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El Tren de la Muerte

Continued from page 6

The rest of the journey seems endless. From the beginning the trip has depended on luck, but riding the trains required hustle and cunning as well. Now, Elias feels helpless, packed like a 2-by-4 into a covered pickup with a dozen other migrants, including a 17-year-old who joins Elias for laughter and a series of dirty jokes. After what seems like forever, they climb out of the vehicle and swim across the Rio Grande near Laredo, then file into a small house in the Texas desert. Martin went home before they crossed the river, so Elias is in the hands of the coyote's associates. Eight days pass with some 30 people stuffed in the little shack, sitting and sleeping shoulder to shoulder in the stifling heat. Once a day, a bowl of chicken is passed around as more migrants arrive and others are led out to traverse the desert.

Finally, just when Elias thinks he'll go mad from the heat and the stink and the anxiety, the coyote comes to get him. They set out at night in a group of 10, walking through the scrub brush on soft, dry sand that sinks under their feet. Even as his feet ache and his lungs strain in the cold November air, Elias marvels at the vast sky that shimmers with millions of bright white stars. The group walks mostly at night and tries to sleep during the day, taking cover in the low brush.

They're told they'll walk for two days, but on the third, they're not even close. The only food Elias has left is mayonnaise. That evening, they stop to sleep for a few hours, then wake in the middle of the night and set out again. Only after six hours does it dawn on Elias that they've forgotten the 17-year-old kid. He'd curled up to sleep apart from the rest of the group, and no one noticed they'd left without him. Turning back without supplies would mean risking their lives, so they continue. For the first time, and only for a moment, Elias wishes he never came. Later, when the sun is rising on its arc over the endless brown expanse, someone points out a helicopter touching down in the desert behind them. Elias prays that it saved the teenager. If not, he would surely die, alone in the desert.

Elias has heard stories about such migrants—people whose feet are so torn up they can't go on and are left behind, others who lie down to sleep and never wake up. If only the kid had slept a little bit closer. Soon, these anguished thoughts are drowned out by the pounding of his feet, the relentless sun overhead and the cold wind that blasts them with sand.

On the fourth day, a downpour interrupts the dryness. Elias' clothes are soaked, and after a few hours the chafing on his arms and legs grows so painful that he strips to his boxers. Soon he's shivering in the November chill.

They reach a road the next day and are finally picked up by a truck. Elias is loaded into a large metal toolbox in the back and told the drive will take a few hours. Eleven hours later, nearly frozen, he finds himself in Houston, where his cousins pick him up. They bring him home to Dallas, where he stays with them in Farmers Branch and attends church at Templo Cristo Rey. Through people he meets at church, he finds a drywall installation job that pays $8 an hour and begins working six 10-hour days a week.

When I meet him for the first time in May, he has been in Dallas for six months. "I love it here," he says, with a smile full of wonder. "It's clean, orderly. Our countries are chaotic." I mention that some Americans worry that immigrants are overcrowding the United States and making it more like Latin America. He nods. "I understand this isn't my country. I know I'm not a citizen, and I'm not asking to be one. I just want permission to work." He is dismayed to find out that his only chance at residency is marrying an American or getting sponsored by his boss. "The guy I work for is illegal too—how am I going to ask him for help?" he says, laughing. "We'll both get thrown out!" It's strange, he thinks, how so much is determined by where you're born. By luck.

He's grateful when he goes to bed at night, and he's grateful when he wakes at 7 a.m. for work. To him, there is something satisfying about hanging drywall—the precision of the corners, the spacing of the screws and nails. As he seals the seams with mud, using a taping knife to smooth the wet joint compound, he thinks about his journey, about the life behind him. He wonders what happened to Pedro. After Elias arrived in Dallas, his friend contacted him to say he'd been deported somewhere near the border. He recently made a third try on the trains, but the last Elias heard from him was weeks ago, when he called from San Luis Potosi. Elias has met migrants who have tried six, eight, 10 times to get through, and though he realizes how fortunate he is to have made it on the first attempt, he worries. About his girlfriend, Maribel, and whether she'll wait for him. About saving for a car and how he'll register it without legal residency. About when the boss will give him a raise and how he'll manage to save $40,000 to repay his debts and return to Honduras. As much as he likes it here, the steady pay, the way traffic lights work and cops are generally decent and women can walk down the street without drawing catcalls at every step, he yearns for home.

"I'm not going to be here forever," he tells me. "Maybe four years, with the grace of God." Then he pauses, knowing that this is what most people say when they get here, as unprepared for the realities of life in America as they were for the journey here. "Then again, my cousin said he'd only be here for two years, and he's already been here for eight," he says. "I guess you never know."

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