Los Cuatro
Copyright© 2025 by Art Samms
Chapter 11
The next morning, we didn’t even need to discuss it—we fell back into formation. The four of us, walking side by side. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest move, visibility-wise, but after everything that had happened, we needed each other. Splitting up hadn’t made us safer. If anything, it had made us feel more vulnerable, more disconnected. So, we walked together. It made us feel better, almost like a small victory, and our spirits lifted ever so slightly.
We reached a fork in the road by mid-morning. A crossroads—literally and otherwise.
A few people peeled off toward Reynosa. Others veered toward Matamoros. That was our path. The four of us knew that without even speaking. Just a look passed between us. Our feet moved with no hesitation. The Rio Grande, and Brownsville, were just beyond Matamoros. It almost felt as though we were on a freeway, and we’d just reached the exit sign, our destination in sight. Now, to be sure, we still had a few days of very difficult travel ahead, with dangers that exceeded anything we’d seen so far.
Marcelo ended up on the same route, which gave us an even greater sense of relief—like maybe there was still a few slivers of good fortune left in the world.
But then ... so did Baldy.
Of course he did.
Luz noticed first. She didn’t say anything, just touched my arm and tilted her head. I followed her gaze and spotted him a few yards behind us, walking with a different group, casual as anything. Like he belonged. But we all knew he didn’t.
We couldn’t shake the guy. He was like a shadow that didn’t care where the sun was.
The Matamoros-bound group was noticeably smaller, maybe thirty or forty people total. It should’ve felt less chaotic, but it didn’t. It felt tighter. The tension was higher, like we were all compressed into a smaller space, breathing the same anxious air.
That night, as we camped near a dry ravine under a half-dead mesquite tree, Marcelo approached us.
His expression was different this time. Not kind. Not casual. Serious.
“I don’t know who you are,” he said quietly, eyes flicking from face to face. “And I don’t need to. But if you plan to vanish ... do it before we get close to the border. It gets worse up there.”
His voice was steady, but the weight behind his words hit hard.
Luz nodded solemnly. Marisol rubbed her arms like she’d caught a chill. Isa stared into the distance, chewing her bottom lip.
I said, “We’ll think about it.”
Marcelo nodded once, and then walked away without another word.
We lay down close together that night, not speaking much. Luz rested in my arms, with Isa pressing into her back, and Marisol right behind. We needed the closeness. We let the weight of Marcelo’s words settle into our bones. The stars were out, but they didn’t feel like they were watching over us anymore.
They felt like a warning.
We were moving again by dawn.
The morning light was soft and gray, everything still quiet except for the soft shuffle of dozens of tired feet and the occasional cough or muttered conversation. The air was already warming, but not yet brutal. It felt like the briefest window of peace before the day could decide how it wanted to break us.
Somewhere around mid-morning, Marcelo sidled up beside me. He didn’t say a word—just slipped something into my hand and kept walking, like he was handing off a note in class. I glanced down.
A folded piece of paper.
I waited until we had a little breathing room on the road before I opened it. Inside was a hand-drawn map—sketchy, but clear enough. A thin irrigation ditch veered off the main route about a day and a half ahead. Marcelo had marked it with a small “x.” According to the note scrawled underneath, the ditch would take us away from the road and—more importantly—away from cartel-controlled territory if we followed it long enough.
No guarantees. But a chance.
I showed it to Luz first, then Isa, then Marisol, each of them studying it in silence. We passed it like a secret we all already knew.
As we walked, the decision settled between us without needing to be said out loud. But we said it anyway. Quick, quiet words.
We’d stick with the caravan through tonight and tomorrow. After that—under cover of dark—we’d break off. Follow the ditch. Head north on our own.
That afternoon, we stopped at a roadside church. Volunteers handed out water and styrofoam containers of lentils and rice. It wasn’t much, but it was something. We ate in silence, our minds already spinning toward tomorrow night.
As evening fell and people began spreading out blankets and tarps in the field beside the church, we laid low like always, acting normal, keeping close.
That’s when I spotted Baldy.
Standing across the field, half in shadow. Watching us. And he wasn’t alone this time. Another man stood beside him, just as rough-looking, arms crossed, saying nothing.
They didn’t approach. Just stood there, staring. Like they were waiting.
I felt every hair on my neck lift.
Marisol was the one who broke the silence between us. She leaned in, speaking in a barely audible whisper.
“Tomorrow night ... we go.”
No one argued.
No one had to.
We made it through one more day.
It was long, slow, and uneventful—which was exactly what we were hoping for. Baldy kept his distance, talking to two other guys, and for once, not watching us. Marcelo was nowhere to be seen, which made me uneasy, but I told myself that maybe he was keeping his distance on purpose. Maybe that was the safest thing for everyone now.
As the sun dipped below the horizon and darkness swept in, people started bedding down in quiet clusters. We waited until the murmurs faded and the rustling stopped. Then, without a word, we slipped away like shadows peeling off the edge of a dream.
Just the four of us. Me, Luz, Marisol, Isa. Everything we had—what little there was—we carried on our backs. Two snack bars between us, half each. Barely enough to feel, but more than nothing. Our feet were raw. Our bodies heavy. But we kept walking.
The irrigation ditch was where Marcelo said it would be. Narrow, mostly dry, hidden enough to mask our footprints. We followed it by starlight, our hands brushing reeds and weeds, the ground uneven beneath our soles. Every so often, when the clouds thickened and the light disappeared, we sparked a lighter to check our footing—quick flicks, no more than a second at a time.
For the first time in days, the tension let up, just a little. No eyes on us. No one breathing down our necks.
We talked.
Not about plans or danger or how far we had left—just food. The stupid, beautiful comfort of it.
“What’s the first thing you’re gonna eat when we get back?” Luz asked.
Isa moaned like she was already tasting it. “A whole platter of tacos. Al pastor. Extra pineapple.”
“Empanadas,” Marisol said. “Our mom’s recipe. I’m making you try them, Brendan.”
I smiled, watching their faces in the dim glow of the sky. I missed hearing the three of them chatting casually like this. It was music to my ears. “I’m not even from Brownsville – not yet,” I replied to Marisol, “so I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
“You’re gonna be fed so well, gringo,” Isa said, nudging me. “You’ll be rolling around South Texas like a tamal.”
They laughed. It wasn’t loud, wasn’t long, but it was real.
Then came the low, far-off growl of a motorbike.
Just one. Not close—but not far, either.
We dropped to the ground, hearts thudding, scrambling into a shallow dip near the ditch wall. I felt the dry, cracked earth press against my chest, heard Luz’s breathing next to mine. The sound grew louder, then passed. We waited until it faded completely.
No one said anything. We got up, slower now, more cautious, and kept walking until we found shelter—a crumbling barn with half a roof and three working walls. It was enough.
We curled up on the dirt floor, wrapped in thin blankets and silence. The stars blinked through the missing slats above us.
We didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.
But for now—we were free.
We slept in.
For the first time in—hell, I don’t even know how long—we didn’t wake up with the sun. The barn had offered just enough comfort, just enough shelter, to let us drift a little deeper, a little longer. When we finally stirred, it was mid-morning. And it was hot. Oppressively hot. The kind of heat that presses on you like a hand to the chest.
And there was no water left.
We’d rationed every drop. Last night, we finished what little we had between the four of us. Now, with the sun climbing and the sweat already starting to form at the base of my neck, our throats were dry, lips cracking. Dehydration very quickly became a concern. We sucked on stones we’d picked from the ground—just to trick our mouths into making saliva. It was pathetic, but it worked. A little.
Marisol stood and brushed herself off. “Bathroom,” she said, and wandered off behind a thicket of bushes.
We waited. Five minutes passed. Then ten.
I sat up straighter, about to go after her, when I saw her coming back—moving quickly, but not in distress.
She was grinning.
In her hands, like something out of a dream, were four oranges. Big, ripe, sun-drenched oranges. And tucked under her arm, two cucumbers.
“What...?” I blinked.
“There’s a grove over that rise,” she said, a little breathless. “And a garden next to an abandoned house. I figured ... you know.”
We stared at the fruit like it was a holy offering. Even Isa, who would normally be the first to raise a moral objection, just shook her head and muttered, “God understands.”
Luz gave Marisol a hug. I just reached for an orange with both hands and bit into it, rind and all, tearing the skin away with my teeth like some wild thing. Juice spilled down my chin. I didn’t care. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted in my life.
We split everything—carefully, evenly. A slice here, a strip there. No one rushed. We chewed slowly, like we could absorb water just by savoring long enough.
A miracle, we said. A small one, maybe. But out here, it felt enormous.
And for a few minutes, under that brutal sun, we were something close to okay.
By afternoon, we were moving again—slowly, stiffly, following the faint suggestion of a path that paralleled a canal. It was too hot to talk much, so we mostly just trudged in silence, eyes down, occasionally scanning the horizon for signs of trouble. Farm equipment rattled in the distance now and then. Power lines spiderwebbed overhead. We kept clear of the roads.
The oranges and cucumbers from earlier had revived us, at least a little. I could still taste the orange on my tongue—bright and sharp and impossible to forget. Without it, I don’t think I could’ve kept walking.
At one point, Luz broke the silence with a triumphant little noise. She held up a faded baseball cap—probably left behind by a fieldworker or a hiker. Without asking, she walked over and plopped it on my head, adjusting it until the brim shaded most of my face.
“There,” she said, brushing my damp hair back from my forehead. “Now you won’t burn off what’s left of your face.”
I managed a smile. “And here I thought I was pulling off the lobster look.”
She chuckled, but it didn’t last long. None of our laughs did these days. Perhaps they would again, very soon—but there was a lot of work to do first.
As dusk approached, we spotted it—a tiny roadside shrine just off the dirt path. One of those little candle-lit altars, the kind people build for the dead. There were flowers, plastic saints, wax dripped over every surface—and two miracles: a half-full bottle of water and a single tamal, wrapped tight in foil.
We looked at each other, silently agreeing. We didn’t know who left it, or for whom, but we couldn’t ignore it.
We split the tamal four ways. It was cold, but spicy and dense, and we ate every crumb. Isa took the candle that was already burning and lit another, whispering something I couldn’t quite make out. A prayer, I figured. Maybe thanks.
The stars came out early, crisp and scattered like broken glass across the sky. No clouds. No buildings. Just open space. With no better shelter in sight, we decided to camp right there, beside the shrine.
We built a small fire—more for comfort than warmth. The girls half-joked about wishing we had marshmallows. Isa said she used to make hers golden-brown, never burnt. Luz claimed that burnt was the best way. Marisol said it depended on the mood. I told them I’d just be happy to have sugar in any form again.
Eventually, the talk shifted—naturally—to the crossing.
“The river’s not deep,” Marisol said, staring into the flames. “We should be able to walk across. But we’ll need to time it right. After midnight. Before sunrise.”
“And the fence?” Luz asked.
“We look for a gap. There’s always gaps. And if not ... we climb.”
No one argued. It was clear—we were nearing the end. The border was close. So was the danger.
But for now, with the fire crackling and the stars overhead, it was peaceful. Strange, but peaceful. And we all felt it—that tiny tug in the chest that comes when you know the moment you’re living in won’t last, and might never come again.
We sat quietly for a long time.
Savoring it.
We broke camp before the sky even thought about turning gray. None of us said much—just packed up our few things and kept moving, following the canal as it bent east. We wanted to put in as much ground as we could before the sun got too brutal.
It didn’t matter. By midmorning, the heat was already unbearable.
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