“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You can come pick me up.”
“Good, Emiliano. That’s good. I will be there in an hour.”
“Do you know how to get here?”
“I know how. I got directions from the owner of the motel. Everyone here in Sanderson knows Mr. Larsson. I would have come earlier except Sara insisted I call you first. She thought it was important … to give you a chance to … decide … on your own. So, you want to come to Chicago with me?”
How was I supposed to answer that? Want? Did I want to go to Chicago with my father? Yes and no. I wasn’t even sure that want was the right word. Then I remembered Yoya’s words: We’ll get this done in Chicago. And if people are after you, you’ll be safer in a big city like Chicago.
“Come anytime. I’ll be here.”
I hung up. I was totally drained. It felt like after one of my soccer matches when every ounce of effort had been given to the game. When that happened, when I knew I had given everything I had, it almost didn’t matter if we lost.
But in this game, if I lost, I would be sent back to Mexico, where I would be killed.
The van, a modern-looking vehicle with an aerodynamic roof, went around the driveway in front of the house and stopped in the direction it had just come from. The driver’s door stayed closed and Gustaf walked toward the house. My father was sitting in the driver’s seat, talking into a cell phone. When he saw me, he smiled apologetically and stuck his hand out the window, fingers waving.
I stood by the side of the van, reading:
Able Abe
Commercial and Residential Heating and Cooling
Year Round 24/7 Maintenance and Repair
Below that was a website address and a phone number. On the top right-hand corner of the van, there was a portrait of a robust, smiling man in his sixties.
After a few minutes of standing there, I started to walk back to the corral. What phone call could be more important than greeting the son you left behind five years ago?
“Emiliano!”
I stopped and turned, slowly. My father had filled out, but he was still the same handsome man. There were patches of white on his temples, which made him look successful. With the cell phone still in one hand, and before I could react, he embraced me. “God almighty, I’m so glad you’re safe.” I let myself be hugged, arms limply by my sides. The body pressed against me had the same strength that I remembered, but it was also different, softer somehow.
When he finally let go of me, I muttered, “Hola.”
“Hola, hijo!” He held me by the shoulders so he could get a better look. “Dios mío. You grew up on me. You’re a man now.”
“Un poco,” I said, loosening myself from his grip.
“Y yo, más viejo.” My father touched the white hair on his temples. I did not return his smile. He went on. “But listen, from now on, only English, okay?”
I stared at him for a few seconds. Was I going to let him tell me what to do? Could he not see that I was no longer twelve years old? I exhaled, softly. “Okay. English, then.”
“Perfect. Because the better your English, the better you will do. You know?” My father looked at his cell phone briefly as if realizing that it was still in his hand. He stuck it in his pants’ right pocket and then looked away, as if he wanted to ask a question but was afraid of the answer. “So? You ready?”
I turned to the horse, who whinnied and stomped the ground. The horse was telling me not to go; that’s how I interpreted his movements.
“I’ll go get my backpack,” I said without looking at my father.
My father rushed to my side and put his arm around my shoulders. “I know this is hard for you, but it’s going to be all right.”
Just then then the muffled sound of “La Bamba” came from my father’s cell phone. He made an expression as if to say that it was a call he had to take and dug the phone out of his pocket.
The old, green canvas backpack was the same school backpack Gustaf’s son had used all through high school. In it were a pair of pants, a cowboy shirt, a few pieces of underwear that had belonged to Gutierrez, the belt with a bucking-horse buckle that Gustaf insisted I take, a toothbrush, and at the very bottom, the metallic bag with Hinojosa’s cell phone. I reached down and felt the phone through the bag. How could something that weighed so little contain so much evil? I had carried heavy backpacks in my desert hikes with the Jiparis, but I suspected that none would be heavier than the one I was about to carry now.
Gustaf came out of the kitchen, holding two brown mugs of coffee. He nodded when he saw the backpack in my hand as if to let me know that it was the right thing to do, hard as it was. We walked out of the house side by side.
“Ahh, Mr. Larsson, so good to finally meet you! I’m Bob, Emiliano’s father.”
Bob? Yes, when I looked at him again, my father seemed more a Bob than a Roberto. He was stashing his cell phone in the pocket of his neatly pressed blue pants and stretching his free hand all at once. “I want to thank you so much for what you did for Emiliano. You saved his life!”
“Naah, the horse did that.”
“What is it with the horse?” My father looked at me quickly and then back at Gustaf.
“It’s a long story. Emiliano here can fill you in.” Gustaf winked at me.
“Ahh.”
A strange look appeared on my father’s face. As if he envied the closeness that had developed in the past ten days between Gustaf and me.
“I can put this in one of those plastic cups. I think there’s some in the kitchen,” Gustaf said, still holding out the brown mug.
“No, no. Don’t bother. I’ll drink it quick,” my father said, reaching for the mug carefully with both hands. “Emiliano, I don’t know if you know, but all the roads going north have Border Patrol checkpoints. I needed to come up with a way to get you past them.” He sipped from the brown mug and then placed it on the front porch. He opened the back doors of the van and climbed inside. Gustaf and I moved closer and peered. The van was filled with pieces of air conditioners: belts, corrugated filters, propeller-looking blades, rolls of electrical wire, tubes of soft aluminum. My father pushed his way to the front, moved two large, heavy boxes that apparently contained air-conditioner units, and opened the hatch to a big metal box at the front of the van. “This is for tools, but Emiliano can fit in here if he lies sideways and bends his knees a little. There’s ventilation. I had one of our boys in the shop ride in it for a couple of blocks to make sure no exhaust went in.” He waited for us to respond, but I didn’t know what to say and, apparently, neither did Gustaf. Finally, my father said, “Emiliano, you want to try?”
I looked at my father with disbelief. Did he really think that was going to work? For a moment there, I thought maybe he was trying to send me back to Mexico. I wouldn’t have minded so much except that now I had to get to Chicago and call Yoya, and there was also the small matter of me getting killed if I returned to Mexico.
“Won’t the Border Patrol inspect the back of the van?” I asked. “I would. And that toolbox there would be the first place I’d look.”
“They have to go through all the stuff.” My father pointed at the clutter of air-conditioner parts. “And the two big boxes here will cover the handle to the toolbox.”