Free Crache by Mark Budz

rides the current to the door.
    “You can’t. You don’t know what you’re getting into.” The IA sounds alarmed at the prospect.
    “You’re probably right,” Rexx admits. “But I’ve chewed about as much cud here as I can.”

9
    BRUJA-HA
    B y the time the gangstas finish hauling L. Mariachi to their temporary barracks, his head is throbbing to a killer downbeat and he has to pee. The real pisser is that his bladder is about to explode and he’s no longer drunk. Fucking EZ beer isn’t worth shit. In the interest of worker health and productivity, it’s been brewed to wear off quickly.
    The
tambo
is a cluster of recycled trailers that have been hauled out of storage in the past twenty-four hours to house the incoming
braceros
. Fabricated out of stucco-textured structural foam sprayed over a wire frame, the trailers are stacked like cargo containers in precise anal-retentive rows. The dirt around them is bare. The politicorp didn’t bother to spray the ground with grass to hold down the grit. A ragtag collection of umbrella palms and circuitrees furnish some UV protection and power. Not much, considering the number of migrant workers that have been sardined into the units. A bad sign. The
patrón
is a tightwad.
    There are more
malavisos,
bad omens. For one, the place is dead quiet; no traditional
banda
or up-tempo
norteño
beat blasting from any of the trailers. No thrashup synthonica to keep the blood flowing. He can’t stop thinking about the absence. It’s as if the lack of music is a wound that needs to be licked, no different from a dog cleaning a raw sore. Not because it feels good but because it hurts more not to. The lack hints at some deeper, unseen illness. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the sick woman—what the witch is trying to cure.
    These
braceros
are more like
pollos,
he thinks. The frightened chickens who used to migrate between clades illegally, covertly, by dosing themselves with black-market antiphers. This was long before the
bracero
work exchange program was formally institutionalized and placed under the administrative control of the Bureau of Ecotectural Assimilation and Naturalization. Now the migrants are officially BEANers. A term that is no longer derogatory, according to the politicorps, because it applies equally to everyone who signs up for the employment program, regardless of race, religion, or economic and cultural background.
    “
Pinche güey
,” L. Mariachi mutters under his breath. Goddamn.
    “What?” Balta, the oldest gangsta asks, steering him toward a trailer at the end of one row. The unit looks like a last-minute addition. It’s whiter than those around it, as bright and shiny as a filling in a mouthful of rotting teeth.
    “I have to take a leak,” L. Mariachi says.
    “Me, too,” the younger gangsta, Oscar, says. Grinning. As if this creates some special bond between them that transcends their background and any other differences they might have.
    “This is it,” Balta announces, pressing a thumb to an iDNA sensor on the door to let them in.
    L. Mariachi isn’t sure if the kid’s referring to the trailer or what’s about to happen. When the door opens he’s assaulted with the aroma of incense, rose-scented candles, tortillas, and hydroponic chili peppers.
    Inside the trailer is a big rectangle divided into smaller rectangular rooms by thin lichenboard panels clipped to modular fasteners. The fasteners make it possible to change the floor plan, or redecorate, but the holes they leave in the exterior walls look like shit. For the most part, these have been papered over with old
videocentro
movie posters, hologram printouts of pop singers downloaded from online netzines, and black silkscreen images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and innumerable saints. The furniture is standard
bracero
mix-and-match, a menagerie of secondhand gel cushions and pillows on folding plastic frames. Interior light is provided by peeling biolum strips stuck to the walls and the