The Only Road (5 page)

“And if you walk,” Pancho continued, “you risk stumbling into gangs again or bandits, who will rob you and leave you to rot. I can't take you any farther. My work is here.”

Ángela inhaled through her mouth and Jaime understood her worry. There was no good choice, but somehow they had to move forward.

“I guess we'll risk the bus.” Ángela looked at Jaime for agreement, but he shrugged.
La migra
, trains, bandits, and more gangs. Everything seemed worse than what they had
left behind. Except here there seemed to be a greater variety of ways to die.

Pancho grumbled but didn't offer any suggestions. “
Bueno
. The bus station isn't far, just a few streets over. Buses are pretty regular.”

A moment of silence overtook them, as no one knew what to say. Good-bye was the obvious response, but it would mean that they were on their own.

“Thanks for driving us here.” Ángela kissed him on the cheek like she would a grandfather.

A red flush crept over Pancho's wrinkled face as he glanced at the food bag that Abuela had given him. “Your family has always been good to me.”

From Heaven, Jaime could feel Miguel nudging him and grinning. The two had long-standing suspicions of Pancho's crush on their grandmother.

Another awkward moment followed until a car drove past them, bringing them back to the dirty alley. Pancho shifted and his face turned to a hard stare. “I'm late, so listen. If
la migra
stops you, act calm. Only people who shouldn't be here get nervous. Whatever happens, you don't know me, you came here on your own.”

“We understand,” Ángela said.

“Be careful who you trust. Not everyone out there is your friend.”

Jaime hugged his backpack tighter against his chest.

Pancho made his way to the truck but then stopped and turned around. He went to the street and motioned them to follow him. “See that mountain in the distance? That's the Volcán Tacaná.”

“On the border of Guatemala and México,” Jaime said. They had studied the second-largest Central American volcano in school. Seeing it now reminded him how close they still were to home. And how far away.

He must have read Pancho's mind, or Pancho his.

“There'll be other mountains, other volcanoes,” Pancho said. “But if you think of each different one as Tacaná, you'll never be far from home.”

This time Pancho made it back to his truck. He waved as he drove out of the alley, not looking to see if cars were coming from either direction. Jaime and Ángela stood there for several minutes in a town that seemed familiar, but the sight of the volcano in the distance reminded them just how far they still had to go.

The next bus to Arriaga
was leaving in twenty minutes, but if they waited until the afternoon, they could take a bus run by a different travel company for half the price, about a hundred pesos less. For each of them.

“How many quetzales is that?” Jaime whispered as they stood at the ticket counter of the bus terminal. His question was directed to Ángela, but the attendant, an old man with thick glasses, answered without looking up.

“About fifty.”

“Two for the afternoon bus, please,” Ángela said at the same time as Jaime said, “The cheaper bus is fine.” One hundred pesos, fifty quetzales. Enough to buy ten Coca-Colas or twenty bread rolls. Some people in his village didn't earn much more than that in a day. Of course,
it was nothing compared to all the money sewed in their jeans, but enough to make them realize just how much money they would still need to get to the Río Bravo, the river dividing the two countries in the north.

With several hours to kill, they walked around Tapachula. People strolled on the shady side of the street. Men called out for them to buy icy juices in big Styrofoam cups cinched with plastic bags for lids. Women sold mangos, guava, papaya, mamey—three for ten pesos. Boys younger than Jaime wandered around with trays strapped to their chests to sell packs of cigarettes.

Unlike at home, where everything was in dire need of fresh paint and repairs, two buildings, the municipal palace and the church, were true works of art. When they entered the yellow and white church, Iglesia de San Agustín, with its tall, impressive pillars, Jaime couldn't stop looking around, feeling like he was within art itself. Never had he experienced something so beautiful and intense. For the first time since Miguel's death, he felt at peace. Why did they need to go all the way to Tomás when here was a place so spectacular that nothing bad could possibly happen? And where they were still close enough to “see” home?

The wood creaked as Ángela slid into a pew near the front. Hands clasped, she bowed her head. Her lips moved in silent prayer while two
gringo
tourists took
pictures, their babbling voices echoing across the pews.

Jaime took a second to say his own prayer—for his family, Miguel, Ángela, and himself—before pulling out the sketchbook and lead pencil he'd packed in his bag. Mamá always said his artistic ability was a gift from God. If that was the case, then surely He wouldn't mind if Jaime used His gift to pay tribute in His house.

It took four pages in his sketchbook to do little justice to the beautiful church. He wished he could capture the sensation of being there as well, of being enveloped in the art—a feeling that he couldn't explain in words, or show in his drawing. The architecture, the way the light came in the stained glass windows. Jaime knew there were people who studied art, who knew tricks of shadow and light to accent features and make the flat paper's two-dimensional image jump out like it had three-dimensional life. Jaime, whose school couldn't afford an art teacher, did the best he could. The result, though nowhere near the real-life beauty of the church, wasn't half-bad.

Ángela's hand on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. From the way the light shifted through the stained glass windows, he guessed it must be midday, hours since they had arrived. What a blessing it was, being in a place where it was so easy to forget everything that had happened.

Across the street from the church, they settled on a
bench at Parque Central Miguel Hidalgo, a stone-paved plaza with a fountain, white-painted tree trunks, and manicured hedges instead of the bare, compressed-dirt park back home where Miguel had . . . No, Jaime wasn't going to think of that park again.

The midnight feast Abuela had made for them back home seemed ages ago. They peered into the plastic food bags Abuela had sent off with them: tamales wrapped in banana leaves, a hunk of queso fresco, chorizo from relatives in the neighboring village, mangos from the tree behind his house, and a pile of her homemade tortillas.

Jaime stopped himself from grabbing half the chorizo and cheese. “How long do we have to make this food last?”

“As long as possible.” Ángela grabbed the smallest tamale and began unwrapping the leaves.

Three bluish-gray pigeons strutted back and forth in front of them, just far enough away to keep from being kicked.

“How long do you think this trip is going to take?” Jaime focused on the tamale instead of his cousin. “I forgot to ask Papá.”

More like he hadn't wanted to ask. Not then, and not really now. The less he knew, the less responsible he'd have to be. Much better to let the grown-ups make the arrangements, let Ángela make the choices. Then if something went wrong, he wouldn't be blamed.

Ángela shook her head. “I don't know. Tina at school once mentioned her papá made it in four days, but Marisol's took forever. Several months.”

“Months?” Jaime choked. How could they possibly survive months? They had left home only twelve hours ago and already he felt lost without his family. What happened when the food was gone, when there was no one to take care of him?

Ángela looked behind her and around the park. Other than the pigeons, there was no one within earshot. She continued talking. “There's a lot we'll need to sort out along the way. Our parents spent more time borrowing money than ironing out the details.”

Jaime's hand landed on his waistband. How had his family scraped up so much, so quickly, and without the Alphas finding out? The guilt that had started upon hearing of Miguel's death twisted and burned in his stomach. It was his fault Miguel had died—Ángela must have thought so too; his fault that he was still alive and that his parents sacrificed so much to make sure he remained that way.

“Do you know Tomás's phone number?” Ángela asked.

Jaime shook his head with another pang of guilt. He had never called his brother. Mamá did that, and only after first punching in all the numbers from the phone card into the village pay phone—using Tío's cell phone
would have cost too much. “Mamá wrote it down for me. It's in my bag.”

Ángela pulled a slip of paper from her pocket. Already it was creased and worn around the edges. “We should memorize it. In case something happens to the paper. Or one of us.”

What? He'd been so worried about what happened to Miguel, he hadn't given much thought to what might happen to them. To Ángela. He grasped Ángela's free hand. “I'm not letting anyone, or anything, hurt you.”

She avoided his gaze. “Still, we should know his number.”

She was right, of course. It'd be stupid not to. Paper could get wet, torn, and easily lost. But by memorizing the number, he would accept the possibility that she might leave him and join Miguel. He didn't want to tempt fate.

Please, Lord, don't make me responsible for another tragedy
, he prayed before studying the paper in Ángela's hand. He ran the ten digits around his head, repeating them like a poem and putting emphasis and beats after certain numbers to remember them better.
5, 7,
he chanted like an intro to a song,
5-5-5-5,
he tapped steadily against his leg four times,
21,
like a question, 86, like the response.
5,7, 5-5-5-5, 21, 86.
He'd have to say it to himself again later.

“Okay, got it.” He heard the rhythm of the numbers and visualized them in his head. He'd done his part. He didn't need to know anything else.

Ángela disagreed. She folded the paper and returned it to her pocket. “We get to Arriaga, and stay the night at a refugee shelter Padre Lorenzo arranged, Iglesia de Santo Domingo. From there we have to contact El Gordo, who's already been paid to take us on the train north to Ciudad México—”

“
Sí
, I heard about El Gordo,” Jaime interrupted. Maybe if Ángela thought he knew what was going on, they could finally change the subject. “Mamá said Hermán Domingo's cousin used him, but he was expensive.”

Ángela nodded her head several times. “In the capital a man named Santos got a deposit to get us on the next train—we'll pay the rest when we meet him, which should get us to Ciudad Juárez.”

“And then we cross the Río Bravo,” Jaime added, despite his resolution to remain ignorant.

“And then we cross the Río Bravo,” she agreed. “Which they call the Río Grande in El Norte.”

Crossing the border of México into los Estados Unidos. Tía's words of keeping the money safely sewed into their jeans rang in his ears. But even with the money, how would they manage it? What he knew of that crossing already terrified him. News reports showed immigration patrol officers shooting anything that moved; detention centers packed with people; politicians over there who said all immigrants were rapists and criminals. And before that,
there was Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican border city notorious for its violence and human trafficking. It didn't sound like Ángela knew how they would manage either.

His tamale remained on his lap, untouched. He unwrapped it, pretending it was steamed and served warm with Abuela's chia salsa.

Jaime felt as though he already knew too much. Friends at school talked; advertisements on television and on billboards warned of the horrors. In an illegal journey of four thousand kilometers, they were going through places more corrupt than his village, running from gangs more violent than the Alphas, going to a country where no one, except Tomás, wanted them there. Everywhere they'd go on this journey, they'd be unwelcome.

5,7, 5-5-5-5, 21, 86
.

The banana-leaf wrapper from his lap fluttered against a light post, where two pigeons pecked it to death. He and Ángela had to talk about something else.

•  •  •

After a tamale and a mango apiece, they weren't full, but the food, filled with Abuela's love comforted them. They walked around the park some more and settled on a different bench, this time near the statue of Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian revolutionary hero in the mid-1800s who became one of México's greatest presidents. Juárez hadn't been influential for Guatemala, but they studied him in
school, just like they learned about Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi.