On Riding a Death Train

Abstract

The freest way to travel is by train. That's most of what I got Miguel when I met him at Carnicer?a Reyes Avenida Guerrero, one of those butcher shops in the middle of the market district, about seven blocks the border. He was a butcher, a short, stocky man with a silver moustache that ended near the wrinkles the outside of his mouth, creases impressed by decades of sun and smoke. He told me a lot of stories, all of which made me depressed, and then he told me the one about his daughter and how she took off Chiapas in early May to get to Nuevo Laredo at the Texas-Mexico border, about halfway between Brownsville and Eagle Pass if you clock it right. Story went that she took off with a gallon jug of water and a cloth full of tortillas fresh the comal, those clothes, on her petite, brown body and a machete. didn't take any pictures, he said, just a few of those plastic cards the color of Camel Filter hard packs with the saints and their corresponding prayers the back, all of them St. Christopher's the front even if he's not a real saint anymore. It got me wondering why she needed so many prayers of the same saint. I got my answer, but that's a story for another time. She brought those things north along the migrant line, from Tijuana to Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros to Oaxaca, to the southern most reaches of Honduras, and imagine that, guey, about thirteen hundred miles of stretch.