American Dirt

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The year before Sebastián’s murder, Mexico was the deadliest country in the world to be a journalist, no safer than an active war zone. No safer even than Syria or Iraq. Journalists were being murdered in cities all across the country. Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. And yet, because Los Jardineros didn’t specifically target reporters the way most cartels did, Sebastián hadn’t received an official cartel death threat for almost two years. So it’s not quite accurate to say that Sebastián and Lydia felt a false sense of security; no one in Acapulco felt secure. The free press was a critically endangered species in Mexico. But in the aftermath of their discovery that Lydia’s friend was La Lechuza, the absence of an explicit warning from him, combined with the fact of her fraught but genuine attachment to Javier, functioned as a sort of short-term analgesic for the worst of their personal fears.

Sebastián continued to take the usual precautions: he avoided adhering too closely to a daily routine, he limited driving his recognizable orange Beetle to crime scenes, and whenever he wrote a particularly risky piece, he used the anonymous byline staff writer to conceal his identity. In those cases, the paper also sprang for a hotel room in the tourist district. He’d take Lydia and Luca and they’d hunker down for a few days out of sight. When it appeared that retaliation was not forthcoming, they’d reemerge and continue with their lives. But those safeguards were largely illusory. Sebastián knew that any research he conducted, any crime he investigated, any source he contacted, was a potential land mine. He was as careful as a truth-telling Mexican journalist can be.

For her part, Lydia became hypervigilant for any signs of danger. Javier continued to visit her in the bookstore almost weekly, and the torment she’d felt the first night she’d discovered the truth about him slowly gave way to something else. She still sat with him, served him coffee, spoke with him about a range of subjects. She listened twice more when he read her poems from his Moleskine notebook. She even smiled authentically at him, and despite a sickening feeling of culpability and a reluctance to admit it, she was still charmed by him. His intellect, his warmth, his vulnerability and sense of humor – none of it had changed. Yet, when there was news of a fresh murder, which happened more infrequently than before but not infrequently enough, Lydia experienced a sort of exaggerated emotional flinch, and she knew that her careful retreat from him was not only necessary but also inevitable. Her behavior need only follow what her heart had already accomplished.

‘What if we tell him?’ Lydia said to Sebastián the week before Yénifer’s quinceañera.

They’d dropped Luca at her sister, Yemi’s, house earlier for a sleepover with Adrián.

‘Tell who what?’

‘Tell Javier about the article. Before it comes out.’

Sebastián closed his leather menu and set it down on his plate.

‘¿Estás loca, mujer?’

She was buttering a warm roll from the covered basket, and didn’t look up at him. ‘Yes. But I think I’m serious, too.’ She pressed the butter into the bread and waited for it to soften.

Sebastián looked away from her, out over the water. The restaurant was on a hilltop above the bay and it was dusk, and he could see lights winking through the valley below, their ghost-lights glimmering echoes in the water. He didn’t want to consider the idea. He wanted to consider the view and the menu and his beautiful wife. After years of narco journalism he’d become good at compartmentalizing, at putting all the ugliness away. Sebastián was skilled at enjoying himself. But he respected Lydia and didn’t want to be dismissive.

‘If we talk about this for two minutes, do you promise then that we can not talk about it for the rest of the night?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ She smiled and bit into her bread.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Why would we tell him? What’s the benefit of doing that?’

She took a sip of water. ‘To gauge his response ahead of time, to know what we’re up against.’ Sebastián sat very still while he listened. ‘Maybe he’d even meet with you. You could get him to go on the record.’

‘Do you think he’d do that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, we know how smart he is. Maybe he’d see it as an opportunity to try and control the message. Get some good PR, get out ahead of the curve.’

‘Every narco has a Robin Hood complex.’

‘Right, so you appeal to that. Maybe he’d even like it.’

‘But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of. I can’t be beholden to him.’

‘No, I know.’

‘But he might not know. He might think this means I’m his new PR guy. I’m on his payroll after this.’

‘Ay.’ Lydia grimaced.

‘It’s too risky,’ Sebastián said, opening his menu. ‘What are you going to eat?’

Lydia read the article on Monday evening, the night before it went to press. She and Sebastián had to calculate the level of risk, to determine their safest course of action for the coming days. The paper had offered to put them up in a hotel again, to get them out of sight. The piece would not be published under his name, but it would be easy enough to figure out who’d written it. Any one of his sources could reveal him to Javier. They already may have.

Sebastián paced behind her while she read at the kitchen table from his laptop: la lechuza revealed: portrait of a drug lord. The story was accompanied by several photographs. Sebastián and his editor had selected a flattering picture of Javier, sitting elegantly with his legs crossed at the knee, one arm draped across the back of a velvet couch. He wore dark jeans and a tweed blazer, and looked every inch the bookish professor, his eyes warm behind the thick glasses, his face smiling but not smug. Lydia thought again of the first morning he’d come into the shop, how deeply his friendship, his vulnerability, had affected her in the months before she understood who he was. She still felt reluctant to learn more unpleasant things about him. She still felt a memory of fondness for him, which unnerved her. She pressed her eyes closed and took a deep breath before she began.

She was amazed by Sebastián’s familiarity with his subject – he clearly knew a very different Javier than she did, and yet the account was both objective and compassionate. In her husband’s words, she recognized her friend’s intensity, but she also discovered for the first time the gruesome details of Javier’s capacity for cruelty. The beheadings were only the beginning. Los Jardineros were also known to dismember their victims and rearrange their body parts into horror show tableaux. According to Sebastián’s report, during Los Jardineros’ war with the previous cartel, Javier was rumored to have shot the two-year-old son of a rival while the boy’s father watched. He’d painted the man’s face with the blood of his murdered child. Those details had been mythologized, of course; there was no proof of that brutality, but when she read that, Lydia closed her eyes for nearly three minutes before she could continue. The article also highlighted the grisly statistics of Javier’s ascension: during the transition of power, Acapulco’s murder rate was the highest in Mexico and one of the highest in the world. The city hemorrhaged tourism, investment, young people, and that kind of bleeding was difficult to stanch even after the violence tapered off. It was also true that, though the bloodshed had become less visible to the average citizen in recent months, there were still a dozen or more murders in the city each week. In addition to those numbers, countless more had silently disappeared. The very essence of Acapulco had changed; its people were permanently altered. Entire neighborhoods were abandoned as people fled the rubble of their lives and headed north. For those who left, el norte was the only destination. If a tourist mecca like Acapulco could fall, then nowhere in Mexico was safe.

The profile drew a bright line between Javier’s ascent and the truth of the city’s ruin. It was a brutal new cosmopolis, and its ugliness was underscored by the memory of Acapulco’s glorious past. Sebastián’s account was heartbreaking, unvarnished, and utterly convincing. It also credited Javier with the dawning peace, commended the control he exercised over his men, and appealed to him for continued restraint. It ended with a psychological profile of the man himself, and as Lydia read it, she knew it to be exactly true. Unlike his contemporaries and predecessors, La Lechuza was not flashy, gregarious, or even particularly charismatic. He seemed enlightened. But like every drug lord who’s ever risen to such a rank, he was also shrewd, merciless, and ultimately delusional. He was a vicious mass murderer who mistook himself for a gentleman. A thug who fancied himself a poet. The article ended with the inclusion of a poem written by Javier himself, and Lydia’s mouth dropped clean open when she saw it there in print. She knew this poem. The first one he’d ever shared with her.

‘How in God’s name did you get this?’ she whispered.

Sebastián stopped pacing long enough to lean over her shoulder. Lydia read the poem again, even more terrible printed there on-screen than it had been when Javier had entrusted it to her.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Sebastián said. ‘That was crazy. You know we run that annual poetry contest? His daughter, Javier’s daughter, sent it in. She submitted it on his behalf. I guess she wanted to surprise him.’

‘Wow,’ Lydia said. ‘Marta.’

The inclusion of the poem was mortifying. It served to coalesce all the facts into a vivid portrayal and to corroborate, somehow, the accuracy of Sebastián’s description. As she closed the browser and leaned back in her chair, Lydia discovered that there were many different ways to feel horrified at once.

‘Well?’ Sebastián shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leaned back against the kitchen counter. He was barefoot and his socks were twisted into a small heap on the counter behind him. Lydia stared at those socks. ‘What do you think?’

She folded her hands beneath her chin and shook her head. ‘I think it’s fine.’

‘Fine? Not good?’

‘No, I mean it’s good. It’s good, Sebastián, I’m not talking about that. I mean I think it’ll be fine with Javier.’

He nodded at her. ‘Okay.’

They were quiet while she contemplated further. ‘In fact, I think it will be better than fine with Javier. I think he’ll like it. It’s fair. More than fair, almost flattering.’

He nodded some more. ‘You feel confident?’

Again, she waited a moment to make sure her answer was true before she said it. ‘Yes.’

Sebastián went to the fridge, retrieved two beers, twisted off both caps, and set one down in front of his wife.

‘I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little nervous.’ He tipped the bottle into his mouth and drained half at once. ‘I’m relieved you feel good about it, though. You’re sure it’s okay.’ He watched Lydia twist her brown bottle in circles on the table. ‘You don’t think we need to disappear for a few days, just to be on the safe side?’

She knew how important it was to be sure. She didn’t fling the answer out recklessly; she measured it first. And then, ‘No, I think we’re fine,’ she said.

‘A hundred percent?’

‘Yes. A hundred percent.’ She closed the laptop and pushed it away.

Sebastián was leaning against the counter. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and there was a shadow of stubble across his chin. ‘Are you surprised? You think it’s too sympathetic?’ he asked.

‘No. I mean, it’s still horrifying.’ She sipped from the bottle. ‘But accurate. You show that he’s human. So as far as the truth goes, I think he’ll be pleased.’

That was a Monday evening, less than two weeks ago. Lydia remembers it was Monday because she’d just brought Luca home from fútbol practice and he’d been hungry, so she’d given him a slice of toast and a banana, even though he was late getting to bed. He’d tracked dirt into the hallway because he forgot to take his cleats off at the door, and Lydia had been annoyed because she’d just swept. Less than two weeks ago, dirt on the floor in her hallway was a thing that could annoy her. It’s unimaginable. The reality of what happened is so much worse than the very worst of her imaginary fears had ever been.

But it could be worse still.

Because there is still Luca.

On top of the train, Lydia takes two of the canvas belts from her pack and secures one through the back belt loop of Luca’s jeans before threading it through a metal loop atop the grating where they sit. Then she belts herself to the top of the train in the same way. She doesn’t know if that small strap of canvas would actually do much to save Luca, should he fall. All she can do is try. She imagines that most accidents happen when migrants are trying to get on and off the trains anyway.

Her feet smart in a way they haven’t since she was a young girl leaping from the swings at a full arc, when she’d land with a thud, and feel that echo of tenderness reverberate up her legs. They’re sore, but it’s not a bad pain. It’s only a reminder that she’s alive, that her legs can be used like pistons and springs, that her feet can still make a racket beneath her. She flexes one leg and then the other, bangs her feet against the metal grating to loosen the ache. Rebeca and Soledad are a few cars ahead of them because they jumped earlier, but soon the girls make their way back to them, stepping along the tops of the freight cars, leaping across the gaps, ducking flat when the train passes beneath a roadway. Lydia performs a series of elaborate flinches while she watches them.

Soon they’re all seated together, along with the four young men who were already here, including the one who caught Luca when he jumped. Lydia watches the men react to the girls’ arrival. She studies their faces as, one by one, they absorb the circumstance of the girls’ extreme beauty and one by one, they shift their bodies ever so slightly away from the teenage sisters. The men are deferential. They know what hardship lies along the road for these girls, and they’re sympathetic to that danger. Soon they all move past it. The men smile at Luca. They tap him and point out interesting sights as they pass: a mother cow with her calf, a huddle of trees like a rugby scrum, a stark white cross atop a low hill. The men bless themselves when they go by a steeple or a roadside grave. They pray.

Those first few hours on La Bestia are exhilarating. The train ambles west and west and north, and Luca feels a giddy sense that they are really going now. It feels so good to be a passenger, to make fast progress with the power of machinery doing the work. They drink water from their canteens and eat granola bars. Lydia gives one to the sisters to share. Soledad and Rebeca sit back to back, their knees propped up like tent poles. Soledad eats her half in one gulp. Rebeca savors hers, picking crumbs from the corners and allowing them to dissolve in her mouth before swallowing.

The landscape rolls beneath them, shifting colors. Sometimes the trees draw close to the tracks, squat and scrubby. Sometimes they stand back and pierce the sky. Sometimes obstructions press in at the top of the train and threaten to knock the passengers off: overgrown foliage, the narrow structure of a bridge crossing over a ravine, and most alarmingly, the cramped tunnels, where the ceilings seem to skim just inches above their heads, and the echo of deafening noise amplifies the fear of falling. The migrants are alert to these dangers: they crouch, flatten, lean. They draw their arms and legs in and hold their breath.

Periodically, the train stops, and after a while, Luca begins to understand how to predict those interruptions. First, there will be an abrupt change of direction – that means there’s a town nearby, large enough that whoever laid these tracks determined the train should go there. The train turns and lurches, slowing first for the change of direction, and then further as the town approaches. The migrants shift into postures of alertness, make themselves flat atop the cars, so Luca and Lydia do the same. They watch for the dark trucks and white stars of la policía federal, whose job it is to clear migrants from the trains.

‘What happens if we see la policía?’ Luca asks. He’s lying flat on his stomach, stretched out between Mami and Soledad. Soledad faces him and rests her ear in the crook of her elbow.

‘You run for your life, chiquito,’ she says.

Sometimes the stops are brief, a few minutes; sometimes they last an hour or more, while the migrants hold their collective breath, their muscles taut, their senses strained. Their eyes comb the landscape for movement beyond the men loading and unloading freight from the hollow cars beneath them. Sometimes the working men throw snacks up to the migrants on top of the train before it leaves, or refill their water bottles from a nearby hose. Other times, it’s as if the men have been warned not to aid the migrants, like they’re invisible on top of the train, and those times are like careful choreography, all pretending not to see or be seen. And then at last, there’s a whistle, a jerk, and the gradual acceleration of relief as the train resumes its journey to the next place. When the light descends to that golden, glowing hour, when it touches Soledad’s skin like an uninvited spotlight, the sisters put their heads together and talk quietly for a few moments.

‘We don’t stay on the trains at night,’ Soledad explains to Lydia, after.

‘We’ll get off at the next place,’ Rebeca adds. ‘Whenever it stops again.’

Lydia nods. She doesn’t ask why.

‘We’ll get off then, too, right, Mami?’ Luca asks.

It feels like the sisters have invited them, indirectly, to go with them. Rebeca looks to Lydia, the girl’s face nearly as hopeful as Luca’s. Soledad is harder to read, turning askance so Lydia can see only her profile. Lydia’s loath to get off, after their difficulty boarding. Now that they’re finally moving, she’d like to stay on the train all the way to el norte. But on the other hand, it’s precisely because of these girls and their instructions that she and Luca managed to get on La Bestia at all. They’ve returned Luca’s voice to him. They know things. ‘Okay,’ Lydia says.

When the train stops at San Miguel de Allende just before sunset, Luca and Lydia follow Soledad and Rebeca down the ladder. They wave goodbye to the men who remain behind, and wave hello to the men who are opening one of the freight cars to unload the waiting cargo. They set off quickly into the town.

San Miguel de Allende is immaculate, with low stone walls lining the streets, and manicured trees and flowers in the plazas. They follow a wide avenue as it swoops past a pink church, rosy in the setting sun, with pennant flags strung festively from the facade to the front gates of the churchyard. Luca can still feel the leftover vibration of the train in his bones as they walk. The concrete underfoot has a new sensation of active stillness. They pass a furniture store, a pharmacy, a bar, a fancy house with balconies, three men loitering beneath a palm tree, causing the sisters to quicken their steps. They pass new houses of stucco and old houses of stone, a supermarket, a fútbol field, a woman begging on the street, a nicer supermarket, and finally, a roundabout that seems to demarcate the downtown’s edge.

The sisters walk by instinct, and they’ve become good at it, following the signs and the people, wending their way into the denser parts of town in search of la plaza central. They feel safest where it’s clean and crowded. A hotel, a hardware store, a bus station, a statue of a winged angel attacking somebody with a sword, and the daylight descends from pink to purple. Beside a fruit vendor, a man sits astride a milk crate wearing a white cowboy hat. His accordion grows and shrinks in his hands like flamboyant lungs. He makes the music the whole street moves to. A lady is grilling meat nearby, and the aroma makes Luca’s stomach twist in hunger, but they keep walking as the streets become narrow instead of broad, stone instead of tarmac. Paper lanterns stretch across the spaces overhead, affixed to the wrought iron balconies and bobbing in the urban breeze. It’s different from Acapulco in every conceivable way except one: it’s like a sensory postcard of a Mexican town. The sun sets west at their backs, making everything blush.

Luca squeezes his mother’s hand. ‘Mami, I’m hungry.’

‘Good timing, chiquito,’ Soledad says. ‘We’re here.’

Here is the Plaza Principal of San Miguel de Allende. They duck beneath the arched stone portico of a cinnamon-colored building and take a moment to rest. Luca lets go of Mami’s hand and leans his pack against the wall behind him. In the plaza, people are eating tortas and drinking Cokes. They’re chatting and laughing. Three mariachi bands in competing colors – orange, white, powder blue – keep just enough distance between them to be heard above their rivals. They stroll the corners of the plaza and romance the tourists with the brightness of their music. There’s a band of odd trees that fills the square between them, their trunks tight and compact. The weird spread of their limbs above blends their foliage into one thick, spongy green ceiling. A riot of pink spires topped by a golden cross rises from the canopy like a fairy palace. It’s the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, and the church makes a stunning silhouette against the dusky sky.

‘Crazy.’ Rebeca says the word they’re all thinking.

It’s one of the strangest places Luca has ever seen. And just as the last ray of sunlight lifts diagonally from the Plaza Principal and slides up the steeples on its way out of town, all at once the studded lampposts blaze to light. The strings of lights around the tree trunks pop and glow. It’s overwhelming, to be in a beautiful, festive place like this. Lydia is overcome by guilt. Because it feels incongruous and seductive and wrong to witness the simple charm of a pretty place. She can see that same kind of notion land across Luca’s features, and she reaches for his hand. His mind does this awful thing to remind him not to be enchanted: it floods him with the helpful memory of all his dead family, the endless roll of gunfire through Abuela’s bathroom window, the screams outside, the futile press of Mami’s hands against his ears, the single spot of his bright red blood against the green shower tile. Everyone gone. Luca is gone with them for a moment, so he doesn’t hear Mami when she says his name. He doesn’t see the faces of Soledad and Rebeca swarm toward him in sisterly concern. He’s unaware of his own sobbing, the way he clamps his hands over his head. He doesn’t know how long he’s gone, but when he returns, he’s tucked into the curl of Mami’s body and she’s rocking him. Her hands through his hair, her voice a hum of tight comfort in his ear.

‘Sh, amorcito, it’s okay,’ Lydia says.

He nods. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m okay now.’

But she doesn’t let go.

Soledad catches Lydia’s eye across the top of Luca’s head, and some byway of recognition darts between them. They perceive each other, the unspoken trauma they’ve both endured, their reasons for being here. It’s as subtle and significant as a heartbeat.

And then Soledad says, ‘Rebeca, let’s hurry now, and get him some food. Figure out where to sleep.’

Lydia funnels gratitude into the slow blink of her lashes.

The sisters return quickly with dinner. It’s like a magic trick, so that Lydia can see for the first time some benefit to their beauty. It’s the best food Luca and Lydia have eaten since the quinceañera, because the sisters have learned important things. They don’t bother with the street vendors, whose generosity might be contingent on feeding their own families first. Instead, Soledad and Rebeca have learned, it’s best to find a fancy restaurant, and befriend a young man there who may emerge for a cigarette break or to make a delivery. That young man may find himself beholden to the beauty and raw need of two young girls who are alone so far from home. Very often, the sisters have learned, that young man will disappear momentarily and return with two heaping containers of hot spaghetti, still steaming and tossed with garlic, oil, and salt. Perhaps there may also be a spoonful of Bolognese or some vegetables. A heel of warm bread. There is always a smile, a blessing, a flare of recognition from the hardworking young man who, because of the way beauty begets empathy (among other things), imagines his own little sister or cousin or daughter in the place of these girls. He bids them a safe journey, implores them to look after themselves. Sometimes he also provides forks. The girls are always effusive in their thanks. They call all of God’s blessings down upon the young man’s head.

On the broad pink steps of the elaborate church, Luca and Lydia, Soledad and Rebeca fall gratefully on the spaghetti. They eat in silence, sharing the two forks, until every morsel is gone. Lydia thanks the girls, and her spoken gratitude feels entirely insufficient, because what she really needs to say is that the food, yes, but also their kindness, their humanity, their very existence, has nourished some withered, essential part of herself. Rebeca and Luca have wandered over to rinse their hands in the fountain, but Soledad is looking directly at Lydia’s face.

‘Maybe we should stick together for a while,’ she says.

Lydia nods. ‘Yes.’

Night collapses over the city. The bars and restaurants empty and shutter their doors for the night, and eventually, even the lingering mariachis disperse to their homes. As the lights of San Miguel de Allende falter and quench, the four travelers move their packs and their bodies toward the center of the plaza. They stretch themselves out on the municipal benches. Like bums, Luca thinks. It’s their first night sleeping outdoors, and it doesn’t feel like an adventure at all. He wants his bedroom with its stack of books on the floor and his balón de fútbol lamp. He wants Papi’s warm shadow on the wall. But his belly is full and his head is resting on the squishy part of Mami’s thigh, and Luca is exhausted. There’s a tug-of-war in his heart already, between wanting to remember and needing to forget. In the months to come, Luca will sometimes wish he hadn’t squandered these early days of his grief. He’ll wish he’d let it pierce and demolish him more. Because, as the forgetting part takes anchor and stays, it will feel like a treachery. He’ll mistakenly believe it’s his own cowardice erasing Papi’s details – the mole above his left eyebrow, the tight, rough little curls of his hair, the timbre of his voice when he laughs, the sandpaper feel of his jaw against Luca’s forehead when they read together at night in Luca’s bed. But Luca doesn’t know any of that yet, nor does he know that, no matter what he does right now, that creeping amnesia is inevitable, it’s not his fault. So, in fatigue, he pushes those memories away and shuts them out. He recites to himself the geographic particulars of Nairobi, Toronto, Hong Kong. Soon, he’s snoring softly on his mother’s lap.

Despite her bone-deep exhaustion, Lydia’s the only one unable to sleep. She stiffens when a young couple approaches, tipsy and giggling. They steal beneath the trees for a kiss and then stop in their tracks when they see the darkened silhouette of Lydia sitting up on the bench, her backpack clutched in front of her like a shield, the sleeping figures of Luca and the sisters nearby. The children don’t stir, and the couple quickly retreats. Behind the noise of crickets, their footsteps echo and diminish.

Lydia envies the chorus of shuffling breath around her, how easily young people can slip into their weariness like a warm bath. She used to do that, too, she remembers, before she was a mother. She could do anything back then, before she had maternal fear to spark any real caution in her soul. She’d been reckless in her youth. As a teenager, she’d dived from the cliffs at La Quebrada, just for the thrill, for the quaver that jolted through her when she leaped. She shudders now at the memory of that unnecessary danger and turns to look at the sleeping girls stretched head-to-head on the next bench over.

When at last a dim light begins to creep through the canopy, signaling the coming safety of daylight, Lydia’s mind releases her to sleep.