Once Upon A Wish : Book One Read online

  Nestor did not know what to do or say.

  Tears welled up eyes but he fought them back, blinking hard to make them go away.

  “You need sleep, amigo,” he said.

  “Sleep?” Hernan said. “Sleep only brings nightmares.”

  “It will get better,” Nestor bluffed. “The memories will fade. You'll only remember snippets. Same with your feelings. You'll only have snippets of emotions. Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.”

  Hernan shook his head.

  Nestor paused as he tried to find the words he felt unqualified to interpret. He knew things would only get worse. He would either blow his brains out or take the route of the slow burn with alcohol or drugs.

  “Go to sleep, amigo,” Nestor said. “Sleep.”

  Hernan lay back down. Nestor drew the blanket over the young man. He looked around to make sure no one else saw this softer side of him.

  He laid back down, disappointed in himself. He read everything he could get his hands on to avoid becoming another dummy numbed by sixteen-hour workdays. He read politics, news and had imaginary conversations with people who cared about his opinions. He fantasized about making his points as clear as a pearl stamped pistol. With Hernan, he failed to get the simplest point across.

  Maybe sometimes the answer could be simple. Like going back to sleep.

  He closed his eyes. A coyote howled at the moon.

  The group continued the trek north. The morning sun offered no quarter as another blistering hot day loomed ahead. Nestor crossed his fingers, hoping they had enough water left for the remainder of the journey.

  Hernan jogged up alongside him.

  “Hey,” he said. He wasn’t panting Nestor noted. He’s in shape.

  “Hey,” Nestor responded without slowing. If the man wanted to talk, fine. He could do it and keep up at the same time.

  “I was thinking. More like a question. Once we get to California, what happens then?”

  “What happens?”

  “Yeah, I mean, what are you going to do?”

  “I am going to stay there. Fuck Mexico. This is my last run.”

  “I was wondering if you needed a partner.”

  “For what?” Nestor asked, stopping. He turned toward him, but thought better of it. They needed to press forward.

  “Whatever it is that you are going to do.”

  “Don't you have anyone up there?”

  “I have nobody.”

  “Go back home.”

  “I don't have anyone, anywhere. There is no home. My big brother took me to a busy street plaza one day and left me there. I was sent to an orphanage. Adopted by a nice lady. Catholic. She adopted another girl.” He shot a thumb over his shoulder. “The girl back there, Teresita.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “She was twenty. Smart. She could have gone to school. But our abuelita got sick. She died last month. It all happened very fast. She wanted us to go to the U.S. She left us money and paid this guy. He tried to get us across the border and then—”

  “I see.”

  “Teresita was all I had left. My big sister. She was going to look after me. She made all the arrangements. I...I was never that good in school. I'm a hard worker. Whatever you need. Whatever work you might have for me.”

  Nestor sighed deep.

  “She was my sister,” Hernan said. He dropped his head and tried to fight back the tears. He looked up at the heavens. “Fuck you, God!” he said aloud.

  Nestor looked over at the group. He saw Veronica cross herself at Hernan's words.

  “I keep seeing her face in my head, you know. It is all I think about. What they did to her,” he said, balling his fists and gritting his teeth. “They tied me up. I couldn't do anything. Tied me up,” he repeated, louder. “I finally broke free and I got them. Broke free at night. Stupid ass drunk motherfuckers. They should have killed me when they had the chance.”

  “But you got your revenge,” Nestor said, realizing they were hollow words.

  Hernan started crying. This time he did not let up or try to fight it. He cried the deep soul wrenching tears that come from the angriest parts of a man’s broken heart.

  Nestor let him cry. He did not have the heart to tell him that he would abandon him in California.

  They reached the tunnel without a hitch. Nestor remembered a television movie about a group of migrants smuggled across the border. One of the tunnels was filled with rats. He smiled at how things improved with technology. The tunnel he had access to had a trolley and functional lights.

  Three hundred yards long. They just had to latch on to its pulley system and follow it until they reached the other end.

  They entered through the narrow hatch one person at a time. Nestor went first, helping each of the others out. Each of them complained about the tight fit of the hole. Nestor joked that he never smuggled fat people.

  The warehouse with the secret hatch had a floral smell. A former rose dispensary, it stood abandoned and far away from scrutiny.

  Attacked with fatigue, some members of the group wanted to stay and rest inside the warehouse.

  Nestor insisted that no one could stay there. Rules were rules and they had to go their own separate ways.

  A gas station stood a block away from the warehouse. Some used the phone there to call their waiting relatives. Others disappeared into the night.

  Nestor noticed Hernan staring at him.

  “I have nowhere to go.”

  “You'll figure it out.” Nestor walked away. “America is like Mexico but sometimes you get what you paid for here.”

  Hernan looked like a lost puppy.

  Finally, Nestor stopped.

  “I am getting a motel room. You could sleep on the floor.”

  Hernan ran to catch up with him.

  “Then you need to get a job,” Nestor said. “Immediately. Do anything. I don't care if you are washing dishes or mopping floors. Shovel shit if you have to, but I am not taking care of you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Horse races. Golden Gate Fields in Albany became his favorite place, next to the duck pond.

  He would hang over the railing as the jockeys made their way into the paddock. He waved hello, offering words of encouragement. A few would nod back at him, amused. He rarely gambled, but he liked to “help out” when he spotted someone rooting for a horse that needed it.

  One time, an elderly Hispanic man in a cowboy hat screamed for the number two horse that ran neck and neck with the number four horse. Hernan stood next to the man and joined him in yelling for the two horse which edged out his foe at the wire. Hernan exchanged high-fives with the man even though he had no money on the horse.

  “Do me a favor,” Nestor said. “Only root for the horses I play.”

  “Okay,” Hernan laughed. “Sorry, amigo.”

  On the rare occasions Nestor won, he would treat Hernan to a trip to the Merritt Restaurant in East Oakland.

  The restaurant's famed chiliburgers quickly became Hernan's favorite dish. Nestor would have fried chicken with all the sides and they would sit there feasting like kings.

  Today, there would be no chiliburgers. Nestor lost as usual.

  He said nothing as the two trekked to the bus stop.

  And waited. And waited some more.

  “When is this fucking bus gonna come?” Nestor said.

  “I won a hundred dollars in that last race,” Hernan said.

  “What?”

  “Windstorm. The five horse. I put ten bucks on it. He looked at me in the paddock.”

  “That horse was ten to one! He looked at you?”

  “Yep. I bet for the first time. The horse looked at me. When I was watching him in the paddock. Kept glancing over his shoulder, watching me watch him. The best horse that ran all day actually noticed me.”

  The bus came and they rode home in silence.

  Nestor sat on his stool and looked out the window. He sipped their last remaining beer as slow as he could.

>   He hated life.

  Battling a bout of self-pity, he shook his head at how one sole factor ruled his life.

  A lack of money.

  The root of all of his problems since birth.

  “Okay, if I watch TV?” asked Hernan.

  “I want quiet.” Two cars with their stereos turned up full blast rolled by. The hum of their dueling bass lines vibrated the apartment windows.

  “I hate this fucking place,” Nestor muttered.

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “I don't know what's worse. Tijuana or Oakland. At least in Tijuana ...Well... Everywhere is dangerous,” Nestor said without completing his thought. “I still can't get over that, man. Why did you pick that horse?”

  “I just knew, man!” Hernan said. “The favorite had bandages on his legs. Plus, the horse looked at me. He looked straight into my eyes—alive. I saw the fire in his eyes.”

  “How much did you bet on him?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  “And how much did you bring with you?”

  “Fifty.”

  “See? Why didn't you go all in? If you bet fifty dollars, you would have five hundred instead. Because of your self-doubt, you shorted yourself $400 dollars.

  “But what if I lost?”

  “What if you lost?” Nestor shrugged his shoulders. “Winners don't ask questions like that. That's the difference. A winner takes a chance. Risks it all. A loser plays scared and is satisfied with scraps. I know. I play it safe too much. Then I try to get it all back in one swoop. It never works. That is why I'm a loser. Why you're a loser.”

  Hernan said nothing. His shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly.

  “You have to think bigger. Tomorrow is dollar day. How much money do you have saved up?”

  “I don't know. A couple of hundred, maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  Hernan went to his room. Opening his dresser drawer, he counted his life savings and returned to the living room.

  “Four hundred and four dollars, amigo.”

  “Tell you what.” Nestor picked out an advertising flyer from the newspaper. “See this? That's twenty-four hundred dollars for a giant screen TV. We make that our goal. We make that much money. Twenty-four hundred dollars and we get ourselves a giant TV. Cool? We’d have our own movie theater.”

  Hernan looked at the television they already had.

  “There's nothing wrong with this one.”

  “Keep thinking small,” Nestor said. “Next week we'll take that money and study the form. We find the best bet. Roll it into something bigger and bigger. Everyone does that. So can we. I have this system but I need capital to get it started. You gotta take risks. A man's capacity to enjoy the finer things in life correlates to the risks he takes.”

  Hernan looked uneasy. It did not take a genius to figure out that Nestor did not know anything about the handicapping of thoroughbreds.

  “What if we lose?”

  “What if we lose?” Nestor got up off the stool and pounded his chest. “See what I mean? Only losers ask that question. That's your whole problem.”

  They did not make it to the racetracks the following week.

  Nestor had a run of bad luck outside the ponies. They laid him off from his maintenance job at a housing complex in Alameda. He received no severance or forewarning. Just a boot in the ass.

  There was an advertisement in the paper for a dishwasher but he nixed the idea. They didn't need two dishwashers in the same household. He thought about becoming a waiter at any of the Mexican restaurants, but he hated people. He would probably only last a day or two before he threw a hot plate of rice and beans over a patron's head.

  Sitting on the toilet, Nestor listened to a motivational speaker on the radio. He found himself nodding his head when he heard the man say how people move aimlessly through life. He said most people lived lives of quiet desperation. They hope their lives change but never take action to force the change.

  He mentioned how a person's self-talk is their barrier to success.

  Nestor thought about how he never went for anything higher than a manual entry-level job. He felt insecure about his accent and his own self-talk told him he'd be rejected for it. Or that they would reject him because of the burn on his face.

  He stopped asking out pretty girls. They wouldn't like him for the same reasons.

  His own self-talk never shut up.

  Hernan came home that night and did not say a word. Just a quick “hey” and he went to his room.

  Nestor turned on the television and waited for Hernan to come out.

  But he didn't.

  He walked over and knocked on his door, seeing him turned over on his side.

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “The boss. Told me I wasn't moving fast enough.” Hernan’s fists clenched and unclenched as he spoke, the veins in his neck showed clearly.

  Nestor said nothing. He had to let Hernan vent.

  “Says I'm moving too slow. Says he wished he hired someone else.”

  “Fuck him! He talks to you like that again just quit.”

  But Nestor knew Hernan would not take his advice. Nor did he really want him to. He knew he had to suck it up because if he lost his job that they would be up further up shit creek.

  Hernan curled up into a little ball and slept for ten straight hours.

  Nestor could not sleep.

  The words of the motivational speaker ran through his head. The phrase quiet desperation fit both of their lives.

  In the morning, he forced himself out of bed. He waited on the strip on East 14th with the other immigrants for someone to pick them up for manual labor. Usually low-end construction work picking up scraps after the crew.

  Hernan left for his day of washing dishes and chopping vegetables with his head hung low and shoulders slumped.

  A life of deprivation and drudgery.

  Nestor readied to leave when he heard a knock on the door. He did not have to look through the peek hole to know who it could be.

  They were behind on the rent.

  He opened the door and his hunch was correct. Faisal, the building supervisor, stood in front of the doorway, walking in without waiting for an invite.

  “These are always unpleasant conversations.” Faisal scanned the apartment's scuffed carpet. He looked at the walls, and went into the bathroom to scrutinize the toilet and shower. Nestor followed him without saying a word.

  “At least you guys kept it clean,” Faisal said.

  “Why wouldn't we?”

  Nestor did not like Faisal. The Arab looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes that rarely blinked. He had a hooked nose and his face resembled that of a rat that returned from the dead. “I need the rent money within forty-eight hours.”

  “Fine.” Nestor said.

  “You have been out of work for a while now?”

  Nestor nodded.

  “Take your stuff to storage. Shouldn't take too—”

  “I'll get the rent.”

  “Okay.”

  Faisal saw himself out and Nestor slammed the door on him. Living on the streets again was not an option. He lived on the streets as a kid. He would not go through that again.

  The situation had its own irony. In Mexico, he could earn more money smuggling people into California. Selling immigrants on the American Dream, but his own hopes shriveled up and disintegrated like a corpse.

  Nestor opened the window. Hip-hop bass lines screamed from at least four cars. Multiple sirens blared. The beeping horn from a cement truck topped them all as they competed for to be the loudest distraction in a cacophony of chaos.

  The next day Nestor told Hernan to call in sick to work.

  They took the bus to Golden Gate Fields in a last ditch attempt to make some money. Nestor hoped Hernan's sixth sense about the ponies could work some magic one more time.

  “When a horse looks at me, I know he's going to win.” Hernan repeated as he s
tudied the horses coming into the paddock.

  Hernan hung over the railing for the first seven races. None of the horses gave him a second look. Until the eighth race.

  A beautiful white horse came out of the stables and into the paddock. He glanced over at the crowd and Hernan smiled big.

  “That's the one,” Hernan said. “He looked at me.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Nestor looked at the racing form. They called the horse White Noise. An 18-1 long shot. He bet half of his remaining funds on the horse. They would need the other half to move their stuff into storage.

  If they won, the money would cover the rent and more than a few dinners at the Merritt Restaurant.

  “They're they go!” the announcer's voice rang out.

  Nestor's heart burst through his chest. White Noise took the early lead. The horse ran impressively, nose down slightly. His breathing seemed controlled and his jockey pushed him. The horse responded, digging deep.