Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (19 page)

“
Is Emilio Hernández around?”

After low words to the other, one of them nodded. I parked the car, jumped an irrigation culvert, and passed into the gloom of the orchard that abutted the camp. You couldn’t really depend on the workers to be home by sundown: Smith’s compound, like the finest colleges in England, had a secret, unofficial entrance, known by all, to be used when the gate was locked. You had to work your way, swinging, up the branch of a grapefruit tree, swing your feet over the barbed wire onto the top of a box spring tipped against the inside of the fence, gain your balance and composure, and then step carefully to the roof of a storage shed and down its drainpipe. I had done it only once, in the daylight—but it was set up very logically. In a few minutes I was back at the front gate, on the inside. The guys there led me to the trailer of the man I was after.

Two of those in the front room nearly bolted when I entered, but others recognized me:
el maestro,
the teacher, that
gringo
who slept in the barn over at Martinolli’s. After a chat, I was ushered into the next room, where a card game called
conquián
was in progress. Hernández, said a player, was already in bed, and a man was dispatched to wake him while I was offered a chair. We talked some more, and as the room slowly filled with men—five, ten, more than fifteen—I realized just how unusual my visit was. Recognizing me was different from knowing me. A couple of men flat out stared; all seemed interested in knowing just what sort of person I was. The room was almost quiet every time I spoke. I sat uncomfortably until another man, wiping the sleep from his eyes, came into the room.

I felt sorry to have dragged him into the limelight, for the bearing of this retiring man seemed designed
not
to call attention to himself. But Emilio Hernández’s shuffling step, bowlegs, skinniness, and downturned gaze belied his importance at the camp. Though I did not know it at the time, he was one of the superpickers, an experienced hand who knew how to find work, keep it, and make lots of money at it as well. Where the money went, no one seemed to know—Hernández, thirty, was a confirmed bachelor with no girlfriend back home and no parents living. And yet by all appearances the money was not spent on himself. He wore one of the green American Army shirts, sold at the swap meet on Sundays, that were so popular among the Mexicans, an old pair of jeans, and sandals. We shook hands, though he did not meet my gaze, and then, in two facing chairs, surrounded by the throng, we sat down.

Emilio whisked some of his shoulder-length hair back behind an ear, exposing the name label
BOUGHTON
, sewn on above his shirt pocket. His seemed a reluctant presence.

“
Are you one of the ones going to Florida soon?”
I asked.

“
Si.”

I cleared my throat, introduced myself, mentioned Mariano, and made my request. Then, on impulse, I took a risk and added something I had omitted from earlier presentations. I wanted to go, I explained, for the experience, the knowledge, the ability to describe their lives and situation to people like the Private Boughton who once wore Emilio’s shirt, people who were not generally well disposed toward Mexicans in the States. I would share all expenses, I added.

“
Wait a minute,”
said a voice from behind Emilio’s chair.
“It’s
you
who want to go?”

I nodded. A clean-cut man with a light brown mop of hair, a stocky build, trimmed mustache, and freckles was looking at me incredulously. It still hadn’t quite sunk in.

“With
us?”
he continued.

“
Sí.”

He suddenly stood back, looked at the others, and laughed out loud. The idea was absurd! A few of them laughed too, but it died out quickly; all could see I was serious.

“
Do you have a car yet?”
I asked.

“
No,”
said Emilio,
“probably tomorrow.”
There was a long pause.
“But you see, the problem is we are full. So many want to come.”

“
I see.”
I had expected this, from interviews at other camps, and decided to play my last card.
“Well, look at it this way. Having me along is like having an insurance policy. If the car breaks down, or you have any accidents—if anything bad happens, I can do the talking. If we have to buy anything, or stay anywhere, I can do the talking for you. To get to Florida, you’ll go through places where nobody will speak Spanish, where people will be suspicious. Having me along might help.”

There was a pause.
“Can you drive? Do you have a license?”
asked the man behind Emilio.

“Of course.”

The two consulted briefly.
“We’ll have to let you know,”
the man behind Emilio then told me. I said I would come back the next day.

And the next day I was barely able to contain my surprise—I had not expected a yes.
“Really?”
I answered, trying hard to act calm. Perhaps it was the insurance angle: at last a group had decided it might be in their best interests to have me along. Perhaps it was simply the thought of having an ally. I wondered if it could be because, for the first time, I had been completely candid. Whatever the case, they had gotten a car and would be able to leave as soon as it could run.

“
It doesn’t run?”

“
Nothing serious,”
said Emilio.
“A little transmission problem, a little electrical problem. It should be ready Saturday
—
tomorrow
—
but we were thinking of leaving Sunday.”
This was a wise move, made for the usual reasons—the lower numbers of Immigration and other police. They would pick me up around dusk on Sunday. We shook hands.

I could barely sleep that Friday night, and all the next day I was antsy. Once I had gotten this far with another group, only to wait hours at the designated rendezvous point and not get picked up. Saying I could come, for them, had been a way of getting rid of me. I would not get left behind again. First thing Sunday morning I got a friend to drop me back over at Smith’s.

The gate was open and the car was parked between trailers, already running. I breathed a sigh of relief as Emilio, packing some blankets into the back of the car, returned my greeting. I contributed two of my own to the pile.
“Afraid we were going to leave you, eh?”
he said, grinning.

“
No, no, of course not,”
I said, noting he did not reassure me they were not.

I had always wondered who goes to those roadside, middle- of-nowhere used-car lots, the ones with the colored propellers on strings, strands of bare light bulbs, big white numbers painted on windshields—
$399.oo!!
—one-room sales offices you’d rather not go in, salesmen trained in psychological warfare. And more than once I had wondered what ever became of the old family wagon, the one Dad bought new when I was a kid, the one like you learned to drive on, the one traded for something better a few years later. But when I saw the Mexicans’ car, both questions were answered.

It was a huge Ford Country Squire station wagon, white but dirty, rusting but relatively undented. I was pleased the tires weren’t bald: on three out of four, the tread was actually visible—what more could you ask? After years of faithful service lugging kids and pets to Safeway store and swim club, it appeared to have come to the end of its career. Alas, it did not look as though it would enjoy a quiet retirement.

The hood was up, and I walked around to notice any anonymous questioner from two days before, the man who had been standing behind Emilio. Today he was more friendly.
“Máximo,”
he introduced himself, smiling and offering a greasy hand.

“
How’s it running?”

“
Ohh—pretty good. Just seems to use up a lot of this stuff. ”
He proceeded to empty a can of bright red fluid into the transmission case. I looked around and noticed an entire case of transmission fluid. Good, I thought—they’ve prepared.

“
Nothing else?”

“
No one knows, ”
said Máximo with a shrug,
“but Him. ”
He pointed a finger toward heaven. We would see.

I imagined a lengthy loading process with so many people—from what I could see, there were seven of them, plus me. But the blankets, the tranny fluid, and a case of motor oil were virtually it—these men, I kept forgetting, traveled light. Most of the others in the camp must have been out picking, for the goodbye committee was small, two or three teenagers looking wistfully from the trailer door. Slowly the others loaded into the car. I made a move for the far back deck—I wanted to be as unobtrusive, as little trouble as possible—but everyone objected: a seat in front had been reserved for me, alongside Máximo and Emilio. They were the other two with driver's licenses, and also the most experienced travelers. The rest of the seating seemed to reflect a status hierarchy: in the middle seat were Emilio's younger brother, Pedro, their cousin, Arturo, and Chucho. Chucho was almost as old, and experienced, as Máximo and Emilio; but the other two seemed to be barely teenagers. In the far back were Moises, also about our age, and Pancho, the oldest of the group at about forty. Most of the decisions were made by Emilio and Máximo, I noticed; occasionally they also consulted me or Chucho. But they never asked the opinions of boisterous, impetuous Moises, or timid Pancho, or the boys. Honored to be sitting as part of the ruling junta, I didn't object.

The wagon bottomed out as we left the fenced-in compound. The car was so heavy—the shock absorbers so compressed—that the suspension was rendered irrelevant. I prayed for no rocks on the highways—one more on my long list of prayers, most devoted to getting us out of town and finally onto the highway proper. My plans for the trip had been derailed so many times that I kept expecting the glitch; I was sure something would go wrong to ruin everything. But the Country Squire, piloted by Máximo, kept rolling, first through El Mirage, then Sun City, and finally onto the entrance ramp of Interstate 17, the Black Canyon Freeway. There, for the first time, Máximo really pushed the pedal down, keeping a careful eye on all the gauges as the Squire rumbled up the ramp and into the light traffic, trailing a cloud of smoke, Florida bound.

*

Emilio and Máximo were all eyes and ears the first few hours, waiting for any sign of trouble in this machine on which we were depending so heavily. The first fault, apparent within minutes, was with the steering: at anything over fifty miles per hour, the big wagon reeled from one side of the lane to the other, unable to hold a straight line. The sway got worse the faster the car went; at sixty, staying on the road—never mind in the lane—was just about impossible. So fifty, we decided, was the line. It would make for a slow 2,500 miles—fifty hours at least, not counting rest stops. But, with no headrests or seat belts, horrible tires, and sundry mysteries beneath us, it increased our chances of survival.

Our first destination, I knew, would be Flagstaff, in the mountains of northern Arizona. There we would catch Interstate 40, east indefinitely. Interstate 20, which cut across the top of the southern gulf states, or I-10, which rimmed the gulf itself, would have been faster routes; but Máximo and Emilio were adamant about staying away from the Mexican border. Checkpoints were common down there, they said, and cops in general more on the lookout for a car like ours. Where we were going—through the Texas Panhandle to Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee —Mexicans were less on people’s minds.

As the sun was setting I asked to see a map; soon it would be too dark to read. But they didn’t have one.

“
Excuse me? No map?”

Emilio shrugged. Máximo shook his head. Twenty-five hundred miles without a map?
“We know how to go,”
said Máximo, in gentle reproach.
“We’ve done it before.”

Digesting this took me a moment.
“You mean to say, you memorized it?”
Slowly the truth was dawning on me.
“All the way to that little town in Florida?”

They nodded as if to say "of course." I let this sink in. It would mean no plotting of the next town for gas, no meal or rest planning, no certainty of where we actually were. I was used to knowing those things, to depending on them. The map was my compass. But to these guys the map contained mainly details, and details weren't important. If you got on the highway, remembered the major turns, and just kept going, you eventually would arrive, God willing. Later, in a gas station, I showed them our location on a wall map. That was when I discovered that Emilio, though polite and respectful of the service I felt I was performing, couldn't even read maps, and Máximo understood only marginally.
They'd memorized the route.
I couldn't get over it.

The sun went down and the road curved up, up, into the pine-covered mountains. There was some debate as to whether the white glow we could see between the trees was snow or just moonlight shining on the earth; a chilly, windy pit stop led to the discovery that the ground was, indeed, covered with snow, a foot or two by the looks of it. As they climbed back into the wagon, the younger guys chatted excitedly about the discovery; being from southern Mexico, they had never seen snow up close before. Chucho even brought in a snowball, and it was gaily passed around like a reverse hot potato.