Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (29 page)

“
And La Migra?”
I asked.

You just had to know where to ride, said Vicente. I did know where to ride, I said, and so would the Migra. No, no, he replied, then you don’t know where to ride. Vicente rode where they didn’t expect him to. He rode, for example, on top of the axles underneath either end of a boxcar, or atop the auxiliary air tank underneath a flat car. I took a notebook from my pocket and he sketched diagrams showing me where.

“
Are you crazy? There’s nothing to hold on to under there. You know what happens if the train’s moving and you slip?”

Vicente nodded. He knew. A man he’d met once in Eagle Pass, Texas, had fallen, and he, Vicente, had witnessed it. He had seen a man die. He drank some more beer.
“You know, when you’re under there, and it’s nighttime, you see sparks,”
he said, the aggression gone from his voice. Vicente had stopped looking at anything particular in the cantina, seemed under a bit of a spell.
“The train changes tracks, or passes over a switch, and sparks fly out. They land on you, but they’re out right away. They don’t hurt.”

What a life, I thought, to be out there like that, alone. I had met a young Mexican once, in Bakersfield, California, who crossed the trains in a yard by crouching down and scooting underneath the cars. American tramps never took that risk—a train could jolt into movement at an instant and cut you in half. It was a thrill to take those risks, but also, something happened to you when you did. When you saw men die, get mangled that way, you weren't the same anymore. The line of beers waiting for me on the bar was down to three; I passed Vicente one, and we drank up.

Eventually I looked around me. The jukebox was silent, the pool game had wound down, and Pablo wanted to go to bed. Somehow it had passed midnight.
“Buenas noches, señores,”
he said, turning off the lights and collecting beer bottles. We stepped out into the street, humid with the mist of the shower, noisy with the sounds of water dripping off roofs and trees. The rain had stopped. I had no further obstacle that evening than navigating my way home.

“
¡Estás bien?”
asked Jesús, a blur in front of my face.

“
Of course, of course, I’m fine,”
I said.
“See you later.”

“
Remember—soccer at two P.M.
tomorrow. We leave the plaza at one.”

I paused. That’s right—the next day was Saturday.
“Sí,”
I finally replied.
“Sí.”

The paving stones of the streets around the plaza were wet and slippery and, in the darkness, impossible to see. I stumbled over them, my way lit only by the stars; it was a relief to reach the muddy but even footing of a dirt road. In nooks and crannies along the way I was vaguely aware of young couples, smooching against walls or railings, denied the comfort of a Chevrolet, practicing foreplay with their feet on the ground, their privacy the night. Daytimes, it was often hard to tell who was with whom; but on weekend nights couples were everywhere.

I turned left at the stone wall marking the side of Hilario’s property. They swung a gate across the main entrance after hours to discourage entry; I would go in the small side gate. If, that was, I could find it. Large, big-leafed trees hung over the small alley I was on, obscuring all light, and the paving stones reappeared underfoot. I ran my hands along the wall like a blind man, searching for the gate. All of a sudden, I touched not wood but bare flesh—a warm stomach, an arm! A breathless, half-squelched cry came from the girl I had bumped; I leaped back in alarm.

“
¡Perdón, perdón!”
I muttered, circling the young couple unsteadily, still sober enough to be embarrassed. Two rocks tumbled from the wall before I found the gate. Then at last I was in.

I relieved myself by one of the big trees near the wall before entering my room—by common understanding, the outhouses were for sitting only—and noticed, as I did, the round forms of the chickens safely on their branches, outlined against the stars. I wondered to myself what those mountain weasels really looked like. Light came out from underneath the crude wooden door to my room; I pushed it open with a squeak. There on the middle of my bedspread sat a large furry spider, three or four inches across, the same one that was always there when I forgot to turn off the dim overhead bulb. As usual, I coaxed it onto a newspaper, opened a window, and tossed it out onto the street. Ah, I thought, laying down under one thin blanket, home in Mexico.

*

That Saturday, the Owls beat the Wolves 2-1, Jesús and Tiberio each scoring, as I watched from the stands. Jalpan’s field was all dirt, with the boundaries marked in lime, and everyone left the stadium hot, sweaty, and dusty ... but with big smiles.
“¡Que vivan Los Tecos!”
cried Tiberio from the window of Jesús’s family Renault, as we sped from a tiny beer store to the Jalpan reservoir with two six-packs of cold Corona to find some shade and cool off. Though not officially for swimming, the murky reservoir served that purpose when the long dugout canoe we found and were paddling capsized; there was also a distance contest for walking on our hands, and the involuntary baptism of some younger guys from Ahuacatlán whom we ran into as we were drying off. Dinner at a local bamboo-walled restaurant followed, and after that an unsuccessful search for a party at the nearby town of La Purísima.

The next weekend I was called in as a substitute during the last fifteen minutes of the Tecos' game. A fortnight later the same thing happened, and a week after that, I got a spot on their relay team for the province's annual "Marathon of the Mountains" footrace. Other outings cemented my friendship with Jesús, Tiberio, Conce, and Victor: an afternoon spent drinking the excellent
pulque
of Doña Rosa, a tough Ahuacatlán widow; flirtatious visits to the office of Elisa and Elena, young social workers sent from Querétaro City to minister to mountain folk two days a week; more nights in Pablo's cantina; a tour to see the annual milling of sugarcane at Pepe Pacheco's, where a horse tied to a beam walked endless circles around Pepe's grinder and dried cane husks fueled a fire that warmed wide evaporation tanks. The rapping of pebbles against the windowpanes of my room was the invitation to another outing, and the days flew by.

Jesús in particular loved to talk about his experiences in the States, usually in the form of anecdotes. Learning English was one of his main preoccupations, and many of the tales concerned the obstacles he’d encountered along the way. One day several of us were seated around the
huarachería
of Tiberio’s brother Ignacio, watching him and his assistants cut and sew the leather for sandals.

“
Teo,”
asked Jesús,
“how do you say it when a girl is wearing perfume? What do you say to her? ‘I like your smell’? Is that it?”

“
I like the way you sm—?”

“
Yes, yes, that's it, ‘I like the way you smell,’ ”
he interrupted.
“Well, you know what I said to my girlfriend there one night?”

Jesús had dated a number of American girls, none of whom spoke Spanish. I shook my head.

“
We were driving in the owner’s car—that old Cadillac he gave us—and she smelled good, so I took her real close, like this, and I said, ‘Baby, I like the way you stink.’ ”

I burst out laughing, and Jesús explained it to the others: in Spanish, you use the same verb for smell or stink, and Jesús hadn’t appreciated the difference.
“Did she explain it to you?”
I asked.

“
Yes, but she was mad!”
said Jesús.
“You know, she taught me some other words too. ‘Be nice,’ she used to say—that’s when we were in the car, and, well, you know ...”

Tiberio made the appropriate body language to describe what they had been up to.

“
Ooh, but we made some big mistakes up there. Remember, Tiberio, in the Burger King? They asked if we wanted everything on it.
‘Yes,’
I said,
‘but no mustache.’ ‘What?’
she asked.
‘No mustache,’
I said. I thought I was saying
‘mustard
.’ ”

Another time he had suggested to his girlfriend a dinner at the Pussycat—“Pizza Hut” he had meant to say—and yet another time, he had asked the foreman if he could borrow the “fuck you” from his trailer.

“What?” said the foreman.

“The fuck you,” repeated Jesús, a bit nervously—he knew the phrase had a bad meaning, but thought it also meant “vacuum.” The words sounded identical to him. So did “eyes” and “ice.” These confusions had gotten him into lots of trouble, he said, offering extra explanations to the others in the room so they would understand what he was telling me.

One of the most rapt listeners was a middle-aged man squeezing rivets into straps of leather for the
huaraches. "Ay, English,”
he said.
“They say it’s the hardest language in the world.”

"No, Chinese is the hardest,"
offered Ignacio, also middle aged. As these men debated the point, I realized something extraordinary was happening here: these older Mexicans were listening closely to men barely into their twenties. Age was the traditional determinant of who listened to whom in rural Mexico, older men seldom having time for younger men's stories (neither group, at least in public, appearing to have time for women's)—but here, emigration to the States had the town turned around. The young guys were heading out, earning in a week up north what their fathers would toil months for. They returned to constitute a higher class of men, wealthier and more experienced, if less wise. Father Cano was right: in ways both subtle and obvious, emigration was setting Ahuacatlán on its head.

“
English is a thousand times harder!”
the older man continued, now rather heatedly.

“
That’s not so!”
countered Ignacio.
“Chinese has thousands of letters, and difficult sounds. Who do you know that speaks Chinese?”

The debate was escalating to an absurd degree: Ignacio and the old man had put down their work and were now yelling. The younger guys were murmuring that perhaps I ought to offer an opinion and put a stop to it—but I didn’t want to take sides. Finally Tiberio stood up, interrupting them, and asked if we knew the joke about learning Chinese. Nobody did.

“
How long did the Russian say it took to learn Chinese?”
he asked the room. There were shrugs.
“Five years,”
said Tiberio.

“
How long did the American say it took?”
Again, shrugs.
“Four years.”

“
Okay, how long did the Mexican say it took?”
Sensing that a punch line was imminent, men started smiling.
“He said ‘ten years,'”
offered one. Tiberio shook his head.

“
The Mexican said, ‘When’s the test?’ ”

It was a masterful move; in their laughter the older men forgot the squabble. Jesús nudged me.
“That’s the reputation we Mexicans have—everything ‘mañana,’ right?”
I nodded.

Soon we stood up to leave, but as we did Tiberio directed a question to Ignacio, something about when the cash would be ready.
“Next week,”
his brother replied.

Other talk of money, of pesos and dollars, of Rogelio, a bank teller, being able to arrange a favorable rate of exchange, filled the air as we walked to Don Beto’s billiard hall. I wondered if they were planning to buy something, and asked as we walked through the saloon-style doors into Don Beto’s.

“
No, no, it's for El Norte—for the trip, and the coyotes,”
Jesús explained.

“
Do you plan to leave soon?”
There was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“
Probably next Sunday, or the one after,”
Jesús replied.
“The fields in Idaho will be all melted soon, and work will start again. And the Owls play their last game next weekend. But Tiberio and Conce are still rounding up dollars.”

I played a horrible game of pool, completely preoccupied by the idea of them leaving. With my friends gone, there would be little reason for me to stay in Ahuacatlán. But what an adventure to go with them! There was every reason, from my point of view, for me to accompany them north—but would they take me? I waited until we’d had a couple rounds of beers, and then, my courage up, I took Jesús aside and broached the subject. He was not the least bit surprised, I don’t think; knowing why I was in Ahuacatlán to begin with, he probably expected it. Still, he said he would have to check with the others.

The next morning I set out to find him at home and learn the group’s decision. But news travels fast in Ahuacatlán: crossing the plaza in the mid-morning, I ran into none other than young Serafín, whom Vicente had told off in the cantina.
“So, you’re going with those guys up to Idaho, eh?”
He looked at me jealously; it was his life’s main goal.
“Well, maybe,”
I replied—I really didn’t know. But he must have thought I was hedging, for his sake.
“No, I know you are. I heard it!”

He was not the only one. Ignacio accosted me from the open window of the
huarachería
as I passed, waving me in. He wanted to make me a special pair of
huaraches,
he said, custom sized to my feet, with softer, better leather than the ordinary—
“the perfect shoes for crossing the desert.”
I was thrilled to hear this—maybe it really was going to happen. He traced my foot on a piece of paper on the floor, explaining that he wanted to do it because I was going to the States with his brother; maybe I would look after him a little.