Chapter Two
Lost (and Found)

Someone was trickling water into my mouth and, startled, I inhaled it. Wracking coughs produced a stabbing pain in my head and side, but I couldn't stop. The sun was high and blinding. I squeezed my eyes shut, still coughing. There was something wrong with my forehead and the side of my neck and my right hip.

Hands lifted me, helping me to sit. I managed a wheezing breath without coughing and opened my eyes. Sand. Gravel.

The Empty Quarter. I touched my forehead–there was a ragged gash, crusted, above my right eyebrow. I dropped farther and felt the side of my neck. There was a scab, like a rug burn. It tugged when I turned my head to see who was helping me to sit up.

"Mas comodo?" a rough voice asked. White teeth flashed in a salt–and–pepper beard. I shifted back slightly. He wore a straw hat and a blinding white button–down shirt, worn khaki shorts. His eyes were hidden behind mirrored aviator shades. His skin was brown but he didn't look Hispanic. Tanned.

"Excuse me?" I managed.

"Oh," he said. "More water?" He offered me the plastic bottle.

I accepted it and sipped cautiously, trying not to breathe it again.

"What happened, kid?"

I blinked. What had happened? Something at home, the woman who said she was from the school district.. . ?

I think I screamed then. I know I jerked upright and surged to my feet and my vision dimmed.

Not sure how much time passed, but I was lying down again, on my back. Someone was holding something over me, which shaded my face from the sun. It was a black umbrella and I could see the sun shining through the black cloth and the spokes, spotted with rust. The hand holding it was thin and wrinkled. I followed the arm to a woman with jet black hair, wrinkled brown skin, and dark eyes like still pools of night.

She saw me watching her and said something in Spanish, to the side. I started to sit up again and a hand, not hers, pressed me back down.

"Let's not and say we did." It was the bearded man from before. "Unless you want to pass out again. There's a nice puddle of dried blood here. Didn't see it before–you were lying on it, but I'd say you're better off lying down, okay?"

The wracking sobs came then. I remembered it all, every bit, flashing over and over, from Mum screaming "Go!" to the blood and the motionless eyes staring into nothing.

I think I passed out again.

The light was different–the sun had shifted halfway across the sky and the wind had picked up. Instead of an umbrella, a blue plastic tarp shaded my entire body, flapping gently in the slight breeze. A clear plastic bag half filled with fluid twisted and bounced with the movement of the tarp. A tube dropped from the bag and I watched it for several minutes before realizing it was running into my arm.

Crunching footsteps crossing the gravel came closer and then the light changed again as someone stuck his head into the shelter.

"Estas despierto?" It was the woman from before, the one with the umbrella. She watched my face for some sign of comprehension, then tried, "You okay?"

"Okay? Yes, uh, si. No hablo espanol."

"Okay. Good. Okay." She pointed to a plastic bottle lying beside me, mostly full of water. She mimed tilting a bottle up to her mouth. "Okay?"

"Right. Uh, okay."

I tried to sit up but she shook her head. "No. Descanza. Estate quietecito."

I dropped back. My head spun from the slight effort to sit up. I explored my side and found a mass of gauze and tape on my hip. I found a smaller bandage on my forehead, running up into my hair, the tape tugging painfully when I touched it. I wasn't on the ground, I realized, but lying on a stretcher, one of those canvas things with two poles locked apart. Turning my head without lifting it, I realized we were no longer in my gully but on some raised hillside. I could see miles across desert, over gullies and low hills.

They'd moved me.

Driven me? Carried me?

I thought about the night before and it was as if I were stuck, frozen. My mind just stopped working. I didn't pass out but I lay there staring at the ceiling trying to think but it was too much–my mind was just shying away from it. I knew it had happened. It was the gauze on my head. My brain was wrapped in gauze–white, fuzzy gauze–and it was hard to feel stuff through it.

I heard someone shout from far away, "Hey, Consuelo! Un poco ayuda!" The woman sitting beside me patted me again on the shoulder and ducked out under the edge of the tarp.

As soon as she was standing upright I heard her footsteps go from a walk to a jogging run. After a minute footsteps returned, more than two, but there was a dragging sound, too, and then the bearded man and Consuelo were back, a man supported between them. His face was bloody and swollen and though his limbs twitched as if to help support him, he was helpless as a baby.

The bearded man glanced at me, watching, and said, "Hey, pardner, think you can get out of that stretcher? Got someone here who needs it worse."

I blinked, then sat up carefully. The bandages at my hip tugged and my head swam just a bit but my vision didn't dim like it had before. I edged off the stretcher away from the newcomer, then slid the stretcher toward them, holding it steady as they put the newcomer down.

There was a rapid exchange in Spanish of which the only word I understood was "banditos" and they were working as they talked. Consuelo was wiping blood off the man's face as the bearded man hung another bag of liquid from the same line that supported mine. He cleaned a spot on the inside of the man's elbow with a wipe from a tear–open packet and then slid a needle into the skin.

I winced and looked away. When I turned back, the needle was connected to the tube hanging down from the bag. The wind died for a moment, then shifted around, and I could smell him. He smelled awful, like one of the dirtier homeless guys around Balboa Park–rancid sweat and a whiff of urine.

"Uh, need a loo . . . bathroom." My voice was a rasping croak but understandable.

The bearded guy was putting a foam collar around the neck of the man on the stretcher. He looked up at me. "Really? That's a good sign." He reached over and pinched the back of my hand.

I jerked it away. "Hey!"

He shook his head, chuckling. "Pinch the skin on the back of your hand and let go. Where I can see."

"Why?"

"Dehydration. The longer the skin stays tented, the more dehydrated you are."

"Oh." I held my hand up, palm down, and did what he asked. The skin pulled back flat pretty much as soon as I let go.

"Hold still," he said. I froze and he peeled back the strip of tape securing my drip needle, then pulled it out, one quick, smooth movement. I felt a tug and then there was a red dot welling up. He handed me an antiseptic wipe. "Put pressure on it with that–hold it high. While you're peeing you can close your elbow over it." He put his own finger over the inside of his elbow and pinned it by folding his arm up.

"Where's the loo–uh, toilet?"

He laughed. "Pick a rock."

I ducked gingerly out from under the tarp. My head spun and I bent over for a moment, bracing my hands on my thighs. After another moment things settled and I straightened carefully.

There was a battered four–wheel–drive pickup parked between two boulders, so dusty I couldn't tell what color the paint job was. A large pair of binoculars and a battered orange–and–white ice chest sat on the tailgate. Two camp chairs sat in the partial shade of a mesquite bush.

The pressure in my bladder reminded me why I was standing. I took limping steps in the direction of the largest rock down the hill and peed behind it.

It took me longer to walk up the hill than down. It wasn't just gravity. Without the full bladder I didn't have the motivation, the need, and the gravel hurt my bare feet. It was hard not to just lie down on the ground right where I was and curl up in a ball.

The bearded man ducked out of the tarp and glanced at me. "You okay?"

No! I thought, but I nodded and resumed my painful limp up the hill.

He motioned toward the camp chair. "I'm Sam," he said. "You got a name?"

"Grif–" I stopped myself. Then continued. "John Grifford. They call me Griff." The woman claiming to be from the school district had asked for me, for Griffin O'Conner. "What happened to him?" I gestured at the blue tarp.

"Bandits. He's a Mexican making the crossing to find work. Pretty poor but with a little money, usually everything his extended family can scratch together in U.S. dollars so he can travel to a city with jobs once he's across. There's them on both sides of the border that prey on 'em.

And after it happens, they don't think they can complain to the police on this side, and on the other side, half the time it is the police." Sam paused as I painfully lowered myself into the chair. "Now, once I heard you talk, I knew you weren't Mexican, but his story could be yours–who attacked you?"

I looked away and put my hand to my mouth. The cotton gauze threatened to shred.

He added the unbearable bit: "Where are your parents?"

I nearly jumped. It was like a blow. I knew I wasn't in danger but I still wanted to flinch away. I wanted to flee, to run, but I knew that no matter how far I went it wouldn't change the facts.

"They're d ... d ... DEAD!" There. I'd said it. Said something I couldn't even think.

"Where?" Sam's eyes widened a bit and his eyes twitched sideways. "When?"

He thinks it happened where they found me, that the people who attacked me could still be around. "San Diego–last night."

Oh, bugger. What was the point of giving him a false name? Now he'd be able to read the newspapers and figure out who I really was.

Something my dad used to say went through my head: Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought an idiot than to speak and confirm it.

Sam dropped his shoulders back down. "How'd you get all the way out here? Did they dump you? Could they still be around?"

I shook my head. "I got away–I came here because it was ... safe." I looked at the blue tarp. "Well, I thought it was safe."

"How?"

I shook my head. "Can't tell you. But honest, those that kill–" I bit down on my lip and squeezed my eyes shut for a second. "The last I saw of them was in San Diego. Not here."

He stared at me for a moment. "Well, Pablo, in there, needs some pretty urgent medical attention. We'll be putting him in the truck and then I'll radio the countyEMS, meet them out at the highway. The police and the border patrol will get involved pretty quick, so I just have one question. Should we be mentioning you? I mean, you didn't go to the police in San Diego, did you?"

I stared at him. "What kind of adult are you? Of course you're going to tell the police, no matter what I say. I'm just a kid. Doesn't matter what I want. I'm a minor."

He blinked, then laughed without making any noise, like I'd said something funny.

"So why are you even asking?" Too strident. I clamped my mouth shut, determined not to say anything else.

He stared at me, his brow wrinkled. "Kid, something really bad happened to you and yours but all I really know is that you're in trouble. I meet people in trouble all the time. They're undocumented workers, crossing. I'm not here to judge them, either. What Consuelo and I do is try and keep them from dying. Sometimes it's just a little water, sometimes it's major medical evac. But we don't judge and we don't involve the INS unless we have to.

"I don't know what's best for you. I don't know enough about what happened or why. You're not dying–I don't have to involve the county and the police. Don't know if the cops would just take you back someplace where the people who did this could get at you again or if they even would want to get at you. So, I'm askin' and I mean it: Should I tell the police about you?"

I shook my head side to side, hard, and the scab on my neck tore and stung.

"Well okay, then. I won't." Sam started to get up.

Despite my best intentions, I said, "Why do you do this, helping the illegals, I mean?"

"Someone's gotta. I've been doing it for six years, since I found three dead men on the edge of my property. Consuelo, she lost her husband and teenage son east of here. Their coyote got them halfway across the worst of it and demanded more money before letting them into the truck, still out in the middle of nowhere. She got the story from a woman who didn't have to walk–who didn't die in the basin."

I licked my lips. "She had the cash?"

"She offered a different form of payment."

I looked at him, puzzled.

Sam said, "God, you're young. You talk like you're older so I keep forgetting. She offered sex for passage."

I felt my ears get hot.

"How old are you, kid? Eleven, twelve?"

"I'm nine."

Sam's jaw dropped.

"I'll be ten next month," I added.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I should talk to the police."

"You promised!"

"No, I didn't exactly promise." He shook his head. "But I said I wouldn't. I won't, I guess." He stood. "Consuelo! jDebemos ir!" He opened the passenger door on the truck. "You ride here. Consuelo is going to ride in the back and tend to Pablo."

"Can't I wait here?"

"Not coming back here. After we get Pablo into an ambulance, I'm heading back to my place." He gestured toward the lowering sun. "Done for the day."

It took me almost as much time to get into the truck as it did for Consuelo and Sam to move Pablo and the stretcher into the back of the pickup, fold the tarp, and stow the camp chairs and ice chest.

He drove pretty slow, because the road–well, calling it a road was reaching. Sometimes it disappeared completely and it felt like he was just driving blindly across the desert, but then the twin ruts would reappear. Other places, going up a grade or down, water had carved deeply into the ruts, and no matter how slowly he drove I was thrown hard against the seatbelt or bounced off the door.

I looked around and saw Consuelo braced in the corner by the cab, shaded by her umbrella. The stretcher and Pablo were secured with straps but Consuelo kept one hand on his forehead, bracing his neck, I guess.

After a half hour we topped a rise and stopped the truck. Sam took a radio mike off its bracket and switched the unit on. "We don't get into range until here." He depressed the transmit button. "Tom–it's Sam Coulton. Got a Hispanic male, dehydrated, some trauma. Got beaten and robbed after crossing south of Bankhead Springs. Was two days without water."

The voice that answered was fuzzed with static, barely recognizable. "You need air evac?"

Sam answered, "Nah. He was conscious when I found him. I've got him on IV fluids and we're less than fifteen miles from Old Eighty. I can meet the ambulance at the Texaco near

Desert Rose Ranch Road

in about thirty minutes."

"I'll call the sheriff's office. Is he legal?"

"Doubt it. Sheriff for the assault and the INS, if they want, but they might as well send someone to just meet the ambulance at Regional in El Centro."

"Okay–they'll probably dispatch a unit to meet you at the Texaco. Anything else?"

"Nah. Gotta get going if I'm gonna meet the ambulance. Thanks loads. Love to Maribel."

He hung the mike back on the dash and concentrated on his driving. I didn't see how he expected to make fifteen miles in thirty minutes. We were doing much less than ten miles an hour because of the ruts and rocks, but we reached the plain below after five more uncomfortable minutes and turned onto a dirt road that was a highway by comparison. Sam sped up to fifty and we were up to the motorway in fifteen minutes.

"Are those pajamas?" he asked.

I was wearing sweatpants and a T–shirt, what I normally slept in. "Uh, yeah."

"So you were in bed? When it happened?"

I turned away and looked out the window. It was less than a half mile down the road to a petrol station. To my back, he said, "Okay. I won't press but you want to avoid the cops, make yourself scarce while I deal with the deputy, okay?" He pulled into the shade of the pump awning and began rooting under the seat. After a moment he came up with one plastic flip–flop but he had to get out of the car and crouch down before he finally snaked its mate out from under. He took a couple of dollars out of his wallet and handed them and the flip–flops to me. "Go wash up, then get yourself a soda, okay? Until we're done with the EMS."

I was embarrassed. "Uh, thanks so much. I really–"

"Thank me later. Deputy's coming." He jerked his chin and I saw a distant car way down the road. The roof glittered and I could believe it was a police car.

I dropped the flip–flops onto the tarmac and put my feet in them. They were way too big but I shuffled my way into the store and, avoiding the eyes of the woman at the counter, I turned away from the counter to the loo.

The men's bathroom stank and I looked horrible in the mirror. My hair was matted and there were circles under my eyes. When I twisted around, painfully, the lower edge of my T–shirt was stained brown with a mixture of dirt and dried blood. Fortunately, the dirt made it look more like a particularly reddish mud rather than blood, otherwise, I suspect the clerk would've said something–or even called 911.

I tried rinsing the blood out in the sink but it spread the stain over more of the shirt. I tried the soap dispenser but it was empty, and much as I needed to, I couldn't make myself put the shirt back on. It was wet and filthy and even though there was gauze and tape over the gouge in my side, I didn't want the thing near me.

I dropped it on the edge of the sink and jumped.

I thought it was a very sloppy jump at first–every drawer was out and dumped and the bed mattress flipped over and across the springs. Clothes on hangers were dumped on the floor of the closet. But they were still, not flying through the air. Someone else had caused the mess. I froze, listening.

I wanted to hear something. I wanted to hear my father talking to Mum. The silence was oppressive, weighing down on me like a hot day. Then there was a click and a thud and a whirring sound and my heart beat like a hammer.

Oh. It was the AC cycling on.

I looked out into the hall. More things littered the floors– books, dishes. I began noticing the black powder, almost everywhere. Fingerprinting powder. There were holes in the walls, large, jagged, the edges sticking out, like something had been pulled from the room.

There was masking tape on the floor in the living room, just like on TV, two taped outlines on the floor. And dried blood.

I turned away–flinched away, really. Glancing out glass panes beside the door I saw yellow plastic ribbon stretched across the top of the stairway printed with crime scene:

DO NOT ENTER.

A police car sat at the curb, too, windows down. I couldn't see if anyone was in the driver's seat but there was a crackle after a bit and the sound of someone talking, scratchy, like a radio.

Shite.

I backed up from the doorway, then walked quickly back to my bedroom, the tape on my hip tugging painfully. I picked up a T–shirt, a pair of jeans, underwear, my track shoes, and socks. They'd swept most of the books from my bookshelf, but I found my passport and my hoard, three and a half months' allowance, where I'd left them, stuffed between Treasure Island and Little Big on the bottom shelf.

I turned to the wall for my sketches, but they were gone. They weren't on the floor, either.

There was a sound from the front, like steps on the stair, and I clutched my things to my chest and jumped.

I was back in the Empty Quarter, by the paintball–splattered boulder, sand and dried grass swirling around me. I heard buzzing, flies returning to the dried blood where it had pooled on the ground. I thought about the bandits who'd attacked Pablo but there didn't seem to be anybody around. I could see footsteps where Sam and Consuelo had carried me away.

I climbed on a rock to change into the clean clothes, easing the pants over the bandages on my hip and brushing the sand off my feet to put on the socks and shoes. It took a moment to visualize the petrol station's bathroom enough to jump back to it. It was the memory of the smell that finally did it. I stuffed the bloody clothes into the rubbish bin, beneath the used paper towels.

When I exited, there was a guy waiting who glared at me. "Shook the door hard enough. What's the matter, couldn't get it open? Is that why you took so fucking long?" He shouldered past me into the bathroom without acknowledging my faint, embarrassed "Sorry."

The ambulance and the police were outside. The medical chaps were just easing Pablo off the canvas stretcher and onto the fancy ambulance gurney. Consuelo was watching the paramedics while Sam was just outside, by the store door, talking with a uniformed deputy.

I went back to the refrigerated cabinets and picked out a large bottle of Gatorade, then got some potato crisps. American chips. That's what I miss from England–all the different flavors of crisps. Roast beef and horseradish was my fave.

I paid, using my money, and went out front, away from Sam and the deputy where there was a bench in the shade of the overhang. The Gatorade was good but the crisps were incredible, like my body was craving the salt. I almost went in and bought another bag, but though my mouth said yes my stomach said no. I settled back and sipped from the bottle.

The deputy went back to his vehicle and brought back a map. Sam and he moved up the porch to spread it across the top of a rubbish can. Sam pointed out some specific location for him and I heard him say, ". . . said there were three men. They spoke Spanish to him and each other. Could be a rival coyote gang–I've seen that happen."

"You see any vehicles?"

Sam shook his head. "Only dust. You know, kicked up, but miles away. Normal. Nothing close enough to ID. And I was lookin', too. Didn't want to run into the assholes who did for Pablo."

"Hmm." The deputy tilted back his hat and asked, "You run into anybody out there who wasn't in a vehicle? Someone who just needed a little more water but kept walkin'?"

Sam laughed. "Not today, Ken. The ones who do it right cross at night and hole up during the heat of the day. They may have seen me and Consuelo. I usually don't see 'em at all unless they're in a bad way." He jerked his chin toward the ambulance.

"Okay, then. You going back there?"

"Not today. Goin' home."

"Hmmm. Okay. I'll put the word out to the state police and the border patrol. You run across anything suspicious, let us know, right?"

"Right."

They shook hands and the deputy went back to his car and began talking on the radio.

Sam glanced at me and started to go into the store then stopped. "Huh. There you are. Where'd you get those clothes?"

I opened my mouth to tell him, but what could I say? Really?

"I didn't nick 'em." I stood up and handed him the flip–flops and the two dollars he'd given me earlier. As he took them I dropped back onto the bench, hard, surprised. My knees had given out and it seemed the gas pumps were swaying in the wind. "Whoa."

"Dizzy, eh?" He looked at me a moment longer. "Gonna gas up. Don't really need it but it'll give the deputy time to move off. You just sit here, right? Wish I–oh, well. Just sit. Rest. You feel faint, put your head between your knees."

I nodded.

He went back to the truck. They'd just finished putting Pablo in the back of the ambulance and Sam exchanged a few words with the paramedic before they closed up and drove off down the highway, lights flashing but no siren. I closed my eyes for a few seconds–I thought–then the truck was there, right in front of me.

"Why don't you lie down in back, Griff?"

I wondered if I should go with them at all, but I didn't know what else to do. The thought of lying down was good, really good. I nodded and he helped me climb over the tailgate and drop onto the canvas stretcher. He gave me a folded blanket to use as a pillow. "We're headed west–cab should shade you, takes about forty–five minutes, all right?"

"All right," I said.

He tucked the Gatorade between my arm and my side. I thought about drinking again, but it was too much effort.

I don't even remember him pulling out of the petrol station.