I feel blood. Mine. Sticky. On my face and arms. They sting from the slashes of the branches. But I cannot clean my wounds. I have no water.
When I was little and I got the slightest injury, Mami, Papi, Abue, Toño—whoever was closest—patted my hurt and said to me this: Sana, sana, colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana. Get well, get well, little frog tail. If you do not get well today, you will tomorrow. There is nobody to sana, sana me now.
You never know when The Beast will come alive again, I have learned, so you should not go into the cities. You have to stay close to the tracks. You may wait for hours and hours. The signal is when you hear the clanks of the cars linking up. That says The Beast once more, with a jolt, is leaving.
A train is leaving right now. I hear the link-ups. So must everybody else for they all run to jump on again. The wheels begin screaming. Then out surge hidden police, their big dogs straining on leashes, lunging for people and barking.
“¡Alto! ¡Alto!” The polis yell. “Stop! Stop!”
But nobody does. While the train gains speed everybody rushes for the ladders and scrambles for a safe place where they cannot be grabbed and forced back from their goal of El Norte.
This is not the same train as before, and it is not so crowded. But still it is on the same tracks. Different people have scrambled aboard. Different Beast Riders with their many hopes. If they could take the bus they would. But buses cost . . . Looking out for each other as best we can, the unspoken Brotherhood goes north.
I make it to a boxcar top, but one guy near me does not. His pant leg is ripped by the teeth of a police dog, not as fierce as my Guapo back home, but scary-fierce anyway. The teeth clamp the man’s leg like a trap and he is bleeding bleeding. He screams frantically and tries to break free. But he cannot escape.
“¡Socorro! Help me!” He yells and yells. The poli yanks his straining dog back from the too-close train. Somebody reaches down for the man’s hand and begins to pull him up. But he is too weak. The leg . . .
He slips down down, to be eaten alive by The Beast.
Now The Beast is gone from there. And the torn man? Who knows? A vision of the boy who died in our milpita comes to me. I lie on my panza, belly, on the boxcar, trembling. For a long time, in my deep heart, I hear the moans of the boy, I hear the cries of the man.
In our village my friends and I used to shout a gruesome goodbye. ¡Adiós! ¡Que te vaya bien! ¡Que te machuque el tren! ¡Que te remuela bien! Go well! May the train smash you! May it grind you up well!
As The Beast roars on, my wounds become warm. I feel a throbbing. Already, I believe, they are festering. I must do something for that. Even though I know there is nothing there but the too-small-to-steal phone numbers, I dig my hands into my pockets.
What is this? I feel something strange in one, something brittle and crumbly wrapped in paper. In my panic at being robbed, I missed it. I pull out a pinch and look at it. But it is not the looks that give it away, it is the sweet scent. I was right. All along Abue knew my plan. She has hidden here a curing herb for me. When my journey began the leaves must have been whole. Their dust will help me still.
Along with the curing leaves there is a note. Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you. And I do. Ever ever I hold on to Abue’s hand.
“Water, please,” I beg from a lady nearby, pointing to my angry scratches. I need water also to drink. My thirst is great. By now I know that Beast Riders, mostly they help each other. And she helps me. With a look of concern, from a plastic bottle she pours precious water into a small empty can. I sip this gift, slow slow. Water is hoarded gold.
What I do not drink I guard carefully. When the sun heats it, I sprinkle in some of Abue’s precious herb crumbs. I touch the hot leaf paste to my face, my arms. “Que Dios la bendiga,” I say to the lady. I whisper a prayer of gracias to my Abue. And to Dios.
I am grateful that I will be healed. Still, I fear that at night the cold will get to me. Hot days. Cold nights. What will I do with no sweater?
While plowing our milpita I have often watched beetles in the fields. These are the ruedacacas, rollers of dung. Their one big concern is caca. As soon as Guapo or Trini shits, the ruedacacas are there, gathering the warm dung. Rolling it into marble-size balls, then moving it with their small might toward their far tunnels. I love to see them working, so faithful to the task. Sometimes I pause just to study their toilings. I know I should keep on in my own toilings, but these beetles are so enchanting.
If they have success and roll the caca home, all year they can feed upon caca balls. If they lose it, or it is stolen by another beetle, they will have none. But always always they keep laboring. Seeking out dung. Fighting for some, the precious popó. Rolling rolling the dung. That is the way of the ruedacacas.
Here am I on this terror train thundering to The North. I am hungry. I am thirsty. I am tired. I am scared. I am wounded. Though crushed against many other people, I am lonely to the bone. In this moment I want to quit. To stop someplace. Anyplace. Then somehow struggle myself home. But then I imagine the lowly ruedacacas, working working. They become my example. I feel my spirit rise. I have good new resolve. Like the ruedacacas, I will keep going.
Dimmest dawn. January is fleeing away. This day, in my deep heart I feel it is my birthday. For my best wish I would be with my family. Though I am too old for such a thing, I wish for a piñata to comfort me. A little donkey. Blue. Like when I was young. For all my strong wishings, these things do not happen. With nothing, I turn thirteen.
Long scary days and nights flow one into another. I think of home. How I would love to call my family, but I have no money. And I fear their dear voices would convince me to return.
Now Abue will be patting out the tortillas of desayuno, breakfast. Now Papi will be trailing Trini through the furrows because I am not there. And little Belén and Javier will be doing my chores for me. Guilt grabs my heart.
I clutch the lurching spine of The Beast. Night and day, people—dirty, sweaty, hungry, thirsty, scared like me—press against each other, people from all over. They sprawl on whatever space there is and pray. To stay on, to keep warm, I lean against others huddled there. They lean against me. Sometimes it is freezing. Sometimes the heat is of ten thousand devils. Nights, I hug myself against the cold. I rub my injured arms to try to keep warm.
When I look at the faces of these other riders, I see tiredness, loneliness, sadness. As though the light has gone out of them. I wonder, Has it also gone from me?
Always I watch for gangs, I try to keep from falling from the train, I search for any speck of shade—to keep from shriveling up and becoming a momia, like a Guanajuato mummy, so famous. I dare not enter a boxcar for fear of somebody slamming the door. In the heat I would cook in there.
We riders of The Beast try to blink ourselves awake. But if we cannot, we guard each other. The worst thing is to fall asleep and be attacked—or fall off. I am filthy beyond filthy, both soot- and sweat-covered. Apart from family and food, what I most long for is a bath.
With the steady roar of The Beast, I become less watchful for danger—or maybe just more exhausted. Whichever it is, one evening when I am darting from a hiding place back toward The Beast, two shots whine by my head. I freeze. I am captured by a poli.