Sweat runs down Carlos’s forehead even though it’s forty degrees outside. Near an immigrant shelter in Northeastern New Jersey, he looks out the window of his ’92 grey sedan—a reptilian looking thing—full of scars from a parade of previous owners, to see a city made of warehouses like grey Legos. He shivers, grabs a Giants sweatshirt covered in ketchup stains, and pulls it on top of his damp tee.

His phone is out of minutes but it’s still useful to stare at the pictures of his children, Josué and Laurita, who are back home in El Salvador. Looking at them makes it hard to breathe, but they’re the reason why he keeps on breathing.

As a child, Carlos used to have asthma attacks when he ran too fast or laughed too hard, or if it got too cold. An attack felt like a giant block of cement on his chest. He’d gasp but the air wouldn’t go all the way in, no matter how hard he tried. The top of his lungs would burn and after a while, his whole torso would hurt from the effort of trying to breathe. Adolescence took care of asthma though, and he allowed himself to forget those days.

Muscle memory comes flooding back now. He knows he’s getting worse and is at a loss for what to do. Five days ago, he tested positive for Coronavirus but was sent home because it wasn’t critical, his oxygen was at 96% and his lungs looked clear or something like that. The doctor gave him the thumbs up and said, “Tu bueno. Go a la casa mejor.”

Home at the moment was a shelter for immigrants waiting for their asylum claim cases to find some sort of resolution. It was clean, decorated with pictures from all over the world, and colorful fabrics the seekers brought with them. There was an air of cautious optimism. There were twelve bunk beds and twenty-four lockers per room. Carlos thought he could self-isolate in the supplies closet, but when he told the shelter lady, she asked him to leave. And yes, that was the best thing to do to protect the others, but he had nowhere to go. Except the car he’d purchased five days earlier with a bit of under-the-table money he managed to save working catering gigs.

Carlos opens his last water bottle and takes an ibuprofen, stretches his arms as wide as he can. He’s sore, so sore, everything hurts.

He takes a moment to pray to San Romero. If anyone can put in a good word with God for him, it will be a fellow Salvadorian.

He has no insurance and has heard that if he takes advantage of any state social assistance, he’s less likely to get his asylum approved. So, he’s taking care of himself. He sleeps as much as he can, pees into an empty orange juice bottle and poops on old newspaper, crouching on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Once a day he walks twenty-three steps to the public trash can, to dispose of what needs disposing. But today, five steps in, he has to return because his head spins and all he can see are black spots that grow wider and darker. As soon as he opens the car’s back door, everything turns black. Muffled voices whisper in Spanish. “Dos horas tiene, si no, ya vas a ver qué pedo,” a man in a threatening voice says. You have two hours, if you don’t, you’ll see what the fuck is up.

The words punch Carlos in the gut. He’s heard that exact thing before. Where is he? In the grey sedan, or still lying on that sidewalk in front of the Burger King in Ilopango, San Salvador, on the day he’d made the decision to leave?

***

Two years ago, Carlos lived in a small house on the outskirts of San Salvador. Every day he got up at 4:30 a.m., kissed his wife Eneyda, and headed to the kitchen to make three guava paste and butter sandwiches with Wonder Bread: one for him, one for Josué, and one for Laurita. Weekdays, he left before they got up and returned after they’d gone to bed. These daily breakfasts were his way of letting them know their dad loved them. (For birthdays, saint days, and Mother’s Day, he would go all out: scrambled eggs with tomato and onion, fried sweet plantains, refried beans and tortillas.

That day, sandwich in hand, Carlos walked out of his home like any other day. At five in the morning, San Salvador was quiet, with a thin curtain of mist lifting off in slow motion, leaving watery diamonds in the leaves of the trees that framed the streets. Sluggish rays made their way over the tin roofs of houses and sleeping stray dogs in doorways. Carlos’s minibus zigzagged through the city streets with the mastery of a driver who’d accumulated years of experience. Housekeepers, construction workers, and restaurant cooks filled his bus during the first hour. He hadn’t even reached the halfway point of his route when two young mareros signaled for him to exit the bus, at the 4th Ave S/National Army’s Boulevard stop. He brought the change box with him.

From afar they looked like kids, but up close, their eyes lacked the brightness of children and their jaws were locked. One of them reached for the box, shook it, and laughed. “Vaya mira, la onda es que no es suficiente hoy.” Wow look, the thing is, this is not enough today.

Carlos had no time to react before the first punch to the face. His brain buzzed when the next one made contact. His face burning, Carlos wasn’t sure whether he was standing or floating, his eyes swelled shut. The next punch knocked the air out of him and his tailbone hit a hard surface with a paralyzing thump.

Two loud barks exploded near his ears. Carlos knew what that meant. Bus driving in El Salvador was the most dangerous profession in the world. But when you had to put bread on the table, you took the chance.

The kid’s voice sounded like that of a man’s: “Dos horas tiene, si no, ya vas a ver qué pedo.” You have two hours, if you don’t, you’ll see what the fuck is up.

Two hours for what? Carlos was confused, but grateful that he didn’t feel the gunshots. Maybe they missed? And then he passed out.

***

It’s March 24th, 1980, Carlos is eleven years old and he’s cleaning up the dinner table when his mom lets out a bloodcurdling scream. The TV news anchor just announced the assassination of Monseñor Romero. Carlos thinks he’s heard that name before, but he knows he’s never heard a sound like the one coming out of his mother’s chest.

***

At the corner of Shephard Ave. and Bergen St. in Newark, New Jersey, Carlos rouses to the sirens of an ambulance driving by. A pungent smell greets him. He’s wet himself. He’s in the back seat of his grey sedan, door open, feet out, boots gone.

He sits up, closes the door, and rubs his feet to warm them. He wheezes with every move. Each breath amasses a scream inside his throat. He curses the day he decided to come to this forsaken country, curses the Maras that drove him out of his home, the shelter lady, the Giants logo on the sweat-stained jersey he’s wearing even though he’s never seen them play. He curses ketchup and his immigration lawyer, his mother for not having money to send him to college. He curses bad luck, frozen feet, his family for needing money he can’t send them. He curses God for leaving him to die alone in this stupid car. With his liquid lungs, he cries, he coughs, he chokes, snot flows and he cries some more.

An oscillating twinkle breaks through the tears and catches his eye. A plastic-coated prayer card dangles from his rear-view mirror. Monseñor.

“What do I do?” Carlos asks aloud. “Does it hurt to die?” He can’t imagine it could hurt more than it hurts to live, but he’s scared.

The door by the driver’s seat opens and someone enters the car. Someone wearing all black. Carlos panics. The car is all he has.

“Please.” His voice is raspy, his English poor, just enough to get by. As a bus driver in San Salvador, you had to know enough to help tourists out. “Please don’t, Sir.”

“You OK there?”

The eyes are familiar. The voice is hard to hear, like it’s bottled up, loud and quiet at the same time.

Warmth rushes through Carlos, which might be fever, but it feels comforting. He smiles. “¡Monseñor! ¿Qué está haciendo aquí?” Speaking spikes Carlos’s cough.

“You don’t sound so good there, buddy. Have you been living in your car?”

It’s weird that Monseñor is speaking in English, but Carlos shrugs it off. Maybe when you die all languages sound the same. He struggles to take a deep breath to control the cough. “You and me go to heaven now?”

“How ’bout we try the hospital first?”

Carlos wants to say no, but the coughing won’t subside, each gasp met with a block of cement in his throat that won’t let air in.

Monseñor turns to the front, says something into his shoulder that Carlos doesn’t understand and starts the car.

Lights flash, buildings deform around them. Carlos closes his eyes and holds on to the seat. Something’s brewing in the pit of his stomach. He fears he’ll throw up with the next cough. Or the next turn.

When the car stops, the driver runs out while Carlos frees his insides from the foul concoction of bile. Through the tears he notices a nurse and a cop running towards him with a wheelchair.

“Here we go buddy, you’re gonna be okay,” the cop says through his face mask as he and the nurse help Carlos into the chair.

The COVID19 wing of the hospital is a labyrinth of plastic curtains that dim the bright white of the hospital. They reach an open area. The nurse grabs a tablet from a nearby desk; she kneels and asks him his name. She asks for ID and insurance information, but Carlos can’t speak. His lips are blue and his hands are shaking. The nurse seems to shout, but to Carlos it’s silence. A loud rattling emanates from the back of his throat. A doctor who looks like she’s thirteen and a tall male nurse take him to a bed. They put an oxygen mask on his face. They prick both his arms, drawing blood from one, inserting an IV in the other. They shove a thermometer in his right ear and check his pulse oximetry in the left earlobe. They check his toes and his fingers. Chest X-rays, EKG, more blood, urine sample. Carlos is a ragged doll. He wonders where Monseñor went. The oxygen mask lulls him to sleep.

***

Three days later Carlos comes to. Thirsty. He hasn’t been this thirsty since his pilgrimage from San Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, towards the US border.

As a devout Catholic, he did what other faithful had done before him—used his church connections to establish a route taking him from church to church along the way. The day before departing, Carlos made a deal with Saint Romero: he would walk all the way to Los Estados in exchange for safe passage. Romero means pilgrim, you see, and if he walked with faith, Monseñor would be with him. It took him forty-three days. It would have taken less but he had to stop and hide in San Pedro Tapanatepec, near Chiapas, because some guys threatened to hand him to the Maras if he didn’t pay a “war tax,” and they still beat him when he didn’t pay enough.

He never stopped believing each step, each blister, each kilo he lost, would bring him closer to freedom and a better future for his family. He adjusted his schedule, walking at night and calling the next church on his route in advance to ask for advice on which streets to avoid. Whenever he could, he joined a group of seekers for their strength in numbers.

When he arrived at the Brownsville, Texas border crossing, there was a line of about a hundred people. He got in line and tapped the shoulder of the lady in front of him.

“Hermana ¿cuánto tiempo lleva esperando?” he said, without waiting for her to turn around, and when she did, Carlos had to control a gasp. Her lip was swollen and one of her eyes was shut blue, but what he couldn’t take his eyes off was the Adam’s apple in the lady’s throat. Carlos had seen some of them in his bus, but he’d never talked to one. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but he was a good Christian, so he pulled out a bottle of acetaminophen and offered it to her, for the pain, he said.

She took the pills and replied to his first question: “Como veinte minutos.” Her voice was not as low as that of a man’s but wasn’t quite a woman’s either.

“Lidia, Guatemala.” She extended her hand towards him.

“Carlos, El Salvador.”

Lidia and Carlos shared stories from the road, and Carlos thanked the Lord in his mind—as well as the Church network—for his luck. Lidia had gotten lost, bit by a snake on a coffee plantation, robbed four times, and rejected by two groups of migrants because they were afraid she might molest the children, she said.

About an hour later they had barely moved, and they were joined by a Cuban history teacher turned tour driver who spoke a little too much, and a Honduran family whose twelve-year-old son was being recruited by the Maras.

Three hours into the wait, a group of American volunteers brought them blankets and hot coffee.

“When you get to the officers,” said one of the volunteers, a slender man who was mostly bald on top but had a long ponytail, “make sure you have all of the paperwork ready. And if you need an interpreter, ask for it. They have to give you one. When you’re done, you’ll get a piece of paper with the date for your hearing. Keep that safe. If you don’t have anywhere to go afterwards, or if you don’t get to file for asylum today, there’s a camp over there.” He pointed to the left, where a sea of multicolor tents and tarps took over a parking lot. Carlos wondered how he didn’t notice that before.

When he got to the front of the line, Carlos signed his name and got a number. This line was not the line to enter the building. It was the line to get a number to tell you which place in line you were to enter the building. Carlos’s head spun. He was so close, if he could just talk to them.

He went to the camp with Lidia, the Cuban, and the Martinez family. He was surprised by how many dogs were there and smiled as he passed a small group of kids playing fetch with a lanky dog, ginger fur matted, tongue hanging out in between runs.

A good sign, he thought, choosing to ignore the smell of piss and other bodily fluids, mixed with wet dirt and mold.

One of the camp leaders, a Mexican woman named Mayra (or Mariela?), helped them get settled. The Martinez family were in luck; there was an empty tent for four. When Mayra stared at Lidia, she took a step back and said, “I can find another place.”

“It’s not that,” Mayra snapped. “Your bruises. I’m tired of seeing bruises. You’ll go with the other girls like you, to the right, over there.”

“And you two,” Mayra pointed at Carlos and the Cuban, “will have to share with two brothers. They’re Mexican, and they’re my brothers, so sorry about that!” She let out a contagious laugh.

The next day Carlos woke at five, checked his number, and called the priest of the Brownsville Catholic Church, the last stop of his planned route. The priest told him the network had arranged for a lawyer from the New Sanctuary Coalition to help with his case, and they would get him settled in New Jersey. He should mention that to the officers when he went to apply for asylum. A group of volunteers from the church would visit the camps once a week with clothes and warm food, and if Carlos needed anything specific like medicine or anything else, he should let them know. Carlos thought it was the kindest thing. The Americans were already taking better care of him than his own government.

***

After checking their number, most men left the camps during the day to work in construction or gardening or anything they could, to earn a little bit of money. Carlos noticed Lidia went out to work at night with the other girls like her. They made sure they were always in groups, but it never felt safe to Carlos. Stories of kidnappings by the cartel were el pan nuestro de cada día.

Carlos started working with Mayra, helping the newcomers navigate the tent labyrinth. His bus driver talents gave him an innate sense of orientation, and his amicable personality helped people feel less scared. When he had the afternoon off, he liked to watch the children play, imagining they were his Josué and his Laurita laughing and running. For a few minutes, they distracted him from the torture of the wait.

***

About two months after arriving at camp, Carlos’s turn to enter the customs building arrived. In the waiting room, the AC was so high Carlos shivered as soon as he stood up from the plastic chair where he’d been playing the most boring game of musical chairs for six hours and seventeen minutes, since he checked in bright and early. Carlos followed the officer into a square of a room. No windows. The officer ordered Carlos to sit in a chair against the wall. He did as he was told.

“Carlos, do you fear for your life if sent back to El Salvador?”

“Yes, sir.” Carlos knew this was coming. He opened his folder and pulled out the evidence he’d carried with him from home: hospital records and police reports from the shooting, and an article that featured his story.

“They hate me because I talk,” Carlos said.

The officer browsed through the papers and set them aside. “I don’t read Spanish,” he said.

“I was shot. Two times, por los Mareros.” Carlos held up two fingers. He ignored the shakiness in his hands and kept going. “Then I talk to newspaper El Faro. They know my face, my name. I go back they kill me because I” (he looked around the room as if the word he was looking for was a mosquito flying around) “los desafié talking to press.” Carlos lifted up his fists in a boxer pose.

The officer stared. Carlos wasn’t sure whether he should keep talking.

“Show me then.”

Carlos thought he must’ve misunderstood. “Show?” he asked.

“Yes, show. Remove your shirt and show me where you were shot. I know about GSWs, so show me. I want to see.”

Carlos felt the shaking in his hands go down to his knees and was grateful to be sitting down. He didn’t want to strip. He kept thinking he just didn’t understand what the officer was really asking. Surely this was a miscommunication.

“RE-MOVE LA T-SHIRT,” the officer overpronounced each consonant.

“My?” Carlos pointed at his dust-ridden, sweat-sponged, poor excuse for a shirt.

The officer nodded.

Carlos complied. Then, remembering that the hospital records had photos, he quickly found them and pulled them up for the officer to see.

The officer opened the door and called for someone else. He and the second officer said something between them that Carlos could not follow. The first officer shook his head. The second one grabbed the hospital records and compared the photos to Carlos’s scars.

“They’re not the same,” he said. “This is not you. Why are you lying to us? You are not really in any danger, right?”

“I’m not lying.” Carlos’s throat tightened.

“C’mon man.” The first officer placed a hand on his shoulder. “You won’t get in any trouble if you tell us the truth.”

“Lawyer,” Carlos burst out. He pulled the lawyer’s business card from his wallet.

The Brownsville priest had warned him he should mention the lawyer from the coalition from the start, but Carlos had thought the priest was being alarmist.

“I go back, they kill me,” he said and gave the officers the card.

They left him in that room without a shirt for three hours while they made “some phone calls to make sure everything checks out.” Then they let him go with a slip of paper that said he had been found to have a credible claim and his asylum request would go to court. He was one of the last seekers to be allowed in, right before the “Remain in Mexico” policy took effect.

Carlos stares at the white ceiling from his hospital bed. Without any windows and with the fluorescent lights on, he doesn’t know if it’s day or night. It’s an effort just to sit up. Machines beep and he hears voices but can’t see anyone through the plastic sheets that pass for walls around his bed.

There’s a plastic cup with a straw on the table. He takes a sip of water that burns as it goes down. He notices his cellphone in a Ziploc bag. Next to it, in another bag, the San Romero prayer card along with a prepaid phone Sim card. Something is written on it.

I told you it was going to be OK, Bud. Stay safe. And call your family.

Ps. Your car is parked in the South parking lot.

Officer Domingo Ramos.

Bud? He is flooded by a flashing memory of Monseñor driving his car. Carlos laughs to himself realizing his mistake—the lord works in mysterious ways.

He takes a deep breath and this time air expands his lungs so fully he has to close his eyes. He conjures Eneyda in his mind, her one dimple forming as she flirts with him. He hears Laurita snoring, that peaceful purr she makes when she’s in his arms. He feels the patterned texture of Josué’s soccer team uniform, the one Carlos used to ready every Saturday morning before practice.

“Welcome back,” a skinny nurse, pale as the sky right before it rains, interrupts his thoughts to check his vitals. “Feeling ready to go home?”

At the mention of home, Carlos’s feet get anxious. He steadies himself. It doesn’t end here. The open road, the blisters, the promise of tomorrow call him. After all, he is a pilgrim, and pilgrims know one thing better than anyone else: how to put one foot in front of the other.