Telling Fortunes in Phoenix

Nik

At any given moment an estimated ten million children are in slavery of some kind while one hundred fifty million are used in child labor, the difference between the two being that the labor force are given small earnings and the slave force is not. Little ones are easily procured and easily convinced to do their tasks, usually as domestics, soldiers, or in some form of the sex trade. These children do, though, often get fed. There are those that fare worse.

Even in the United States there are two to four children that are hungry for every beloved well-fed child; every day these children’s families struggle to put food on the table. Internationally, more than three million children die per year of malnutrition.

Nikolai Andreyovitch Stepan had learned long ago to keep the vastness of this human misery at an emotional distance to avoid being crushed beneath its weight. Nik earned his bread and butter as an Information Technologist but his lifework was rescuing children that had been sold into servitude. This endeavor ate up most of his discretionary income to little effect, but it was an obsession he saw no reason to give up.

His personal efforts yielded an average six saves a year, a pitiful result, but Nik had made a deal with himself to consider his help enough. It kept him sane. For those six kids the impact was huge and because of his childhood in Moscow he knew what it was to be rescued. The effort was imperative to his being.

Most of these little souls were beyond his reach. Families in abject poverty often sold one child to feed the others. Many of these enslaved children would have starved to death if they had not been indentured, though many of them were worked to death instead. He didn’t have the resources to abolish poverty or greed and he got no satisfaction from charitable societies where more contributions were spent on overhead than victims. He didn’t trust authority so he kept on with his little underground puttering, concentrating on stolen or abandoned children.

It wasn’t a simple job. Once saved, the child needed a home. His experience with churches and synagogues and mosques had been mixed since Nik operated beyond the law. The kindly pastor or rabbi or imam would shrug his shoulders sadly but would not endanger his institution by going outside of legal boundaries. Yet some of them would invite him to their homes for further discussions and sometimes at these homes he would meet young people that could not find children to adopt. Arrangements would be made. Nik’s computer skills were helpful in creating false identities that would allow the legal requirements to be observed.

This morning he drove south on Highway 85, jotting down mile markers near uncharted dirt roads leading off. This was a vague study and he wasn’t sure what would come of it but after texting his name and address to a police officer the day before he was afraid his days as an independent contractor might be coming to an end. He recorded dirt roads leading away from SR 85, looking for possible routes to the Mexican border.

Before meeting Cody he’d let his reputation bring cases to him. There was never a lack of children in need; his only regret was that he could assist so few. Now, though, because he wanted to stay home, he concentrated on Phoenix and Mexico. This was his third run down this year.

Nik thought of his success rate as he headed for the Border Patrol Station below the town of Ajo. The road shot through some of the most beautiful desert in the state, jagged outcrops and distant hills breaking the flat deserts as he drove through three national parks. Rattlesnakes, cactus, and coyote made this an area few humans would want to travel, containing hundreds of miles of desolate country to cross without water or shelter. Texas had a much more hospitable international border, the Rio Grande, over a thousand miles of river shallow enough to walk across, but entrance through all of the bordering states was common. Meditations on Mexico filled his mind as the light came up so he did not think it odd when he saw a burro pulling a cart.

A boy was trotting beside it in time honored fashion with a stick tapping from behind, urging the little beast. Quaint. It was another quarter mile before Nik thought better of the tableau. Surely most boys his age were eating their cereal in front of cartoons as they prepared for school. This was not the 19th Century.

Nik made a U-turn and spotted the cart disappearing behind a hill. He pulled off on the shoulder and flew out of the door, dashing over the rise to spot the boy in the wash below. The cart had a lumpy load covered in a tarp.

Nik hailed the kid. “Hey, stop!”

The child stopped and so did the burro. Four black eyes looked him up and down as he closed the last few yards.

“Hello,” Nik said, a little breathlessly. “Do you live around here?”

Silence.

“Habla Ingles?”

A little nod. “A little, sir.”

“Where are you going?”

The boy used his head to point in the direction the cart was heading.

Nik had his hands on the side of the cart now and flipped the tarp up. There, arranged in a muddle of blankets, was a tangle of little kids, out cold.

He looked at the boy. He raised his eyebrows. The kid looked at the ground.

Nik removed the tarp completely and found four children between the ages of three and eight, two girls and two boys. There were some apples and carrots and water bottles next to a burlap sack. He prodded the oldest boy and got no response. He tried pushing and speaking to the other children. They were breathing but they did not waken or make the usual sounds of protest that could be expected from sleeping children disturbed at their rest. The cart was very dirty but the burro’s harness was well made.

“Are these children drugged?”

The boy continued looking at the ground.

“Muchacho, this looks very bad. Do you know these children?”

The boy nodded his head.

Nik spoke slowly. “Did someone give them a drug? Medicina?”

The child lifted his shoulders. He looked near tears.

“Where did you come from?”

The boy pointed behind him and Nik could see the cart’s tracks paralleling the highway.

Nik thought. “Are there bad people back there?”

Now the boy did start to cry, though he wiped the tears angrily from his face.

“Look there.” Nik pointed to his car on the verge of the road. “I can take you somewhere safe.” His stomach knotted. These children could not have come far in this cart and he did not think anyone who would calmly give drugs to children was a person he wanted to tackle on his own.

“My name is Nik,” he said. “What’s your name?

“Jesús.” He pronounced it Hey Zeus. “Chui.”

“Chui. Con mucho gusto.” Nik let some silence fall between them.

“The bad people will find you soon.” Chui followed Nik’s finger as he pointed to the clearly visible tracks. “They will follow you. Come with me to the city…”

Chui jumped back a little as if struck and shook his head. Nik considered. He looked at the sky. The morning air was cool and fresh but soon the sun would clear the horizon and the heat would descend.

“Let me take your hermanos somewhere safe.”

Jesús looked fiercely protective but mirrored Nik, looking to the sun and down the clear cart tracks that led straight to them. He put his hands together and squeezed his eyes shut, whispering in Spanish as more tears leaked down his face. Was the child praying? If so his prayer had been answered. He opened his eyes and nodded.

“Quickly, then.” Nik picked up the largest boy, a real load, and struggled with him across the desert to the car. He looked up and down the empty road, then placed him in the front seat and buckled the seat belt. The boy slumped to the side. Chui handed him the littlest girl who he seemed to be carrying and hugging at the same time. Tears continued rolling down his face. Nik took her and buckled her in the center back.

They ran back and got the last two children and packed them on either side in the rear.

“You sit here,” Nik said, pointing at the middle front position that the child would have to share with the gearing mechanism.

Chui backed away. Nik expected armed men to come over the hill or down the road any minute and considered overpowering the child but maybe the kid had his reasons. At any rate they weren’t safe standing here arguing and he felt certain he couldn’t convince him. His head jerked with decision and he pulled his cell phone out.

“Do you know how to use this?” He opened the phone and demonstrated where the contacts were and how to dial. He found Cody’s number and pressed ‘call.’ There was no answer and he went to voice mail.

“Cody, I found a boy in trouble. I am giving him my phone. Do not call him but help him if he calls you. His name is Chui.” He spoke slowly so that Chui could hear everything, then he showed him Cody’s name in the contact list.

“You take this and call Cody when you can. He will tell you how to get these children.”

Chui grabbed the phone and backed away, still crying. He looked around him in a panic and ran to the cart, unharnessing the burro. Nik felt as panicked as the boy. He jumped in the car and headed north with his new burden.