‘Do you smell that?’ Luca asks Rebeca.
‘¿Chocolate?’
He nods.
‘Nope. Don’t smell it,’ she says.
Luca laughs. ‘Well, I sure do.’
They trudge ahead, passing behind the Hershey’s factory without ever realizing it’s there. Luca presses a fist against his stomach to discourage the groaning. They haven’t eaten since breakfast at the casa in Celaya, and now it’s late afternoon.
‘Hungry?’ Mami asks.
He nods.
‘Me, too.’
When the warehouses give way to brick and cinder block homes, the migrants are cheered by the appearance of two pigtailed girls in school uniforms, one slightly larger than the other, one with dimples, and one with a scab on her knee. Their mother sits at a wooden stall nearby, with a cooler of drinks and a small grill. She’s selling lemonade and hot ears of grilled corn. A fat baby sleeps in a stroller by her side. There’s a large basket there, to which the girls return in swoops, retrieving armloads of little white paper bags. These they pass out to the migrants with their blessings.
‘Bienvenidos a Guadalajara,’ the girls say, ‘and may God bless you on your journey.’
The one with the scabby knee presses a bag into Luca’s hand and one into Rebeca’s.
‘Thank you,’ Luca says.
The girl skips away, the hem of her blue plaid skirt brushing against her brown legs as she goes. Luca rips into the bag.
‘Mami! It’s chocolate!’ There are three Hershey’s Kisses inside.
As the city grows dense around them, people come and go across the tracks, carrying lunch boxes or bags of groceries. Kids with brightly colored backpacks hold their mothers’ hands and clamber across the rails. Many of them look Luca and Mami right in the eye, and say, ‘God bless you,’ and they smile. Luca would like to smile back, but he feels peculiar, too. He is unaccustomed to pity.
At El Verde, there’s a bench outside a neat, walled-in garden. The bench is painted orange, pink, and yellow, and a sign on the wall behind it reads migrantes pueden descansar aquí. Migrants can rest here. A large, mustached man is sitting on the bench, and when he sees the migrants approaching, he stands, fixes a cowboy hat over his bald head, and retrieves a bat-sized machete from the ground beneath him. He walks toward the tracks with the machete still in its sheath, and keeps it tipped back over one shoulder.
‘Amigos, hoy es su día de suerte,’ he says loudly so they can all hear. Today is your lucky day. ‘I will walk with you.’
The migrants in front of Luca and Mami cheer, but Rebeca and Soledad exchange worried glances. The man falls in step beside them.
‘You are right to be afraid,’ he tells them. ‘But not of me.’
Rebeca sticks her thumbs under the straps of her backpack and says nothing.
‘You have come a long way, yes? Honduras? Guatemala?’
‘Honduras.’ Rebeca is first to relent.
‘Your journey has been okay so far?’ he asks.
Rebeca shrugs. They walk for a few moments in silence, only the sound of their jeans swishing beneath them as they go. Luca holds Mami’s hand, but he strains against it, pulling her arm nearly taut as he tries to hear what the man is saying to the sisters.
‘Well, I want you to have happy memories of Guadalajara.’ He smiles, and catches Luca looking at him. He’s so large he could use that machete as a toothpick. Luca shies back to Mami’s side. ‘My name is Danilo, and when you get to wherever you’re going, when you find a job and a good house, and you meet a beautiful gringo boy and you get married and have your children, one day, when you’re an old lady and you’re tucking your nietos into bed, I want you to tell them that long, long ago, you met a nice man in Guadalajara named Danilo, and that he walked with you, and that he swung his machete around to make sure the knuckleheads didn’t get any ideas.’
Rebeca laughs now; she can’t help herself.
‘See? I’m not so bad.’
Soledad is still apprehensive. ‘Where are all these knuckleheads hiding out?’
‘Oh, amiguita.’ Danilo frowns. ‘I am afraid you will meet many of them in short order.’
Soledad raises her eyebrows but doesn’t respond.
‘It’s like the good, the bad, and the ugly in this city,’ Danilo says.
‘And the beautiful!’ Lorenzo adds, gesturing toward the sisters.
Lydia cringes. Why is he still here? Walking just behind them and listening in on every word. She shudders at his remark, noting how the girls draw their bodies closer in instinctive response. Danilo continues as if Lorenzo hasn’t spoken at all.
‘It’s a long walk from here into the migrant places,’ he says. ‘And there are many dangers.’
‘What kind of dangers?’ Lydia asks.
‘The usual kind,’ Danilo says. ‘La policía, railroad employees, security guards. Especially dangerous for you two.’ He looks at the sisters briefly. ‘It’s better to get off the tracks before you get to Las Juntas – go into the streets and make your way to one of the shelters. There are signs for them, or shopkeepers will point the way. If anyone says they will take you there, don’t go with them. If anyone offers you a job or a place to stay, don’t go with them. If anyone talks to you first, don’t speak with them. If you need directions, ask only the shopkeepers. I will go with you as far as La Piedrera. A few miles.’
‘Why?’ Soledad asks.
‘Why what?’
‘Why walk with us?’
‘Why not?’ Danilo says. ‘I do this at least three times a week, a walk with the migrants. It’s my hobby. Good exercise.’
‘But if it’s as dangerous as you say, why do you it? What’s in it for you?’
Danilo has the kind of eyes that protrude slightly from beneath his lids, so there’s no possibility of hiding their expression when he’s in conversation. Luca can see that he’s not annoyed by Soledad’s inquiry. He appreciates her skepticism. ‘I will tell you the truth,’ he says. Then he pauses for a moment to smooth down his mustache with his thumb and index finger. ‘When I was a teenager, I stole a truck. My father died in a work accident, and I was angry with his employer, so I stole that man’s truck. I destroyed all the windows and the headlights using my father’s hammer. And then I slashed its tires and I drove it into a sewer ditch.’
‘Seems reasonable to me,’ Rebeca says.
‘I drank for three months, and I did terrible things in my grief. But I never got caught, and God provided me with a good life anyway, despite my sins. So this is my penance. I am like the guardian devil for migrants who pass through my little neighborhood. I protect them.’
Soledad looks up at him, narrowing one eye as she searches his expression for indications of deceit. She finds none. ‘Okay.’
Danilo laughs. ‘Okay?’
‘Yes, okay,’ Soledad says. They are quiet again for a few moments.
‘You ever have any trouble?’ Lorenzo asks from behind them. ‘Ever get beat up or anything?’
Danilo turns without removing the machete from his shoulder and looks back at him. ‘Not anymore,’ he says.
Lorenzo nods and jams his hands into his pockets. ‘Cool, cool.’