The Crossing by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-10-16T21:00:00+00:00

The Rio Brava Hotel was set so that when you came in the manager’s desk was to the right, the stairs up to the rooms were to the left, and straight ahead was the hotel café — an open, sunny room always dirty and full of noise and people and the smells of Mexican cooking. It was not a hotel the turistas came to but one used by people coming from the south to Juárez on business, to sell in the market or go to one of the many dentists or opticians or divorce parlors. A no-nonsense hotel, old and full of dust and people.

Manny walked in the front door slowly. He had only been inside the hotel twice. Once to see if he could beg — before he knew there were no turistas — and the second time to try for food at the café. Both times the man at the desk had thrown him out and he did not really expect to get away with it this time, but the desk manager was not there.

He saw the sergeant sitting at a table in the rear of the café, alone; and, thinking that he should not be doing this, that he should turn and leave, Manny walked into the café. The waiter, a man in jeans and a dirty white shirt, saw him come in and would have thrown him out, but he had a plate of eggs for a side table and only hissed a warning to Manny, which the boy ignored. There was this, he thought — the sergeant had covered for him with the police, had not told the police of his attempt to steal the wallet, and that might mean the sergeant was generous. If he was generous there might be a further chance to beg. All of this was in Manny’s thinking, but it was not what brought him into the hotel and into the café. He was drawn to the sergeant by something else, something that made him want to know more of the sergeant, and he walked to the sergeant’s table and stood, silent, watching him.

Robert did not at first see the boy. He had taken the table in the corner with his back to the wall just as he always tried to find tables in corners against walls. The waiter had not come yet, and he was looking at the menu. He could not read Spanish but understood simple things — eggs were huevos, coffee was café, milk was leche, and it did not matter anyway. He was here to eat because he must eat, not because he liked food, and he would do as he usually did — order the first thing at the top of the menu and hope that it did not have menudo in it because that was tripe, and he did not eat tripe because it was guts; and although it was eaten to cure hangovers, he did not have a hangover because he was still drunk — and he looked up from the menu to see a boy standing there.

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