Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (37 page)

“Yeah, met Leo—that guy that was here—while back through a friend. I don’t like doin’ this, but it pays the bills, huh?”

“Oh, right!”

“I don’t know, my wife don’t like it, but a guy’s got to get by. It’s like you guys: crossin’ the border is illegal, but you do it ’cause you have to, right?”

Jesús looked at him.

“I mean, nobody else’d do the work you’re doin’. Nobody
I
know would do it, that’s for fuckin’ sure. And somebody’s gotta get you guys up here. Look, the government says it’s okay to give you a job, but it ain’t okay to get you there. Man, that’s bullshit! Sometimes you get the feeling they
expect
you to break the law. Fuckin’ hypocrites, know what I mean?”

Jesús didn’t.

“
Migra?
Hypocrit-o?”

“Ohh!
La Migra!
No, no!”

“No, no sir. That’s what I say.”

The
coyote
knew the way to Smith’s ranch just as airport cabbies know the way to downtown. Two of the guys had once worked there; for the others, it was still like a suburb of Ahuacatlán, full of family and friends. Pulling up alongside the orchard midday, I felt a sense of déjà-vu, as though I had completed a great circle—from the orchards, to Mexico, and back. “Goodbye!” said Jesús to the
coyote,
who was still in midsentence. We all piled out as quickly as we could and ran into the orchard, leaving the
coyote
to close his own doors. Through the trees we went, entering the compound in the customary way, over the fence in back. Since the citrus season was winding down, an empty trailer had opened up; we went in and collapsed on the cots. I was thrilled to be back in my own country, relieved to be out of the hands of the
coyotes.
The others, now in a foreign land, still had fear in their eyes, but it was tempered by the sanctuary. We were getting there.

*

I sat on the wooden stoop outside the trailer door and stared, eyes unfocused, at my feet. The
huaraches
had come off for the first time in days, and it was remarkable now to see the zebra stripes of tan where the sun had shone in between the straps. A cracked fragment of mirror in the trailer bathroom showed my face to be the same brown hue as the dark stripes on my feet; the whites of my eyes glowed in contrast. It gave me a funny feeling to think back on what I had been through since leaving Phoenix, and especially in the past few days. Men with guns? Brutal cops? Night after night without sleep? Rather than sick, I felt strangely vibrant—damn near invincible, in fact, having made it into the States as we had. Only, I wondered a little about myself: where had my caution gone? I had stretched what I thought were my limits: was the knowledge gained a good knowledge? Was it wisdom? Or did some knowledge bruise? What had changed? I had seen a nice sedan, full of air-conditioned white people—owners, like Smith—drive by on the road half an hour earlier. What did I still have in common with people who were ... like me?

I straightened my neck and looked around. It was getting dark, but there, a few yards away, was the driveway from which I had departed with Emilio and Máximo and company for Florida ... it seemed like years ago. There was the trailer where I had first met them, feeling as naive as a midwestern Sunday-school teacher in Harlem. Spanish Harlem.

In the orchards, through the chain-link fence, I remembered picking, nearly killing myself with work. The job seemed even more remarkable now, after seeing what guys went through to
get
the job. What American wanted a job so badly? Any job—not just bottom-of-the-barrel work like this. Would you walk thirty-five miles, through the desert, for a job?

I looked deeper into the orchard, to where it got too dark to see. And I remembered ...

It was after dinner, a few months before. Sitting outside at Martinolli’s, on a different stoop, I had seen Don Bernabé Garay heading off into the orchards with a rifle. It was Lupe Sanchez’s rifle, I knew, a Browning bolt action .243; the aging, respected farmworker had borrowed it to go hunting for coyotes—not the smugglers, against whom he held no grudge, but the four-legged variety: in Mexico grease from their fat, rubbed on one’s joints, was held to be the best cure for rheumatism. And with the midwinter rains that had been drenching the Phoenix orchards, Don Berna’s need was acute.

I called out as he ducked under the trees, and when his mumbled reply did not sound discouraging, I fell in behind.
Gringos
seemed to hold little mystique for Bernabé. Growers, field bosses, labor organizers, Border Patrolmen—over the course of half a lifetime in the States he had crossed paths with them all. White Americans no longer intimidated him; they barely even seemed to interest him. There was an aura about the man, stemming from his experience and dignity and the vast respect accorded him by others, Mexican and
gringo
alike. He wasn’t arrogant, but Don Berna bowed down to nobody. Tagging along behind him down between the dark rows of orange trees, mud pulling at my shoes, I remembered feeling like a little kid.

After about twenty minutes we emerged onto the clear, flat desert. There it was brighter and colder; the orchard’s musty, woodsy smell had yielded to sweet scents of sage and of cactus flowers opened by the rains. Don Berna paused, looking and listening. It seemed half an hour before he even noticed me.
“There were some out this way last night,”
he said.
“I heard them.”
We climbed up onto a little rise and sat down on rocks. Another half hour passed, and I began to feel the cold; I’d left in a rush, without my jacket. Fidgeting and shifting my weight restlessly, I must have made some noise.
“Ssssh!”
he hissed.
“They hear everything. Have you never hunted coyotes?”

I shook my head. We passed the next half hour silently. The night was completely still; there were no barks, no howls, no hints of
coyotes
or anything else for that matter until a huge owl appeared, swooping around a tall shrub in front of us, the moonlight white on its back and wings and a black shadow tracing its path on the desert floor. The owl was patrolling at about the height of a standing man; you could hear the rustle as it flapped its wings once. It passed again and Don Berna raised the rifle ... but then, with less noise than the owl in flight, he put it down. Perhaps it was the owl’s eeriness in the colorless light that earned his respect, a presence that seemed almost imaginary; perhaps it was respect for another hunter. Or, as Don Berna said,
“No point killing it now. We’d never see the coyotes then.

“
You know,”
he continued presently,
“they’re the most suspicious creatures on earth. Sometimes you see them in the orchard, in the early morning or else at sundown ... but only if you’re alone, for two people will always scare the coyote off. Before they leave the trees to cross a road, they look both ways. They want to know if anything’s there. And if they hear the slightest noise, the slightest disturbance, they’ll go back into the trees. They hate the daytime. And they trust nothing, nobody.

“
That is why they call those who smuggle ‘coyotes’ too. They are just like the animal.”

Another half hour, and Don Berna had stood up to go. I wondered if he blamed me for his lack of success. He exuded competence, capability—certainly, left to his own devices he would have returned to camp with some warm coyote grease to rub on his elbows, hands, and knees. But that night had brought nothing for him, and only a little something I couldn’t put my finger on—an inkling, perhaps, of experience to come, a foreshadowing—for me. We had followed the path of dark trees back to camp.

And now I was in camp again. It was like coming full circle—except that I wasn’t back where I had started, exactly. And things were by no means over. The aluminum door slammed behind Tiberio as he came out of the trailer. He looked barefoot and relaxed, and had changed out of his
Tecos
jersey into a black T-shirt adorned with deer and waterfalls that said
“
IDAHO
.”
A cold open beer was in one hand, an unopened one in the other for me.

“
How’s it going for you, Teo?”
he asked, sitting down and handing it to me.

I wanted to tell him the truth, but the translation job was daunting. It might take hours to explain how it was going for an American in my situation. I popped open the beer, and said it was going well.

“
To Idaho!”
said Tiberio, raising his.

“
To Idaho.”

*

Shards of glass littered the front seat of the old Cadillac. The car—wide, yellow, and finned—had been a gift from the farmer up in Idaho, and the setting for the seduction of various
chicas
from the land of famous potatoes
(“Be nice!”
Jesús had been told.) Lately it was more important as a conveyance from the border to Idaho and back. The guys stored it behind a shack across the orchard during the five months a year they were home; this winter, we later learned, some kids had gotten it with rocks. Jesús lightly brushed glass off the damp front seat, produced the precious key, and turned it in the ignition. On the fourth try the old girl started up, to a round of cheers and
“¡Vivan los Tecos!”
The Owls were still in business.

A garage in El Mirage installed a new windshield the next day. And that night the first carload left for Idaho, Jesús at the wheel. I stayed behind with the second carload. Our group had shrunk back to eleven, the men from Quirambal, I discovered, having been taken by their
coyote
to another Phoenix ranch where they had closer relatives. They would look for late work in citrus and then, perhaps, head to Colorado for peach picking on the western slope. Jesús and Evangélica—she had been afraid to stay without him—returned to Phoenix a day and a half later, having driven nineteen hours and slept little. After a morning and an afternoon of rest they were stiff and bleary eyed but still eager to get back north again. It was late Saturday night when I and the rest of those remaining climbed into the Cadillac—perfect timing for avoiding the police. It had been nine days exactly since we left Querétaro. This was the last leg of our trip.

Again, the route was memorized. The highway connecting Phoenix to El Mirage continued on, conveniently, 300 miles to Las Vegas. Within the same early-morning hour, we passed through that symbol of American glitz and glitter and crossed over the gray barren expanse of Hoover Dam and the surrounding hydroelectric works, all starkly floodlit. Next we took a right on Interstate 15, and it was a straight, boring shot up to Pocatello, Idaho—nearest big town to the ranch. With Jesús on the edge of exhaustion, I agreed to help Victor with the driving. We stopped only for gas.

Because of the spring melt in the Northwest, and the beginning of the farming season, other migrants were on the road too. We knew them by their cars—generally larger, smokier, “previously owned” American cars, packed to the gills and low to the ground. At one gas station we chatted briefly with a group headed north from Los Angeles. The year before, confided one, he had been caught by an Immigration roadblock about an hour north of where we were now: Immigration knew this was a time for travel, and they laid their nets accordingly. We thanked the men and took note, following their route to an older highway that paralleled the interstate for a couple of hours, avoiding the danger zone. And then it was back on the interstate, making miles.

I was in the backseat with four others, asleep and with my head slumped backward, when I felt the Caddy brake and slip onto the shoulder. I snapped my head up, noticed it was morning, and rubbed my eyes. Nobody said a word. I looked around back—into the flashing lights of a sheriff’s car. We had been pulled over.

Jesús, at the wheel, rolled down his window.

“May I see your license?” asked the cop. I looked around me—we were in a small town. Jesús handed him the license, the one he had gotten legally in Florida.

“Where are you going?”

“Where?”

“Where are you going? Do you speak English?”

“Where? Oh, Idaho! We go to Idaho.”

“Where are you from? Mexico?”

Jesús played dumb on this question, and the cop repeated it loudly.

“Jes,” Jesús finally confessed in defeat. He tried to pronounce the name of his country the American way: “Messico. ”

“Do you have a green card? Papers?”

Jesús knew what all this was about. There was no bullshitting left to be done. He shook his head. “Do any of these people?” asked the cop, peering into the car. He got no response. “Well, we clocked you at thirty-five in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone. You were speeding. And since you don’t have papers, I’m afraid you’ll have to come in with us. Follow me, please.” Then he repeated it in passable Spanish, so there would be no mistake:
“Sígame. ”
Looking straight ahead, Jesús rolled up the window. He looked scared and angry, though emotions other than joy or amusement were subtle on his face. No one else said much, until Conce broke the ice.
“What did he say?”

“
¡Cabrón!”
said Jesús.
“Bastard! I wasn’t speeding.”
I felt he was telling the truth. He and the others obeyed the speed limits scrupulously, wanting much more to arrive without getting caught than to arrive quickly. The cop had probably pegged our car as carrying illegals, though why he bothered to stop us, I didn’t know. Most local police considered arresting illegals optional, and tended to let them go their way—taking them into custody and transferring them to Immigration meant a lot of extra work.