I am not afraid.
That is what I tell myself.
Just after midnight, five hundred meters from the border fence, I keep still, squatting on the ground beneath a mesquite tree. Buried in the sand are motion sensors and infrared cameras.
My name is Victor Castillo. I am 13 years old.
Back home, in my village, a man warned me not to do this.
You are looking for el cielo. Heaven. But you will find only el infierno. Hell.
Still, I am not afraid. In a matter of minutes, I will be in the United States. By breakfast time, I will be with my Aunt Luisa in a little California town called Ocotillo. She is a nurse, but an even better cook. The best huevos rancheros in the world. Homemade tortillas, the eggs not too runny, the red sauce spiked with jalapenos. We will have a cry about my mother, then mi tia will put me on a bus to Minnesota, where my father works in the sugar beet fields.
But first, there is the fence. It slithers down a rocky slope and disappears between distant boulders, like an endless snake. We move from the cover of the trees to a ravine filled with desert marigolds. I hope the golden flowers are a good omen. We climb out of the ravine and up to the fence, the links glowing like silver bullets in the moonlight. The man who calls himself El Leon – “The Lion” – snips at the metal with wire cutters. He wears all black and his long hair is slick with brilliantine.
In the States, they would call El Leon a coyote. In Mexico, he is a pollero, a chicken wrangler. Which makes the rest of us – Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans – the pollos. The chickens. Hopefully, not cooked chickens. If we are caught and turned back, I don’t know what I will do. All my mother’s savings are paying for my passage
The wire cutters fly from El Leon’s hands, and he curses in Spanish.
This is taking too long.
Above us, a three-quarter moon is the color of milk. Under our feet, the earth is hard as pavement. Somewhere, on the other side of the fence, La Migra, the Border Patrol, waits. I listen for the whoppeta of a helicopter or the growl of a truck.
El Leon, please hurry!
He keeps snipping and cursing. I sit on my haunches, inhaling the smell of coal tar from the creosote bushes. From a pocket in my backpack, I take out a photograph of my mother, her face pale in the moonlight.
El Leon works quickly now, the links cra-acking like bones breaking. Finally, he says, “You first, chico.”
I duck through the opening, then hold the wire for a Honduran girl. Maybe I should say a Honduran “woman,” because she is pregnant, her stomach a basketball under her turquoise blouse. But she is probably only sixteen or seventeen and is traveling alone, and she looks too young and too scared to take care of a child. On her feet, huarches, sandals made from old tire tread. I hope she can keep up with us. A selfish thought, I realize, and immediately feel ashamed. My mother taught me better.
The pregnant girl places two hands on her stomach, bends over, and squeezes through the fence. Following her are two campesinos from Oaxaca who smell like wet straw. The men wear felt Tejana hats, cowboy boots, and long-sleeve plaid work shirts. Then the rest, fourteen in all.
Ten minutes later, we are climbing a dusty path, moonbeams turning the arms of cholla cactus into the spiny wings of monsters.
Los Estados Unidos. I am here!
Do I feel different, changed in some way? I am not sure. The rocks on the ground and the stars in the sky all look the same as in Mexico. Maybe mi mami is looking down at me from those stars. Her weak lungs gave out five days ago, and I recited the oraciones por las almas over her grave.
“Let me see her again in the joy of everlasting brightness.”
The stars have “everlasting brightness,” so yes, I pretend she watches me, even though I never believed half of what the priests said.
I travel alone to find my father. My two older brothers have been with papi for nearly a year, carrying their weeding hoes all the way from our village in Sonora to a town called Breckenridge in Minnesota. Beets, strawberries, cabbage. Melons, corn, peas. Whatever is in season and requires hands close to the ground. The work is hard, but the pay is good, at least by Mexican standards.
Now we walk along a rocky path that crawls up the side of a hill sprouting with stubby cactus like an old man who needs a shave. El Leon yells at two Mexican sisters, calls them parlanchinas – chatterboxes – tells them to keep quiet. He has a rifle slung over a shoulder. But why? Who would he shoot?
The older sister is still babbling, something about every house in California having a swimming pool, when El Leon hisses, “¡Cállense la boca!”
He cocks his head toward the hill. I hear something, too.
A clopping.
Growing louder. Horses!
A gunshot echoes off the hillside.
“Vigilantes!” El Leon yells.
My stomach tightens. Our village priest warned me about the vigilantes. Not policemen. Or National Guard. Or Border Patrol. Private citizens, gabachos, calling themselves the Patriot Patrol. Maybe protecting their country or maybe just taking target practice with their friends. Maybe one day shooting Mexicans instead of road signs and cactus.
“Run!” El Leon screams.
But where? On one side of the path, a steep upward slope. On the other, a creviced, dry wash.
The two campesinos leap into the wash and take off, the spines of prickly pear tearing at their pant legs. El Leon leads the others back toward the border. But I cannot follow them. ¡Mi papi está en los Estados Unidos!
I scramble up the steep slope, grabbing vines, pulling myself hand-over-hand. The horses are so close now I can hear their hooves kicking up rocks on the path. “Yippee ti-yi-yo, greasers!” A gabacho’s voice. Gruff and mean.
Two men on horseback in chaps, boots, and cowboy hats. One man holds a large revolver over his head and fires into the air.
“Git on back to Meh-ee-co! Look at ’em run, Calvin.”
Calvin, a big man with a belly flopping over his jeans, coughs up a laugh. “Whoa, what do we got here, Woody? Looks like a piñata on Michelins.”
I see her then, too. The pregnant Honduran girl in her tire-tread huarches, trying to hide in the shadow of the hill.
“Someone aims to have herself an anchor baby,” Calvin says.
I know what the man means. Anyone born on this side of the border is automatically an American citizen. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Mexico, Guatemala, or Mars. If el Diablo himself fathered a child in Los Angeles, the unholy offspring would be an American.
“Welfare and food stamps and diapers all on the taxpayer’s dime.” Woody spits out the words.
Gripping a vine at its root, I keep still. Afraid to dislodge a stone. Afraid the gabachos will see me. And ashamed of my fear.
On the path below me, the girl tries to run back toward the border, but the best she can do is a duck waddles. The two men cackle and whoop. Calvin grabs a lariat from his saddle. “Where you goin’ chica? The amnesty bus already left the station.”
He twirls the lariat and tosses it over the girl’s head, where it settles on her chest. He pulls it tight, nearly yanking her off her feet.
“No!” she screams, clawing at the rope. “¡Mi bebé!”
“If there really is a kid…” Calvin hops off his horse. “Let’s have a look, chica.”
He struts toward her, bowlegged, his belly jiggling over his wide belt,
which is studded with silver buttons.
I want to fly down the mountain and take the gun away. If they give me any trouble, I will shoot one in the kneecap and the other in his big, fat belly. Isn’t that what a valiente – a courageous man – would do? Take any risk, fight any foe, protect the weak, punish the wicked. But I am a boy. And they are grown men with guns.
“You with that coyote calls himself ‘El Leon?'” Calvin demands
The girl’s head bobs up and down.
“El Leon’s a narcotraficante. You carrying his cocaina instead of a kid? You a mule?”
“No! Mi bebé!”
“C’mon. He always uses kids and women to carry his drugs.”
“Not me. ¡Te lo juro por Dios!”
Calvin slips the lariat off the girl, then yanks up her blouse.
Even from this distance, I can see her bulging stomach, creamy white in the moonlight.
“She ain’t lying,” he says to Woody, patting the girl’s belly. “Maybe we should deliver the baby right now. Save the county some money.”
The girl screams.
“You got a knife, Woody?”
“You know I do. Bowie knife.”
I must do something, but what? My arms feel like they’re dipped in boiling water. I try to get a better grip on the vine, but it tears from the dry earth. I dig my sneakers into the slope.
Calvin says, “Who’s gonna operate?”
“You do it, Woody. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
The girl chants in Spanish. Asks God to take her own life but save her baby.
I do not expect God to answer her prayers. He did not answer mine when my mother was sick. It is up to me.
Can a valiente be afraid?
I tell myself yes. If he acts with courage, despite the fear.
I grip the vine with my left hand, pick up a rock with my right. Round and jagged, the size of a baseball. I throw the rock at Woody, the gabacho still on his horse. It sails past the man’s head, clunks into the dry wash.
“What the hell!” Woody turns in the saddle, faces the slope, revolver in hand.
“Up here, pendejos!” I yell.
“It’s a kid,” Calvin says, pointing. “Right there, Woody.”
“C’mon down here, you little jumping bean,” Woody orders.
“Come and get me, culero!” I throw another rock, adjusting for the downward arc. Woody never sees it coming out of the darkness, and it plunks his shoulder. He yelps and his horse does a little dance under him. He turns the revolver toward the slope and fires. A bullet pings off a boulder. Not even close. I think maybe he is not such a good shot.
“I work for El Leon!” I yell, waving my backpack in the air. As if I’m carrying cocaine and not just a pair of jeans, three t-shirts, and a first baseman’s mitt.
“Little greaser’s the mule!” Calvin sounds as if he’s just made a great discovery. Now, I think maybe the men are not too smart, either.
“I may be a mule, but you’re nothing but chicken-hearted bandidos!”
I start up the slope again, clawing at rocks to make my way.
“Stop, you little punk!”
I keep going, hoping they will try to follow.
Another gunshot ricochets off a boulder far over my head.
“C’mon down here, you little peckerwood!” Woody shouts. “Give us the coke and we’ll let you go.”
I reach the top of the slope and look down toward the vigilantes. “So long, pendejos!”
“Go around that way, Cal,” Woody orders, tugging the reins and pointing into the darkness. “We’ll meet up on the far side.”
The vigilantes turn their horses and take off in opposite directions. They will try to cut me off on the other side of the hill. And they may succeed. But at least, they have left the girl alone. I glance one last time down the slope. The girl waves and says something to me I cannot hear, but in my head, I think she is chanting a blessing for me. I wave back and scramble on hands and knees over the top of the hill.
Minutes later, I am stumbling in the dark, tripping over roots and trying to avoid prickly pear with spines as long and sharp as porcupine quills. The slope becomes too steep, and I slide part way down on my butt, ripping my pants, and scraping my hands. Near the bottom, I stop and listen for the sound of horses or the shouts of angry men.
But what I hear is a wail. A cry of pain.
“Broke my damn ankle, Woody. Can’t put an ounce of weight on it.”
“Hang in there Cal.”
I peek around a stand of organ pipe cactus. Two horses, but only one man. Woody is bent over the edge of a cliff, his hands yanking at his lariat, which is stretched taut. “Damn rope’s fouled in the rocks.”
“Git it loose, Woody. Hurry! Jesus, ankle’s swole up and hurts like hell.”
Calvin’s voice, raw with pain, coming from over the side. The vigilantes must have stopped here and gotten off the horses. The big man never saw the cliff. Now he was over the side.
It is more than I could have hoped for. A perfect distraction. I can work my way around them in the darkness. I can get away.
Then I hear Woody moan. “Damn, it hurts like a sumbitch. I might pass out, Cal.”
“Hang with me, man!”
“Gonna die out here.” Woody starts to sob. Great, wracking sobs that seem to echo off the rocks and boulders.
Why don’t I just sneak past them? I don’t know. Sometimes we do things without ever knowing exactly why.
“You can’t get the rope free that way,” I say to Calvin as I come up behind him.
Startled, he wheels around. “Ain’t your business, chico. Git out of here.”
“I can rope down the cliff.”
“What the hell you talking about?”
“Rappelling. Rock climbing. I’ve done it back home.” I look over the side of the cliff. Woody sits on a ledge about 20 feet below us. The rope is stuck in a crevice maybe 15 feet from him. “I’ll work the rope out, walk it along the cliff face till I reach your friend.”
Calvin looks at me as if he thinks I might steal his wallet. “Why would you help?”
“Because somebody has to.”
He seems to think about this a moment.
“After you pull him up, drop the rope back to me,” I tell the man.
“You trust me to do that, kid?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Okay, then,” he says, just as an orange streak of the sun appears over the mountains to the east.
I rappel down the face of the cliff. Seconds later, I am working the rope out of a slot between two rocks. Once it is free, I wrap the rope around my waist, hold on with both hands, and bounce-walk along the face of the cliff until I reach the ledge.
“Thanks. You’re a good kid.” Woody winces in pain as I hand him the rope. Up close, he looks older and not as fierce as he did from so far away. His face is slick with sweat. His puffy cheeks have a gray stubble and his breath smells of tobacco and beer.
He is able to put weight on one leg and use it against the cliff face. Huffing, puffing, and cursing, Calvin pulls him up. A few moments later, I reach the surface just as Woody painfully struggles to get back on his horse.
Calvin looks down at the ground, kicks at the dust. Seems like he wants to say something. Sorry, maybe. But he can’t quite get it out.
“You’re not a drug mule, are you kid?” he says, finally
I shake my head. “I just didn’t want you to…”
“We never would have hurt that girl. Just meant to scare her into going back home, tell her friends to stay put.”
“Where you headed?” Woody asks.
“Ocotillo. My aunt lives there.”
“We got a truck couple miles over if you want a lift. Ocotillo’s on our way to the hospital.” He says it softly. Sounding a little embarrassed, wishing he had more to offer.
“My Aunt Luisa’s a nurse. She can take a look at that ankle.”
Woody doesn’t take me up on the offer.
“Mi tia can make us all breakfast,” I say, trying again. “She’s a great cook.”
The sun is an orange fireball, fully above the distant mountains now.
The men don’t look like vigilantes any more. Ordinary guys with creased, tired faces. They exchange bashful looks.
“Do you like huevos rancheros?” I ask.
“Love it,” Calvin says.
“No better breakfast on either side of the border,” Woody agrees.
“So?” I ask.
There is no more meanness in the men’s faces. “What are we waiting for?” Calvin says. “I’m hungry as hell.”
I do something I haven’t done since crossing the border. I smile.
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