Crossing the Wire (15 page)

R
ICO AND
I
WALKED
along the embankment above the river. It was a small stream with clear, cold water, trout darting here and there. After all this time and all we went through together, I thought, I still don't understand my friend. Why is he so unhappy?

It was a beautiful evening in the park in Dayton, Washington. Everything was green as could be. A breeze was blowing through the cottonwood trees. The long days of searing heat in the desert were almost hard to imagine. We could hear the cheerful shouts of kids playing in the nearby swimming pool. Whatever was knitting Rico's eyebrows together was a mystery to me.

I set out our comida on the table: chicken, small plastic tubs of beans, noodles, and chili peppers, a large Coke for me and a large Dr. Pepper for him. “I'm looking forward to working in the orchards,” I said. “They say you get to eat the ones that drop. Eat till you explode.”

“I'm not so sure about the orchards,” Rico replied.

I had a bad feeling about what this might mean. At least he seemed willing to talk. “What else would we do, 'mano?”

“I'm thinking about doing something completely different,” he said.

“Like what? We're making good money!”

“I'm not very good at field work, just like you predicted when I first told you I was going north.”

“I never said you wouldn't be good. I just said you wouldn't
like
it.”

“I've been thinking about school,” Rico said.

“School? How? Even if they let you go to school here, how would you support yourself?”

“Not here, Victor. I'm talking about school back in Silao. I'm thinking about going back to live with my sister.”

I was stunned. “After all we've been through, with good money to be made here? Did I miss something? Did you fall off that mountain ledge and land on your head?”

Finally, I'd gotten him to laugh. “Seriously,” he said. “I've been thinking about going home.”

“Give it a few months, 'mano. You'll get used to the work. The money will add up. Rico, I can't believe you would give up your dreams. You can buy things—a new CD player, lots of CDs. You could even get a car eventually. If you stay up here long enough, they might even change the laws so you can become a citizen. Isn't that what you wanted?”

“Or we could get deported tomorrow, next week, next month…”

“Let's hope we don't. But even if we did, we would come back.”

“Crossing the border again, through the danger and the stupidity, around and around and around.”

“As many times as it takes, remember?”

“It's different for you, Victor.”

“Nothing's different.”

Rico looked me in the eye.
“Everything's
different. You have a family to send your money back to. A reason to keep you going. But me, why am I here?”

“One day you'll have your own family.”

“That's not what I'm talking about.”

“What
are
you talking about, then?”

“On the mountain…when we were crossing that ledge—that was crazy, you know.”

“I know. We were desperate.”

“I was so sure I was going to fall. You told me to think about the reason I needed to live, and that would give me the strength. Well, it worked.”

“What was it?”

“I hate to admit it. The reason was my parents.”

“Your parents? Really? I thought you had put them out of your mind.”

“I know, that's what I told you. It never really worked. I was always thinking about them, how they were doing and what I had done.”

“So…this isn't just about going back to school.”

“It's everything. I want to knock on my parents' door. I want to see their faces.”

“They would be overjoyed.”

“I'm pretty sure you're right.”

“I know I'm right.”

“I'm worried about my mother, too. You said she'd been to the clinic. I keep—”

A police car was driving by the park. It slowed when the policeman spotted us. He went even slower, taking a long look. We practically stopped breathing. He drove on by.

“If you do this,” I said, my heart still racing, “if you go home, I will miss you a lot.”

“You'll find friends, Turtle, people to crawl with.”

“I know, but I can tell already, people will come and go. It would never be like you and me.”

“This is the hardest part for me, leaving you here alone. I believe you when you say you're going to miss me, even if you shouldn't. I know it's going to be really lonely for you up here in El Norte. Back in Silao, I'll think about you all the time, what you've seen and how you're getting along. The good part is that you can send letters to your family—send them to me in Silao, and I will take them to your mother myself.”

“I still can't believe this.”

“Who knows, maybe someday I'll get back. But it won't be very soon, not for a long time. Not while my parents are alive. I used to
think it was unfair that my parents had chosen me to be the one to take care of them in their old age. Now, I choose it.”

 

Two days later, on the second of June, we waited at the bus stop on Dayton's main street. We talked about how Rico would be able to tell my mother in person that the money order was waiting for her in Silao, if she hadn't picked it up already. I said I could picture the feast his mother would make to welcome him home. The bus came into view and words got hard to come by. Our arms reached out and we embraced. Our tears ran together. I whispered how proud I was of him. We said good-bye. Rico boarded the bus. “Travel well,” I told him.

“You too, 'mano,” he said, and then he was gone.

Rico's journey home was going to be straight as an arrow. My journey in search of work would take me in all directions across the States, always looking over my shoulder. All I knew was, I had to survive here, so that my family could survive at home. It might be many long years before I saw them again.

I watched Rico's bus get smaller and smaller. It wasn't the first time I had seen my best friend go out of my life, but it might be the last.

The bus wound its way through the fields and vanished down the river. I wondered if Rico was thinking what I was thinking, that we had finally become true brothers. I was happy, but in a sad sort of way. I remembered one of my father's sayings, one that had always puzzled me: “Sorrow also sings, when it runs too deep to cry.” Now I understood.

I'd been visiting Arizona's borderlands for several decades, and contemplating a border story for nearly as long. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the majority of illegal crossings along the U.S./Mexican border were deflected from populated areas to the most remote deserts and mountains of Arizona, with more and more people dying every year. I was moved to learn all I could, and to write a story that would put a human face on the complex and controversial subject of illegal immigration.

In the fall of 2003, I scouted border locations where the latter part of my story might be set. I would like to thank Ann Rasor, the Superintendent of Tumacácori National Historical Park, and her daughter Rae, for hiking with me to Baboquivari Peak. I saw the jaguar “scratchers” and gazed up at the Lion's Ledge, and I knew that somehow both would figure in my story.

I would also like to thank Dan Wirth, Senior Special Agent and Border Coordinator, U.S. Department of the Interior, for the generous and extensive interview he gave me in Tucson on law enforcement issues along the Arizona/Mexican border.

I had traveled to Mexico's state of Guanajuato, and that helped
somewhat in choosing a starting point for my protagonist. Victor's fictional village of Los Árboles owes a large debt to the experiences of my niece, Annie Morrissey, who worked as a volunteer in Mexico for a summer through Amigos de las Américas. Annie lived with a family in a village off a back road between the cities of Guanajuato and Silao. The village lies below the mountaintop statue of El Cristo Rey, at the geographical center of Mexico. I drew heavily on my niece's anecdotes and observations as well as her affection for her Mexican family. Thank you, Annie.

As I researched the novel, I drew on countless newspaper stories, magazine and Internet articles, and television documentaries. Of the many books I read, the following are the ones I found most helpful: Coyotes, by Ted Conover (Vintage Books, 1987);
The Devil's Highway,
by Luis Alberto Urrea (Little, Brown, 2004);
Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant,
by Ramón “Tianguis” Pérez (Arte Público Press, University of Houston, 1991);
Tunnel Kids,
by Lawrence J. Taylor and Maeve Hickey (University of Arizona Press, 2001);
Folk Wisdom of Mexico,
by Jeff M. Sellers (Chronicle Books, 1994); and
Southern Arizona Nature Almanac,
by Roseann Beggy Hanson and Jonathan Hanson (University of Arizona Press, 1996).

Given rapidly changing conditions,
Crossing the Wire
needed to be grounded in a specific year. I chose 2004, when I did most of the writing.

Durango, Colorado
April 2005

Cover art © 2006 by Vince Natale

Cover design by Hilary Zarycky