La Linea (9 page)

CHAPTER 19

Javi chose a spot just before the track curved for us to wait. “This is good,” he declared. “The
mata gente
will still be going slow enough for us to hop on. It'll be here in less than an hour. You'll see, no problem. But first things first.”

From his pack, he took out a pocketknife, the kind with miniature tools attached. He pulled out the little scissors from one side and held them out to Elena.

“You need to cut your hair off, all off, short. Then put your cap back on,” Javi instructed.

He looked away, but continued, “You should disguise yourself. The less you look like a girl, the better. There are train gangs. They rob, steal, beat people up.…”

Javi paused. Finally, he looked back at Elena. “And they rape many women.”

The look I saw in Elena's eyes when Colmillo robbed us returned for just a moment. She grabbed the scissors and began to hack away at her hair. It fell to the ground in dark, thick clumps. She cut and cut her hair. Then she asked Javi to cut it even more, until it lay like a small black cap on her head.

When he finished, Javi stood with the little scissors open in his hand, staring at Elena. “You look like
m'ija
Magdalena with your hair like that. She cut it short herself last year. She plays soccer, climbs trees, runs. She said she didn't want to bother with her hair. Really, you could be
hermanas,
you look so much like her.”

Javi seemed unable to move. He seemed stuck to the ground. He couldn't take his eyes off Elena's face.

“What else, Javi? What else?” Elena demanded.

She just wanted to finish. She just wanted to get it over with. Elena looked down at her clothes. Her pants and loose shirt, her sneakers—all of them could've belonged to a boy. It looked like a good disguise to me. With her cap pulled down over her eyes, she would fool almost anybody.

Javi turned, and dug into his backpack. He pulled out a black marker and handed it to me. His hand trembled. He looked me in the eye, but it seemed he was looking straight through me to a place a long ways away.

“Write
‘Tengo SIDA'
in big letters across her chest,” he said quietly. “The threat of AIDS might stop some men.”

I swallowed hard, took the top off the marker, and wrote the words in thick block letters right above Elena's small breasts. It was warm, but she shivered anyway. I shivered, too, at all the things I didn't know, and didn't want to know.

And how could I protect Elena when I didn't have a clue about all the things I was supposed to protect her from?

Of course Javi had a plan for getting on the train. He made us run through the steps ten times before he was satisfied. I didn't see why we had to practice hopping the
mata gente.
We were young and quick and there was no one else around to fight us for a spot on a ladder.

“It's coming!” Javi said. “Can you hear it?” At that moment, the
mata gente
's whistle blew loudly. It was close, very close.

“Come on! Get in position!” Javi demanded. We lined up, Elena in front. We began trotting along the tracks, eyes on the cross ties to avoid tripping.

Suddenly, the
mata gente
came roaring up, a giant creature with whirling steel wheels. It was moving much faster than I'd imagined it would, and we would have just one chance to make it on.

“Elena! Elena!” My voice was swallowed up by the noise of the beast. “Faster.
¡Más rápido!
”

I glanced backward over my shoulder. Javier was right behind me. “Get the first one you can!” I yelled to Elena.

Elena ran even faster and, in one motion, leaped at the lowest rung of a freight car ladder. She hung on with one hand, turned, and shouted, “Miguel! Miguel, come on!”

She held out her free hand. The
mata gente
was picking up speed, fast. For a moment, I imagined Elena fading into the distance. I saw myself tripping and falling, dragged into the stomach of the monster. It ate me up and I felt nothing.

“Go, Miguel,” Javier puffed in my ear. “Now!”

From somewhere I found the speed I needed. I grabbed the rung with one hand, Elena's hand with the other. We moved up the ladder and, somehow, Javi attached himself below us.

The train rounded the corner and then, from the bushes, from the grass, dozens and dozens of people began to throw themselves at the
mata gente.
They ran and pushed and shoved. A few ended up like us, clinging to a ladder. The others were like a swarm of pesky flies. The
mata gente
just swatted them away and moved forward.

The young couple, Javi's friends from the train yard, ran clumsily along. The husband urged his pregnant wife to go faster. She never had a chance. They crumpled together onto their knees next to the track.

A thin little boy scrambled easily up a ladder, only to lose his grip suddenly. He fell like a leaf, silently.

An old man with watery desperate eyes looked like he would make it. But, at the last moment, just as he reached for Javi's extended fingers, the tip of his cowboy boot caught on a railroad tie. He tripped, stumbled, and disappeared without a sound beneath the grinding wheels.

It was over as fast as it began. Within seconds, the train moved beyond the unlucky ones. Javi, Elena, and I crawled numbly to the top of the car and lay down flat, Elena in the middle. Javi cried quietly. The roar of the
mata gente
turned to a rhythmic low rumble. We held hands and turned our bodies toward the front of the train, facing north.

CHAPTER 20

The sun set, the moon rose, and the
mata gente
moved us steadily along. Javi took a length of rope from his pack, lashed us together through our belt loops, and secured the rope to a rail on top of the car. Javi made us as safe as he could, but he did it grimly. The
mata gente
had sucked out all of his good humor.

The other
mata gente
hoppers, most of them young, children really, perched on the cars in front of us, like little birds on a limb riding out a storm. The cars swayed side to side. They rocked and jolted and lurched. We settled into the crazy rhythm, unable to talk. It was too hard to hear. Words traveled back with the wind from the car ahead, only to be swallowed up by the clatter of the wheels.

“No train gangs so far,” Javi spoke into my ear. “Rest some. I'll keep watch for a while.”

I lay down and watched the progress of the moon across the starry sky. For hours I drifted in and out of sleep atop the roaring train. Javi thought we could make it more than halfway to the border on the
mata gente,
maybe farther if we were lucky. I thought it was about time we had some good luck.

I woke up for the third time when the moon had descended almost to the horizon. The train's brakes screeched. The large jolt threw me toward the front of the car. The train slowed to a crawl. Javi frowned and untied himself from our rope. He climbed partway down the ladder on the side of the car and leaned out as far as he could.

“I can't see what's going on up there.” Javi motioned toward the engine. “Can you see anything from the top?”

We stood up. People ran along the tops of the cars toward us, leaping across the chasms between the cars. Others scrambled down the side ladders as fast as they could.

A warning echoed from car to car. “
¡La migra!
Get off! Run!”

We climbed quickly down our ladder and jumped off the train. We ran into a thick grove of trees, then turned around and watched, ready to plunge farther into the forest. The
migra
made a show of rounding up the slowest ones but didn't bother to try to find the rest. By the time the train started up again, they had left, and we were back in our place on top.

For the next two days, the
mata gente
was home. Five more times we jumped off to avoid capture by
la migra.
Once we even got off, skirted around a small town, and hopped on once again on the other side. Javi said the
migra
had a checkpoint in the dead center of town. I don't know how, but each time, Javier seemed to know what we should do.

But by evening of the second day, we'd had only sips of water from one bottle and two small
bolillos
to share. We were hungry, but mostly we were dead tired. Even when we could stay on top of our car, we could never rest.

Two boys got swept off the car right in front of us by a low-hanging branch. They fell into a ditch full of dirty brown water. We had to duck again and again to avoid electrical wires. If we touched one, we'd die, just like that. The metal rails, hot from the sun, burned our hands. We coughed up the diesel smoke that filled our lungs.

“I can't go on,” Elena finally yelled above the roar of the engine. “I need to eat something. I need to drink. I want a bed!”

Dark circles of fatigue ringed Elena's eyes. Her face was streaked with diesel soot and she blew diesel snot out of her runny nose. Her jeans were stained and torn at the knees. Her lower lip trembled.

“Don't worry,” Javi called back. “I've heard that up ahead there are some people who take care of migrants like us. We'll get some food.”

Elena shook her head in disbelief. “Fairy tales are for little girls,” she screamed above the roar of the train. “I don't believe in
el hada madrina
anymore. I hate this stupid train!”

The brakes squealed and the train slowed, again. If we had to hop off and on here, just one more time, one of us wouldn't make it. One of us would not have the strength. Right now, it was a tossup between Elena and Javier. I hadn't seen Javi rest at all. He'd been awake, vigilant, looking out for every big and little danger. How much sleep could he do without, anyway?

The train whistle blew three times. The
mata gente
slowed even more, but did not stop. Javi moved toward the edge of the car.

Elena shook her head again. “I'm getting off here and I'm not getting back on.”

And then I saw people gathered at the side of the tracks. They were throwing things at the train, probably rocks or bricks. Maybe they hated migrants like us in this
pueblito.
We flattened our bodies on top of the car. But nothing fell on us. Instead, I heard a girl, two cars ahead of us, laughing.

I peeked over the side of the car. There, running alongside, was a fit middle-aged man.

“Here!” he yelled, keeping pace with the
mata gente.
“Catch!”

More people swarmed from their houses, their arms full. They aimed and threw and they didn't miss. They'd done this before, lots of times.

I reached out my arms and caught a plastic-wrapped package of tortillas. An old woman held out a water bottle full to the brim, a young girl a plastic bag with fruit. Javi leaned from the ladder and grabbed both.

A whole bagful of bread landed in Elena's outstretched hands. At the bottom was some ham. Everyone on the top of the train got gifts: loaves of bread, lemonade, sandwiches, even sweaters and blankets.

All up and down the train, the
migrantes
yelled down,
“¡Gracias! ¡Gracias!”

“¡Dios los proteja!”
the people on the ground called back.

But there were some who held nothing in their hands. One old woman stood unsteadily, too close to the moving train. Our eyes met.

“Go to your father,” she urged.

Another old man called out, over and over, “Find your mothers.”

The people of this
pueblito
knew the
mata gente
was full of boys and girls, just kids. Just like Elena. Just like me. The people knew we were looking for our
padres
and
madres.
There must be trainload after trainload of
niños,
all of them headed north, searching for their families.

Javi didn't smile at the
bendiciones
from below. He looked haunted, as if a ghost had just whispered into his ear. Well, no wonder. He was, after all, the one doing the leaving. His own children would be forced to hop the
mata gente
someday, if they ever wanted to see him again. They could die from a train gang, or thirst or hunger, or just pure loneliness.

I looked at Javi again. How many times would he make promises to
his
children back in El Salvador, promises he couldn't keep once he got to his brother in New York?

Then it wasn't Javi I saw. Instead, it was Papá. Papá's face was exactly as it was the day he left me. Papá left without me.
Me abandonó.
He could've taken me with him and he didn't. Or he could've stayed, just stayed, and made it work in San Jacinto. Or, he could've snapped a finger, and just like magic, Don Clemente would have sent me.

So there we were, Elena and I, making that trip.
¿Y para qué?
How many times had we already escaped death, or worse? And we hadn't even reached the border yet.

Well, I'd been only partly alive anyway, for a long time. Papá took a big part of me with him to California when he left. He thought he was sending for me now, but I'd already been there and he didn't even know it.

I searched for a word to describe how I felt at that moment, but I realized I felt nothing for Papá.
Nada, absolutamente nada.
Where there should have been feeling, there was just a big black hole of emptiness.

CHAPTER 21

The train rounded a curve and slowed to a crawl. The whistle sounded twice. The
mata gente
chugged forward, then stopped next to a tall water tower. Several figures leaped from the tower, onto the
mata gente
two cars in front of us.

“It's a train gang.” Javi grabbed Elena's hand. “Follow me, quickly.”