going to die here, he refuses to die here, in such a stupid, undignified way, when he has a big, strong body to save him, so he looks up at his father on the ledge above, and manages to turn himself just enough so the next rock he hits feet-first, and then another and again, until he’s almost bouncing himself along in the water, from boulder to boulder, and when the next one comes, he uses it, and the momentum of the water, to catapult himself up toward the ledge above, and again he misses his tío’s outstretched hand, but the men are yelling encouragement at him, and keeping pace with his swift progress by leapfrogging each other, and he knows his plan is a good plan, and if he can do it again it will work, so again he twists in the water, except this time, when the next boulder comes and he reaches out his leg, it gets caught there, in an underwater crevasse, and the water pushes his body past, but keeps his leg wrenched under, and he can feel the bone snap, and he screams out in pain, but now his father and his tío are there just above him, and the pain is wicked, but their hands are on him, his papi has his arm, and his tío has the hood of his sweatshirt, and they are hauling him back against the current and toward his wrong-way leg.
He feels no relief when the coyote is there, too, when they fix their six strong hands on him and together haul the top half of his weight up from the floodwaters and drape it over the lip of the earth above.
His body is twisted awkwardly, but he has purchase now, they’ve got him.
He will not drown. The water from his drenched body stains the dirt beneath him a darker color, and his fingers scrabble at the earth, but the lower half of his body is still in the water, stuck.
He feels no relief because he knows.
“My leg is broken.” Ricardín does not cry. “It’s definitely broken. I broke my leg.”
And it’s just as well the other migrants have not followed this far downstream, because no one wants to see or to hear the horrific business of removing the boy’s leg from where it’s caught in the crevasse below.
The only question is who will stay with him.
Slim and Choncho have both done this journey enough times to know how it works, and to accept the terrible fate without complaint.
They don’t plead with El Chacal or the other migrants.
They don’t beg for help or ask them to stay.
Although it would be a reasonable response in these circumstances, they don’t drift toward hysteria at the thought of being left alone and immobilized here in the desert.
It’s Choncho who makes the final decision.
“Because I’m the older brother, that’s why.”
Slim nods.
“I’ll stay with my godson,” Choncho says. “We’ll give you a head start, and when he’s feeling up to it, I’ll get him to the Ruby Road. You take David and go find work for both our families.”
The brothers embrace, the hard, back-smacking embrace of working men. Then Slim pulls his son’s wet head into his arms.
“I’m sorry, Papi,” Ricardín says.
Slim shakes his head. “Gracias a Dios, you escaped with your life. That’s all that matters.”
Ricardín and David pray with their fathers before the four of them part ways.
“Call Teresa when you get to a phone, when you get picked up,” Slim tells his brother. “And I’ll call her when we get to Tucson, and make sure you’re safe.”
Choncho nods.
“And take this.” Slim sets one of his water jugs down beside his son.
“Papi—”
“Take it, Ricky,” Slim says. He squats down on his haunches and looks his son in the eye, and then squeezes his shoulder, and stands up with his hat pulled low. He turns his face quickly away.
Behind him, Choncho hugs his son, his hand like a mitt on the back of David’s neck. They’re both well over six feet tall. Choncho kisses his boy on top of the head, and then gives him a light shove toward his uncle. “Stay out of trouble,” he says.
“Keep the rising sun to your backs,” El Chacal tells them. “The Ruby Road is barely a mile from here.”
A mile, Luca thinks. With a broken leg.
When the coyote herds the migrants back to their route, when they ascend from the canyon into the hot pink dawn, only Luca looks back from the gap at Ricardín and his tío still sitting on the ledge below.
The others keep moving, and Luca can feel their unified will, pushing themselves forward like cogs in machinery, like an escalator.
They can’t stop the engine or even slow it down.
It moves on despite the new rot in their collective spirit.
Even the coyote’s energy seems to be flagging. But they move on. They move on.
The migrants are shuffling past Luca, who hovers now, in the gap.
Behind them, Choncho pulls his brown baseball cap low over his eyes, and Ricardín’s face is a wet twist of pain.
How will they climb out of there when he can’t walk?
Luca wonders. How will they make it to the road?
Then he banishes that thought and prays instead. Please let them make it to the road.
“Luca, ven,” Mami says.
He scrambles to catch up.