The Long Road North
Hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and snakebite plague the journey of the wetback, but there’s only one danger that counts.
(Page 5 of 6)
Javier shook his head with sleepy amusement and then noticed his wristwatch. “Four o’clock! Two hours I slept!”
“You’re sleeping a lot,” Juan commented.
“I wonder why,” Javier said as he sat up. And then with irony, “I guess because it’s my vacation.”
Javier checked the compass, and they drank more water before crawling out of the ditch. Beyond the fence, the land turned stony and the low rolling hills were covered with an unbroken thicket of brush. Parting the way with a cedar stick he had picked up at the fence, Javier waded in, Juan following. Thorns snagged each step, and stones, unseen beneath the foliage, staggered them. The brush rolled from swell to swell; the dark green troughs of blackbrush and ironwood were dappled with ashen ceniza and reefs of pale prickly pear, and the crests were light green with fernlike guajillo. Above, white blocks of cumulus marched east toward the Gulf and a late afternoon breeze rippled the surface of green.
Within the brush, the ground held the afternoon heat. Javier’s shirt soaked black with perspiration; their accumulated scratches stung with sweat. They held the shopping bags before them like shields, but the constant nag of thorns was inescapable. The first variation in the landscape, a short caliche ledge, forced them down into a trough of huisache. In the pallid light below the bushes they saw a skeletal lattice of pale branches and a long ditch of stagnant water. The ground was sodden caliche, and white clay clung to their boots miring each step. Slipping and staggering, goaded by moist suffocation, they forced their way through the thicket until the ditch dried and they were able to climb the opposite bank.
Climbing out, Juan stumbled and grabbed a bunch of blackbrush, driving three of the long straight thorns into his palm. He gave the branch a careful yank to pluck out the spines and then watched as three drops of dark blood formed at the punctures.
Thirsty, tired, red in the face, they pushed through the brush. At the top of a swell, they saw a small cloud of dust moving along the ground from east to west and, as it came closer, heard the crunch of tires on gravel.
The ground had been cleared for fifty feet on either side of a dirt road, increasing the danger of exposure. At the edge, they listened for traffic before dashing across the open space, crossing the fence, the road, another fence, and back into the brush. They kept going through the thinner secondary growth until Javier dropped his bags in a clearing on a slight rise and sat down in the evening shadow of a mesquite tree. Juan sank to the ground, Javier took out the jug, and they both drank. Due east on the horizon, near the road, they could see a windmill. Javier unbuttoned his soaked shirt and flapped the breeze to dry it. “This is going to smell,” he grimaced. And then noticing that Juan was relatively dry, “Why don’t you sweat?”
“Too thirsty,” he answered.
Javier handed him the jug and watched him tilt it for another swallow. A layer of silt approached the neck of the jug as Juan drank. Javier asked him, “Now, what do you think? Think we’ll make it?”
Juan handed him the jug and shrugged.
“At any rate, we’ve had luck,” Javier said. “The little airplane hasn’t seen us.” He took another swallow of the water and then handed it to Juan. When Juan finished, the jug was essentially empty.
“Where do we get more water?” Juan asked.
“Windmills,” Javier answered.
“That one?” Juan pointed to the one in view.
“It’s too far out of the way. We’ll come to others.”
“Yes?”
“There are thirteen before Carrizo. With luck, we will sleep next to one tonight.” Javier took the compass out of his bag and checked directions. A light evening breeze had begun to blow and the sun’s rays were beginning to lose their intensity. “Let’s walk,” Javier said, and got to his feet. “These are the good hours.”
And on they went, one step after another, Javier always in front carrying a cedar stick he’d picked up, Juan just behind wearing his white plastic hat. They never complained and rarely remarked the armadillos and rabbits that crossed their path.
Two more roads and they came to a windmill. They opened the tap beneath the storage tank, let the water run clear, and Javier leaned down to drink. Juan drank as much of the salty water as he could and they took turns holding their heads beneath the stream and running the cool water over their hands and arms. Javier took off his soaked brown shirt, rinsed it, and stored it in the net shopping bag. He put on a dark green shirt he’d been carrying in his canvas bag, they filled the jug with water, and, as there was another hour of light, checked the compass and moved on.
The sun neared the dark horizon, its long rays refracting pink on remnants of cloud: the sky turned an intense and late blue. In the last light, they crossed another dirt road. In the secondary growth of mesquite beyond it, Javier picked out a cleared spot that looked relatively snake-free. The sun touched the edge of the horizon and abruptly, as at sea, was gone.
The two brothers sat on the ground beneath the lilac sky eating refried beans spread thick on pieces of white bread. Juan had discovered that either the jug of water had leaked or Javier’s wet shirt had soaked the bread, but after considering spreading the slices out to dry overnight with the shirt, they went ahead and ate the bread wet. With their boots they stamped out places on the ground to sleep. Javier put on his velvet jacket and they both lay down on the ground, their heads resting on their bags. In the dark, his back to Javier, Juan asked, “The life in San Antonio: is it a good life?”
Javier thought a moment before answering, “It’s work.”
“But it’s better than Mexico.”
“Harder than Mexico. More work. That’s all it is—work.”
“But you have a car.”
“To go to work.” Javier raised himself on one elbow to speak more clearly, “Everyone who goes thinks he’ll make lots of money; that he’ll have a chance. But you never have a chance.”
“Then why are you going?”
“Who knows,” Javier said. “For the chance.”
Javier lay back and didn’t speak again. After a moment, his body jerked once and Juan could sense his falling asleep. In the night air, after the day’s heat, it was suddenly cool, and Juan pushed his back to Javier’s for warmth. The last thing he heard before dropping off was a high-pitched chorus of coyotes singing in the brush.
A quarter moon rose at eleven. At twelve, they started walking again. The dark shiny leaves of the blackbrush and ironwood reflected the pale light, and the ceniza stood spectral. From the contour of the brush and the feel of the cedar stick, Javier was able to guide them through. When the ground was rough, he warned Juan. When the brush was eye-level thorny, he held it back with the stick. They watched the sky to set their course and stopped often to light matches and look at the compass. What relief there was from the heat was negated by the insecurity of each step.
At a thicket of prickly pear, they veered to the east to try to outflank it, but, after pushing through dense brush, were stopped by an arm of the thicket. They backtracked and forced their way to the west, but again found themselves outflanked. The prickly pear appeared to encircle them, as if like fish they had swum into a trap. Within the thicket, the brush and the dark prevented their seeing where they had entered, and they were unable to gauge the depth of the prickly pear they would have to penetrate. Slightly disoriented, Javier checked the compass and then sighted a narrow indentation to the north. He placed the end of his cedar stick against a branch of the obtruding cactus and pushed until it broke with a vegetable crunch and fell out of the way. With the end of the cedar stick, he slowly and patiently punched a narrow hole through a four-foot-high wall of prickly pear and on they went.
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