“Especially old people.”
“What happen, they don’t know how many things you got to have two people. To hold something while you working. Hand you a tool. What happen, one die, they need help to do something they always done for themself. The thing about James, he understand old people.”
“Why do you think that is?” Ray didn’t answer. “Are you afraid to talk about him?” she asked. “Because James is undocumented?”
They looked at each other a second, and Brenda faced forward. “The woman he asked to show me around Naples,” Brenda said. “Her name’s Noelle Harmon. She says everyone here likes your cousin. No one wants to give him a hard time, and neither do I.”
They rode a minute in silence.
Finally he said, “Quinto figure out a lot from when he was young. We come from Mexico City. His father’s brother, my father, he come here when I was twelve. Three years later, he send for me.”
Ray motioned for her to get in the right lane.
Maybe it was because she already knew his cousin was undocumented, or because she was giving him a lift home. But now Ray Colon relaxed. He explained how Rivera’s own father—a teacher, poor but educated—had died of TB. He had left a wife and two boys, with a third child on the way.
“James was the oldest,” Ray said. “You know what is a barrio?” Brenda nodded, eyes trained on the car in front of her. “We live in a bad one. Near a dump. In Mexico City, you got to have a lot of money to move. A lot of sickness from air pollution. That’s what kill Quinto’s father.”
After her husband’s death, Rosalla Colon had cleaned for a wealthy family. When her baby girl was born, they let Rosalla come back. But with three children, the young widow had made a quick decision: she would send her smartest, oldest son to Cozumel. Another cousin was there, working in a hotel and making good money. Tourists tipped well.
A month later, in the back of a truck loaded with carved onyx bookends for the souvenir shops in Cancun and Cozumel, thirteen-year-old James had reached the Yucatan Peninsula. His cousin paid the necessary bribes and soon Rivera was washing dishes in the hotel’s huge kitchen. After six months, he was made a busboy, then a waiter. Now he could work directly for the tourists and study them.
“That’s when he really start learning English,” Ray said. He pointed again. “Up here is Golden Gate Parkway. You got to turn.”
Brenda nodded and angled right.
“At night,” Ray said, “after the guests go to bed, Quinto stay up. He watch satellite TV from the States, in the lounge. He do that for eight months.”
Enjoying the story himself, Ray described how, on a night off, James and his cousin had sat on the dock, watching tourists return to their cruise ship. It was huge and white, with flags and steam. “Like a dream, he tell me,” Ray said. “He say looking at it make him think of the movies the priests show us when we was kids. Old ones they got from a church in the States. They show them outside at night, everyone watch under the stars. To him, he say the big ship make him feel like being in a movie.”
A happy memory. As she drove, Brenda saw two boys on a dock. They were sitting with their legs over the side, looking up at a cruise ship.
“He say not to tell anyone this story,” Ray said.
“Why not?”
“He don’t like people knowing.”
“Why, Ray?” Colon didn’t answer. “It’s a wonderful story.”
Don’t stop, Brenda thought. She hoped that helping him would lead Colon to trust her, to break the code of silence his cousin had imposed. She stopped for a red light. When the logjam of cars finally moved, she followed others up a bridge. Signs showed she was on her way to I-75.
“Please, Ray,” she said. “It can’t hurt anything. I’m from Michigan, I’ll be gone in two weeks. I want to know what happened. I won’t tell anyone, that’s a promise.”
Again Colon seemed to think about it. He looked out his side window. “Okay,” he said and faced forward. “Quinto help you out, so I trust you. But don’t forget, you can’t say nothing. He find out, he get really mad.”
“I understand.”
“Okay,” Ray said again. “That night, the cousin have to get back to work. He leave Quinto alone on the dock. Sitting, watching. He say…what you call it, they put you to sleep, but you still awake?”
“Hypnotized?”
“Yeah, hypnotize. By all the lights and music. He stay like that until all the tourist come back. They laughing, tripping. Got all kind of souvenirs.”
A night of stars and music. As she drove, Brenda now saw just one boy, alone and still dazzled by glamour and music as he walked back along the dock. Some of the ship’s crew were just then returning from town. “They was drunk,” Ray said. “Like the vago men in the barrio. They stumbling, arguing.
“Thirteen years ago,” he said. “Quinto was fifteen. He say there was a full moon, no clouds. Two crew guys pass, running fast for the ship. But two others are fighting in front of the dock. When he get there, Quinto see one with a knife. The other guy, he was swinging something. You know what it is?”
Brenda shook her head. The story had her on autopilot. She had followed a broad curve, and was now driving north on I-75.
“A thing for books they make out of stone,” Ray said. “From Mexico City. Some passenger drop it walking back. Maybe it come in the same truck with Quinto. The one with the stone, he fight better, real hard. He hit the other guy a lot of times. Quinto say there was all kind of blood. The guy with the statue, he see my cousin, he grab him. He make Quinto help pull the other guy off the dock. He
