Crossing the Wire (6 page)

W
E WENT LOOKING FOR WORK
again, but came up empty. We had just passed by a church when I happened to glance through the open door of the next building. Inside, people were eating at rows upon rows of long tables. We took a look. It didn't seem like anyone was taking money. We asked a woman with small children who was on her way out what was going on. “This is the church's soup kitchen,” she said. “They're open every day for comida. Hurry in, they'll stop serving soon.”

Rice and beans with bits of meat along with two tortillas sure felt good in my stomach. “I take back what I said about Nogales,” Julio said.

Afterward we were walking by the small park between busy streets, the one with the man of bronze that the pigeons liked so much. The Stupid Dummy, kids called the statue, the kids who ran into the street at the stoplight to sell gum and wash windshields.
“Want to try that?” I asked Julio. “Buy some gum and resell it?”

He answered with a sour expression. Just then a kid tossed a squeeze bottle and a rag behind a taco cart. I grabbed them up. “It's worth a try,” I said.

“Go ahead,” Julio said. “I'll see you tonight at the Plaza de Toros.”

The kids washing windshields were only eight, nine, ten years old. They yelled at me, but only at first. This was no way to get rich. The drivers mostly wagged their fingers at me. Others ignored me, let me wash their windshield, and drove off. Every so often, someone gave a little. An American gave me a dollar bill. By the end of the day I had enough to buy extra food for a couple of days, but I was going to try not to spend it.

That night at the Plaza de Toros, Julio showed up with his backpack in his hand and a new one on his back. The new one was heavy with food—bags of tortillas, blocks of cheese, cans of meat and chili peppers and so on. He spread them out on the blanket for me to look at. “For crossing the desert?” I asked.

“Possibly,” he said. He opened up a package of tortillas, handed me a few, took a few for himself. Out came his knife. Julio popped the stiletto blade and carved some hunks off the cheese. With his can opener, he opened a can of peppers. “Dig in,” he said.

I did as I was told. “I was hungry,” I said.

“That's what I thought.”

It was then I realized he must have stolen the pack, probably from a fellow mojado, maybe at the bus terminal, somewhere like
that. “Let's split the food—it's heavy,” Julio said. “You keep the pack. It's more useful than that bag of yours.”

I already knew I wasn't going to ask him any hard questions. “Thanks,” I said.

We were going to keep eating at the church's soup kitchen. We would save the rest of the canned goods, in case we needed to cross the desert on foot.

The days passed with me making only pocket money and Julio away on his own business, which I never asked about. March was melting away. I was keeping track of the days in my head. It might be seven months before the Day of the Dead, when my family would have to move away if I failed to send money from El Norte, but that didn't mean I had time to spare. Crossing the desert in summer would be too dangerous. If I could cross soon and send money home before summer, they wouldn't have to sell our milk goat. They could keep her and her kids, due in the middle of April. Usually she had two. My family would have milk and cheese and meat to go with the garden vegetables.

The fourth day in Nogales, heavy clouds rolled in. My skin was no longer so dry, and neither was my throat. The air, full of moisture, even smelled different.

Still, I didn't guess the weather would come to anything, and neither did Julio. We spread out our blankets as usual that night, along with the others in the center of the bullfighting arena. Sometime after midnight, the clouds broke open with bolts of lightning, booming thunder, and sheets of rain. We ran for cover
and squeezed into a tiny space under the colonnades.

The lightning kept cracking and the thunder rumbling. There were many crying babies and not much sleep. Dawn came, and it was still spitting rain. Julio was all excited and wanted to go outside, into the streets. I grabbed my new backpack and ran after him.

Julio made like an arrow to the mouth of Los Vampiros, the tunnel close to the city center. The wash that came down from the hills and into the tunnel was running fast and deep. The floodwater was black with muck and heaving with sticks, plastic jugs, odds and ends of garbage. “This is our ticket to El Norte!” Julio cried, and started running the opposite direction.

“What are you talking about?” I yelled as I ran to keep up.

“Just stick with me. You'll see!”

At the nearest gas station, Julio pulled out a roll of pesos and bought two large inner tubes. “You mean to float through?” I cried.

“What else?” He soon had them inflated, and we were running back toward Los Vampiros. My heart was in my throat. “I don't know,” I summoned the courage to tell him. “I just don't know.”

Julio ignored me, just kept running. At a nearby store, he darted inside and bought two flashlights, one of which he shoved into my hand. “They say it's almost two miles long, and pitch dark.”

“I don't know, that sounds really risky,” I murmured, with only a block to go. All I could think of was how lucky I had been to survive my leap from the train. This was going to be an even bigger leap.

We got to the guardrail above the raging arroyo. Julio climbed
over the rail and started to make his way down the other side. Cautiously, I followed him down. I glanced over my shoulder. A couple of cholos were up above, standing at the guardrail. I couldn't tell a thing from their expressions, whether they thought this was going to work or we were going to die.

Julio set his inner tube down at the edge of the black, muddy river and then took his pack off his back. I just stood there like the Stupid Dummy statue. “Are you coming, or not?” he said, wild-eyed.

“Julio, what if they didn't open the gates at the other end?”

“I'm going to take that chance! An opportunity like this, with the cholos out of the way and the Border Patrol off guard…don't you see? Don't you see?”

“Maybe so…If it was just me, I would do it.”

“What are you talking about?” he yelled.

“What if the gate is closed? What if I drown? What would happen to my family? I can't take the chance. I'll have to find another way.”

Julio threw up his hands. “Good-bye, then, amigo. Good luck to you!” He waded into the water, settled into the inner tube with his backpack to his chest, and pushed off, flashlight in hand.

In seconds, without a look back, he disappeared into the blackness.

It wasn't long before the river quit running through the tunnel. The water remaining was only ankle deep. Dozens of cholos went back into the tunnel to reclaim what was left of their empire. I
asked one about the gate at the other end, if he thought it had been opened in time. “How would I know?” he said. “I ran out of this end, can't you tell?”

I found the answer the next day, in the newspaper. The gates had been opened. Nobody had drowned. It didn't say a thing about people running or floating out of the other end. It just didn't say. But I had a picture in my mind. Julio had floated all the way through, and right past the Border Patrol. I could picture the patrolmen running along the bank, trying to catch up with him.

I pictured Julio landing his inner tube and running for it. I could see him back on the train, safe inside a Suburban heading for Tucson and Phoenix.

I would never know. I would only know I had been too cautious, just like Rico had always said.

I could see Rico's grin. I could hear him calling me Turtle.

In a daze, I went back to work washing windshields at the Stupid Dummy stoplight. “What is the matter with you?” asked a kid Chuy's age. “Are you stupid?”

“What are you talking about?” I fired back.

“You're old enough to get a job at one of the maquiladoras. My mother makes five dollars a day.”

“Doing what?”

“Putting TVs together.”

“Do they need people?”

“What do you think? There's a hundred of those factories. That's where everybody works. You just have to be old enough.”

“Where are they?”

The boy pointed. “Over the hills, everywhere you look.”

“I'll give it a try,” I said. “Many thanks.”

“It's nothing,” he said, and raced into the traffic with his squeeze bottle.

I hiked through the neighborhoods and over the hills, where dirt roads led to the assembly plants. They were big as bus terminals and enclosed by chain link fences. Before I reached the gate of the nearest factory, the man at the guardhouse motioned for me to go away. I hiked to the next one. This one had little traffic, and the guard was willing to speak to me. “This plant is closed,” he said. “It's been closed since January.”

“Where should I go? Which one would have work?”

“None of them. A dozen have closed already, and more will be closing soon. The work is all going to China.”

“But why?”

“People can work for less over there, a lot less. Don't ask me how.”

Back in the city center, and all out of hope, I went into the church next to the soup kitchen. I took off my hat as I entered. Off to the side, I found the shrine of the Virgin, with many candles burning. I dropped a ten-centavo coin into the metal box and lit a candle of my own. I thought of my family and fought to stay in control of myself. I looked into the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As always, she was looking to the side. She's looking at my mother, I thought. I comforted myself with the story of the miracle. It was an
Indian the Lady had appeared to on several occasions. It was on the robe of the poorest of the poor that she left her famous image.

I said a prayer and left the church with hope burning once again in my heart, at least a flicker. I sat on the broad steps outside and watched the people on the street below. Most of them weren't really from here, I knew. Like me, they had been stranded in the whirlpool that was Nogales, going round and round while the river of humanity passed us by, streaming north.

Many were in a lot worse shape than me, especially the old people. Here came a man who wasn't old but had a bad limp. He was leaning on a walking stick. Tall, skinny, and shaggy-haired, he walked stooped over, eyes on the cobbles. His backpack, stuffed full, made me wonder if he was a mojado. One look at his face, and I had to look away. He had been given a terrible beating, and not very long ago. When I looked again, I noticed that one of his eyelids was frozen in place, half open and half closed.

I remembered the sleepy eyelid of the man on the bus, my lone wolf. I took a better look and I couldn't believe it. Same backpack, same black baseball cap, even the same snap-button shirt, only now it had bloodstains on it. Same man! What in the world?

I followed him down the street. Miguel, I remembered, that was his name. Some cholos here in Nogales must have beaten him up. Whatever had happened, his fully loaded pack meant that he was about to cross the border.

This might be the Virgin's answer to my prayer, I told myself. Here was someone I knew, sort of. I had no choice but to follow,
and see what this would come to.

Sleepy Eye's path led to the busy bus terminal. He bought a ticket—I didn't know where to. I had no money to buy a ticket.

Miguel limped outside and waited on the platform. I was careful not to let him catch me watching. He boarded a second-class bus marked for Agua Prieta. Where that was, I had no idea. I stood there wondering if this was the end. The bus driver was planted on the curb right by the door, taking the tickets. How could I get past him?

From the cover of a column, I waited for my chance. I thought of Julio, who always believed that a chance would arrive. I just had to be ready.

All the passengers seemed to be aboard. I was sure that the driver was about to follow, take his seat, and shut the door. Instead he looked at his watch and stepped aside. He lit a cigarette and chatted with another driver on the platform.

His back wasn't turned long, just long enough for me to glide aboard.

M
IGUEL DIDN'T NOTICE ME
coming down the aisle. I took a seat in the next-to-last row. The driver climbed aboard and gave a quick look toward the back of the crowded bus. He didn't notice me either. I was soon rolling up and over the hills, out of Nogales.

The bus went flying south like a bullet—wrong direction. I was afraid that my lone wolf had given up after all, and was heading home. Where would that leave me? Finally the driver turned sharply left. I asked the woman at my elbow if she lived in Agua Prieta, where this bus was going. She said she did. I asked if it was anywhere near the border. She said it was right on the border, across from Douglas, Arizona.

Late afternoon, we arrived in Agua Prieta. I kept a close eye on Miguel. Most people were getting off, and I was sure he would, too, but he stayed put. So did I, slouching in the back and hoping
I wouldn't attract any attention. The bus filled with new people, and minutes later was flying along the border to the east.

No metal wall separated the countries here, only the barbed wire fence my father had once described, a simple cattle fence. A green-and-white Migra truck was raising dust on a dirt road hugging the other side. In the next minute I saw a second truck, then a third one. They were everywhere. The Border Patrol, not the fence, was going to be the problem.

At his own window, Miguel was also paying close attention. With the sun setting behind us, the bus left the desert plain and began to climb the foothills of a mountain range. My lobo was studying the mountainsides, like he'd seen them before and was looking for something in particular. Suddenly, he stood and started up the aisle. I would have followed if he hadn't left his pack and walking stick behind.

The foothills were full of sharp curves. As Miguel approached the driver, he had to brace to keep his feet. A bit of green showed from his fist. I didn't see the money pass hands, but I could tell he was paying the driver for an unscheduled stop. My throat, suddenly, was dry as rawhide.

Miguel returned down the aisle. A minute later, we were slowing down. Drowsy passengers opened their eyes. Miguel had his pack and walking stick, and was bracing his way forward. I grabbed my own pack and did the same. With a hiss, the bus came to a complete stop. “Go with God,” someone called from behind. Miguel stepped down to the shoulder of the pavement. The bus was
pulling out before he realized that someone else had gotten off. He was caught by surprise, and unhappy, but he didn't even take a good look at me. Fast as he could, he started down a steep embankment, then up a dry wash.

The wash was a fan of sand and gravel at the mouth of a narrow canyon. As soon as Miguel reached the canyon, with the highway out of sight, he stopped to lean on his stick and scowl in my direction. I stayed well behind. Twice more, he turned and scowled. What did I care? I wasn't asking him to be my friend.

It got dark fast. The stars came out, but the moonlight was blocked by the canyon walls. There was barely enough light to avoid the rocks and cactus. Before long Miguel came to a dry waterfall. He climbed around it. At a fork in the canyon, he veered left. It was easier to see now with the steep, lower reaches of the canyon behind us. The moon was unblocked and half full. It had been growing. Two weeks had gone by since I left home, but it felt like a whole lot longer.

I followed Miguel up a shallow wash. It led to a fence with seven strands of barbed wire. I waited for him to climb over it, but he just stood there. Resting, I thought, but then he waved me toward him. I stayed where I was. He waved me forward again. This time I went.

In the moonlight, his swollen face was a terrible thing to see—broken nose, jaw askew, stitches above his right eye. He didn't say a thing, just glared at me.

I pointed to the barbed wire fence. “Is that the border?”

“It is,” he said with disdain.

“So, that's the States on the other side.”

“Isn't that what I just said? Go ahead, cross the wire. What are you waiting for?”

For the first time I noticed his front teeth. The bottom ones were freshly missing. His wounds and his pain and his sleepy eye unnerved me. He was truly terrifying to look at. “You're the kid from the bus,” he said. “The bus from Silao, then the one from Guadalajara. You sat next to me. Started talking about green cards.”

“And got thrown off.”

“Don't tell me your troubles. I got my own.”

“It looks like we both had a rough time in Nogales.”

He didn't seem to have heard me. He cocked his head to one side and told me to say it again, which I did.

He motioned toward his face. “You talking about this? This didn't happen in Nogales. It happened on the other side.”

“Oh,” I said. “You've already been across? This is your second try?”

“I don't have time for this conversation,” he growled. “Go ahead, pass me. Can't you see I'm moving slow?”

“I don't know the way.”

“Go north, good luck.”

“I have a feeling it's not that easy.”

“Whatever you say. Just quit following me like a dog. It's getting on my nerves.”

“I'll follow farther back, where you won't see me.”

He raised the stick and shook it. “Do I need to beat you like a dog?”

“If you do, I'll still follow. You know where you're going and I don't. I might be able to help you, Miguel.”

“How in the devil do you know my name?”

“From the bus, as you were showing your identification to the police. What if I carry the heavy things from your pack? You could get some of the weight off your legs. Don't worry about me running off with your food. I have my own, and a jug of water.”

“Listen, kid, I can't afford to make any more mistakes. I have a wife and four small children back home. Walk your own road and bear your own load—that's my motto. Any little mistake of yours would give me away.”

“Then keep me close, where you can make sure I won't make any.”

“You are a persistent one, aren't you?”

“Persistence is one thing I have a lot of.”

“You're like a fly in my face, and just as annoying.”

With that, the man slipped the pack off his back. It took me a second to realize he had given in. He pulled all the food out of his pack, quite a variety. All I had left in my own was two tins. I showed Miguel my can of pork so it wouldn't get confused with one of his.

“That's all you've got?” he barked.

“And a can of peppers—I don't eat much. By the way, my name is Victor Flores.”

“Born in Chiapas, as you told the police. Raised in Guanajuato.”

“You believed me?”

“Of course. When ‘Camino de Guanajuato' was playing on the first bus, you cried a large puddle.”

“That much?”

“Nearly. Throw out that flashlight. It will give us away.”

“It's gone. There, all packed. Can I help you over the fence?”

“Why, when it's been knocked down right over there?”

“Oh,” I said, “I didn't see.”

“Open your eyes wide, Victor Flores. I do a lot of walking in the dark. And don't speak unless you are spoken to. I can't afford to have you give me away.”

“You can count on me, Miguel.”

“I'm not going to get caught again. We're going high, where the bighorn sheep go.”

I fell in behind and started walking. Three times that night, from high above, we watched mojados winding their way single-file up the canyon bottoms behind their coyotes. From a distance, they looked like centipedes, which is what Miguel called them. “Cut off the head,” he said, “and the body will die.”

The fourth time, there was something different about the centipede. Miguel brought out a pair of binoculars. He took a long look. “Their backpacks are huge and all the same,” he reported. “Those are mules. Drug runners.”

Once the moon set, it got so dark I couldn't see my feet. I fell several times, filling my hands with tiny cactus needles. I didn't cry out.

Dawn came, and we took off our packs. “Sit on my right side,” Miguel directed. “Always on my right side.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I can't hear out of my left ear. Haven't you noticed?”

“Sort of.”

“As the Americans would say, you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“I do my best.”

He threw me a needle-nose pliers. I caught them, looking confused. “For those cactus needles,” he explained. “But first, find some tortillas and cheese, and grab your can of chilies. Here's a can opener.”

I drained the water off the chili peppers and spread the food on a rock. My hunger was painful. Trying not to look at his food—once was enough for him to describe me as a dog—I reached for one of my peppers.

“Going north to join your father?” my guide said gruffly, as he reached for a tortilla and broke off some cheese, then grabbed a pepper.

“I'm on my own.”

“Looking for excitement, is that it?”

“Looking to support my mother, my sisters, and my little brother.”

“Eat!” he ordered approvingly.

I nodded and helped myself, but I didn't say thanks. This man would hate it if I groveled.

I thought he would press me about my father. He didn't. “How's your family been getting by up till now?” he asked instead.

“I've been farming—raising corn.”

“I used to raise corn myself. That's no way to make a living.”

“How long have you been working in El Norte?”

“Since I was nineteen. Eight years.”

“Always crossing alone?”

“This is my third time alone. Like everyone else, I used to pay the coyotes. Until I was in a group they abandoned. It was in May—hot as a blacksmith's fire. Half of us died. Never again will I pay them a thing. You know what the coyotes call their customers these days?”

“Pollos, I have heard.” I was thinking of Rico, the others from the village, and all the men who came before, like our fathers.

“Chickens, that's right. Cooked chickens, no less. And the coyotes have another cute name for their underlings who actually guide people across the desert—polleros.”

“Chicken wranglers?”

“They think that's funny. Meanwhile, we are supposed to regard them as heroes. They are scum, my friend. I would rather die than pay them a fortune, only to have them betray me at the drop of a hat.”

“When you were deported a few days ago…had the Migra kept you in jail?”

“Soon as I got sewed up, they deported me. The jails were too crowded.”

“I've heard that the American jails are really bad.”

“Are you kidding? Three meals a day, and lie around and watch TV? You must be thinking of our Mexican jails. I've been in American jail—twice.”

I hesitated. “Did the Border Patrol do that to you, then, before they let you go?”

“This? My head, my ribs, my knee? People talk about the Border Patrol doing such things, but I've never seen it. They catch you, they hand you a bottle of clean drinking water and they put you in their air-conditioned perrera.”

“Perrera—what is that?” I was done eating, and was pulling cactus needles with the pliers.

“Dog wagon—truck with a holding cell in the back. It's what we mojados call them, because the Border Patrol are like dogcatchers.”

“If it wasn't the Border Patrol, who beat you up so bad?”

“Vigilantes. I had always heard about mojados crossing east of Agua Prieta, on the flats. You saw that stretch from the bus. It looks easy. Hundreds do it every night. I got past the strip of government land, where the Border Patrol are so thick, but then I got caught crossing the private ranches. Lots of coyotes lead their mojados through there. Some groups get caught, some don't.”

“By vigilantes?”

“Yes—the private militias, who are angry with their government for not stopping the flood. It didn't use to be like this. The ranchers used to put out water for people, before there were so many of us,
before the coyotes started smashing down their fences, breaking into their houses, stealing their vehicles…times have changed.”

“These vigilantes, what do they do?”

“Catch people and turn them over to the Border Patrol. But some of them, as I found out, have sick minds. They come from far off to dress up like soldiers, carry guns like soldiers, and commit crimes for which they will never be punished.”

I cringed, imagining what must have happened to Miguel. “They beat you up, and then they turned you over?”

“They would have been arrested for what they did to me. They just dumped me in the road like a piece of meat.”

“I'm sorry, Miguel.”

“Don't be sorry for me, or for yourself, either, when the bad things happen. You have to stay strong for your family. You have to be a man.”