The Long Road North
Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and snakebite plague the journey of the wetback, but there’s only one danger that counts.
(Page 3 of 6)
“Perhaps you have a cigarette you can give me?” Hector asked. Javier took out his pack, gave Hector and Juan each a cigarette, and took one himself. He started to sit down at the table beneath the awning after they had lighted the cigarettes. “Not here,” Hector stopped him. “Sometimes the federales come; you had better hide in the bushes.” He led them beyond the circle of trash and into the mesquite, where three men sat at the edge of a clearing around a washed-out campfire. Two of the men had paper bags at their sides and the third a black plastic shaving kit. “They’re going too,” Hector said by way of introduction, and the three men nodded. Javier and Juan dropped their bags in the ring of ashes and sat down on the ground in the long shadows of the mesquite trees. “Very soon and Rodrigo will be here,” Hector assured them one last time before going back to the shack.
They watched Hector leave and then Javier asked the men where they came from. “Veracruz—donde no vale la vida,” the round-faced man sitting in the middle answered for the three. “And you?”
“Jalisco,” Javier echoed. “Where life has no value.” Javier stretched out on the ground, put his canvas bag beneath his head, and pulled a weed to chew on. “How long have you been waiting here?”
“Since midday,” the same man answered. “What time is it now?”
Javier looked at his wristwatch. “Four o’clock.” To the west he could see cumulus clouds building as if for the sunset.
“Rodrigo is probably getting drunk somewhere,” the man speculated. “The skinny one with the eyes said they took nine this morning.”
“Nine,” Javier repeated. “That’s a good business.”
“Yes, but it’s not a regular harvest.”
“It never is,” Javier agreed. “You’ve been before?”
“Yes, but not the others,” the man answered.
“Then you’re the one that knows the way?”
“I can look at the sky and tell which way is north.”
“That’s good,” Javier said and pulled the long stem of the weed through his teeth to shred it. “The first time I went, one of us had a compass. We walked for three days and came to a big river. At last we thought we were getting out of the brush. We were so happy. We spent most of a morning looking for a place to cross before we realized it was the Rio Grande.”
“You walked in a circle,” the man said.
“That’s right,” Javier smiled. “The one with the compass didn’t know how to read it. Like idiots, we almost crossed back into Mexico.”
“But you made it.”
“Barely,” Javier sat up, stretched, and then propped up on one elbow. “Just barely.”
“How many days did it take?”
“Eleven to San Antonio. We almost starved in the brush before we got to Carrizo and had to stop at a ranch and work for food. They gave us each two dollars for three days of cutting mesquite posts and said if we didn’t leave they would call la emigración.”
“Be glad they didn’t need more posts. You would have worked more days for the same amount of money.”
“True,” Javier said and sat up farther. Gazing toward the man, he had noticed that beneath the cuffs of his green polyester trousers hung a set of plaid double-knit cuffs. The two other men also had double sets of cuffs hanging above their boots. “You’re wearing two pair of pants,” Javier observed.
The three men looked down at their cuffs and then up. “For the snakes,” the man in the middle explained.
“They must be bad now.”
“Perhaps the rain makes them crawl up in the trees to stay dry.”
Javier studied the mesquite around them for signs of snakes and concluded, “That way they would strike us in the face or on the arms, rather than on our boots.” Juan shifted uneasily, attracting Javier’s attention. “Are you frightened?” Javier asked.
“Psssh,” Juan exhaled genuine disgust and turned away.
“The last time,” the man in the middle went on, “we found a corpse. Snake-bit, we decided.”
“Many say they’ve seen bodies. Thank god, I never have.”
Hector reappeared to say that Rodrigo would be there any minute. Impatient, the man in the middle got up and said they would walk further up the river to see if anyone else had a boat. “Rodrigo comes and you’re not here,” Hector warned, “he won’t wait for you. He’ll be angry that you left.” The man shrugged; the three of them picked up their belongings and started for the road.
Javier watched them go, then lay back down, resting his head on the canvas bag. “If we cross by sunset,” he said, “that’s soon enough.” He pulled the brim of his baseball cap over his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
It was dusk when they heard the pickup. There was honking, then shouting and drunken laughter. Confident it wasn’t federales, Javier and Juan picked up their bags and walked out toward the road. In the half-light, they could see a blur of activity between the shack and an old truck. Hector, when he saw them, brought Rodrigo out to talk. Powerfully built, dressed completely in black, Rodrigo acted as surly as he looked. “You want to cross,” he said, and hitched his pants higher. When he opened his mouth, splayed, tusklike teeth sprouted from his upper gum.
Yes, they wanted to cross, Javier answered politely.
“You can pay?” he looked them over as if it might be by the pound.
Yes, Javier answered, they could pay.
“Tomorrow morning when it gets light, I’ll take you across. You can sleep tonight behind the warehouse.”
Javier and Juan sat on the warehouse loading dock and ate a can of refried beans. Above them they could hear bats swoop, and before them the tops of six-foot-tall sunflowers swayed at the edge of the dock. Juan reached for the empty milk container and started to get up. “Where are you going?” Javier asked.
“To ask for water.”
“Don’t ask them for anything. If they don’t rob us, we’ll be lucky. Let them forget we’re here.”
At the edge of sleep, Javier heard someone on the steps to the dock. Hector came toward them carrying a large bundle. “You want these?” he said and dropped a couple of blankets. They spread one blanket beneath them and pulled the other over. “Tonight,” Javier said happily as dirt sprinkled onto them from the blanket, “we sleep like the president.”
Javier woke with the first gray light. He sat on the dock and watched the shack. A rooster crowed, but the shack remained silent. The sun rose and Javier lay back down to wait. When he woke again, Rodrigo was climbing the steps to the dock. He squatted down in a friendly way at the end of their blankets. “How much money do you have?” he asked.
“Twenty.”
“Each?” he said and sucked his upper lip down over his teeth.
“Together,” Javier answered.
As if annoyed, Rodrigo ran a hand through his wavy hair. On his forearm, a lopsided “lov you” was scratched with blue ink. “You think I can take you for that?”
“It’s all we have,” Javier replied.
“You’ll have to give me more—a wristwatch or something of value,” Rodrigo said and left the dock without waiting for a response.
Thirty minutes later, Hector appeared to say they should follow him. Carrying their plastic shopping bags, they trotted behind him across the road and through a cornfield toward the river. Overhead, the sun had broken through the morning haze. The damp ground was steaming. They came out of the field onto a road that turned toward the river. From behind, they heard horses and saw Rodrigo approaching in a wagon, which contained a boat. Hitched to two red nags, the wooden relic, adapted with tires, was too large for the horses, but bolting, eyes rolling, they caught up with Javier and Juan and forced them off the road.
Hector led the two brothers down a path into a ravine where they could see Rodrigo waiting on a small knoll next to the now-empty wagon. The boat—which was actually two automobile hoods welded together—floated below in the water. As if barring their way, Rodrigo stood to face them. “How much can you pay me?” he started over.
“Twenty dollars,” Javier repeated.
“That’s not enough,” Rodrigo said angrily. “I take la raza across; I help la raza. It’s a good thing I do, but I must be paid. If caught, I go to prison and my family starves.”
“It’s all I have.”
“What about your wristwatch? What kind is it?”
Javier looked at the dial. “Timex. It’s old but I need it. I can’t give it to you.”
Rodrigo scowled at Juan. “What about you?”
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