Migration

They were migrant workers.

They made their way to the United States when things in El Salvador were so bad, and there was more death for them there than life.

They made their way through Mexico to the border on a train called The Beast.

A kind priest listened to their story and led them to an Underground Railroad that took them to a church in Arizona that gave them sanctuary.

They were never able to get their papers to be in the United States legally, but they began a migration across the country, dropping their sweat and blood onto the ground of states across the west, midwest and south, until they found themselves in South Carolina, many thousands of miles and heartbeats away from where they began their journey.

They picked tomatoes and peaches near the coast of the Atlantic Ocean around Charleston, living in an old, broken down school bus.

Hilcias knew they’d move down the coast through Georgia to Florida as summer changed to fall changed to winter, and that they’d move back up the coast along that same migratory route as winter changed to spring changed to summer again.

He used to despair the moving until he learned that blue whales are migrants, too, and that we move many thousands of miles, like him, season after season, year after year.

This made his heart hopeful.

He made my heart hopeful.

- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown eyed girl, 2019