Crossing the Wire (9 page)

T
HE HOLDING ROOM FOR
boys was overflowing. Most of us spent the night on the floor. I had my blanket, but I didn't even try to sleep. Partly it was the cold concrete, but mostly it was cold fear. What would they to do to me, and how long would they keep me? A little while, like Miguel, or a long time, like Julio? With Julio, it was four months. If they kept me all summer, with my mother going to Silao every month and returning home with no money, it was all over.

Let them deport me soon, I prayed, so I could somehow try to cross again before the deserts got too hot, before my mother had to sell the goat and the chickens.

Morning came. The boys were all restless and starving. Somebody said they weren't going to feed us with the kids inside until after we were admitted. Food arrived after all. Everybody got a paper sack from McDonald's—egg sandwiches just like the ones
at the McDonald's in Silao. I ate every bit and licked the cheese off the wrapper. “Is it like jail, inside?” I asked the boy next to me, who was picking at a scab on his arm. “What did you think?” he said sarcastically. I closed my eyes. I was too low to even get up and move.

I had to wait a long time to be admitted. When my turn came, in the middle of the afternoon, they took my fingerprints. I wouldn't give them my name. A Border Patrol lady named Miller led me down a hallway with many side rooms where kids were being questioned. The gabacha pointed to a bench in the hallway and said, “Take a seat.” Her voice was rough, like her pocked face.

“We're too busy to do anything with you,” she said, “even to file a plan of return for a juvenile.”

I didn't know what she was talking about. I was surprised she spoke such good Spanish.

“There's no room,” she said tiredly. “If you complain, then we'll have to take you.”

“Take me?”

“Keep you.”

If I complained, they would keep me? It didn't make any sense. “How long would you keep me, if I complain?”

“Months, probably. Eventually, you will get an escort back home. You want to complain?”

“No,” I said, finally understanding. “Can I go straight to the border instead?”

“That's what I've been trying to tell you. We'll drop you in
Nogales.” It looked like the Migra lady hadn't slept either.

“I won't complain,” I said.

She looked me in the eye. “You'll go straight home from there?”

“Straight home.”

“Good. Go home. Don't try again. Okay?”

I looked at her blankly. She pointed to the door at the far end of the hall, which a guard was holding open. I reached for my backpack and joined two other boys heading that direction.

Outside the door, two buses were waiting. A couple hours later, I was on the border, passing through Nogales, Arizona. We drove by the Wal-Mart.

Above, on the hills, loomed the much larger city of Nogales, Mexico, which I knew all too well. We got out of the bus at the side of the Port of Entry. I followed along as we were led, like cattle, through fence gates and chutes. I was too stunned to think about what to do next. It was early evening, but hot. All that deep snow in the Chiricahua Mountains seemed like I had dreamed it. So too, the journey with Miguel. Being with Julio, that was from another lifetime.

I was numb. I was ashamed. I had failed.

The green shirts had nothing to say. We were walked to one last gate, which was padlocked. It was opened, and we filed through. I watched the gate close behind me, heard the lock click shut. The high metal wall ran as far as I could see. It was a strange feeling, being locked inside your own country.

I had arrived too late for comida at the soup kitchen. I spread out
my blanket in the familiar arena of the Plaza de Toros. I missed Julio, who had slept right here. I missed Miguel.

In the morning, I carried sacks for people at the Port of Entry. I made enough to buy an Arizona map. It wasn't nearly as good as Miguel's. It didn't show the dirt roads, the wells and the springs. But it showed the border towns and some of the mountain ranges—the Chiricahuas, but not the Dos Cabezas. It had the interstate highway and it had Willcox. I already knew a lot about Miguel's route. Next time I would follow it all the way to La Perra Flaca. At least I wouldn't run into snowstorms. The problem would be the heat.

The map was from a little store where people bought soda, candy, magazines, and lottery tickets. Every morning, a small tear-off calendar showed the new date. It made me sick every time I went to check. Time and the sun were my enemies. Every day the sun was a little higher in the sky, the streets of Nogales were hotter. I had to get going, but after a week in Nogales, my pesos added up to less than five dollars. I needed bus money east, and food for ten days or two weeks.

April dragged by. By the end of the month it was broiling. I didn't have nearly the money I needed. All I was doing was surviving one day to the next. I'd had six weeks to get ahead of the heat, and I hadn't done it. I thought of Teresa, back home. My sister wouldn't be very proud of me now.

The first of May was unfolding like any other day. During comida in the crowded soup kitchen, as my eyes wandered down the long
table, they caught something familiar. On the opposite side, way down near the end, sat a boy with a dirty yellow baseball cap and hair that was blond where it was growing out but dark underneath. For a second I thought it was Rico, but that couldn't be.

I looked again. His nose, the freckles on his cheek…

I ate my last bites without blinking, without tasting my food. Rico had left Los Árboles in a yellow Lakers cap.

The boy got up to leave, empty tray in his hand. He was headed in my direction.

My heart jumped out of my chest. “Hey, Rico!” I cried. “How are you? How have you been?”

His eyes landed on me. “Victor! I don't believe it! I don't believe it!”

Outside the parish hall, we fell on each other like we were dying in the desert and had just discovered water. “Am I happy to see you,” I said, laughing and crying and embracing my friend.

“Same here, only more so. What in the world are you doing here, Turtle?”

“Crawling north. I thought you were in Tucson, cleaning the swimming pools. Surrounded by beautiful girls.”

“I almost got there. I got to Phoenix.”

“I made it to Tucson. I saw it from inside a perrera.”

Rico looked at me with newfound respect. “I don't believe you, 'mano. You've been to the other side and been deported? Were you trying to find me?”

“I was trying to find work.”

“Who gave you the coyote money?”

“Didn't have any. At first I was by myself, then with a kid from Honduras, then with a mojado from Guanajuato traveling on his own. He got caught, then I got caught—it's a long story. What about Fortino and the others you left with? Are they here?”

“We got split up. I've been on my own, too.”

Rico's nose was peeling, his lips were chapped, his hands torn up. “You look pretty bad,” I said. “All this time, I was sure you had already shook the hand of Mickey Mouse.”

“I grabbed him by the tail, and he turned around and bit me.”

“How long have you been in Nogales?”

“Six days.” Rico pulled a peso coin out of his pocket. “Let's flip.”

“What for?”

“To see who tells his story first.”

R
ICO WON THE TOSS.
A block from the soup kitchen, we found a shady spot on the curb and sat down. “Tell me before I start,” he said. “Did you talk to my parents, like I asked? Did you tell them what I was doing?”

“I did,” I answered cautiously.

“Good. That's all I wanted to know.”

“Your mother went to the clinic in Silao that day.”

Rico frowned like I'd punched him in the gut. “Victor, what did I just say?”

“Sorry. I thought you would want to know.”

“Okay then, I'll start at the beginning. After we left Los Árboles, the five of us went to Guadalajara and caught a first-class bus. Somewhere along the coast—past Los Mochis—my jacket was stolen. A third of my coyote money was in the jacket, five hundred dollars.”

“Lots of sharks on those buses, I guess.”

“We got off the bus at Sonoyta, on the border with Arizona. A windy, dusty little place. We walked out of town, down an arroyo, past lots of other groups who were waiting. We picked some scrubby trees to sit under and began our own wait.

“Coyotes from three different outfits came to see us. Fortino did all the talking. With the coyotes going back and forth to their bosses, there was a lot of waiting. Part of why it took so long was because we didn't have as much money as were supposed to.”

“Because of your jacket being stolen?”

“None of us had the full fifteen hundred. The coyotes wanted telephone numbers on the other side, people who would guarantee the rest. Nobody gave a name or a number. Fortino said that all sorts of horrible things might happen to your friends or relatives if they couldn't pay. Finally, Fortino got a coyote to agree to a thousand apiece. Five hundred up front, five hundred when we made it to Tucson.”

“Sounds like you got a good deal.”

“We thought so. We figured we had just saved five hundred dollars apiece. We walked east a couple of miles to meet our driver, within sight of the new fence the Americans built to keep the coyotes from driving into a huge cactus park.”

“They built a metal wall like here in Nogales?”

“It's all different. Every four feet, there's a heavy iron post in the ground, with railroad ties welded across. The fence is only five feet high. It's to keep vehicles out, but let the wildlife go back and forth.
That's what we heard.”

“You climbed over it?”

“Went all the way around it. Our driver was no older than me. The other guy up front was the pollero who was going to walk us across the desert. The truck looked awful and sounded worse. There was already a group from Guerrero in the back. Eleven of them and five of us made sixteen. The bumper scraped whenever we crossed a gully.

“We drove a couple of hours east to where the cactus park ended. From there, the border is just a barbed wire fence, and it's Indian land on the other side. The driver and the pollero bent over a steel fencepost that somebody had already weakened with a hacksaw. We crossed the wire, barely creeping, headlights off. The driver leaned his head out to find his way around the bushes and gullies. After about fifteen minutes we got to a dirt road, and he turned the headlights on. We started to breathe easier, but not really. There was no shell over the back of the truck. We were eating dust the whole way.

“The road got better and we started going forty or fifty. Out the back, we saw some lights. There was a vehicle coming up behind us.”

“Border Patrol?”

“That's what we thought. They came on really fast. I mean really fast. Our driver tried to accelerate, but we were heavy and the motor was a piece of junk. Whatever was chasing us was new and powerful. In no time at all, it was on us. I mean, twenty feet behind. Their high beams blinded us so bad, we couldn't see what
it was. Suddenly they turned on a row of even brighter lights across the top of their cab. I made out a guy's arm sticking out the passenger window with a pistol. He was yelling at us to stop. We went around a little corner. I could finally see what was chasing us—a black pickup, a new Dodge Ram. Two guys standing behind the cab had automatic weapons pointed right at us. They started spraying bullets—
rat-a-tat-tat.
I was sure I was dead.”

“People got killed?”

“No, they were shooting just over our heads. That got the attention of our driver. He finally stopped, and for a couple of seconds, everything was quiet as the grave. The two men in the cab of the Dodge got out. No uniforms—we had no idea who they were and what this was all about. One had that pistol, the other a short assault rifle. They ordered our driver and pollero to get out with their hands up. The pistolero started shouting at our driver, accusing him of smuggling, and then he pistol-whipped him. The other guy punched our pollero hard in the stomach. In the back of the truck, everybody was whispering. I heard the leader of the men from Guerrero say it was the Federal Judicial Police. The way he said ‘Judiciales,' it scared me to death.”

“They were Mexican police, and they chased you into the States?”

“Ten minutes north of the border, at least.”

“But why?”

“The crossing is supposed to cost fifteen hundred dollars, remember? Guess what—when we only paid a thousand, the
Judiciales didn't get their bribe. Our cut-rate coyote must have thought that the police weren't keeping close track of all the groups waiting outside of town. I found out later we should have stayed in a safe house, in Sonoyta. If you're staying in one, it means you're safe from the police—they've been paid.”

Rico picked up a rock and threw it at a pigeon. He missed.

“How'd you get away? Where are the others?”

“I'm getting there. The Judiciales made us drive back toward the border. They stayed right behind us with those blinding lights on. They made our pollero ride with them. Their pistolero was in the cab of our truck with his gun to the driver's head. In the back of the truck, people were whispering about how everybody's money would be stolen by the police, about prison, about torture. Someone said everybody should jump out of the truck as soon as we reached rough ground. ‘They got two AK-47s and a mini,' the leader from Guerrero said. ‘They'll mow you down.'”

“I would have died of fright.”

“I asked Fortino if it was true, about jail and all the rest. ‘Say your prayers,' he whispered. All I knew was, I had to get away. I squeezed toward the edge of the pickup. We were going around a curve. I went flying, right into a narrow spot between two bushes.”

“Did they shoot?”

“The shots went right over my head. I kind of tumbled when I hit the ground, and was out of their lights. I ran like I've never run before. Tripping, falling down, running, tripping, running, running…”

“What about the others?”

“Who knows? I still don't know if they went to jail, or what. Probably they did. I never saw them in Sonoyta. I hiked all the way back there the next night.”

“Why would you go back there?”

“Our coyote had half of my money. They're supposed to get you to where you're going, as many tries as it takes.”

“You still had the other five hundred?”

“Still had it. I waited three days until they had more pollos ready to go—a group from Oaxaca with women and kids. This time they let us off on the highway to Tijuana, along the border with some kind of wildlife refuge. We walked north for four days. Fortunately, it wasn't that hot yet, but even so we ran out of water. Only half of us made it. You had to be really strong.”

“What happened to the other half?”

“When they couldn't keep up, they got left behind.”

“Abandoned?”

“The chicken wranglers don't care. They get paid by the head. They still make good money if only half make it, that's what I heard.”

“They left women and children behind in the desert?”

“Including a woman from Chicago who said she was the aunt of the boy and girl who were with her. They were eight and nine, and didn't look a thing like her. Later on, when she caught up, without the kids, she told us she was hired to go get the kids way down in Mexico and bring them across. Take them to their parents in Pennsylvania.”

“She abandoned the boy and the girl? What happened to them?”

“Who knows? Our pollero said that the Border Patrol's search-and-rescue helicopters would pick them up.”

“But what if they were never found?”

“I try not to think about that. There was nothing I could do. They never would have made it through the Growler Mountains. It was rough. We hid outside a town called Ajo. The American coyotes showed up late the next day. We drove past a cemetery for people who died in the crossing. All these small white crosses with no names, just the words NO OLVIDADO.”

“Not
forgotten.
What's that supposed to mean, if nobody knows who they were?”

“I'm only telling you what I saw. They took us to a safe house in Phoenix. I waited two weeks for a ride to a safe house in Tucson. They were messing with me, trying to get a name, a phone number—more money. The ride was supposed to be coming any minute, but then we got raided by the Border Patrol. They didn't have any room in the juvenile detention center, so here I am.”

“How much money do you have left?”

“Less than a hundred. Those American coyotes got three hundred out of me in Phoenix. What do you have?”

“Thirteen dollars' worth of pesos if I'm lucky. If you go back to Sonoyta, will your coyote give you another try?”

“After I paid on the other end, why would he? I'm in a bad way, 'mano. Now, tell me about your own disasters.”