Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (10 page)

Carlos, Victor, Ismael, I, and an older Guerreran named Timoteo cruised back out of Phoenix to El Mirage. The Top Hat lounge, known to its Mexican patrons simply as
El Sombrero,
was a roadside honky-tonk with a black-and-white checkered linoleum floor, pool table, and a surly waitress with a heavily made-up face. But, in their deprived state, even she looked good to my companions.

“
What’s going on tonight, baby? Is there a dance up in Surprise?”
asked Victor.

“
That’ll be five bucks.”

“
What? No dance?”
He handed her some bills.

“
There’s only four bucks here. ”

“
And only one of you, mamacita!”

It wasn’t shaping up to be much of a weekend. We left the Top Hat, picked up some groceries, and went back to camp to wait and see if things might pick up later.

Camp, as it turned out, was where things were happening. Two of the car-trunk salesmen—locals who took advantage of the workers’ isolation by filling up their cars with various consumer goods and selling them at the camps for a big markup—were parked outside the house. One was an aging Chicano who specialized in trousers, and in telling you how good you looked in them. The other was a quiet, thin man who customized van was a regular duty-free shop on wheels. Stereos, liquor, jewelry, madonnas, sex aids, hats ... if he didn’t have it today, he would tomorrow. Nothing had price tags, of course. The worker feigned a passing interest in an object he savored, the salesman quoted an absurdly high price, the worker countered with a laugh and a ridiculously low price ... and, if neither succeeded in offending the other, eventually a deal would result. This day Timoteo bargained again for a small portable stereo he had admired before; he finally got it when the salesman threw in batteries and some pirated pop music cassettes.

Everyone's inspection of Timoteo's purchase was interrupted, however, by hoots and hollers heralding the arrival of a dusty yellow Lincoln Continental. It was the camp's most celebrated sales team: Susi, Cándida and Lágrimas—the prostitutes. Tiny purses in hand, spiky heels sinking deep into the gravel, they climbed from the front seat, eyeballed hungrily by all. Like the other vendors, they knew enough to come before the paychecks had been completely spent. The customized van man slammed shut his sliding door, recognizing that his sales for the day were over. The pants salesman pondered the women's undersized jeans, perhaps contemplating the chances of selling them three pairs that actually fit. Everyone else's mouth watered, which seemed to me peculiar since, if there was one feature of these women that really stood out, it was their lack of appeal. One, Susi, was very overweight; all three had yellow-red hair; their natural complexions, thoroughly masked by cosmetics, were impossible to discern; they exuded unhealthiness. This, truly, was the bottom of the barrel.

“
What are you staring at?”
demanded Cándida, moving her small, red lips at an admirer.
“Get me a beer!”

They came inside, and Cándida and Susi sat on the couch and crossed their legs, trying hard to look bored and sexy at the same time. Lágrimas—the name means “teardrops” in English—moved toward the bathroom. It had been inoperative—and increasingly disgusting—since the water pump broke, but no one volunteered this information to her. Presently she could be heard muttering her displeasure. When she emerged the trademark mascara teardrops has been redrawn under the outside corners of her eyes.

Victor sat down on the bed with Timoteo’s new radio in his lap and inserted one of the tapes. The room soon filled with Top 40 music, and runners were sent for more beer.
“I like your stereo,”
Cándida said to Victor, and the ice had been broken.

Guys took turns asking the prostitutes to dance; then, before long, the more senior workers invited one or another of them to
“go for a walk.”
This translated into a quick stroll to the backseat of the Lincoln or out into the orchard; the charge was normally twenty dollars. The advantage of being senior, I supposed, was that you got to go first. As the evening wore on, the idea of a quickie evidently became less appealing, because the prostitutes would have to wheedle and persuade to get the men out of the house. This reached a particularly pathetic level one night when, desperate for some business, Lágrimas virtually had to beg for someone to have sex with her.
“My grandmother is sick,”
she cried.
“I can’t afford the bus ticket to California!”

My Guerrero friends got the idea that it would be fun for me to have a go with big Susi, and there in the living room, between songs, Victor and Ismael suggested it. Susi herself took the initiative when I declined; but after we had danced, after much cooing and affection, I still could not be persuaded. Acting spurned, Susi angrily turned to my friends and asked,
“What is this guy, a faggot?”
Then, in English, “Hey, whatsamatter, Mexican girl not good enough for you?” I was reminded of the feigned anger of the used-car salesman I had bought the Nova from when he thought the deal was falling through. To calm him down, I had finally bought it. Not again.

“
You’re too fat!”
I said, returning the insult. It was a cheap shot, but my friends found it funny, and I was back in the fold. Later, I tried explaining to Carlos:
“For me, it’s not like it is for you guys. I can meet girls here. ”
One night they had told me of a visit to some Acapulco hookers, during which several lost their virginity. In Mexico that was often how it was done—prostitutes were a part of growing up, the first visit a rite of passage.
“The guys I grew up with, we’re not so interested in that,”
I explained. Carlos said he understood, and I believed he did: if not the ways of Americans, then at least the allowances a friend makes for a friend.

*

One morning everyone’s great fear came true: Immigration raided us. This particular raid, however, was an anticlimax. Due either to all the missing windows in the house or to the monumental ineptitude of the INS, ten agents succeeded in catching only six men. They arrived at about 5:30 on a Monday morning—an hour at which, because of their country upbringing, a good many of the men were already awake.
“¡Migra! ¡Migra!”
—the alarm went out quickly. In less than a minute almost everyone had fled, by one route or another, deep into the orchard—there were escape routes that the INS hadn’t anticipated. Asleep in the refrigerator room, we, of course, missed the whole thing. Despite the small number of casualties, people were quite upset. By Friday, however, it was party time as usual, due to the return from the border, by various devious means, of all but one of the deportees.

But the raid had a bad indirect effect. Pete, the ranch foreman, heard about it and, convinced the surplus of men at the camp was to blame for attracting Immigration’s attention, announced that the day of reckoning had come. “Lupe, you gotta ship at least half these guys out of here,” he announced at a meeting soon after. Privately, Sanchez blamed Pete’s own reluctance to fix the water pump as well: the daily file of water carriers along the road to the camp caught the attention of other growers and was an embarrassment. Just the same, Sanchez agreed to abide by Pete’s decision. The number of workers was fixed by the contract. As expected, the ranch committee elected to cut workers on the basis of seniority. Nervously, my friends made plans to leave.

Of course, I was cut too. For me it was a sobering time because my friends were nearly broke and unsure of where to go. Also, every day I continued to work now was a moral victory over Nate. But it was victory at a price: though I had met his challenge, I still felt little mastery over the job. Every morning at dawn, when by bunkmates began to rise, I still felt the dread of impending exhaustion. It was never clear to me whether I was getting weaker or stronger, but I suspected the former. And so, in this sense, getting laid off was a relief.

As news of the layoffs spread,
coyotes
began to show up at camp. They were, you might say, domestic
coyotes,
taking advantage of the fact that travel
within
the border states was difficult for Mexicans too. You knew it was them by the shiny, low-riding American sedans that cruised up to the house, by the radios blaring, by the guys in front wearing mirror shades and just dripping with hipness. Casually, they would light up a cigarette or joint and saunter around or just sit on the hood. The Mexican workers would humbly approach the cars, maybe offer their hands to be shaken, look down at the ground, and stand around for what seemed interminable lengths of time, until one
coyote
or another revealed what all had known since he arrived: that they could be hired to go to one place or another, that the prices were good but not cheap, that they could leave anytime.

Often, workers who had been around a while knew a given
coyote
or his reputation and would discreetly advise others when he left. Deals were almost never struck at once. Bartering was the game, as in Mexico, and not only was the price on the block, but the terms of payment—half down, half upon arrival; everything down; or some combination thereof. If a worker had the phone number of an employer who would pay at the other end, a hard-pressed
coyote
might call it to try and get some assurance of payment; if he were really desperate, it wasn’t unknown for a
coyote
to take workers without charge and just “shop around” when he arrived at the destined farm area—if he knew the market well, he could sell his
pollos
for a handsome profit.

The
coyotes
were usually either Chicanos or experienced first- generation immigrants who really knew the score. Frequently they would pretend they were only representatives of a
coyote
to protect themselves. Savvy ones almost inevitably declined to say when they would come by to pick you up—they simply appeared, often in the middle of the night, and you had five minutes to get your belongings together and get into the car.

One day when I was gone, Carlos and his friends hooked up with a
coyote
who agreed to take them to L.A., where Carlos had an uncle, for $210 apiece, with payment in thirds. A third was due when they were picked up, a third when they were en route, and a third upon arrival. All were quite nervous because, in fact, none had more than $100. They were counting on the
coyote’s
investment of time, on stalling, and on their air of confidence about the solvency of Carlos’s uncle to convince the
coyote
to keep going.

I considered asking them if I might come along, but the suspicious looks the
coyotes
gave me convinced me in advance that it was out of the question. Also, the financing arrangement seemed a recipe for disaster; as a rule
coyotes
carried guns, and did not like to be messed with. I got the address of Carlos’s uncle and promised to visit once they had gotten settled.

I remember waking up when the
coyote
arrived. There was a mad frenzy of activity around the refrigeration room, all of it strangely silent and in the dark. Good-byes were hissed, and then, Carlos in the lead, they filed quickly out and into the
coyote’s
van. Heart pounding, I watched in sadness from the moon shadow of the barn’s interior as the van’s door slid shut, and the van slipped away.

Only a day and a half later I saw the van again. It came roaring up the dirt road and skidded to a stop in the dust outside the old house. Obviously unhappy, the
coyote
climbed stiffly from the driver’s seat and slammed the door hard behind him. I retired discreetly to the back room. I listened carefully as he burst in through the screen door and began demanding answers to his questions about my friends. Where were they? Hadn’t anybody seen them? No, they hadn’t arrived in L.A. Who knew them? And what were their names anyway?

Later, through the grapevine, we heard that the van had been pulled over by a sheriff soon after crossing the California state line. While the
coyote,
driving, was being questioned in the front seat, another officer shined his flashlight through the rear windows to see what the van was carrying. Thinking they were about to be arrested by Immigration, Carlos and his friends jerked open the side door and bolted. They escaped; but the
coyote
was detained, questioned, and, went the story, avoided being sent to Immigration only by agreeing to part with the many crumpled ten- and twenty-dollar bills in his pocket. The last part sounded like the twist of a Mexican storyteller, but what was clear was that the smuggler, having discovered their lack of funds, felt robbed and betrayed by his fainthearted
pollos
and was eager to have a word with them. “I’ll be back,” he said as he left.

I tried to track down the source of this rumor—if it were true, then at least some of my friends must be around to tell it, because Mexicans fresh to the country almost never communicated by phone. The story had been introduced to the camp, I finally learned, by Rafael Sanchez, one of my students in the English class. He had heard it from his cousin at Bodine’s orchard. “If I drive you over there, can you take me to him?” I asked. Because it was midweek, we would have to go at night, he said—and that would make it difficult, because Bodine’s workers lived “in the trees”—out in the orchard, in other words. But he said we could give it a try.

It was very dark when we left on the twenty-minute drive to Bodine’s. Other men came with us, taking advantage of the free ride to see their own friends. I had never been to Bodine’s, which was said to have the most primitive conditions of any camp in the area, but was a bit surprised when they instructed me to park in the lot of a convenience store.
“From here, we walk,”
said Rafael.