Disappeared Read online

  “He’s coming to.”

  The face he sees is brown with black eyes, thick eyebrows, pretty. It reminds him of the clay nativity set with the Mexican-looking Baby Jesus that his mother takes out for Christmas. The woman in front of him looks like the Virgin Mary. Then another face appears. This face is worn out, deeply tanned, unshaven; the hair is sparse and white; the blue eyes are so light you can almost see through them. A Joseph of sorts?

  “How you doing?” He recognizes kindness in the man’s gruff voice.

  There’s a clear plastic bag with transparent liquid hanging from a wooden coat hanger on the wall and a plastic tube running to his arm.

  “Glucose,” the man explains. “And penicillin for the foot. Lupe here hooked you up.”

  Emiliano looks around the room. A noisy fan oscillates on a wooden table next to him. The walls are made of dark wood. There are pictures of people standing in front of adobe houses, some of them on horses. An old-looking rifle hangs on one of the walls. Someone shot at him with a pistol. Who? When was it? Not too long ago. He closes his eyes.

  He feels a woman’s soft touch on his arm. It must be the pretty woman—Lupe. Lupe is a nice name. It’s short for Guadalupe. Still with his eyes closed, he feels his bare chest. His rosary is gone.

  “Looking for this?” Lupe opens his hand and drops the rosary in there. Her smile reminds him of Linda Fuentes, his first crush. What about Perla Rubi? Her smile was not like that. It was more cautious, more controlled somehow.

  “Pressure’s going up,” he hears her say a few moments later. “He’ll be all right. Change the bag when that one’s empty, just like I showed you. Don’t let him drink too much water at once. I left some pills in the kitchen. One every four hours until they run out. Keep draining that foot. Call me if the fever goes up again.”

  “Thank you, Lupe. I’d like to pay you for this.”

  “I’ll send you the bill.” The way she says it, Emiliano knows she never will.

  The last thing he thinks about before he falls asleep is the white truck with his sister in it disappearing down the long dirt road.

  The old man’s name is Gustaf, but Emiliano doesn’t know whether that’s his first name or his last name.

  “My name is Gustaf,” he says, the first time Emiliano is fully conscious. Then the man shows him a one-gallon plastic milk bottle and tells him to pee in it until he can make it to the toilet down the hall. One good thing about the old man is that so far he isn’t much of a talker. He comes in, puts a bowl of soup on the wooden chair next to Emiliano’s bed, looks at him for a few seconds, and then leaves. Or he comes in, squeezes Emiliano’s foot until he can barely endure it, and changes his bandage, all without uttering a word.

  On the second day, the old man is sitting on the wooden chair, pulling the needle from his arm, when Emiliano decides to speak.

  “I have to go.”

  Gustaf doesn’t say anything. He’s concentrating on the needle. After he pulls it out, he rips the adhesive tape from Emiliano’s arm in one quick movement.

  “You speak English,” Gustaf says, not looking at Emiliano.

  “I have to go,” Emiliano repeats.

  “Go where?”

  “Number two.”

  “Ah! Get up, then.”

  Emiliano pulls the sheet back. He’s wearing boxer shorts for the first time in his life. He’s suddenly embarrassed that someone, this man or the woman named Lupe, must have seen him naked.

  “You soiled the ones you had on,” the man says, moving the wooden chair out of the way. “It happens with heatstroke. The body gets rid of what it don’t need no more.”

  Emiliano sits at the edge of the bed and waits until he can feel his legs. He tries to stand but he has no strength. There’s gauze around his left foot.

  “Gotta keep draining that. We almost got all the yuck stuff out.”

  “Was it gangrene?”

  “You know your first aid. Lupe said it was the start of something called wet gangrene. But we caught it before it took hold.”

  The man grabs his arm and pulls him up. Emiliano hops on his right foot. When he walks out of the bathroom, the man is no longer there. There’s a wooden crutch leaning against the wall. Emiliano hobbles back to the room where he’s been lying and looks out a small window. Gustaf stands in what looks like a corral. He’s got a straw hat on and is trying to get a rope around the neck of a skinny horse. Emiliano can’t help but laugh when he sees the horse wait for the man to get close before skittering out of the way. Then the man and the horse and the corral start spinning and Emiliano stumbles back to the bed.

  When he wakes up again, it is dark outside. At the foot of his bed, he finds an undershirt, another pair of boxer shorts, a long-sleeved cowboy shirt with pearl buttons that snap on, a pair of denim pants, and white cotton socks. Beside the clothes is a towel, a bar of soap, and a toothbrush still inside a plastic package. A pair of flip-flops lie next to the bed. The message seems to be that he should take a shower, brush his teeth, and get dressed. He sits up and then stands carefully. He can walk without the crutch if he doesn’t put too much pressure on his left foot.

  After the shower, he finds Gustaf in what looks like a living room, sitting in a reclining chair, watching television. He has a TV tray in front of him and is eating something with a spoon out of a plastic bowl. Next to the bowl there’s a glass of water and a bottle of hot sauce. Gustaf barely looks at Emiliano when he comes in. “Help yourself to some stew,” he says with a movement of his head toward the kitchen.

  Emiliano walks to the kitchen and ladles stew into a bowl next to the stove. He opens a cabinet and finds a glass, which he fills with water from the faucet in the kitchen sink. He finds a spoon and puts it in the stew, and then he stands still, not knowing where to go. There’s a small round table with four chairs in the kitchen, and he begins to walk toward it when Gustaf shouts: “Over here.”

  In the living room, Gustaf motions to the TV tray by the sofa and Emiliano sits down. The old man doesn’t say much, but it’s not as if he’s rude or unwelcoming. The TV is ancient—a tiny round screen encased in a huge wooden cabinet. Emiliano studies the scene on the TV. A big bulldozer is pushing earth around. Then the face of a man who looks a lot like Gustaf appears, shouting, “No guts, no glory!”

  “Damn fools!” Gustaf says. “They out in Alaska. More than one hundred thousand dollars they spent already getting themselves there and renting equipment and what have you, and all they got is a few nuggets of gold.”

  Emiliano finishes his stew and then, during a commercial, he asks, “How you find me?”

  Gustaf digs in his chair until he finds a remote. He turns down the volume. “There’s this one horse who I swear is out to end my days. I got him four summers ago at an auction over in Marfa. Cost me all of two hundred dollars. Every year he finds a hole in the fence and heads for those canyons. This year I was ready to let him be, let him get eaten by the coyotes, serves him right. Ornery creature. Never been able to put a saddle on him. I was chasing him again like an idiot when I saw the buzzards circling the way they circle when they see a good meal. Figured the damn horse finally got what’s coming to him. So I went to where the buzzards was to make sure. Instead I found you. The horse climbed down the canyon and was just standing there, a few yards from you, didn’t even flinch when I lassoed him. I put you on his back and brought you here. Called Lupe, she’s a nurse over in Sanderson, and she brought you back to life.”

  Emiliano waits a few moments. The gold-digging show comes back on but Gustaf doesn’t turn the volume back up. “I came from Mexico,” Emiliano says.

  “You don’t say.”

  The old man’s mischievous grin makes Emiliano smile too. Gustaf turns up the volume and they watch in silence. When the show is over, Gustaf pushes the TV tray to one side and stands up. He tosses the remote on the sofa next to Emiliano. “Guess I’m going to turn in. Turn off the lights when you’re done.” Gustaf stops at the entrance of the hall that l
eads to the bedrooms, turns around, and walks back toward Emiliano. He sits on the edge of the reclining chair and folds his hands. “I went through your pockets. Hope you don’t mind. I thought maybe I’d find an address or something. Found a funny-looking bag with a cell phone. It’s in the desk drawer in your room. There was a map of the park in your back pocket with Sandy Morgan’s name. I know Wes Morgan, Sandy’s father, so I called him.”

  “My sister gave me the map.”

  “That must be Sara. Sandy picked her up?” Emiliano nods. “Wes is representing her asylum case. He’s got her going to the West Texas Detention Facility in Sierra Blanca where he thinks she has a better shot. Wes is a fine lawyer. Your sister’s in good hands.”

  Emiliano sits up, feels his heart knock against his chest.

  “One other thing. Lupe called this morning. She says a man showed up at the clinic asking if they knew of any undocumented Mexicans that mighta been found out in the desert. Lupe didn’t tell him nothing. He gave her his name anyway just in case she heard something. Bob Zapata. Been in Sanderson for a few days, I guess.” Gustaf waits for a response from Emiliano. When he doesn’t get one, he continues, “You know him?”

  Emiliano waits. Then, softly: “My father.”

  “I know a little bit about a father not knowing where his son is, so I can tell you. That man’s worried about you. He’s hurting to see you.”

  Silence.

  “Well, he’s staying at the Desert Air Motel. There’s a phone book in the drawer next to the forks and knives. If you want to call him, you can call him. If you want to stay, you can stay. I could use the help around here. Good old hard, honest work. Or go back to Mexico. It’s up to you.“

  The old man stands up and limps slowly away.

  “Do you know where I can send an e-mail?” Emiliano asks before he leaves the room.

  Gustaf turns and nods. “I got a computer in my office. It don’t move around, so if you need to use it, you gotta do it in there. Don’t be looking at any naked people.”

  After he leaves, Emiliano stands, picks up his bowl, spoon, and glass, and cleans them in the kitchen sink. Then he goes to Gustaf’s office. Gustaf’s computer is even older looking than his television. Tomorrow he’ll send an e-mail to Yoya and ask for an address where he can mail the cell phone. He examines the pictures on Gustaf’s desk. In one of them, a much younger Gustaf and a boy about Javier’s age are on top of a black horse. The boy’s tan hat is too big for him so most of his face is covered. All you can see is that he’s laughing. That reminds Emiliano, he promised to call Lester’s wife. What was Lester’s boy’s name? Jimmy.

  Emiliano makes his way outside through the kitchen door. He walks away from the house in the direction of the corral he saw out the window of his room. The dome of the universe is black and has more stars than Emiliano has ever seen before. There are so many stars up there that it looks as if someone carrying a tray tripped and spilled a few million. If Sara or Mami looked up at the sky now, they would see the same stars. Tomorrow, after he calls Lester’s wife, he’ll take care of the other promise he made to Sara. He’ll call his father and tell him about Sara’s asylum petition so he can vouch for her. Then what? Good old hard, honest work. Or go back to Mexico. Gustaf’s words. That’s the choice he needs to make.

  Emiliano locates the Big Dipper and then traces an imaginary line until he gets to the five brightest stars in the constellation Cassiopeia. He’s always liked that constellation. Brother Patricio taught him how to find it during their trip to the Sierra Tarahumara. But the night has to be dark for Cassiopeia to be seen.

  Maybe there’ll be a park in Chicago where the stars of Cassiopeia will shine.

  I would like to thank Marcos Paredes of Rio Aviation and Jen Peña of Jen Peña Photography for sharing with me their love, knowledge, and experience of Big Bend National Park; Ramon Santini for his company and friendship as we explored this most beautiful park; Joseph Borkowski for his general guidance on IT issues; and Sara Fajardo and Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa for helping me to see with greater clarity the beauty and pain of Ciudad Juárez and its people. I am forever grateful to Faye Bender, my agent at the Book Group, for her unwavering faith in my work, and Cheryl Klein, my editor at Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, who continuously makes me a better writer and person.

  Francisco X. Stork is the author of six novels, including Marcelo in the Real World, which received five starred reviews and won the Schneider Family Book Award; The Last Summer of the Death Warriors, winner of the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award from ALAN; The Memory of Light, which received four starred reviews; and Irises. He lives near Boston with his family. You can find him on the web at www.franciscostork.com and @StorkFrancisco.

  Copyright © 2017 by Francisco X. Stork

  All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Stork, Francisco X., author.

  Title: Disappeared / Francisco X. Stork.

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Arthur A. LevineBooks, an

  imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2017. | Summary: Four months ago Sara Zapata’s

  best friend, Linda, disappeared from the streets of Juarez, and ever since

  Sara has been using her job as a reporter to draw attention to the girls

  who have been kidnapped by the criminals who control the city, but now she

  and her family are being threatened—meanwhile her younger brother,

  Emiliano, is being lured into the narcotics business by the promise of big

  money, and soon the only way for both of them to escape is to risk the

  dangerous trek across the desert to the United States border.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017017320 | ISBN 9780545944472 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Brothers and sisters—Mexico—Ciudad Juárez—Juvenile

  fiction. | Women—Violence against—Mexico—Ciudad Juárez—Juvenile

  fiction. | Crime—Mexico—Ciudad Juárez—Juvenile fiction. |

  Kidnapping—Mexico—Ciudad Juárez—Juvenile fiction. | Reporters and

  reporting—Mexico—Ciudad Juárez—Juvenile fiction. | Ciudad Juárez

  (Mexico)—Fiction. | CYAC: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. |

  Kidnapping—Fiction. | Reporters and reporting—Fiction. | Ciudad Juárez

  (Mexico)—Fiction. | Mexico—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S88442 Di 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017320

  First edition, October 2017

  Cover art © 2017 by Shane Rebenschied

  Cover photo (top) © CKMilestoneNaturePhotography/500px

  Cover design by Christopher Stengel

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-94584-4

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

 

 

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