Oliva stared at his squeaky shoes. “That picture. On your phone? It’s the one I saw on the news, yes?”
Vega pulled his phone out of his pocket again and brought up the picture of the two brothers and Hector’s son on the screen. “This one, you mean?”
“It was taken in Guatemala,” said Oliva. “Near the border to Honduras. In a place called El Floridio.”
“Hector told you that?”
“No.” Oliva pointed a thick stubby finger to his white shirt. “I took that picture. I was with them on that journey. That is how I know Edgar.”
Vega felt as if someone had wrung all the air out of him. “You crossed the desert with them?”
Oliva’s dark eyes held Vega’s. “Yes.” Then he faced forward and laced his thick-knuckled hands on the pew in front of him. His voice took on a soft trancelike quality. The noise and people in the cavernous interior fell away and Vega found himself transfixed by the man’s words.
“I met the two brothers and Hector’s son on the journey from Honduras. By the time we reached northern Mexico, some of the Hondurans in our group had gotten sick or hurt or caught by the Mexican police and deported back. There were only twelve of us left,” Oliva said slowly. “Nine men. Three teenage boys. Near the border, we were handed off to a coyote who was supposed to guide us across the desert and into the United States. He was no older than the boys.”
Oliva’s voice was measured and even, almost devoid of emotion. He barely moved when he spoke, except to lick his chapped lips. “We each carried three plastic gallon jugs of water and some tins of sardines. The water was heavy and hard to carry but it was enough to last us for three days.” Oliva held up three cracked and callused fingers. “That’s what we were told the journey from Mexico to Arizona would take.” He said the last words like a small child who still believed that saying something would make it true.
Oliva stared straight ahead. His voice turned husky and barely rose above a whisper. “On the second day, we ran out of food. On the third day, we ran out of water. On the fourth, we drank our own urine. We were lost. The coyote told us to give him all our money so he could buy water and get help. We never saw him again.”
“He abandoned you?” asked Vega.
“Yes. After that, some became too weak to travel. The group began to split up. Hector’s son, Miguel, got bitten by a scorpion. Hector had to walk much slower for the boy’s sake. I was by myself. I had to keep going. My family in Honduras was depending on me.”
“How did you know where you were going?”
Oliva pointed to the vaulted ceiling of the church where a fresco of saints acted out their own life-and-death dramas. “I followed the North Star at night. That was all I could do. My nose bled. My tongue swelled. My skin felt like it was on fire. On the fourth day, I spoke to the mountains.” He closed his eyes. “On the fifth, they answered back.”
Vega felt stung by the enormity of such suffering—the sheer loneliness of it. To die in the desert is to die twice. Once in the body. Once in the soul.
“The doctors told me that when two good Samaritans found me by an Arizona roadside, I had only hours to live,” said Oliva. “At the time, I believed I was the only one of the twelve to survive.”
“You didn’t know that Hector and Antonio—um, Edgar—had survived?”
Oliva shook his head. “How could I know? We did not travel under our real names. We could not draw attention to ourselves or our situation once we were here. I didn’t even know the name of the coyote who abandoned us. We called him “Chacho” because he had this little bit of facial hair beneath his chin. He was so young, I think that’s all he could grow, even after we were out there several days.”
“How did you find out Hector was alive?”
“Years later, when I lived in Queens, I met Father Delgado and told him my story. That’s when he introduced me to Hector. I moved up to the Bronx and began to work at the church. Neither of us knew that Edgar had survived. Not until Edgar contacted Hector through a cousin’s Facebook page.”
Oliva brushed a hand along the beveled edge of the pew in front of him. “You need to understand,” he said slowly. “Edgar wasn’t trying to be hurtful when he disappeared from his family. He was just living a very different life than they would have been comfortable with.”
Vega nodded. “They wouldn’t have accepted his homosexuality?”
“Probably not,” said Oliva. “At least not then. This was twenty years ago.”
“So what made him come forward now?”
“Edgar saw the book.”
“The book?”
Oliva rose. “Come. I will show you.”
Oliva ushered Vega out of the nave and into the hallway that connected the church to the rectory. They walked past Delgado’s office until Oliva came to a small janitor’s closet full of mops and brooms and cleaning supplies. Oliva felt around on a shelf for something.
“This is why Edgar contacted Hector.”