Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (35 page)

I fell into step two people behind Conce, who kept a flashlight pointed at the ground in front of his feet. There was a time lapse between the moment his light illuminated the ground and the moment I arrived there, and I tried to adjust my eyes and brain to the delay, tried to remember where to step. The large group lent confidence—a sense of momentum, purpose, and capability. For at least another hour and a half we walked, the desert surface rolling slightly, rising always, leading us to the mountain. Then a water and cigarette break with everyone squatting around in a circle, flashlights off, the sliver of a moon, stars, and cigarette embers the only light. The smell of tobacco smoke was reassuring. But the break lasted no longer than a cigarette, and soon we were back on our feet, trekking hard.

A yelp came from the back. Young Inocencio, ignorant of the desert, had been swinging his arms a bit too enthusiastically and had attracted the barbed spines of the jumping cholla cactus. The cholla were probably our worst enemy among the plants; their luminous clusters of needles grew mainly at a height between one’s shoulders and knees. The slightest touch—sometimes, it seemed you didn’t even have to touch, but simply come close enough for them to leap onto you—the slightest touch and their microscopic barbs implanted themselves in skin, clothing, shoe leather, anything. Any further movement after that, and larger barbs worked their way in too. Inocencio had batted the back of his hand against a cluster of four cholla pricklers, and they were in deep. His friend Marín had donned a glove and was about to try to pull them out, but Genaro stopped him.

“
You can’t touch these with anything soft,”
he explained, shining his flashlight on the pale hand.
“They’ll stick in gloves too.”
Unfortunately, the pliers we had bought were in the pocket of Plácido, up front, and this required immediate action. Genaro handed me the light, picked up two rocks, and told Marín to hold Inocencio’s fingers.
“This is going to hurt,”
he told Inocencio, who nodded. Then, using the rocks as pincers, Genaro got a grip on one cluster at a time, and pulled. The spines yielded reluctantly, releasing the skin at the last possible instant. Inocencio flinched, but said nothing. His hand was torn and bloody, but the spines were out. We moved on.

I was getting tired, and was impressed by how the Mexicans kept up the pace. I thought of Mexican nourishment: weren’t Americans better fed? Milk, fresh vegetables, and red meat—that’s what I had been raised on, and Mexicans had little of any of them. But, even on camping trips with backpacks, I couldn’t ever remember having pushed it like this. I didn’t think my American friends and I—even with European hiking boots and the finest clothing—would have been able to do it, not without eating, not for so long. How could you explain it? Was it simply will? Growing up accustomed to hardship? Was it fear? My mind was slowly numbing due to lack of blood sugar, and it was only vaguely that I realized Genaro had speeded up from the tail end of the expedition and, barely even puffing, had passed me on his way to the front. I slowly came to my senses, and shook the sleep from my head. If Genaro could do it, in his condition ... I forged ahead.

We marched on over a rise and there, on the far side, beneath a low outcropping of rock, came upon the delicious sight of the leaders unshouldering their sacks and dropping their water jugs. Relief! Mine fell to the sand like lead when we reached them. Cigarettes came out and lighters clicked, and the men from Quirambal built a small campfire, for it was cold if you weren’t walking. A few of the group stayed up to watch the fire burn itself out. The majority, though, lay down, jackets on, side by side, and with a blanket thrown over us for warmth. I saw the fire flickering on the rocks and on an organ pipe cactus before I closed my eyes, and in the first seconds of sleep was reminded of the large, furry spider that used to climb on my bed when I left on the ceiling light in Ahuacatlán. This was tarantula country! I sat up and took a sleepy look around me, at the scattered rubble under the rocks, the decomposing trunk of an organ pipe cactus, the broken branch of a cholla, the white, sandy dirt: shouldn’t we put that fire out? Then again, I thought, you could grow old fast trying to prepare against everything. As Mexicans appreciated, that’s what prayers are for. I lay back down and said one.

*

It seemed only three or four hours later that we were up—the sky was barely turning light. Plácido responded to the grumbling by reminding us that, outstretched and in the open, we were easily visible from
La Migra’s
patrol planes, which flew during the day. A warm-up fire was out of the question for the same reason; we were reduced to watching the steam of our own breath as it rose and dissipated in the cold air. Someone broke out a loaf of bread and some slices of cheese, but only a few partook of this skimpy breakfast. The rest, it seemed, were impatient; they moved to walk: it was not yet time to eat.

The sun rose quickly into a cloudless sky as our file continued toward the mountain with the notch. I was tired, but daylight made the going easier: now, at least, I could see where I was stepping. We wound our way around cactuses and dry shrubs, the ground mostly even except for where showers had washed a channel in the desert floor. The higher we climbed toward the mountain, the deeper these channels became, until they were regular arroyos. When we stopped it was always in an arroyo, for there we cast no shadows, could not be seen. But other creatures enjoyed these refuges too, and, upon descending to their sandy floors, you had to look carefully for desert rats, spiders, and snakes. We had seen all three by our second rest of the morning; a young cousin of Genaro’s, who came upon the rattler, expressed regret that it had gotten away before he could find something to knock it on the head with.

There was no path, no obvious route, but several times we came upon wrappers from Mexican products—
Alas
cigarettes,
Chiclets
and
Canel's
gum, a pair of spent and corroded flashlight batteries—that showed us others had passed the same way. The space around us was wide and empty, but there was never a sense of loneliness or uncertainty: we knew where we were going. Somewhere nearby, I knew, thirteen Salvadorans had perished on a crossing in 1980. They had entered Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the Fourth of July weekend, with the same plan as ours but without the experience. Dressed in city clothes and carrying suitcases, they expired of thirst on a day when the temperature on the desert floor was estimated at 150 degrees. Moments before their deaths, they poured cologne, deodorant, and even their own urine down their throats in a last-ditch effort to survive.

The walk became steep as we finally trod upon the very skirt of the mountain we had seen from afar.

“
We should climb this fast,”
said Jesús, coming up alongside me, Evangélica in tow.
“There’s no cover at all.”

The file disintegrated as the slope steepened, each person picking his own line up the crumbly surface. My heart pounded—normally a person slowed down for a climb. But, even in their smooth-soled cowboy boots and homemade
huaraches,
the men from Querétaro climbed like mountain goats, scampering up and leaving me behind in a light rain of pebbles. Climbable slope narrowed to a strip only a foot or two wide toward the top, with rocks on each side—calling this a pass was generous—and here I took a breather, turning around to survey the land we had crossed. Visibility was good on that clear day, and I knew that somewhere across the arid expanse below ran the highway we had crossed the evening before. But for the life of me, I couldn’t pick it out; United States or Mexico, it all looked the same.

Hawks rode the thermals in front of me; some at a lower altitude than I, so that I could see their backs. Vultures circling would have added drama, but there were none, never had been in all my desert travels. Perhaps it was a good omen.

Sweating and wary on the top, we enjoyed the breeze and view for just a few seconds before beginning our descent. Ahead were a couple more mountain ridges, but beyond them it looked flat. We were about halfway down, skidding and sliding in a small cloud of dust, when the faint buzz of an airplane became audible.

“
Run!”
cried Genaro, down below in the lead, waving his arms for us to follow. Nothing was visible, but it could be soon—and so, then, would we. The dust cloud became larger, our movements reckless and desperate, and we strove for the bottom. There were no trees or cactuses at all on the small slope, and only when I arrived on nearly flat ground at the valley floor did I realize Genaro had jumped into an arroyo. Stooping low under the trees along its rim, I shot in with the others.

As fate would have it, Genaro’s cousin, at this same moment, finally found his snake. It was coiled in the sand about six feet from him, rattling, its lair having been suddenly invaded. Everyone froze; the buzzing of the aircraft grew louder until finally it appeared, nearly overhead, through the thin leaves of the desert trees. No one moved until the sound had passed, and we could again hear the snake. Then Genaro broke a dead, scrubby tree in half, came up behind the boy, and lifted the snake with the end of the stick. It slipped off and rattled some more. People laughed nervously. Genaro forked it up again, which seemed to me a bad idea until I saw that this time he had it—in the air the snake was powerless. Genaro kept turning the stick to keep it that way. His cousin bent to pick up a large rock; Genaro nodded, then flung the viper down and began to beat it with the stick. Fazed, the snake stopped hissing, and the boy, from about three feet above, dropped his stone on its head. The snake lay twitching. Another drop of the stone, and it was dead.

Genaro picked up the body with his hands. We all stood close to examine it—the pointed head, the little dip between the eyes of a pit viper. After it was passed around, it was handed back to the boy who had killed it, who in turn passed it back to Genaro.
“No,”
said Genaro.
“I already have one.”
He pointed to the snakeskin band on his hat.
“It’s for you.”
The boy grinned to himself.

No one could answer my question about whether the single-engine prop had been an Immigration plane or not—
“they’re never the same,”
said Jesús. But, after all the excitement, everyone agreed that it was finally time for a meal. All packs were untied, jacket pockets were emptied. It was mostly shady where we were, but still hot—a good time not to be walking. A good time to be eating. Despite the leaders’ warnings to save some, we ate nearly everything we had brought, and then lay back—our stomachs full and round, like a snake’s—to let it digest.

I got up after a while to watch the boy from Quirambal skin the serpent. Using Genaro’s knife, he cut off the head and tail and then slit the body lengthwise, to one side of the tough white stomach scales. The long tubular stomach itself produced a handful of tiny white bones toward the snake’s tail—probably part of a desert rat that had wandered too close several days earlier.

Reluctantly we returned to our feet, and the desert. The sun was at its highest, and as we walked in the trough between two shimmering mountainsides the temperature rose alarmingly. When we stopped for water the wind was too hot, like the breath of some great animal. Only three people, I noticed, had any water left in their jugs. But there was nothing to be gained by worrying, and gratitude was due when the wind stopped, gratitude for the long sleeves that covered my skin.

My concern over what seemed a long detour in the wrong direction melted into affection for Genaro when we arrived at an abandoned well. I later found this well on a topographic map of the area; Genaro had simply been shown it years earlier by another crosser, and remembered the spot. Inocencio, light and small, descended dark steps on the wall of the well to the water level, some thirty feet down. From there he refilled the empty water jugs we dropped and carried them back up, two at a time. As the sun fell low in the sky, we once again found ourselves on the flat desert floor, having crossed over two more mountains. Feet were heavy now, and the going slower. We became aware of a highway in the distance, perhaps a quarter mile away, and began to walk a line midway between it and the mountain range, heading toward a little bump of a hill separate from all the others.

When we were near enough the small hill to see two huts partway up, Genaro and Plácido stopped. Two envoys, Jesús and Plácido, were selected to go on alone, toward the huts. These dwellings, I later learned, were part of the hamlet of Gu Vo; we had crossed into the reservation. Topography had been our only map. The walking, now, was almost over—it was known that the Indians could arrange transportation the rest of the way to Phoenix. To keep inconspicuous, the rest of us waited for our emissaries to return.

The two came back at sunset, to report they had set up a ride for the next day; in the meantime we would have to wait it out. Jesús suggested that I simply hitchhike the rest of the way to Phoenix, an option unavailable to them. It would be good for me—I would save $200—and, though he didn’t say it, it might be good for them, since they wouldn’t have to explain me to the
coyotes,
whoever they turned out to be. But I demurred: having come this far, the money wasn’t so big a deal, and I was by now fairly confident of my disguise—hooded sweatshirt, baseball cap, and, if necessary, Victor’s very ethnic-looking woolen
serape
to drape over my shoulders. I wanted to go all the way, I said, and there was no objection.

The night was very cold. When it was dark we crossed the road we had paralleled and circled a hill until we came to a thicket. There we lay down—though, because I was dawdling, I almost didn’t get a place under the blanket. I had to resort to the tactics of latecomers, simply lying down on the compact row of bodies and hoping two of them would part to create room for me. When finally I did scrunch in, it was amidst all the butt-fuck jokes that always accompanied the front-to-back, spoonlike sleeping arrangement. More guys fit under the blanket this way than any other, and more surface area was warmed by other bodies than in any other arrangement ... but it seemed even Mexicans were embarrassed, in their way, to be this close. That evening the pressure from people on either end, trying to get in under the edges of the blanket, made a slot in the middle extremely uncomfortable. I got a muscle cramp from someone’s knee pressing into the back of my leg, and then felt an overwhelming need to urinate. Either one of these problems might have been tolerated alone, but together they called for action. I squeezed out and into the freezing air, did my business, and then tried to get back in. But the slot had closed up, and my pleading evoked only sleepy grumbles. I tried to burrow in under the legs, but came away with a face full of dirt and a semiconscious boot in the ribs. Frustrated and freezing, I got up and paced around.