The House of the Scorpion (32 page)

The boys surged forward, all talking at once. “What’s your name? Where are they sending you? Got any money?” Raúl, perhaps noticing Matt’s odd position, crowded them back.

“Orale, morros
. Okay, kids. His name’s Matt, and he needs to be left alone for a while. He just lost his parents in Dreamland.” The boys went back to the tables, but they eyed Matt curiously, and one or two of them smiled and tried to entice him over.

Matt stood next to the door while Raúl walked around the room, commenting on the boys’ work. Some were fitting small bits of machinery together, others wove strips of plastic into sandals. Still others measured powder into capsules and counted the finished pills into bottles.

Raúl stopped by a large boy who was sanding a curved piece of wood. “We don’t have time for hobbies, Chacho. The orderly production of resources is vital to the general good of the people.”

“
Crot
the good of the people,” muttered Chacho, still sanding the wood.

If Raúl was angered by this curse—and Matt had no doubt it was a curse, although he didn’t know what it meant—the man didn’t show it. He took the wood from Chacho’s hands. “Attention to the welfare of the nation is the highest virtue to which a citizen can aspire.”

“Yeah, right,” said Chacho.

“Work is freedom. Freedom is work. It’s hard but it’s fair.”

“It’s
hard
but it’s
fair,”
chanted the rest of the boys. “It’s
hard
but it’s
fair.”
They banged out the rhythm on the tables, getting louder and rowdier until Raúl stilled them by raising his hands.

“I’m glad to see you in high spirits,” he said, smiling. “You may think I’m a boring old Keeper, but someday you’ll understand the importance of these lessons.” He led Matt to the middle of the room. “This boy is going to San Luis. I want you to make him welcome, but don’t push him if he wants to be alone. He’s just been through a terrible loss.”

Rauúl’s exit was done smoothly, with the door closed and locked almost before Matt was aware of it. Why did they have to be locked in? And what was a Keeper? It was the second time Matt had heard the word.

He glared at the boys, whose work slowed now that they weren’t being watched. El Patrón always said it was important to establish your authority before anyone had a chance to question it. Matt walked toward the tables as though he owned the place.

“Want to join us?” said a skinny little kid who was making up pills. Matt looked grandly around the room. He nodded curtly. “You can help if you want,” the kid offered.

“My advice is to sit on your butt while you have the chance,” said Chacho from across the room. The big boy was twisting plastic strips into sandals. Matt walked slowly to the sandal-making table. El Patrón said you should never look anxious or needy. People always took advantage of those who were anxious or needy.

“Why is that?” inquired Matt, looking down at the tangle of plastic strips.

“ ’Cause the Keepers are gonna work your butt off tomorrow,” said Chacho. He was a large, rough-looking boy with big hands and black hair slicked back like the feathers on a duck.

“I thought I was going to San Luis.”

“Oh, you are. So am I and Fidelito.” Chacho pointed at the skinny kid, who looked only about eight years old. “But you can bet we’re going to work
before
we get on the hovercraft,
while
we’re on the hovercraft, and
after
we get off the crotting hovercraft. You’ll see.”

So Matt wandered around and watched the various chores the boys were doing. He settled by Fidelito, who was ecstatic to gain the approval of the newcomer. After a while Matt could see why. Fidelito was the neediest kid in the room, and so of course everyone pushed him around.

“What kind of pills are those?” Matt asked.

“Vitamin B,” said Fidelito. “They’re supposed to be good for you, but if you eat ten or twelve of them, you get sick.”

“What a dope!” Chacho said. “Why would anybody eat a dozen vitamin pills?”

“I was hungry,” Fidelito said.

Matt was startled. “You mean, they don’t feed you here?”

“Sure they do, if you produce enough work. I’m just not very fast.”

“You’re not very big,” Matt said, feeling sorry for the earnest little boy.

“That doesn’t matter,” Fidelito explained. “Everyone’s supposed to have the same output. As long as we’re here, we’re equal.”

“It’s
hard
but it’s
fair,”
intoned Chacho from across the room.

The other boys picked up the chant, banging the tables until the whole room rocked. One of the border guards told them to shut up through a loudspeaker.

“Did you see your parents taken?” asked Fidelito when the hubbub died down.

“
¡Callate!
Shut up! Let him get used to it,” several voices cried, but Matt raised his hand for silence, as he’d seen Raúl do. To his great pleasure, the boys obeyed. There really was something to El Patronós methods of gaining power.

“It happened yesterday morning,” he said, improvising. Matt remembered the crowd of Illegals who had distracted the Farm Patrol. “I saw a flash of light. Papá shouted for me to go back to the border. I saw Mamá fall down, and then a man grabbed my backpack. I slipped out of the straps and ran.”

“I know what that flash of light was,” said a sad-faced boy. “It’s a kind of gun, and it kills you dead.
Mi mamá—”
His voice choked and he didn’t say any more. Fidelito put his head down on the table.

“Have—have other people lost their parents?” stammered Matt. He’d been about to create a dramatic story about his escape. Now it seemed a heartless thing to do.

“We all have,” said Chacho. “I guess you haven’t figured it out. This is an
orfanatorio
, an orphanage. The state is our family now. That’s why the border guards wait along the
frontera
. They catch the kids of rockheads who make a run for it and turn them over to the Keepers.”

“
Mi abuelita
wasn’t a rockhead,” said Fidelito from the cradle of his arms.

“Your grandma—Oh, heck, Fidelito,” said Chacho. “She was too old to run to the United States. You know that. But I’m sure she loved you,” he added as the little boy sniffled. “So you see how it is,” Chacho told Matt. “We’re all part of the crotting production of resources for the crotting good of the people.”

“Don’t let Raúl hear you,” someone said.

“I’d like to tattoo it on my butt for him to read,” said Chacho, going back to the tangle of plastic strips on his table.

27
A FIVE-LEGGED HORSE

T
he rest of the day, from Matt’s point of view, went very well. He drifted from group to group, listening to conversations and storing up information. In case someone were to wonder why he was so ignorant, he didn’t ask many questions. He learned that the Keepers were in charge of people who couldn’t take care of themselves. They took in the orphans, the homeless, the insane and molded them into good citizens. The orphans were known as Lost Boys and Lost Girls, and they lived in different buildings. Matt couldn’t figure out why everyone seemed to hate the Keepers, although no one, except Chacho, said so directly. Raúl seemed nice enough.

Matt also learned that the country of Opium was called Dreamland here. No one really knew what lay beyond its borders. There were many stories of zombie slaves and a vampire king who lived in a castle. The
chupacabras
haunted its mountains and occasionally crossed over into Aztlán to drink the blood of goats.

Boys who had not seen their parents taken believed they had made it to the United States. Several boys assured Matt they were only waiting for their parents to send for them. Then they would all be rich and happy in the golden paradise that lay beyond Dreamland.

Matt doubted it. The Farm Patrol was very efficient, and besides, El Patrón had told him just as many people ran away from the United States as toward it. If a golden paradise had ever lain to the north, it wasn’t there anymore.

Matt helped Fidelito make pills. It seemed monstrously unfair that the little boy was deprived of food simply because he was slower than the larger boys. Fidelito responded with such adoration that Matt began to regret his good deed. The kid reminded him a little of Furball.

They had a half-hour break for lunch. First the guards checked everyone’s work output for the morning. Then they brought in a steaming cauldron of beans and handed out tortillas. Before anyone was allowed to eat, the boys had to recite the Five Principles of Good Citizenship and the Four Attitudes Leading to Right-Mindfulness. The food was doled out according to whether a boy had reached his quota or not. Fidelito looked at Matt with shining eyes as his bowl was filled to the brim.

After lunch the work started again. Matt helped Fidelito for a while then switched to Chacho’s table for variety. He very quickly figured out the pattern he was supposed to weave. “Enjoy it while you can,” grunted Chacho.

“Enjoy what?” said Matt, holding up a finished sandal.

“The thrill of moving from one job to another. Once you settle in, the Keepers will let you do only one thing. It’s supposed to be efficient.”

Matt considered this information as he continued to weave plastic. “Can’t you ask for something else?”

Chacho laughed. “Sure, you can
ask
. You won’t get it, though. Raúl says worker bees do the best they can with whatever job they’re given. That’s his way of saying,’Tough toenails, sucker.’”

Matt thought a while longer. “What was that piece of wood you were working on when I arrived?”

For a moment Matt thought the boy wasn’t going to answer. Chacho twisted his strip of plastic so viciously it broke. He had to start over with a new one. “It took me weeks to find that wood,” he said at last. “I think it was from an old packing crate. I polished it and sanded it. I was going to find more pieces and glue them together.” Chacho fell silent again.

“And make what?” Matt urged.

“Promise you won’t tell?”

“Of course.”

“A guitar.”

That was the last answer Matt expected. Chacho had such clumsy-looking hands, he didn’t seem capable of playing a musical instrument. “Do you know how to play?”

“Not as well as my father. He taught me to make guitars, though, and I’m pretty good at that.”

“Was he—was he taken in Dreamland?” said Matt.

“
¡Caramba!
Do you think I belong with the rest of these losers?
Me encarcelaron por feo
. I was locked up for being ugly. I’m no orphan! My dad’s living in the United States. He’s got so much money, he can’t even fit it into his pockets; and he’s going to send for me as soon as he buys a house.” Chacho looked absolutely furious, but Matt could tell from his voice that tears weren’t far below the surface.

Matt worked on his sandal, not looking at Chacho. He noticed the other boys were absorbed in their work too. They knew—they had to know—that Chacho’s father wasn’t going to send for anyone anytime soon. But only Matt understood what had really happened to him. Chacho’s father was bending and cutting, bending and cutting poppies all day in the hot sun. And on still, breathless nights he was sleeping in the fields to keep from being suffocated by the bad air from the pits.

In the evening the lunchtime ritual was repeated. The food was exactly the same. Afterward the boys washed dishes, tidied up the workroom, and moved the tables to one side. From a storage room they dragged out beds and fitted them on top of one another to form bunks three levels high. “Put Fidelito’s bed on the bottom,” someone told Matt.

“Which one is it?” asked Matt.

“Smell the mattress,” said Chacho.

“I can’t help it,” the little boy protested.

They were marched into a communal shower by the border guards. Matt had never seen anyone naked outside the art classes on TV. He found it embarrassing. He kept his right foot planted on the floor so no one could see the writing that proclaimed him a clone. He was very glad to shrug on a coarse nightshirt and retreat to the workroom, now bedroom.

“Do we go to sleep now?” he asked.

“Now we get the bedtime story,” said Chacho. The boys seemed energized by something. They clustered around a bunk bed under a window, and Chacho put his ear to the wall. After a moment he pointed at the window and nodded.

Fidelito climbed the bunk bed like a little monkey and lifted his nightshirt. This was his moment of glory.
“Voy a enseñarle la mapa mundi,”
he announced.

I’m going to show him the map of the world?
thought Matt. Show who? And what did he mean by the map of the world? Fidelito stuck his skinny backside between the bars of the high window and waggled it. A minute later Matt heard Raúl’s voice say, “One of these days I’m going to bring a slingshot.”

Fidelito scrambled off the bed to the cheers of the rest of the boys. “I’m the only one small enough to fit,” he said, swaggering around like a bantam rooster.

When Raúl entered, he said nothing at all about being mooned. He pulled up a chair, and the boys settled on the bunk beds to listen. The title of his talk was “Why Individualism Is Like a Five-Legged Horse.” Raúl explained that things went smoothly only when people worked together. They decided on a goal and then helped one another achieve it. “What would happen,” the Keeper asked all the boys, “if you were rowing a boat and half of you wanted to go one way and the other half another?”