Part 13 (2/2)

”I left all that in my wallet.”

”And now tell me how you thought you could go on a trip without your wallet.”

”It stayed back there inside my shoe boxes,” he said. ”The ones you didn't let me bring.”

The bus vibrated unsteadily as it rolled across the grated lines on the road and came to a smooth stop under the open-sided checkpoint. The highway continued south and north from this point, but with no other sign of life as far as they could see in either direction. An officer dressed in green pants and khaki s.h.i.+rt approached the bus with a clipboard in hand. Don Celestino reached the front of the bus just as the driver was opening the door to shake hands with the official.

”Excuse me,” Don Celestino said, ”but the immigration office was closed at the bus station and they told me that I could get our visas here.”

”Over there.” The official pointed to a single metal office that stood directly across the other lane used for smaller vehicles. ”Go knock, see if today you find him in a good mood.”

”And hurry,” the driver added, ”or you'll have to take the next bus.”

The men were still laughing as he waited for a large white truck with Texas plates to pa.s.s so he could make it across the lane. He found the office door open and an older woman in a long gingham ap.r.o.n mopping the tiled floor. ”Is this where I can get a visa?”

”I only clean the office for the one who sits at the desk,” the woman replied.

A short pile of blank visa forms lay on the surface of the otherwise bare desk.

”You know when he's supposed to be back?”

”He comes back whenever he feels like it, any more you have to ask him. I just clean the floor.”

He stepped to one side of the entrance to let her pour the water onto a patch of weeds, then carry away the bucket and mop. Back at the bus, the driver was already on the first step, leaning down to shake hands one last time with the official.

”You got everything you needed?” the official asked.

Don Celestino nodded and held up the two forms, folded in half, before he tucked them into the top pocket of his guayabera.

A few minutes later, as the bus was pulling back onto the road, Socorro asked him the same question but got a different response.

”And later if somebody asks, what are we going to do?” she said. ”You never stop to think about how things might turn out. You think I can help you if the two of you get in trouble?”

”I was asleep,” Don Fidencio said, now sitting back up and leaning forward to hear a little better. ”And anyway, if I was born on this side, for what do I need papers?”

”You still need them to be in either country.”

”So I'm not supposed to be here, but now I can't get back over there? Is that what you want to tell me? Not here and not there?”

His brother looked at him and then at Socorro. ”Just give me time and I'll figure something out,” he said, and leaned back in his seat.

”Sure,” Don Fidencio said, ”sure you will.”

_______.

The bus barreled through an open stretch of highway, slowing down only when the red light above the driver buzzed, indicating that he had again exceeded the one-hundred-kilometers-per-hour speed limit. The buzzer, which was actually more of a high-pitched squeal, was interfering with the pa.s.sengers' movie, as well as the ca.s.sette tape he was playing up front for his own pleasure. The combination of the Norteno music, the squealing buzzer, and the Hindu music from the movie forced him to ease his foot off the accelerator. The only other time he reduced his speed was when he found himself stuck behind a car or trailer with a driver who didn't extend him the courtesy of moving off to the shoulder. On the tighter curves, he slowed down to a sluggish eighty kilometers per hour.

After feeling what seemed to be each and every pebble the bus had rolled over, the old man opened his eyes. Three more crosses marked the curve up ahead. A woman was pulling the weeds growing around the last of these shrines, each of them no bigger than a doghouse. Off in the distance he made out a teetering windmill still spinning, though only one of its blades remained in place. Halfway up a small hill, he thought he spotted a thicket of palo amarillo, the kind his grandfather used to search for when he wasn't feeling well and needed to brew another batch of the stems. Together they would venture out into the monte without any clear direction, but turning this way and that way, down along a creek or up some gravelly hillside, as his grandfather picked up a trace of the vanilla-scented flowers. A moment later Don Fidencio grabbed the seat in front of him to pull himself up.

”I need to make water,” he announced to anyone interested in knowing.

”You went at the bus station,” Don Celestino said back over his shoulder.

”This time I can make it there without your help.”

”Yes, yes, without my help - and then if you have an accident and fall?”

”So then what, you want me to stay here and do it in the plastic bag?”

Socorro kept her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, while the two brothers continued arguing between the seats: something about a pecan, then a guava; something about shoe boxes; something about sacrifices; something about knowing better. Two days ago she'd wanted to come along on the trip, if only to spend more time with Don Celestino. She knew it was silly, but she imagined the trip would somehow make things between them more real. If they were away from home for a while, people would see them together out in public, like a normal couple, and it would continue when they got back. She had been trying to think of the best way of telling her mother, but then Don Celestino said they weren't going after all. She was disappointed at first, though later that night she realized the trip would have been difficult for Don Fidencio. The man needed more care than they had considered before agreeing to take him. Those times they'd gone out to eat, he had refused to wear anything on his collar to protect his clothes. Afterward she'd tried to help him wipe off some of the stains, but they almost always had to return him to the nursing home with various wet splotches across his s.h.i.+rt and pants. Of course, the old man cared little about how he looked; she was the one who worried what people would think, especially the nurses and aides. And none of this was taking into account how he seemed to be losing a little more strength every day. It was difficult helping him get in and out of the car as it was. And now a bus? She had seen how the nurse's aides struggled to get these poor old people in and out of their wheelchairs, their beds, their restrooms. What if one day he couldn't go to the toilet on his own or bathe himself? What if they bought him the cane he insisted on using but then saw that he needed the walker? Though she had gone to bed feeling sorry for him, by the morning she had woken up thankful that his daughter had put an end to the whole thing. She didn't know what to think when she first saw the two men sitting in the taxi at the bridge. What was going through his head, believing he could steal his ninety-one-year-old brother and run away to Mexico? This wasn't going to make the man's life any better. If anything, from now on they probably wouldn't allow him to leave the nursing home even for a short while to eat lunch somewhere. And then one final thought had crossed her mind: What if the old man gets sick on the trip?

Maybe it was her fault for encouraging them to take the trip. Maybe even her fault for insisting that he introduce her to his family. If they hadn't met, Don Fidencio might not have continued telling his grandfather's story as much as he did. What did it matter if she met his family anyway? Or he met hers? She had met his brother, and it wasn't as if anything had changed. Wasn't it enough that she had found someone? Was she imagining this thing between them was more than what it was? The only thing she knew for certain was that she had more questions than answers, and sometimes only questions.

It sounded as if they'd stopped arguing. Then she felt Don Celestino standing up to follow his brother to the lavatory. She opened her eyes just as the bus climbed a low hill that opened up into a new valley. The blossoming white flowers of the yucca spotted the distant hills, and farther to the west, the huisache splashed orange-and-yellow hues along the horizon. A few cinder-block houses with thatched roofs stood at the end of a winding path extending out from the highway. When the bus reached the bottom of the hill, a young boy was standing by himself near the shoulder. He held a falcon tethered to his forearm, which was padded with the remains of what looked like a quilted blanket. A large wire cage stood next to him as he waited for his next customer to pull over. There was nothing around him except for more and more open range. The gust of wind and dirt from a pa.s.sing truck caused the bird to flap its sizable wings and the vendor boy to extend his padded arm to avoid being swatted. As the bus zoomed by, the boy was still struggling to pull down on the tether with his other hand. Socorro turned in her seat until she finally lost him in the unforgiving scrubland.

28.

The engine lights start flas.h.i.+ng, but with no sign that there is trouble with the engine. He has no idea what has become of the driver, or why, of all people, an old man who has never driven a bus, and much less through Mexico, would be the one at the wheel. He tries, for the fourth time, to eject the video from the VCR, and again, like so many other things in his remaining days, it refuses to cooperate with him. He has listened to enough of this strange music in some tongue he has never heard but feels compelled to hum along to. What he needs to do is find a safe place to pull over somewhere on this mountain road and add water to the overheated engine. Because of the dense clouds he has trouble seeing beyond the solid white line at the shoulder, but he imagines the drop is severe and not something any of them would survive if he were to miscalculate one of these curves when the front end of the bus swept over the edge. He eases up on the accelerator as he approaches a group of men walking single file in the opposite direction. But when he gets closer he sees that he is one of these men, only younger, just as he was the only other time he traveled so far into Mexico. The old man desperately wants to slide open the little window and speak to this younger version of himself, tell him how it all turns out, that he makes it back home alive - hungry, but alive - and that from then on he'll take work only when they travel up north, where it will be less likely for these men to accuse him of not belonging where he is and forcing him to go somewhere else, and that later he will find a good job, but one that over many, many years will require him to walk farther than he is walking now, no matter how difficult that might be to imagine. When the road opens up he decides to pull over, only he notices that he has no brakes. There is a gas pedal and then a wide-open s.p.a.ce to the left. He sees the highway flas.h.i.+ng just beneath him. Of all the buses to be put in charge of, they gave him one without so much as a brake pedal. And the accelerator he thought he was controlling turns out to not change in the slightest when he takes his foot off it completely or stomps on it all the way to the floor. The bus simply continues at the same pace, regardless of what he does or doesn't do, whether going downhill or up an incline. He lifts his hands from the steering wheel and it turns smoothly with each curve. Then he stands, watching the bus continue the same as when he was driving, or thought he was. What he wants more than anything is to get back to his own seat and fall back to sleep, as he was doing before he was put in charge of driving a bus that needs no driver. He holds on to the backrests to guide himself past the other pa.s.sengers, who don't so much as thank him for his efforts. But what else should he expect from someone like The Turtle With The Fedora or The Turtle With The Orange Gloves or The One Who Cries Like A Dying Calf or The Gringo With The Ugly Finger? ”I pretty much stopped taking buses when I joined up with Pan Am. Then it was nothing but blue, blue skies for yours truly. My little accident wasn't going to keep me grounded, no sir.” They're all here, in the seats where the other pa.s.sengers were earlier. The One With The Hole In His Back balances his withered body across several rows so his wound can get some air from the open window. He has left his darkened parts exposed only so that he can keep hold of his cowboy hat in the bustling wind. ”I CAN FEEL IT GETTING SMALLER NOW. ALREADY I HAD TOLD THEM TO LEAVE IT, THAT IT JUST NEEDED SOME FRESH AIR AND IT WOULD HEAL BY ITSELF. BUT DID THEY LISTEN?” The lack of empty s.p.a.ces sends him shuffling back to the driver's seat. At least they're past the mountains and hills and are on a level highway. Everything is so much flatter now. The narrow road has two ample lanes going in the same direction and, across a narrow median, another two lanes going in the opposite direction. Something about this feels familiar. He tries to remember the stretch of road from the other time he was here, but he realizes how pointless this is for him, trying to remember something he experienced a lifetime ago. The needle has fallen off the compa.s.s. Who knows where they may be headed? ”Telefono!” The bus has slowed down and is traveling through a busy street. No more mountains, no more checkpoints, no more buzzer going off. Still there is something he wants to recall about being here. They're driving straight into the sun, and then up ahead he sees what looks like a long line of cars, all heading toward a bridge.

29.

Most of the pa.s.sengers were still asleep when the bus pulled over. The driver pressed a b.u.t.ton on the console and muted the video.

”You need to wake up,” Socorro said.

”Are we there?” Don Celestino sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

”Look for yourself,” she answered, turning to rouse his brother.

Three soldiers were boarding the bus. One stayed up front; the other two walked down the aisle to check everyone's papers. They wore flak jackets over their dark-green fatigues, and the one at the front carried a submachine gun strapped to his shoulder. Don Celestino pulled his seat back to the upright position when the first soldier walked by him.

”I told you something like this would happen,” Socorro whispered. ”But what do I know?”

”Nothing's going to happen.” He caressed her hand.

”You say it like I have something to worry about,” she said. ”You and your brother are the ones.”

The younger of two soldiers was now at the rear of the bus, making his way toward the middle. His partner had stopped in front of the long-haired musician and nudged him until he sat up.

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