Jumper: Griffin's Story (3 page)

Crunching footsteps crossing the gravel came closer and then the light changed again as someone stuck his head into the shelter.

"Estas despierto?" It was the woman from before, the one with the umbrella. She watched my face for some sign of comprehension, then tried, "You okay?"

"Okay? Yes, uh, si. No hablo espanol."

"Okay. Good. Okay." She pointed to a plastic bottle lying beside me, mostly full of water. She mimed tilting a bottle up to her mouth. "Okay?"

"Right. Uh, okay."

I tried to sit up but she shook her head. "No. Descanza. Estate quietecito."

I dropped back. My head spun from the slight effort to sit up. I explored my side and found a mass of gauze and tape on my hip. I found a smaller bandage on my forehead, running up into my hair, the tape tugging painfully when I touched it. I wasn't on the ground, I realized, but lying on a stretcher, one of those canvas things with two poles locked apart. Turning my head without lifting it, I realized we were no longer in my gully but on some raised hillside. I could see miles across desert, over gullies and low hills.

They'd moved me.

Driven me? Carried me?

I thought about the night before and it was as if I were stuck, frozen. My mind just stopped working. I didn't pass out but I lay there staring at the ceiling trying to think but it was too much–my mind was just shying away from it. I knew it had happened. It was the gauze on my head. My brain was wrapped in gauze–white, fuzzy gauze–and it was hard to feel stuff through it.

I heard someone shout from far away, "Hey, Consuelo! Un poco ayuda!" The woman sitting beside me patted me again on the shoulder and ducked out under the edge of the tarp.

As soon as she was standing upright I heard her footsteps go from a walk to a jogging run. After a minute footsteps returned, more than two, but there was a dragging sound, too, and then the bearded man and Consuelo were back, a man supported between them. His face was bloody and swollen and though his limbs twitched as if to help support him, he was helpless as a baby.

The bearded man glanced at me, watching, and said, "Hey, pardner, think you can get out of that stretcher? Got someone here who needs it worse."

I blinked, then sat up carefully. The bandages at my hip tugged and my head swam just a bit but my vision didn't dim like it had before. I edged off the stretcher away from the newcomer, then slid the stretcher toward them, holding it steady as they put the newcomer down.

There was a rapid exchange in Spanish of which the only word I understood was "banditos" and they were working as they talked. Consuelo was wiping blood off the man's face as the bearded man hung another bag of liquid from the same line that supported mine. He cleaned a spot on the inside of the man's elbow with a wipe from a tear–open packet and then slid a needle into the skin.

I winced and looked away. When I turned back, the needle was connected to the tube hanging down from the bag. The wind died for a moment, then shifted around, and I could smell him. He smelled awful, like one of the dirtier homeless guys around Balboa Park–rancid sweat and a whiff of urine.

"Uh, need a loo . . . bathroom." My voice was a rasping croak but understandable.

The bearded guy was putting a foam collar around the neck of the man on the stretcher. He looked up at me. "Really? That's a good sign." He reached over and pinched the back of my hand.

I jerked it away. "Hey!"

He shook his head, chuckling. "Pinch the skin on the back of your hand and let go. Where I can see."

"Why?"

"Dehydration. The longer the skin stays tented, the more dehydrated you are."

"Oh." I held my hand up, palm down, and did what he asked. The skin pulled back flat pretty much as soon as I let go.

"Hold still," he said. I froze and he peeled back the strip of tape securing my drip needle, then pulled it out, one quick, smooth movement. I felt a tug and then there was a red dot welling up. He handed me an antiseptic wipe. "Put pressure on it with that–hold it high. While you're peeing you can close your elbow over it." He put his own finger over the inside of his elbow and pinned it by folding his arm up.

"Where's the loo–uh, toilet?"

He laughed. "Pick a rock."

I ducked gingerly out from under the tarp. My head spun and I bent over for a moment, bracing my hands on my thighs. After another moment things settled and I straightened carefully.

There was a battered four–wheel–drive pickup parked between two boulders, so dusty I couldn't tell what color the paint job was. A large pair of binoculars and a battered orange–and–white ice chest sat on the tailgate. Two camp chairs sat in the partial shade of a mesquite bush.

The pressure in my bladder reminded me why I was standing. I took limping steps in the direction of the largest rock down the hill and peed behind it.

It took me longer to walk up the hill than down. It wasn't just gravity. Without the full bladder I didn't have the motivation, the need, and the gravel hurt my bare feet. It was hard not to just lie down on the ground right where I was and curl up in a ball.

The bearded man ducked out of the tarp and glanced at me. "You okay?"

No! I thought, but I nodded and resumed my painful limp up the hill.

He motioned toward the camp chair. "I'm Sam," he said. "You got a name?"

"Grif–" I stopped myself. Then continued. "John Grifford. They call me Griff." The woman claiming to be from the school district had asked for me, for Griffin O'Conner. "What happened to him?" I gestured at the blue tarp.

"Bandits. He's a Mexican making the crossing to find work. Pretty poor but with a little money, usually everything his extended family can scratch together in U.S. dollars so he can travel to a city with jobs once he's across. There's them on both sides of the border that prey on 'em.

And after it happens, they don't think they can complain to the police on this side, and on the other side, half the time it is the police." Sam paused as I painfully lowered myself into the chair. "Now, once I heard you talk, I knew you weren't Mexican, but his story could be yours–who attacked you?"

I looked away and put my hand to my mouth. The cotton gauze threatened to shred.

He added the unbearable bit: "Where are your parents?"

I nearly jumped. It was like a blow. I knew I wasn't in danger but I still wanted to flinch away. I wanted to flee, to run, but I knew that no matter how far I went it wouldn't change the facts.

"They're d ... d ... DEAD!" There. I'd said it. Said something I couldn't even think.

"Where?" Sam's eyes widened a bit and his eyes twitched sideways. "When?"

He thinks it happened where they found me, that the people who attacked me could still be around. "San Diego–last night."

Oh, bugger. What was the point of giving him a false name? Now he'd be able to read the newspapers and figure out who I really was.

Something my dad used to say went through my head: Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought an idiot than to speak and confirm it.

Sam dropped his shoulders back down. "How'd you get all the way out here? Did they dump you? Could they still be around?"

I shook my head. "I got away–I came here because it was ... safe." I looked at the blue tarp. "Well, I thought it was safe."

"How?"

I shook my head. "Can't tell you. But honest, those that kill–" I bit down on my lip and squeezed my eyes shut for a second. "The last I saw of them was in
San Diego
. Not here."

He stared at me for a moment. "Well, Pablo, in there, needs some pretty urgent medical attention. We'll be putting him in the truck and then I'll radio the
county
EMS
, meet them out at the highway. The police and the border patrol will get involved pretty quick, so I just have one question. Should we be mentioning you? I mean, you didn't go to the police in
San Diego
, did you?"

I stared at him. "What kind of adult are you? Of course you're going to tell the police, no matter what I say. I'm just a kid. Doesn't matter what I want. I'm a minor."

He blinked, then laughed without making any noise, like I'd said something funny.

"So why are you even asking?" Too strident. I clamped my mouth shut, determined not to say anything else.

He stared at me, his brow wrinkled. "Kid, something really bad happened to you and yours but all I really know is that you're in trouble. I meet people in trouble all the time. They're undocumented workers, crossing. I'm not here to judge them, either. What Consuelo and I do is try and keep them from dying. Sometimes it's just a little water, sometimes it's major medical evac. But we don't judge and we don't involve the INS unless we have to.

"I don't know what's best for you. I don't know enough about what happened or why. You're not dying–I don't have to involve the county and the police. Don't know if the cops would just take you back someplace where the people who did this could get at you again or if they even would want to get at you. So, I'm askin' and I mean it: Should I tell the police about you?"

I shook my head side to side, hard, and the scab on my neck tore and stung.

"Well okay, then. I won't." Sam started to get up.

Despite my best intentions, I said, "Why do you do this, helping the illegals, I mean?"

"Someone's gotta. I've been doing it for six years, since I found three dead men on the edge of my property. Consuelo, she lost her husband and teenage son east of here. Their coyote got them halfway across the worst of it and demanded more money before letting them into the truck, still out in the middle of nowhere. She got the story from a woman who didn't have to walk–who didn't die in the basin."

I licked my lips. "She had the cash?"

"She offered a different form of payment."

I looked at him, puzzled.

Sam said, "God, you're young. You talk like you're older so I keep forgetting. She offered sex for passage."

I felt my ears get hot.

"How old are you, kid? Eleven, twelve?"

"I'm nine."

Sam's jaw dropped.

"I'll be ten next month," I added.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I should talk to the police."

"You promised!"

"No, I didn't exactly promise." He shook his head. "But I said I wouldn't. I won't, I guess." He stood. "Consuelo! jDebemos ir!" He opened the passenger door on the truck. "You ride here. Consuelo is going to ride in the back and tend to Pablo."

"Can't I wait here?"

"Not coming back here. After we get Pablo into an ambulance, I'm heading back to my place." He gestured toward the lowering sun. "Done for the day."

It took me almost as much time to get into the truck as it did for Consuelo and Sam to move Pablo and the stretcher into the back of the pickup, fold the tarp, and stow the camp chairs and ice chest.

He drove pretty slow, because the road–well, calling it a road was reaching. Sometimes it disappeared completely and it felt like he was just driving blindly across the desert, but then the twin ruts would reappear. Other places, going up a grade or down, water had carved deeply into the ruts, and no matter how slowly he drove I was thrown hard against the seatbelt or bounced off the door.

I looked around and saw Consuelo braced in the corner by the cab, shaded by her umbrella. The stretcher and Pablo were secured with straps but Consuelo kept one hand on his forehead, bracing his neck, I guess.

After a half hour we topped a rise and stopped the truck. Sam took a radio mike off its bracket and switched the unit on. "We don't get into range until here." He depressed the transmit button. "Tom–it's Sam Coulton. Got a Hispanic male, dehydrated, some trauma. Got beaten and robbed after crossing south of Bankhead Springs. Was two days without water."

The voice that answered was fuzzed with static, barely recognizable. "You need air evac?"

Sam answered, "Nah. He was conscious when I found him. I've got him on IV fluids and we're less than fifteen miles from Old Eighty. I can meet the ambulance at the Texaco near

"I'll call the sheriff's office. Is he legal?"

"Doubt it. Sheriff for the assault and the INS, if they want, but they might as well send someone to just meet the ambulance at Regional in
El Centro
."

"Okay–they'll probably dispatch a unit to meet you at the Texaco. Anything else?"

"Nah. Gotta get going if I'm gonna meet the ambulance. Thanks loads. Love to Maribel."

He hung the mike back on the dash and concentrated on his driving. I didn't see how he expected to make fifteen miles in thirty minutes. We were doing much less than ten miles an hour because of the ruts and rocks, but we reached the plain below after five more uncomfortable minutes and turned onto a dirt road that was a highway by comparison. Sam sped up to fifty and we were up to the motorway in fifteen minutes.

"Are those pajamas?" he asked.

I was wearing sweatpants and a T–shirt, what I normally slept in. "Uh, yeah."

"So you were in bed? When it happened?"

I turned away and looked out the window. It was less than a half mile down the road to a petrol station. To my back, he said, "Okay. I won't press but you want to avoid the cops, make yourself scarce while I deal with the deputy, okay?" He pulled into the shade of the pump awning and began rooting under the seat. After a moment he came up with one plastic flip–flop but he had to get out of the car and crouch down before he finally snaked its mate out from under. He took a couple of dollars out of his wallet and handed them and the flip–flops to me. "Go wash up, then get yourself a soda, okay? Until we're done with the
EMS
."

I was embarrassed. "Uh, thanks so much. I really–"

"Thank me later. Deputy's coming." He jerked his chin and I saw a distant car way down the road. The roof glittered and I could believe it was a police car.

I dropped the flip–flops onto the tarmac and put my feet in them. They were way too big but I shuffled my way into the store and, avoiding the eyes of the woman at the counter, I turned away from the counter to the loo.