Guadeloupe Bridges
"Instead of love and the feel of warmth / you've given him these cuts and sores / that don't heal with time or with age."- What's the Matter Here? // 10,000 Maniacs
You don't have to look at me for too long before you realize I haven't done much with my life. I like to think that's not my fault. My parents died when I was 10 and I was put out on the streets, because I decided anything was better than the foster care of Southern Chile.
By the time it's 10 years later, I'm 20 and I still want to leave the city I've lived in my whole life. Only now I've accepted the fact that it isn't likely. When you've been homeless for a certain amount of time, you figure out there isn't a way to afford any kind of plane fare.
That being said, I'm not really thinking about these things when I'm getting up one frigid July morning.
Yawning, I slip into a thick jacket I found in a dumpster some years ago. It isn't much of course, but it's almost enough to save me from the freezing air of winter. In one of the southernmost points in the world, it's needed. Years as a child lying on freezing concrete taught me that.
Glancing to my best and only friend Bob, I watch as he basically uses his beard as a blanket. On a 72 year-old man, it's long enough to do the job.
Three years ago, when I was still 17, he came into town asking to stay with me. I knew him from times he'd visited before, but things changed significantly this time.
He had an accident back up in a city called San Diego; an accident he doesn't normally tell me about. I may not have many experiences to go off of in my life, but I do know it's best not to dwell on the bad ones.
Having a companion is one of the few pieces of my life that can make me happy. In a routine that only involves scrounging for food and thinking about the emptiness of your own life, Bob becomes surprisingly fun to be around.
I take one last look at his mangled white hair and head out through the creaky door.
The temperature is about the same outside of my "house" as it is inside. For the past few years we've been living in a concrete shack crammed inside an alleyway. There's only room for two makeshift cots. However, I don't mind how small it is; it makes me more motivated to spend my day outside.
The walk through Punta Arenas is no different than usual: comfortable and familiar. There are the only streets I've ever known; I could walk through them with my eyes closed. From what Bob's told me, the city is different from the others in South America. As far as he knows, it's the only area with pine trees and such a cold climate.
All the houses I pass on my walk double as car garages or tourist shops and are crammed together on the side of the road. Most of them don't even have doors, which goes to show that even if you own a house down here, your life isn't that much better.
There was a time when I lived in a house, but that was back with my parents. And when they died they left me with nothing, as if they hadn't been my parents at all.
As I walk past the houses, my head turns to their TVs. They're visible from the streets, and some mornings for the past three years, they've been flashing this strange symbol: it's a circle, half black and half white, with lines of those colors coursing through it.
It wouldn't upset me if I didn't know what it is, but I do. Bob's told me that it's the symbol of HEXA, the organization that Jose Delgato works for. Delgato being the man that abducted him three years ago and ran experiments on him. I know he must see the symbol in the morning too, though he doesn't say anything about it.
With my head still turned, my eye catches a dark figure some paces behind me. His walk is hasty and a sickening feeling in my gut says it's me his after. Muggers aren't unheard of in this neighborhood, and the best way to avoid them is to just keep moving forward.
Just walk, Guad. Why would anyone want to be watching you anyway?, I think for the next few minutes.
As my morning walk is coming to a close, my nerves relax. It looks like the man's disappeared and I'm in the clear.
I approach a restaurant popular with the tourists, but I'm certainly not here to buy a meal. Behind the building is a lucrative set of dumpsters where I get breakfast nearly every morning.
After only a few minutes of digging, I've found a half-eaten meal. I take it to the sidewalk next to the outdoor dining patio of the restaurant.
I'm torn by the fact that people can bring themselves to eat only half their meal, but because they do, I can eat as well.
The wealthy natives and visiting tourists eat out here at the open air patio to get a fresh view of the pine forests and mountains off in the distance. I can't help but envy how the rich can eat anything they want and how the tourists can go wherever they want. Never in my life have I had the freedom to do either.
Across the street, in between two buildings, I can spy the town square and in the center of it, a statue of Ferdinand Magellan. "He was the first man to ever sail across the whole earth, Guad," my father once told me. "That hombre had it right, hijo. The point of human existence is to expand the knowledge we already have."
It's ridiculous he would be so adamant about that, considering he left me with nothing when he and my mother died. He left me here, stuck at the bottom of the earth. An able bodied young man with nothing and nobody going for him.
I'm only eating for a few minutes when a hobbling yet strong man walks and joins me on the sidewalk.
"Hey, Guad," he says in Spanish, resting his elbows on his knees. His brilliant blue eyes aren't looking at me; they're gazing out into the street. I'm quiet as I watch him look at the teenagers as they chat and laugh. I always feel pity, looking at his eyes. Their brightness is just a remnant of who he used to be. But the rest of him was destroyed back in San Diego.
He asks for some of my "breakfast" and I hand him a soggy chip, not caring if it looks revolting to the people passing by us. We don't talk while we eat; we know each other too well to say anything. Instead we listen to the conversations of the people around us.
"Geez!" Some guy eating on the patio yells in English. "The app won't stop crashing!"
"Well you are at the bottom of the earth," says another guy. "I'm not surprised your phone doesn't work in such a stinkhole."
I almost laugh in spite of myself. Here I am, starving on the streets, and they're complaining about an app crashing.
I decide to tune my ears to a different conversation and listen to a particularly loud pair of voices speaking in Spanish.
"Did you hear about that plane that flew in from California?" One of them asks.
"Yeah, what about it?" Asks the other, sounding bored.
"Since we're so far south, they just use the same plane to fly back up to America, and it's heading up there Tuesday," explains the first guy. "But here's the thing, there's been a hole in security lately. Somebody could just climb into the hull and ride up. It's literally a free pass to America!"
I listen with more interest; I can't help but admit I'm intrigued. Was that guy kidding when he said someone could just climb on? Could I do that? Shut up and listen, Guad, I think.
The other guy takes a sip from his drink. "Really? Security is that relaxed? Doesn't the airport know how many people would jump at the chance for a free ride to America?"
"It is the land of opportunity after all." He chuckles in self-accomplishment.
"Would you gentlemen like a check?" Asks the waiter in English. The men's conversation seems to be over, but I know all I need to know.
Suddenly, the waiter's yelping in alarm, "Sir, your phone!"
Glancing behind me, I see who I've been listening to for the first time. The two men are clad in black and sitting at one of the small, round tables. One of them is holding his cell phone as it's smoking and throwing fumes into the air.
"Is it okay?" Asks the waiter, an expression of nervous concern on his face.
Surprisingly, the man holding the broken phone breaks into a laugh. He turns his head and seems to stare straight into my eyes. "That only means it's working."
. . .
Bob leaves before I do, so I end up walking home alone.
I've barely made it across the street when I get that same nervous feeling from this morning: I feel as though someone's following me.
My entire body feels skittish as I begin walking faster down the street. You don't even know if someone is following you, I think.
Nevertheless, I still have the urge to hide. I can't help feeling that there's a ghost after me, and to lose them, I make a questionable decision: I turn into the closest alleyway.
I soon find out this one is narrow, dark, and damp; it's nothing like the one I live in. The walls seem to be closing in on me.
My breaths become more shallow and frequent, and I soon find out that I was right. There are people following me.
The two figures cause me to stop in my tracks. My fear is heightened as I tell my feet to move, only they won't.
They tower over me as one of them steps forward. His shoulders are almost as wide as the alley, and I want to say something to make him go away. But how am I gonna run my mouth if I can't even walk it?
"Pay up," says the giant in Spanish. Before I can reply, he brings back his fist and barrels it into my skull.