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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “Carpool” Down in the Dirt, v149 (the September 2017 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the issue book the Light in the Sky the Down in the Dirt Sept.-Dec. 2017 collection book		get the 418 page May-August 2017 Down in the Dirt issue anthology 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Land of the Free

Kari Livingston

    The air was thick with the stink of sweat, piss and stale tobacco that clung to Hector’s clothes. The taste of his last cigarette still lingered on his tongue, and he ached for another, but the driver took what was left of his pack. “Can’t have you smoking in the truck,” Joe said as he stuck one of Hector’s prized cigarettes between his lips. “Might catch on fire.” Hector bit the inside of his cheek. At home, he would settle this with his fists, but he couldn’t afford to make Joe mad. Hector’s five hundred dollars was in Joe’s pocket, and Hector didn’t trust him not to kick him off the truck and keep the money, and then where would he be? Stuck, broke, and too embarrassed to go home.
    Men were wedged in the cargo truck, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, a collage of hopeful brown eyes, dirty calloused hands, and sweat-stained t-shirts. “Squeeze in,” Joe barked around Hector’s cigarette. “We got a straggler.” The bodies shifted and squirmed and impossibly, just enough room for Hector to cram himself in the truck appeared. He winced when Joe slammed the door against his shoulder. He sat huddled with thirty men, each with a different dream, but the same hope that their trust in Joe wasn’t misplaced.
    The darkness in the cargo hold was absolute, broken only by a thin shaft of light that crept in through a gap in the door. Hector trained his eyes of the stream of light, on the thin streak of illuminated steel. Rust patterns swirled, came in and out of focus based on the quality of the light, whether it came from a street light or the headlights of a passing car. He looked for pictures in the stains, the way a child would look for a puppy in a cloud. “What do you see, mi amigo?” Hector turned his head toward the quiet voice, but could make it no features, just a slight darkening where a body should be. “Nothing.” His voice sounded harsh, loud to his ears, even though he spoke barely above a whisper. “What do you see?” There was a smile in the answer. “Freedom.”
    Hector bit back his rancor. He wasn’t headed for freedom, and he damn well knew it. Trading one kind of poverty for another. But it wasn’t for him to step on any dreams. He closed his eyes and let his breath settle into a deep, steady rhythm, hoping to discourage conversation.
    “Where you headed?” Hector sighed as deeply as the compressed air would allow. Heat pressed down on his chest as sweat rolled down between his shoulder blades.
    “Arkansas. My brother says he can get me a job in the chicken plant. You?”
    “California.” The voice was young and hopeful. He tried to remember the flash of the face before Joe pitched them into darkness. “Going to pick oranges. Save enough to send for mi familia. You have children?”
    Hector thought of his Lupita and his dead girl born too early. Now Lupita was pregnant again. “Just my wife, but she carries a child. I will send for her before the baby is born.”
    “An American son?” The voice was full of admiration. “He will be president. A man can be anything in America.”
    Hector heard the note of wonder in the voice and hid his irritation. There was no place in America for him. His brother told him the truth— that they were unwelcome, forced to do jobs that no one else wanted. Pick strawberries. Skin chickens. Scrub toilets. Care for white people’s houses and children while his own sat alone and untended.“You think I am a fool?” The voice laughed.
    “Not a fool, but America’s not what you think.” Hector heard the bitterness in his voice, hated it. He was hopeful once, before his daughter died, before he placed his trust in a stranger to take him on a dangerous trek across the Texas border.
    “So you’ve been?”
    “No, but my brother...” Hector stopped himself. If the voice’s dreams helped him endure the hellish trip, Hector would keep his pessimism to himself. But the younger man heard Hector’s hesitation.
    “If it is so bad, then why do you go?”
    “Because the shit in America smells better than the shit in Mexico.” The voice echoed in the cargo hold like a bullet. The speaker made no attempt at whispering; he made sure that everyone was listening. The voice was familiar, but Hector couldn’t place it. “Because no matter how much they hate us, the worst they can do is send us back, and it’s just another $500 trip back over the border.”
    “How many times you been sent back?”
    “Twice. Third trip. Probably the last one. If I get sent back one more time, I’ll just stay. End up like my brother.” His brother. The recognition settled over Hector like an ocean wave, filling his nostrils, making it impossible to draw breath without drowning on bitterness. The sight of Ramon’s head, sawed jaggedly from his body, stuck on a spike at the corner of the market, a warning from the cartel, a promise of what would happen to those who cooperated with the police. He wanted to say he was sorry for Cesar’s loss, but what good what that do? Of course he was sorry. They were all sorry. It was why they all crammed in the back of a dank, airless truck, hoping against hope that things would be different in America.
    Hector thought of his own brother, the brother who sent the money for the trip. After what happened to Ramon, and a hundred others whose names he didn’t know, there was no way Hector could refuse. It would have broken Lupita’s heart. “I go because it is expected. Half my family is there. The rest of us are just waiting our turn.”
    The truck was silent again, except for the slow, rhythmic breathing, the occasional gasps for air. How long had they been in the hold? The air grew heavy with the stench of unwashed bodies and leaky bladders. Hector’s tongue grew furred, stuck to the roof of his mouth. He thought he would sell his soul for a drink of water, but he realized his soul wasn’t his to sell. He sold it to Joe for $500.
    “Why are we stopping? Surely we’re not there yet.” The boy’s voice was tight, strained. His body as rigid as steel next to Hector’s. “Is it the police?”
    “Abrir la maldita puerta!” Not the police. Bandits, kidnappers, hitmen from the cartel. Hector found the rosary in his pocket, the one that his Abuela shoved in his hand. He fingered the beads, and by habit, recited the familiar prayer, “Santa Marãa, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen.” He pictured the smooth beads in his Abuela’s wrinkled fingers, heard her voice singing the prayer and realized he was praying to her and not the Virgin. His grandmother would box his ears for the blasphemy, but he found himself calmed.
    “The Hell I will!” Joe’s voice was slow and even. “There’s nothing in this truck that concerns you.”
    “Si usted está moviendo mercancãa, es nuestro negocio!”
    “The type of merchandise I’m moving is of no interest to you.”
    A gunshot, then another. Hector’s calm fled, picturing Joe dead on the ground, blood gushing from a hold where his face had been. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant picture, but where did that leave him?
    “Hang on in there!” Joe’s voice was still slow and even. “We’re going to take an alternate route, and it’s going to get pretty bumpy. “
    Hector felt the young man’s body relax next to him. “I heard you praying to the Virgin and she answered your prayers. We are surely blessed. You will find happiness in Arkansas. I’m sure of it.” Hector heard him yawn. “I’m going to sleep now,” he said. “We will be in America soon. You will send for your Lupita, and I will pick my oranges. You should sleep, too.”
    But Hector couldn’t sleep. The truck jostled over rough roads. Hector’s shoulder throbbed from being bounced against the truck wall. The minutes crept by. Hector rested his head on the young man’s shoulder and tried to sleep, but the heat and the heavy air made it difficult. The trip was taking much longer than it should have. Around him, the truck grew quieter and the shuffling and breathing slowed. Hector’s own breath was coming in shallow spurts. Horror stories of men who paid for passage, only to be left in the heat to die, rolled through his mind. Instead of trying to sleep, he fought to keep his eyes open, afraid that if he closed them, it would be for the last time.
    The truck stopped after two hours or two days. The cargo hold was deafeningly quiet. No one had the breath left for conversation. What breaths Hector could hear were shallow and small. It was a long time before he heard shuffling footsteps outside the door, so long that Hector wondered if they were abandoned. He wanted to bang on the door, demand to be allowed to leave, but what then? What if they were still in Mexico, or surrounded by border agents. He kept quiet and tried not to think about the last time he heard the voice next to him speak.
    Without warning, the door opened and blindingly white sunlight illuminated the cargo hold.
    “Out!” Joe barked and began pulling men out of the truck and throwing them onto the dry sun-parched earth. Some of the men staggered a few feet before steadying themselves, some rolled out of the truck and lay motionless on the ground. “Damn,” Joe muttered under his breath as he nudged one unmoving man with his toe. He turned and found Hector watching him. “What are you looking at? Get the hell out of here before I shoot you and leave you here with him.”
    Hector looked down at the smooth, hairless face of the boy at Joe’s feet. A small smile was on the young man’s lips, as if he had drifted to sleep dreaming of oranges. Hector’s gaze flickered to the cargo hold where four other motionless bodies lay. Hector pulled the rosary out of his pocket and placed it on the dead boy’s chest. Hector didn’t need it, would never need it again. The other men began a long shuffle across the plain on their way to the jobs and the families that waited for them. “Didn’t you hear me the first time, boy? Get the hell out or I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in your heart. I ain’t got time for this shit.” Hector gave the boy one last look before he joined the line of men marching like ants across the heat-scorched land. Joe took a final deep pull on one of Hector’s prized cigarettes and threw it on the ground before going back to Mexico for another load.

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