Crossing the Wire (10 page)

I
T WAS EVENING AND
starting to cool down by the time I finished my own story. “Let's find something to eat,” Rico said. “I've never been so hungry in my life.”

“I can wait until the soup kitchen tomorrow,” I said.

“Tell me this. What is the one food you would die for, right now?”

“Chocolate-covered frozen banana on a stick.”

Rico pointed to an ice-cream cart down the street. He pulled some pesos out of his pocket. “My treat, to celebrate. Let's see if they have those.”

They did. We stood in the shade of a plaster wall to keep the chocolate from melting. Rico gobbled his up but I went slow, enjoying every bite. The chocolate reminded me of my last night at home. “I just realized this,” I said. “You don't have a backpack.”

“I lost it yesterday. I have to get another one, and some clothes. Mine stink.”

As I finished and was licking my fingers, two cholos approached, flashing some sort of signs. They sported white muscle shirts, baggy pants, flashy sneakers. We talked a little, and then the one with no hair except a rattail said, “We can get you though the tunnels.”

“No, thanks,” Rico said. “Once was enough.”

Grinning, the cholos shambled off. “What was that about?” I asked. Before, when I had told him about Julio floating through on an inner tube, me staying behind, he hadn't said a thing about having tried the tunnels himself.

“It's how I lost my backpack,” Rico replied sheepishly.

“When was this?”

“Just yesterday. I met a cholo—Nardo was his name. For a hundred dollars, he said he'd take me through. It sounded like a deal. Let me tell you, it was creepy in there. It's really long, smells bad, and it's pitch dark. Traffic rumbling over your head, side tunnels, people appearing and disappearing like ghosts. Lots of cholos live in there, huffing spray. Nardo's flashlight was a piece of junk. Finally I saw the faint light at the other end, reflections of streetlights. When we got close, there was a heavy chain-link gate across the entrance—like you were talking about, like you were afraid of floating into on the inner tube.”

“How did you lose your backpack?”

“The cholos took it, and the hundred dollars in my pocket. A bunch of them came out of the side tunnels with sticks and knives, like a pack of hyenas, only worse. Nardo laughed and called me a fool. I would have lost my last hundred if they'd stripped me, like
they were talking about. They let me go, laughing at me all the way back.”

“Well, you survived.”

“What a fool I was. I can't tell you how good it felt to see you, Turtle, after everything I've been through.”

“Will you keep trying to cross?”

“Of course. Everything will be fine once I get to my brother's. Now we can team up and figure out how to get across this stupid border once and for all. Maybe my brother will put both of us to work.”

“Right now that sounds too good to be true.”

At the Plaza de Toros, we spread out my blanket and my map of Arizona, which included Mexico for a hundred miles south. I tried to talk him into Miguel's route, all the way to La Perra Flaca.

Rico went from looking sour to shaking his head. “Too far, too many chances to get caught. Plus, that was March and this is May. The water you found would have dried up by now.”

“About that, you might be right,” I had to admit.

Rico pointed to the huge Tohono O'odham reservation. “Everyone says this is where most people are crossing. The Indians have seventy or eighty miles of the border. Maybe it's not patrolled very much.”

We took a closer look at the map. A paved road ran east and west through the middle of the reservation. At a town called Sells, the pavement dipped within thirty miles of the border. “We hike to that road,” Rico said. “From there, Tucson is only an hour's drive.”

“When we get to the road, who's going to give us a ride?”

“The Indians, I guess.”

“The Indians have cars?”

“In the States, who doesn't?”

I didn't like the uncertainty, but had to wonder if Miguel might think this was worth trying, now that it was May. The shorter the distance, the better our chances of surviving the desert. I would let Rico decide. It was his money that was going to buy the bus tickets and the supplies.

In the morning, we found a shop with cheap used clothing. My old T-shirts and underwear went in the trash. Rico wasn't the only one who smelled bad. Rico found a backpack, and we both found better sneakers. At the bus terminal, Rico bought two tickets for Altar, a town a couple hours to the southwest.

The bus rolled up the hills and out of Nogales, onto the desert plains sprinkled with those huge factories, the maquiladoras. Soon we saw only skinny cows, cactus, and mesquite. I hoped to God I had seen the last of Nogales.

At Altar we got out our map and compared it with the one posted inside the bus station. We had a decision to make. Mexico had border towns near both ends of the reservation—Sonoyta to the west, Sasabe to the east. Rico said he'd had enough of Sonoyta, and Sasabe was closer to the Indian land.

The only problem was, there was no bus to Sasabe. We turned from the ticket window and started asking questions. There were plenty of mojados to ask. You go to Sasabe by van or truck, a guy
told us. Go to the plaza, you'll see.

The town was flooded with wets. The park inside the plaza was overflowing with them, and with polleros. Rico and I hadn't even found a place to sit down when we began to hear their pitches. “Florida, Los Angeles, Chi-cago—wherever you want to go…Three thousand dollars to Boston with a job guaranteed as a dishwasher.” Five times in ten minutes, we were asked if we were looking for guides.

The plaza was ringed with parked vans. Many had their back doors flung open and were selling jugs of water. Most had a sign in the window. We went to have a closer look. The signs said
SASABE.

Three, four times, we asked about the cost of the ride to Sasabe. “Who are you with?” they would ask back. “We're by ourselves,” we would say. “No room,” they would tell us. Try to push it, and they told us to go away.

We were halfway around the plaza before we got an explanation. “If you two are by yourselves,” a driver told us, “forget about it.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Crossing on your own, that's bad for business.”

“Whose business?”

“The coyotes, who do you think? They don't like people trying to cross on their own. They'll charge you five hundred dollars apiece if they catch you trying.”

“What for?”

“They make you pay them so that nobody will mess with you—understand? Don't waste my time. Go home if you have any sense.”

We stepped aside. “Protection money,” Rico fumed. “Did your Miguel ever tell you about that part of trying it on your own?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“I think we have a problem.”

“We'll stay out of their way,” I said. I didn't let on, but my confidence was shaken. “Let's keep looking.”

At last we found someone who liked the green color of Rico's money. “Ten dollars apiece to Sasabe, and there might be room. Be back in an hour. Buy your supplies in Altar. Sasabe is a chicken-scratch town.”

At Altar's biggest grocery, Super El Coyote, we bought our supplies: food for a five-day hike across the Indian reservation, water, cheap sunglasses, a pocketknife, and needle-nose pliers. All the money that remained was a few dollars of Rico's, in pesos.

We hurried back and got packed with thirteen men into a Suburban with the seats taken out. The others were from Michoacán, wets like us, but with coyote money. They were going to meet their pollero in Sasabe.

The road north was mostly unpaved, with heavy traffic. The driver kept the windows up to keep out the dust. I thought I was going to suffocate. We were all tangled up in there like a nest of spiders in a tin can, and the air-conditioning was broken. Rico made a joke about the Suburbans being put together in Silao. He said his sister's husband was to blame.

I didn't have the breath to grunt a reply. At least we were moving, and the direction was north.

S
ASABE, AT LAST.
Finally, the doors opened and the spiders crawled out of the can. The men from Michoacán took off to find their pollero. Rico and I stood there on unsteady feet with no particular place to go. A dust devil whirled sand and trash down the street and threw it into our faces.

The noise of the small desert town made up for its size, with honking horns, barking dogs, a policeman blowing a whistle, firecrackers going
pop-pop-pop.
The streets were hot as lava, but even so they were packed with hundreds and hundreds of mojados making their last preparations or killing time. The only shade, under a few spindly cottonwoods, was all taken.

From the end of the street, we could see the border. Trucks were backed up there, waiting to have their produce inspected for stowaways. Beyond the Port of Entry, the gas stations, convenience stores, and fast food places of Sasabe, Arizona, shimmered in the
heat. So did a mountain range, spiny as an iguana's back, looming above to the north and west. One peak in the middle, with square, tapering sides like a monument, stood much higher than all the rest.

“Those mountains are in the States,” I said. “We could get into them on foot from here.”

Rico made a face. “Those mountains would spit us out like a hairball.”

I pulled out the map of Arizona. Baboquivari was the name of the range. The Baboquivari Mountains rose on the border and ran north. Their crest was the eastern boundary of the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation. I was studying the map hard, like Miguel would have. The tower mountain was called Baboquivari Peak. It soared more than a mile above the desert floor.

Rico was frowning. He could see where I was looking. “There has to be a dirt road on the Mexican side that goes around those mountains. All we need is one more ride, so we can cross into the Indian land where the hiking won't be straight up and down.”

“I guess you're right,” I said.

How to come by that last ride, that was the problem. There were plenty of vans and pickups to be seen leaving along a dirt road heading west toward the Indian reservation. But those vehicles were full of mojados who had scraped together the big money.

We told each other there had to be people who lived in that direction, in ranchos too small to appear on the map. Some of them must come to Sasabe for food and supplies.

We found several such people. It was easy to see they didn't want to waste their time with us. They would barely admit that they lived out of town. As soon as we brought up needing a ride, they shook us off quick.

It was hot, and our backpacks were heavy. Rico was red in the face and murmuring about the heat, the money being gone, and the trouble we were in.

“Something will come along,” I said. “We'll start walking from here if we have to.”

“Too far, Turtle. We'd go through all our water before we even crossed the wire.”

Rico took out his frustration at a video arcade, on an army of green-shirted soldiers who blew up like squashes and bled rivers when you blasted them with your AK-47.

The machine ate peso coins like candy, but what could I say? It was Rico's money.

Ten minutes later, along came a bare-chested punk three or four years older than us. I was shocked by the tattoo on his chest, a gory Christ with barbed wire for a crown of thorns and much dripping blood.

For whatever reason, the punk had his sights on us. He had a rockero haircut, short all around except for a purple forelock that hung down nearly to the top of his nose. Apparently he didn't know how stupid it looked, especially when he flicked it back, which he did as a habit. It was like the switching tail of a donkey stuck on his forehead.

“What are you guys up to?” he said as he lit a cigarette. Money was written all over him: silver nylon pants, snakeskin boots, gold chains around his neck, diamond studs in his ears.

“Sitting here in limbo,” Rico replied with a shrug.

“Jimmy Cliff song! You like reggae, Bob Marley?”

“Who doesn't?”

“Right on, 'mano. ‘Stand up for your rights.' What else do you like? Rap, metal, punk, pop? What kind of CDs you got in your backpack?”

“I lost my CDs and my player in Nogales.”

“Don't tell me about Nogales. I'm
from
Nogales. These days, I wouldn't give you spit for it. Same goes for Juárez and Tijuana. So many Migra, they sit with their trucks in view of each other, waiting to pounce.”

“You can't even use the tunnels in Nogales anymore,” Rico said.

“Tell me about it.” The punk flashed a tattoo on his wrist at us. It was familiar, a triangle of blue dots.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Don't you know anything? Barrio Libre, from Nogales! I've done it all…I've been a cholo, a ratero, and a bajadero, but I have graduated.”

“Now you're a pollero?”

“Polleros and coyotes are what you call us. We call ourselves gangsters.”

“Gangsters?”

He pretended he was firing a submachine gun. “Like the Mafia.
My name is Jarra. Tony Jarra, but you can call me the Mosquito.”

The Mosquito put his cigarette out on a caterpillar that was crawling across the video machine. It made a putrid smell. “Obviously, you guys are trying to go north to make some money,” Jarra said. “How much do you expect to make on the other side?”

“Six dollars an hour,” I said.

“Doing what?” He threw back his head to make his donkey tail swing.

“Field work.”

Jarra spat at the caterpillar, which was still squirming. “Some kind of Pancho Villa you are. How about you, Blondie,” he said to Rico. “Hoe the weeds also, pick the lettuce?”

“Clean the swimming pools.”

“Aaah…” the gangster said, breathing out a long plume of smoke. “The swimming pools of the rich. A real Zapata, you are.”

“What about you, Mosquito?” Rico kidded. “What kind of revolutionary are you?”

“Where have you been? Even the stupid ranchera ballads glorify us these days. We are heroes to the mojados and their families back home, while making fools of the Border Patrol. Aside from all that, there is the money. As a guide, I am paid one hundred dollars for every pollo I get to the pick-up point. How does a thousand dollars a week sound to you?”

“It sounds like a lot of money,” Rico said.

“Party, party, party! Back when I was a mule, I made eight hundred dollars a trip, three trips a month. You two have strong backs.
You could start out carrying, learn the trails as mules, then graduate to guiding, like I did.”

“Only one problem,” I said. “If we get caught running drugs, we rot in jail.”

“You'll rot in Sasabe instead. It's going to be a warm summer. Think about it.”

The gangster slouched on by.

Rico had his head down, as if deep in thought. Then he slammed his fist on the video machine. “Let's get out of here,” he said.

We followed a dry creek out of town, toward a mesquite thicket where new arrivals congregated and slept. All the while, I could tell Rico was getting worked up. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks and said, “I blame my father for this.”

“How? Why?”

“Think about all those years when it would have been so easy.”

“What would have been so easy?”

“To move his family to the States. I could have grown up there, and not have to go through all of this. He knew better! Too stubborn, that's all!”

I pointed to a mesquite that would be easy to crawl under. Nobody had taken it. “Let's get out of the sun for a while, Rico. The heat is getting to you.”

“You fight off the rattlesnakes. I'm going back into town.”

Just the thought of rattlesnakes made my throat tighten and my skin crawl. “You don't need to scare me, Rico. I'm scared enough,
just like you. I tell you, everything will be better.”

“When?”

“Tonight, tomorrow.”

“I'm not so sure,” he said. “I'm going back into town. I'll see you later if the snakes haven't gotten you.”

“I'll be here,” I said.

It was getting dark, the first hint of a breeze beginning to arrive, when Rico finally returned. He looked better. “You eaten anything?” I asked.

“I'm starving, but I got our problems taken care of.”

“Here, have a cheese stick. You found us a ride?”

“Better than that. I got us covered all the way to Tucson, to my brother's.”

“What are you talking about? How is that possible?”

“I called him up.”

“Reynaldo?”

“Isn't that what I just said?”

“I thought you didn't have a phone number.”

Rico reached for a package of tortillas. Before I could say anything, he tore it open at the wrong end, opposite the plastic zipper. We wouldn't be able to reseal it.

Rico hadn't noticed. “Here,” he said, giving me a tortilla, chewing on another. “The phone number was supposed to be a last resort. I wasn't going to use it until I got to Tucson. Well, now is what I would call a last resort. I reached him. It wasn't easy, and he wasn't happy about everything that's happened, but he wasn't surprised.
The important thing is, he vouched for us with Jarra's coyote.”

“Who's that?”

“I don't know his real name. He calls himself The Venom.”

“What kind of person would call himself The Venom? You met the actual coyote, the head man?”

“Through Jarra, then some other guy.”

“Where did you have this conference and do the phone calling?”

“Jarra's motel room. What difference does it make?”

“What have you done, Rico? I thought we were going on our own!”

“It wasn't going to work! Isn't that obvious?”

“How would we know unless we tried?”

“Calm down, Victor. You'll see. We need the protection of a group, and my brother is willing to cover us.”

“Did he say anything about a job for me?”

“We didn't discuss it.”

“Without a job, how will I pay him back?”

“He wasn't worrying about it. Why should you?”

“Have you forgotten? I have to send my money to my family.”

“Paying back Reynaldo is the least of our troubles. First we have to get there, and I've taken care of that. You should be happy.”

“I'm not.”

“I'll pay back your coyote money myself.”

“I couldn't let you do that.”

“Try and stop me. Now shut up and eat. We're leaving in half an hour.”