Rudy wondered about the monsters his mom had mentioned. They couldn’t be real, could they?
He tried not to think about it. There was a rational explanation for their losses. Some people had chosen to travel another route. That was it. After the caravan disembarked the freight train in Guanajuato, half the group splintered and traveled north, hoping to enter through Texas. Mother had said the cartels were worse in that part of Mexico. Maybe they were the real monsters . . .
Rudy’s belly rumbled as it had for the last week, and he hoped his mother would come back soon.
He looked across the way and spotted Guillermo and his son, Enrique. Guillermo’s shirt appeared tighter on him, as if he had gained weight over the last few days. Rudy wondered how the man had stayed so plump while everyone else starved. He was eating well, and Rudy hated him for it. He hated Enrique, too, for being given such a fancy new hat. He knew it was because dark people like him were seldom given anything but mean stares.
Rudy’s mom suddenly approached the camp. She smiled at him and placed two slabs of meat onto a pan and set it down over the fire.
“I helped the owner of another butcher shop clean down his counters,” she said. “I think I’m on to something.”
The sizzle of the meat had stirred a few curious onlookers who soon returned to their starved slumber.
After dinner Rudy slept well and dreamed of the promise of a new country.
They’d crossed the Sonoran Desert and headed farther north, where they now made camp in the Tijuana countryside, just outside a colony of concrete-and-sheet-metal huts. There were just twenty people in the group. His mother had been right; people disappeared in this country left and right.
Rudy crouched alone beside the campfire where his mother had told him to wait. He dwelled on the border, now just a half day’s walk away.
Guillermo buried his face in his hands and sobbed beside Rudy. Enrique had vanished as evening came, and Rudy couldn’t help but feel guilty. Maybe if they’d been friends, they could’ve watched over each other.
“My son is gone,” Guillermo said. “Will no one help me find him?”
“You have nothing to cry about, you monster,” shouted one of the women. “We know you’ve been snatching children in the night and slaughtering them to keep yourself fed.”
“No, I, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s right,” said an old man. “We’ve been talking about it. Interesting how all of us are starving, yet you keep getting fatter. How do you explain that?”
The rest of the adults in the group stood and surrounded Guillermo. One of the men pulled on his collar. Rudy stood and stepped away. He hoped his mother would hurry back.
“No, wait, I can explain.” Guillermo reached for his wallet. “Look,” he said, retrieving a wad of cash. “In Honduras I was a wealthy man. I’ve been buying food.”
“And you didn’t think to share with us. When so many of us were starving?” the woman said.
The group hauled him off into the darkness of the countryside until Rudy could no longer see them. Guillermo’s screams faded after a while.
Rudy smiled as his mom returned from Tijuana. He’d never felt so relieved.
As always, she returned with two thin strips of meat. One for her and one for him. She slapped them on the pan over the fire and brought Rudy against her body.
“Tomorrow a new life begins for us,” she said. She retrieved something from a small plastic bag. “I found you this hat, Mijo. I think you’ll like it.”
She placed a Cruz Azul hat on his head. The hat was crumpled and a little wet with something, but felt warm in the bitter, cold night.
Downpour
JOSEPH SALVATORE
The rat had been trapped on the subway platform for a half hour before Rose lugged the dripping baby stroller down the stairs to the swamp of bodies waiting in the humidity for the L train to Manhattan. The sudden July downpour brought even more riders than usual off Bedford Avenue and down to the trains. And when Rose finally got down there, Emma was miraculously still asleep. Rose put the brake on the carriage and thought about opening the plastic rain cover, but when she saw her four-month-old’s sleeping face, she decided to keep her inside her plastic bubble.
Rose turned to see a swath split the crowd, parting them like a zipper, everyone jumping and lifting their legs and holding on to other people. The woman in front of Emma’s stroller screamed, “Fucking rat!” Rose saw the rat dart under a bench and then reemerge on the other side and scurry under a trash barrel, its long gray tail twitching like a dying worm. A white girl with dreadlocks and designer bell-bottoms screeched and jumped up on the bench, clutching her backpack to her chest and laugh-whining to her friends, still standing around her. Someone called for help, at which point—deus ex machina—a cleaner in dark blue subway overalls came down the stairs with a broom the size of a hammerhead shark, with bristles as big as chopsticks. He silently moved into the crowd, laser-focused on finding the rat. He held the broom up with two hands and approached the trash barrel stealthily, as everyone moved back, crowding Rose and the stroller closer to the edge of the platform.
The cleaner crept toward the barrel with the broom raised like a spear. The rat’s tail disappeared under the barrel and everyone let go a collective
