But this isn’t right, Papi said. I’m living like a dog for this shit.
What can you do? Tomás said. Life smacks everybody around.
We’ll see about that.
There are two stories about what happened next, one from Papi, one from Mami: either Papi left peacefully with a suitcase filled with Eulalio’s best clothes or he beat the man first, and then took a bus and the suitcase to Virginia.
Papi logged most of the miles after Virginia on foot. He could have afforded another bus ticket but that would have bitten into the rent money he had so diligently saved on the advice of many a veteran immigrant. To be homeless in Nueva York was to court the worst sort of disaster. Better to walk 380 miles than to arrive completely broke. He stored his savings in a fake alligator change purse sewn into the seam of his boxer shorts. Though the purse blistered his thigh, it was in a place no thief would search.
He walked in his bad shoes, froze and learned to distinguish different cars by the sounds of their motors. The cold wasn’t as much a bother as his bags were. His arms ached from carrying them, especially the meat of his biceps. Twice he hitched rides from truckers who took pity on the shivering man and just outside of Delaware a K-car stopped him on the side of I-95.
These men were federal marshals. Papi recognized them immediately as police; he knew the type. He studied their car and considered running into the woods behind him. His visa had expired five weeks earlier and if caught, he’d go home in chains. He’d heard plenty of tales about the Northamerican police from other illegals, how they liked to beat you before they turned you over to la migra and how sometimes they just took your money and tossed you out toothless on an abandoned road. For some reason, perhaps the whipping cold, perhaps stupidity, Papi stayed where he was, shuffling and sniffing. A window rolled down on the car. Papi went over and looked in on two sleepy blancos.
You need a ride?
Jes, Papi said.
The men squeezed together and Papi slipped into the front seat. Ten miles passed before he could feel his ass again. When the chill and the roar of passing cars finally left him, he realized that a fragile-looking man, handcuffed and shackled, sat in the back seat. The small man wept quietly.
How far you going? the driver asked.
New York, he said, carefully omitting the Nueva and the Yol.
We ain’t going that far but you can ride with us to Trenton if you like. Where the hell you from pal?
Miami.
Miami. Miami’s kind of far from here. The other man looked at the driver. Are you a musician or something?
Jes, Papi said. I play the accordion.
That excited the man in the middle. Shit, my old man played the accordion but he was a Polack like me. I didn’t know you spiks played it too. What kind of polkas do you like?
Polkas?
Jesus, Will, the driver said. They don’t play polkas in Cuba.
They drove on, slowing only to unfold their badges at the tolls. Papi sat still and listened to the man crying in the back. What is wrong? Papi asked. Maybe sick?
The driver snorted. Him sick? We’re the ones who are about to puke.
What’s your name? the Polack asked.
Ramón.
Ramón, meet Scott Carlson Porter, murderer.
Murderer?
Many many murders. Mucho murders.
He’s been crying since we left Georgia, the driver explained. He hasn’t stopped. Not once. The little pussy cries even when we’re eating. He’s driving us nuts.
We thought maybe having another person inside with us would shut him up — the man next to Papi shook his head — but I guess not.
The marshals dropped Papi off in Trenton. He was so relieved not to be in jail that he didn’t mind walking the four hours it took to summon the nerve to put his thumb out again.
His first year in Nueva York he lived in Washington Heights, in a roachy flat above what’s now the Tres Marías restaurant. As soon as he secured his apartment and two jobs, one cleaning offices and the other washing dishes, he started writing home. In the first letter he folded four twenty-dollar bills. The trickles of money he sent back were not premeditated like those sent by his other friends, calculated from what he needed to survive; these were arbitrary sums that often left him broke and borrowing until the next payday.
The first year he worked nineteen-, twenty-hour days, seven days a week. Out in the cold he coughed explosively, feeling as if his lungs were tearing open from the force of his exhales and in the kitchens the heat from the ovens sent pain corkscrewing into his head. He wrote home sporadically. Mami forgave him for what he had done and told him who else had left the barrio, via coffin or plane ticket. Papi’s replies were scribbled on whatever he could find, usually the thin cardboard of tissue boxes or pages from the bill books at work. He was so tired from working that he misspelled almost everything and had to bite his lip to stay awake. He promised her and the children tickets soon. The pictures he received from Mami were shared with his friends at work and then forgotten in his wallet, lost between old lottery slips.
The weather was no good. He was sick often but was able to work through it and succeeded in saving up enough money to start looking for a wife to marry. It was the old routine, the oldest of the postwar maromas. Find a citizen, get married, wait, and then divorce her. The routine was well practiced and expensive and riddled with swindlers.
A friend of his at work put him in touch with a portly balding blanco named el General. They met at a bar. El General had to eat two plates of greasy onion rings before he talked business. Look here friend, el General said. You pay me fifty bills and I bring you a woman that’s interested. Whatever the two of you decide is up to you. All I care is that I get paid and that the women I bring are for real. You get no refunds if you can’t work something out with her.
Why the hell don’t I just go out looking for myself?
Sure, you can do that. He patted vegetable oil on Papi’s hand. But I’m the one who takes the risk of running into Immigration. If you don’t mind that then you can go out looking anywhere you want.
Even to Papi fifty bucks wasn’t exorbitant but he was reluctant to part with it. He had no problem buying rounds at the bar or picking up a new belt when the colors and the moment suited him but this was different. He didn’t want to deal with any more change. Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t that he was having fun. No, he’d been robbed twice already, his ribs beaten until they were bruised. He often drank too much and went home to his room, and there he’d fume, spinning, angry at the stupidity that had brought him to this freezing hell of a country, angry that a man his age had to masturbate when he had a wife, and angry at the blinkered existence his jobs and the city imposed on him. He never had time to sleep, let alone to go to a concert or the museums that filled entire sections of the newspapers. And the roaches. The roaches were so bold in his flat that turning on the lights did not startle them. They waved their three-inch antennas as if to say, Hey puto, turn that shit off. He spent five minutes stepping on their carapaced bodies and shaking them from his mattress before dropping into his cot and still the roaches crawled on him at night. No, he wasn’t having fun but he also wasn’t ready to start bringing his family over. Getting legal would place his hand firmly on that first rung. He wasn’t so sure he could face us so soon. He asked his friends, most of whom were in worse financial shape than he was, for advice.
They assumed he was reluctant because of the money. Don’t be a pendejo, hombre. Give fulano his money and that’s it. Maybe you make good, maybe you don’t. That’s the way it is. They built these barrios out of bad luck and you got to get used to that.