The Long Road North
Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and snakebite plague the journey of the wetback, but there’s only one danger that counts.
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“Nada,” Juan said and showed empty hands.
Rodrigo turned his back on them. Hector and the two men looked from Javier to Rodrigo and back to see who would give. The tension mounted until Javier repeated, “I promise, it’s all I have.”
“Then give me the money,” Rodrigo relented.
They slid slowly down the bank on their heels to the boat, which had three crossboards for seats. Rodrigo stationed the two brothers and their belongings at either end and climbed into the middle seat. Before telling Hector to push them out, he studied the dense trees and brush on the opposite bank for movement. The mile of river they could see from bend to bend was clear, and the silence revealed no warning hum of Border Patrol surveillance plane or patrol boat. Hector shoved the boat into the swirling brown water, and Rodrigo dug in with oars made of plywood squares nailed to long sticks. With each heavy stroke, the two ends of the boat twisted at the welded seam, but by keeping within shelter of the bank, Rodrigo managed to row against the current without the two hoods splitting apart. The boat moved laboriously upstream until Rodrigo lifted the left oar and dug hard with the right to swing the boat into the current, and then dug with both oars to propel them across the forty yards of river before it could sweep them too far downstream. Javier started to speak, but Rodrigo hushed him—a voice carries too far on water—and there was only the steady thunk of the oars in the notches cut into the side of the boat.
The prow of the boat hit bank at the edge of a canebrake and the two brothers scrambled out into ankle-deep mud. Rodrigo handed up their bags and Juan shoved the boat back into the current. Staggering from the weight of the mud on their boots, they crashed through the cane to dry ground and pushed their way up an overgrown ravine to a dry bank, where Javier sat down to slice thick wedges of mud off the bottom of his boots with a stick. He handed the stick to Juan and, breathing hard, whispered, “We have to get away from the river fast. No more noise.” He stood, swung the plastic shopping bag counterbalanced by the weight of the canvas bag over his shoulder, and started north.
The heat of the river bottom was oppressive. The trees and brush gave off more humidity than shade, and the lack of breeze was claustrophobic. Following behind, Juan noticed Javier’s dark brown shirt beginning to soak black and the empty water container bouncing loose in the plastic shopping bag. From the top of a steep dirt bluff, beyond a barbed-wire fence and dirt road that ran along the rim, they could see flat pastureland, and below, a curving sweep of river and the lower Mexican bank. Javier stepped on a fence wire and jumped over. Juan followed and they sprinted across the road and through the open part of the pasture to the cover of a clump of mesquite trees. The ground was clear and they wove quickly through the mesquite until they came to another fence that separated the pasture from a field of corn. Again they jumped the fence and ran crouching between two rows of corn to the next fence. The midday sun was fierce in the open field and they were both covered with sweat and panting for breath. The next pasture, where they spooked a small herd of cows, brought them uncomfortably near a farmhouse. They circled away through the mesquite, crossed another fence, and kept going until they heard the clear whine of pickup tires on hot asphalt.
Breathing hard, Javier came to a halt beneath a large mesquite tree where he dropped his bags and sprawled on the ground. “Carretera,” he rasped, and nodded toward the highway when Juan dropped beside him; he was so dry, the cotton was edging out in gray flecks at the corner of his mouth. Juan sat fanning himself with his white hat and staring as Javier rummaged in his canvas bag and took out the compass to check directions. Sure they were going north, Javier climbed the mesquite as high as its limbs would take him and looked out toward the road. A car whined past and when it disappeared, he dropped back to the ground. “We have to cross a bridge,” he said, and swung his bags over his shoulder.
Through the tops of the mesquite they could see a taller line of cottonwood and sycamore indicating a creek. Thick brush protected their approach to the bridge and from its base they saw the water still running muddy from the storm. Javier dropped his bags at the foot of a concrete rampart. “Stay here,” he whispered when Juan started to follow him down to the creek. Juan sat down and watched Javier crouch beyond a clump of willow to fill the water container. From above, he could see a large black water moccasin uncoil in the willow and slide into the water.
“Did you see the snake?” Juan asked when Javier handed up the jug.
“I wish it were the last!” he answered. His baseball cap was tilted back, his face was wet, and drops of water hung in the sparse hairs of his moustache and goatee. He watched Juan drink the brown water from the jug. When Juan finished, Javier refilled the jug and put it in his shopping bag. “One at a time, we cross the bridge,” he instructed. You come. Listen for cars.” On all fours he crawled up the rampart to the bridge. As he was about to haul himself over the concrete railing, they heard a diesel semitrailer. He squatted down and waited for the truck to swoop thunderously past and drone into the distance. Grinning at Juan, he pulled his ball cap snug, climbed over the railing, and ran crouching across the bridge. In turn, Juan did the same.
On the far side of the bridge, Javier was waiting out of sight at the bottom of the road’s embankment. Juan waded down through knee-deep grass, they crossed the fence, and started through another pasture. The grass gave way to a hard sandy crust shaded by mesquite trees where they picked up the parallel tracks of a road. Javier looked back and stopped when he noticed Juan walking in one of the sandy tracks. “Step on the grass,” he said. “You won’t leave footprints.” He turned and walked on.
The terrain began to change to hard rocky ground cut with shallow gullies and covered with low-lying scrub brush. Without the cover of mesquite trees, they were exposed to the hot sky. Looking for relief, Javier cut away from the road through the thickest stand of brush until he came to an eroded ditch. At a clump of scrub oak that spanned the ditch the two men dropped in, crawled in the shade, and got out the water jug. By now it was midafternoon.
“What do you think?” he asked his younger brother.
“It’s not so bad,” Juan answered.
“We haven’t begun.”
Javier took a can of sardines out of the net shopping bag and cut it open with a pocketknife. He put a piece of white bread on his palm, laid a large Mexican sardine on the bread, poured a little tomato sauce from the can, and rolled it up like a tortilla.
After they finished the sardines and half the loaf of bread, they drank more water and smoked a cigarette. Javier took the dark green velvet jacket out of his canvas bag and draped it over his head and ball cap to keep off the black flies, then leaned back against the ditch wall. “Rest!” he said from behind the dark veil and snuggled his body against the ground.
Juan tilted his white hat over his eyes and crossed his arms, but a rock beneath his shoulder, then the flies, and finally Javier’s heavy breathing distracted him. He crawled up on the edge of the ditch to stretch out flat, found that more comfortable, and dozed off. He woke to the sound of a four-wheel-drive vehicle winding through the brush. Not thinking they could have been seen in the brush, but remembering his footsteps in the road, he cautiously slipped back into the ditch where Javier slept soundly. A pickup door slammed, a dog barked, and he heard a man’s voice. In the ensuing silence, Juan sat in the ditch and stared down at the ground before him. Next to a dry leaf on the sand, movement focused his eyes on a scorpion scuttling his way. Meditatively, listening to the silence, Juan picked up a twig and stuck the end of it in the scorpion’s path. Violently, the scorpion swung the stinger at the end of its long tail over its back at the twig, turned and crabbed in the opposite direction. Again Juan blocked it with the twig, and again the scorpion swung its stinger and turned. Each time intercepted, the scorpion ran back and forth in the silence, back and forth as the truck started and wound away into the brush, back and forth across the sand until Juan crushed it with the twig.
Javier breathed more deeply beneath his dark veil until abruptly, he pulled away his jacket and blinked.
“I dreamed I was snoring and the dream woke me up.”
“It was no dream,” Juan said.
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