Free American Dirt : A Novel (2020) by Jeanine Cummins Page A

bathroom and makes him stand on the toilet seat inside. It’s the sort of thing she usually wouldn’t tolerate. Luca doesn’t think anyone in the terminal noticed them, and he feels pretty sure because he was studying the faces, but if there is someone looking for them here, if they do track them first to the bus terminal, then to the women’s bathroom, and finally to the handicapped stall, well, then standing on a toilet with your back against a wall doesn’t seem like a very effective way to survive. Luca leans his hands down on his knees and tries not to shake. He watches Mami remove her backpack and prop it in the corner before hanging the overnight bag from the hook on the back of the door. She has to dig nearly to the bottom of it to find a pair of socks. They’re still attached by a plastic barb, which Mami snaps before putting them on. He doesn’t know how she does that. Luca always has to cut them with scissors. Mami doesn’t look that strong, but he knows she’s really powerful, because she can always snap that plastic barb like it’s nothing. She digs out a bra, too, and wriggles into it beneath her shirt. Then she zips up Abuela’s gold sneakers and turns her back to Luca so her feet are pointing in the right direction in case anyone looks under the stall. They’re alone in the bathroom, but he speaks to her very quietly anyway, so they can hear if the door opens, if anyone comes in.
    ‘So we’re going to Colorado?’
    Lydia nods, and Luca wraps his arms around her neck.
    He leans his chin on her shoulder. ‘Good plan.’
    ‘No one would ever think of Colorado.’ Lydia stares at the bag hanging in front of them and tries to remember if she ever mentioned Denver to Javier. Why would she have? She’s never been there and hasn’t seen her uncle since she was a kid.
    ‘Plus, it’s far,’ Luca says.
    ‘Yes,’ Mami says. ‘Very far away from here.’
    In fact, Luca knows with some degree of precision just how far Denver is from Acapulco (almost two thousand miles by car). He knows this because Luca has perfect direction the way some prodigies have perfect pitch. He was born with it, an intrinsic sense of his position on the globe, like a human GPS, pinging his way through the universe. When he sees something on a map, it lodges in his memory forever.
    ‘I’m going to miss the geography bee,’ he says. He’s been studying for months. In September, his school paid six hundred pesos for him to take the international qualifying exam because his teacher was convinced he would bring home the $10,000 grand prize.
    ‘I’m sorry, mijo, ’ Lydia says, kissing his arm.
    Luca shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
    Before yesterday, that geography bee had seemed so important to all of them; now it feels like the most trivial thing in the world, along with everything else on the running to-do list Lydia kept beside the register in the bookshop: Fill out the church paperwork for Luca’s communion. Pay the water bill. Take Abuela to her cardiology appointment. Buy a gift for Y é nifer’s quincea ñ era . What a waste of time it had all been. Lydia feels annoyed that her niece won’t get to see the music box she purchased for her special day. How expensive it was! She realizes, even as this thought occurs to her, how bizarre and awful it is, but she can’t stop it from crashing in. She doesn’t rebuke herself for thinking it; she does herself the small kindness of forgiving her malfunctioning logic.
    Luca whispers in her ear, ‘With a population of almost seven hundred thousand, Denver, nicknamed the Mile High City because of its elevation, is located just east of the Rocky Mountain foothills.’ Reciting from the memory of flash cards. ‘It is the state capital of Colorado and one quarter of its population claims Mexican heritage.’
    Lydia squeezes his arm, reaches up, and runs a hand through his black hair. The summer before last, when Luca’s enduring interest in maps began to shift from