Recorded Books presents an unabridged recording of The Crossing by Gary Paulson, narrated by Maria Hammer. Hello, I'm Gary Paulson. The story you're about to hear is called The Crossing.
It's a story about a Mexican boy whose only chance of survival is to cross from Mexico into the United States. I'll be back at the end of the program to tell you more about how I came to write it. And now, The Crossing. The First Meeting. Chapter One.
Manny Bustos awakened when the sun cooked the cardboard over his head and heated the box he was sleeping in until even a lizard couldn't have taken it. And he knew, suddenly, that it was time. This was the day.
He would make the crossing today. Juarez, Mexico, was never quiet. As a border town it was made of noise.
Noise that filled all the hours of the day. But the noises changed and he listened to them now without thinking. Honking. horns. The market starting to fill with people trying to get fresh goat cheese or the thick coffee.
People yelling insults and curses at each other. A hum of noise. Mornings were the best time.
Not a good time. There were no good times for him, but the best. He lived on the street, moving, always moving, because he was fourteen and had red hair and large brown eyes with long lashes.
And there was danger if he didn't move. Danger from the men who would take him and sell him to those who wanted to buy fourteen-year-old street boys with red hair and long eyelashes. So now he rolled out when the sun warmed the cardboard of his lean-to, wiped his mouth with a finger, and stood to begin moving for the day. Another day in Juarez. But this time it was different.
This day he would change it all. He would leave. This day he would cross to the north to the United States and find work, become a man, make money, and wear a mask. a leather belt with a large buckle and a straw hat with a feathered hatband.
Hunger was instant, had never gone. He went to bed hungry, slept hungry, awakened hungry, had hunger, hunger every moment of every day and couldn't remember when he didn't have hunger. Even when he was small, a baby in the back of the church of Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, where his unknown mother had left him in a box and the sisters had tried to feed him, there was hunger.
It was almost a friend, the hunger, if something could be a friend and be hated at the same time. And he set out now to find the first food of the day. He tucked the T-shirt into his torn pants and ran his fingers through his hair.
It did almost no good. His hair was wiry and thick and full and resisted any attempts at straightening, but it was an automatic gesture, and he jammed in the loose ends when he put the baseball cap on. Across the front of the cap, it said, Ford. Manny moved through the alley and back of the church and made for the back of the two-by-four bar and cafe near the strip of Santa Fe Street where the bridge crossed over from El Paso into Juarez. Most of the bars and clubs and places were closed.
with women were for the tourists and soldiers who came over from Fort Bliss and weren't open yet, but the two-by-four was open early to catch the people who were going to the market. It had been open since three o'clock. It was a simple way to get to the market, place to eat. In the front was a large gas grill with pipes filled with tiny holes for the gas to burn in rows of blue flames. Past this rotated a rack with whole chickens on steel rods.
on a stove to the side was a large pot of beans frijoles and at four booths were bowls of salsa with seeds and so hot even manny who had a tongue of iron couldn't eat it in the rear of the caf was a large steel drum with a flame in it and a flat piece of steel on top cooking tortillas. At the drum stood Maria. Manny thought of her always as old Maria, although she wasn't so old.
Taking the corn dough in small pieces and slapping it flat with her palms, slapping it to drop it on the hot tin, flicking it over with her fingers when it was smoking, cooking the other side until it was done and brown, and adding it to a stack of tortillas that never seemed to grow because people ate them with the chicken and salsa as fast as she could cook them. if he stood long enough and smiled in the shy way old maria would sometimes hand him a tortilla and he could get some beans from the pot if he was lucky and that would cut away the hunger for a time once a drunk soldier had believed his limp when it was dark and he was begging and had given him five american dollars which none of the larger boys had seen so he'd managed to keep it at the time he was only five or six he didn't know his true age and five american dollars was a fortune he had taken it to the two-by-four and bought a chicken and tortillas and pepsicola and had eaten and eaten until nothing but bones remained that had been a time that day he hadn't gotten full but there had been something close to it and he could still close his eyes eight years later and remember the taste of the grease and the garlic on his face the feeling of his stomach swollen with food and not with hunger. He'd spent over half of the five dollars just on food, and would have spent it all had a larger boy not seen him eating and known that he had money and taken the rest from him. Even so, with just half of it, there had been much food, a whole chicken and a stack of tortillas.
He arrived at the back of the two-by-four and stopped outside the screened alley door. It was hot in the alley and the garbage smells were getting strong, but still the odor of the cooking chicken and the scorching tortillas rolled through the screen and took him. His stomach rumbling, he looked through the screen to see Maria standing by the metal cooker, and he smiled the shy smile. Hello, beautiful lady. How is your morning?
Maria looked through the screen and laughed. I could set my watch by you, if I had a watch. First the sun, then the heat, then Manny Bustos coming for his breakfast.
She finished slapping a tortilla and threw it on the tin, flicked four of them over, then picked up some corn dough and started making a new one. Some hair had come loose from the leather tie back and hung down the side of her face. It was rich and thick and black but for a small streak of flour in it where she'd used her hand to push it back.
I can let you have a tortilla, but the frijoles aren't ready yet. Manny nodded. I would be very grateful for a tortilla. Your tortillas are the best I have ever eaten.
So smooth. So smooth. You are as smooth as my first husband when he came to talk to me of the moon and beauty. She opened the screen and handed him a tortilla fresh off the stove. So hot he had to juggle it with his fingers to keep from burning them.
when it was only slightly cool he rolled it expertly in a tube and ate it in two bites one tortilla was small and it really only served to make his appetite worse but he held back on pushing for more he had bigger thoughts later in this day i'll be leaving he said lowering his voice as he thought a man would speak It's time for me to be crossing to the north and finding work. She studied him through the screen. A dozen flies worked to get in, making a high buzzing sound that somehow matched the talking sounds of the cafe in front. You are too young to make the crossing. Manny shrugged.
It isn't age. I'm ready to make the crossing, and so it's time. Age doesn't matter. But you're small. I'm not so small, he bridled.
I have strength, and I'm fast, and I know how to work hard. That's all that's required to cross to the north. They only wish you to work hard.
She sighed. Two tortillas started to burn and she took them off the stove, then added some more corn dough to the red hot metal. The coyotes will have you.
They're not good people, the coyotes, who take people across the border. They will have you and they will sell you. Manny brushed the flies from the screen. It can't be worse than now. Every day I must watch for those who would sell me.
Besides, I won't use coyotes. I will cross myself, alone. This night, in the dark, I will become like the night, and I will cross, and then I will find a ride in the back of a truck and head north.
There's much work there. I will find work and make money and buy new pants and a new shirt with the silver snaps and a new belt with a large buckle. and perhaps a new pair of boots i will cross to-night and i will do all of that maria continued the rhythm of the slapping the tortillas flowing in an endless stream from the dough through her hands on to the stove and into the waiting customers if you're so sure of all this why do you come to tell me now he hesitated What he wanted had to be asked for correctly and with courtesy. I will go tonight, and there's much work to be had, but it is perhaps possible that I will not find work at once. I may have to go a day, I may have to go even two days.
He trailed off. And you want food, she finished for him. You come to me for food.
He nodded. If I had a chicken, one of those delicious chickens and a few tortillas, I could go for days. It's possible that I can pay you.
This afternoon I will go to the bridge and work the turistas and there may be enough money to pay. But if not, I wish to borrow a chicken and some tortillas. Borrow.
She snorted. You wish to borrow a chicken? Si. Yes.
I will pay you later, send you money for the chicken. And at first he thought she would say no. There was that in her mouth, he thought. The no was in her mouth.
But instead her eyes took on a sadness he didn't understand. It was a sadness for him, but more it seemed to be a sadness, a pity for herself. She sighed again. Come back this evening.
I will still be working. Come to the back door just at dark, and I will have a chicken in a paper sack for you. But wait until I'm standing alone to knock.
The owner comes in the afternoon and stays for the evening. He won't be pleased if he sees me giving you food. Manny smiled. I owe you much for this.
Thank you. Thank you and know that I will find a way to pay. Don't talk of pay. You have nothing and will have nothing for the time that you live. But you can't see that now.
So, cross tonight and I will feed you and maybe it will be that you're lucky. One of the lucky ones. She brushed the hair back. And now leave. Just talking to you makes me feel old and tired.
Manny thanked her once more and moved off into the alley, headed for the bridge. it was still too early for the tourists to start flowing across it but he had to get his money catcher ready and perhaps fight for a place beneath the bridge he had much to do to get ready and on this day he didn't have much time left he would cross to-night chapter two he was above all things a sergeant robert s locke looked in the full-length mirror on the door of his barrack's room above the mirror was a sign in large block letters a soldier is always neat check your appearance daily and studied himself carefully. He thought even now, even with the slippage from the Cutty Sark Scotch whiskey and the clouded vision that was coming as the whiskey took him, even with all that, he was still, above all things, a sergeant. The man in the mirror didn't look like he felt. The man in the mirror was ramrod straight, with graying, short, tight hair, and a straight mouth.
The man in the mirror had an inline nose, even steel blue eyes with just a faint shade of red in the whites now. A shave so close, the skin looked raw. Flat ears, and a uniform so incredibly neat and sharp and true, that the cloth looked to be carved from stone.
A granite uniform. Even the rows of decorations seemed carved against his barrel chest. The man in the mirror showed only one scar, the one from the tiny bit of shrapnel in Vietnam that had cut white sizzling across his left temple.