Border Crossings
Copyright Michael Weems 2010/2011
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this material may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Special thanks to Heather Wren for editing.
“The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.”
–Bess Myerson
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
The afternoon lay quiet except for the crunch of dirt beneath tires on an old worn out trail. A white and green Ford Explorer bounced along the dirt road, kicking up the desert floor and scattering it to the wind. In the passenger seat a young man’s hazel eyes peered out from under the shadow of his green ball cap towards the searing sun. “Awful hot,” he said. It was more a premonition than a comment on the weather.
In the driver seat sat a squat man, brown-skinned with a wispy mustache that flickered with the air blowing in on high through the vents. He raced along the road with eerie calm for someone so consistently close to a cataclysmic crash at any second, skipping and sliding the suv around each bend like a seasoned drift racer. He glanced down at the temperature gauge on the dashboard which read 94 degrees. It could be well over 150 degrees in a confined metal space, an oversized oven. “Yeah,” he agreed, “They might be dead already.” He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a well-worn toothpick and placed it between his teeth as he continued slipping along. The other said nothing, only watched the desert pass them by.
In front of them, Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at an elevation of 8,749 ft, rose up in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Before them lay the dirt road designated for 4 X 4 vehicles only, and somewhere out in the canyon region sat an abandoned metal trailer which had six young women locked inside and left for dead.
As they passed a campground sign the ranger in the passenger seat pulled the crudely drawn map from his shirt pocket, a fax they’d received not ten minutes ago. He matched up the line drawn on the map with a trail he saw ahead. “There,” he pointed. “That’s it.” The SUV made a sharp turn that sent him sloshing against the door while the driver barely shifted his weight. They turned on an offshoot where a sign that read “No Vehicles Beyond This Point” sat crooked on an old post. Nearby, a Gila monster sat flicking its tongue on a rock, curiously watching the great green and white beast roar past him.
They followed a trail along McKittrick Canyon just south of the New Mexico border. There lay the only natural source of water in the park in the form of a small creek on the Eastern side of the massif. After about a mile and a half they came to a ridge they followed until it ducked down into another miniature canyon. There, they saw the small pull-behind trailer, old and discolored, not much bigger than the discount economy size available at any local moving truck rental facility. The sun was glinting off the less worn parts of its metallic exterior and rust was eating at its joints. The SUV rolled to a halt, its catalytic converter crackling as though desperate for breath after the race it’d just ran. The two rangers exited quickly, yet apprehensively. They’d found a dead hiker several months back and both had learned it took some roots under your feet when greeting death out in the desert. The combination of sight and smell the heat could render human remains in just a short time could easily bowl over the unprepared.
And death’s handiwork there was. Before they even approached the trailer they saw their first victim. A man’s body lay stretched out on the ground, blood soaking his chest and iridescent green-bellied flies buzzing the newly dead flesh. The passenger approached but didn’t have to go far. “Oh, yeah, this one’s gone,” he announced, seeing the man’s open eyes staring unnaturally at the blazing sun, a few flies licking the wetness of his pupils.
The driver took his toothpick out of his mouth and tucked it away. “Shit”, he muttered to himself. It wasn’t a good sign for the rest of them. He headed to the back of the trailer, but there was a massive padlock securing the door. “Hey!” he called in Spanish, “anyone in there?” He rapped on the side of the trailer but heard nothing. Then he put his hand on the trailer door and was nearly burned by the heat. Chinga madre! he cursed. “Too late,” he told the other. “It’s like a hot grill.” He imagined what lay inside, bodies littering the floor of the trailer like a remnant of the holocaust ovens, charred grotesquely like a cannibal’s memorial weekend barbecue celebration. He turned and headed back to the SUV to call it in. As he did the other ranger strolled to the trailer and palmed the padlock, feeling its weight and heat.
“God, can you imagine?” he asked. “What a horrible way to go. “ As he spoke he thought he heard a faint clunk from within the trailer. Then, from a small hole in the rust near the bottom, a finger poked out. It was painted in crimson from its tip down to where it disappeared within the crevice, and as it poked out the rusty edges of metal cut against it like tiny teeth. The ranger noticed that some of what he thought had been rust around the hole was instead dried blood, someone’s efforts to expand the tiny little opening with their fingers. Then a voice, if it could be called such, called out weakly.
“Hey!” he yelled excitedly. “Hey! They’re still alive,” he called to the other. “I got a finger over here.” He called to the people inside, “Hold on, we’re going to get you out!” He bent down quickly and touched the finger. It immediately curved and tried to grip him and he heard the faint sounds of someone trying to talk, though he could not make out the words. The voice was a whisper, raspy and desparate. “I think maybe there’s some bolt cutters in the truck,” he told his partner.
“No, bolt cutters no good. Lock’s too thick.” The driver was now doing his best to run to the truck in an odd sort of gait from a hip that’d been a bit off most all his life, although he’d never bothered to get a medical opinion on the matter.
The other stayed holding to the finger and tried his best to say something helpful, “We’re going to get you out, just hold on.”
The driver returned from the Explorer with a shotgun. Besides buckshot, they had a box of deer slugs in the glove box, which he loaded. He walked back towards the lock with a determined grimace, pushing the shuttle of the gun to place with its distinctive clicking.
“You think that’s a good idea?” asked the other.
He shrugged. “Better move out of the way.” In a loud voice he called out to those inside the trailer in Spanish, “Get back away from the door! I’m going to shoot the lock.” There was no response, but the finger retreated and he heard the faint sound of movement. He angled his shotgun down in such a way that it would only catch the lock and the very right edge of the door. Then he pulled the trigger and the shotgun let off a blast, which resounded off the rocks around them. In the distance the Gila monster retreated to a shadowy crevice. The lock thudded in its place but the ring of the loop unclasped, freeing the latch. He put down the shotgun and grabbed the handle of the doors, which was also burning hot, and swung them open.
A wave of heat poured out as though cracking open a broiler, followed by the sickening stench of urine, vomit, and skin that had begun to burn slowly against the metal. The ranger with the shotgun held his arm up to his nose in an effort to block the odor. His younger peer came around his side and his heart froze with what he saw. “Christ.”
Inside the trailer were six young women, all lying next to each other. Their clothes had been stripped off in an apparent effort to cool themselves and spread out on the floor of the trailer in an attempt to provide some protection from the surface heat. The rangers could see some of them not only had heat blisters on their arms and faces, but burn marks on their arms from prolonged exposure to the metal. The walls of the trailer were covered in dings and dents and along the bottom edges were tiny pinpricks of light where rust had eaten through the metal leaving small holes, many of which were now spotted with bits of blood. They had struggled against their prison before succumbing to the heat. The inside of the trailer looked like a trap in which the prey had flung itself against the walls over and over, beating itself with every effort of escape.
Two were undoubtedly dead, their faces sunken in and eyes staring forward in similar fashion as the corpse on the ground outside . . . the death stare looking beyond the mortal world. Three others lay completely motionless and the rangers didn’t know if they were alive or dead. The sixth and final, the only one conscious, peered at the rangers, her nude body withered and tinted with a greenish discoloration, drained of an unnatural amount of fluid. Her skin had the appearance of an old woman, her body the gaunt and lethargic bend of a withered dry reed before it breaks. Her arms were wrapped around one of the other girls. Her tortured hands, swollen and splayed awkwardly revealing dozens of cuts, rested on the other’s motionless chest. Her cracked and bleeding lips quivered as she tried to say something, “Water,” she managed to beg in her native tongue. The cooler outside air brushed against her face and she held her head up to its breeze as her eyes rolled back and she lost consciousness.
Chapter 1
He sat in the parked car staring at the photograph in his hand, his right thumb circling the face. He’d been this way for several minutes now. Finally, he tucked it inside his shirt pocket and picked the gun up off the passenger seat. He opened the door and began walking down the darkened street, the gun held in his hand, tucked away in his sportscoat pocket. He turned the corner and proceeded a few more blocks toward the neon sign. There in front of its red glow he waited in shadow.
The young men inside ordered another round, a pile of shot glasses already stacked in a small pyramid on the bar. A couple in the corner watched them apprehensively until one of the men noticed them looking on, “You got a problem, puta?” he asked the man. The onlooker quickly looked away. “That’s what I thought. You look over here again and I’m going to come over there and cut your eyes out. Maybe after I’ll take your hot girl right there for a ride, eh?’ He smiled at the girl, “Would you like that, chica? Why don’t you drop that pussy and come hang out with some real men? ”
The couple quickly got up and left, leaving money on the table for their drinks with plenty of change to spare. The other men laughed at them.
“Later, puta,” one called after them.
“I’ll see you around, chica,” said the first man to the departing woman. The man outside watched the couple leave from his shadowy alcove. “Let’s get out of this shithole,” said the first man to the rest. “We can go to Maricel’s place and have her call up some friends.”
Another finished the last shot on the table, licking the salted rim and tossing back the tequila. “Let’s do it,” he said, adding the glass to the top of the pyramid. They all shuffled out without paying. The bartender knew better than to offer them a bill. They came in once or twice a week drinking his establishment dry and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. It was simply another cost of doing business in the shadier parts of Chetumal, Mexico.
They swaggered out into the night with hearty laughs, getting into a metallic gray Chrysler 300, which stuck out like a sore thumb on the impoverished street. Its over-sized chrome wheels reflected the dilapidated storefronts condescendingly. As the driver put the key in the ignition, one of the others pointed out a man walking towards the car on the sidewalk. He stood some feet away but under the open sky’s light they could see something was distinctly off about the man. He was staring at the trio with a look of profound hatred. He wasn’t a man of intimidating size or build, but his gaze was so cold it was enough to falter the three men’s bravado. As he came along the car, he stopped walking, turned towards them slightly, and proceeded to simply stand and stare at them.
“Who the fuck is this guy?” one of them asked. The vehicle started, but still they remained, staring back at the man as he stared at them. They had been momentarily quieted by his unnerving demeanor but the moment passed quickly. They were not the type to be easily intimidated, particularly when there were three of them and one of anyone else. The driver hit the power window, ready to ask the brazen man if he had a death wish looking to be granted, but what happened next happened quickly and the driver had just enough time to realize his initial fear had been the best idea his rarely conversed with common sense had offered up in a long while. He wasn’t afforded much time to regret not heeding it. The man’s hand appeared from the sportscoat, a gun in tow with his index finger already in place on the trigger for introductions. The driver opened his mouth to yell Oh, shit, but the quicker bullet rendered him constipated as the word shit never made it out.
The man on the sidewalk calmly began firing. First was the driver, whose head was halfway out of the window and whose lips were just in the O shape preparing for his last exclamation, when POP! His forehead caved in like Gallagher was in town, and the bullet made a messy exit to the back seat where it found the rear passenger’s third rib. Before the other two had time to flee or reach for guns of their own they had stashed in interesting places, the man was already firing at them, his finger pulling the trigger, releasing, and pulling again in a steady rhythm. He fired ten rounds, seven of which hit their mark of flesh, and those that were astray were not much so and would have found their mark but for the flailing inside the Chrysler.
Seven seconds later the men lay motionless, the car’s interior redecorated in blood-splattered windows in a piece Pollack aficionados would have admired. The man stood staring in disgust with the gun still raised, his hand shaking, but only slightly. He looked around to see who else was on the street and may have seen the massacre, but there was no one. The few people in the bar had heard the shots and didn’t dare come out to see what had happened. The bartender was inside, crouched down behind his counter, quickly dialing for the police with a 20-year old shotgun on his lap. A man in a nearby apartment had heard the shots and ran to close his window blinds, not even peeking to see who was outside.
The man on the sidewalk lowered his weapon and looked down at the gun in his hand, pondering its meaning in this world. He’d been worried about how he’d feel afterward . . . about whether or not he could live with himself; becoming something so similar to that which he claimed foe. Much to his relief, he was feeling fine with it for the moment. There was no remorse. Perhaps that’d come tomorrow. Perhaps not. But as he stood there looking upon the death he’d brought to them, he just felt right. Hell, who was he kidding? As he turned around and disappeared back into the shadows he had to admit killing them had felt pretty damn good.
Chapter 2
Taylor slumped into the couch with her backpack and exhaled deeply. Kendra heard her from the kitchen and poked her head out. Just as she figured, Taylor looked whipped.
“Test not go so well?”
She blew her platinum blond bangs out of her emerald-esque eyes. “He asked about shit we never talked about in class. I have my notebook right here,” she explained, as she unzipped her backpack and pulled out a large yellow binder, waving it as though it were the final rule of law on the matter. “Half the stuff he was asking about was stuff he specifically skipped. That’s just such crap.”
“Are you going to say anything?” Kendra knew Taylor was the type to say something.
“Oh, I asked him after the test.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said it was all out of the outline and just because he didn’t talk about it in class doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be on the test.”
Kendra went back into the kitchen and unscrewed the zinfandel. They’d given up buying the stuff with a cork in it. By this point in their lives of financially distressed educational co-habitation, they didn’t give a damn whether the wine was corked, screwed, or came out of a plastic baggy in a cardboard box for that matter. She brought Taylor a tall glass and said with as much empathy as she could muster, “Yeah, they’re dicks like that sometimes.”
Taylor took the wine and leaned back in defeat, “I bombed it.”
“Oh, you always think you bombed it and you always end up with an A or B, so stop stressing.”
“No, I really think I bombed it. I literally don’t remember seeing half that stuff. I mean, I read it . . . some of it, at least . . . but Jesus! Who remembers the vague stuff from some obscure chapter that he never even mentioned in class. I went looking for one question afterward and it came from a footnote . . . a freaking footnote . . . on some chapter from like the third week. Who’s going to remember that?”
“Nobody,” said Kendra. “That’s the point. They always try to throw that stuff in there that nobody ever saw so it’s not too easy. They can’t have everyone acing their tests or they’ll get canned for being soft. So don’t worry about it. I guarantee you most of the class definitely didn’t read the assignments and if he didn’t talk about it they probably never saw it, unlike you who at least maybe saw it before, but don’t remember it all now.” She lifted her own glass. “Here. Here’s to your last midterm and the start of our kick ass spring break. No more worrying about tests, no more cramming until two in the morning, and no more stressing about stuff that’s already behind us. It’s time to kick back, relax, and enjoy!”
She wasn’t feeling quite so Zen, but Taylor toasted nonetheless.
An hour and two glasses of wine later brought a knock on the door, much to Kendra’s relief as she was failing miserably at getting Taylor to stop worrying about midterms and start worrying about having fun.
Jamie burst into their apartment like a shining beacon of college debauchery. She had sandy-blond hair, double D’s she regularly referred to as “her girls”, and wore a pair of mini shorts which barely made it over an ample, yet shapely, rear end. “Spring break, bitches! Who’s ready for Mexico!?” She swept through their apartment like a whirlwind, quickly finding the vino and pouring herself a tall glass in which she tossed a few ice cubes and a spritz of soda from a two liter in the fridge. Then she gracefully slid between Taylor and Kendra on the couch, shifting her rear side to side to make room between them. “Cancuuuun,” she said slowly, “Doesn’t it just sound sexy? But that’s tomorrow, ladies. So the real question tonight is . . . who’s up for Sixth Street!? I’m ready to get shit-faced.”
Her enthusiasm was infectious, her smile a challenge to all in its presence to dare mope while in the light of its glory. Taylor forgot about her test and smiled. Spring break had officially begun.
Chapter 3
With one foot in front of the other she sped her way to an hour of freedom. The beat of Motorcycle’s “As the Rush Comes” carried her like a drug, bass thumping in her eardrums like the rhythm man’s drum on ships of old.
It filled her, moved her, letting her push always for more. The heat and her exhaustion were saying stop and rest, but the music said go, go, go! And, the music almost always won. It was eighty-five and climbing and she had a good sweat going, just like she liked it. She put her thumb down and tracked the mp3 player to another motivator, Armin Van Buuren. She passed him on the left, a middle-aged man of average fitness, thoroughly sweat-drenched in the humidity. He was momentarily distracted from his jog by the black haired woman’s figure as she passed. She had a distracting type of figure. Shapely legs, not overly long, but well proportioned and toned with thick thighs like the seasoned runner she was, stemming from a thin waist and a rear end that could make any pair of jeans look good. Like any courageous, red-blooded, recently divorced and trying to get in shape for the ladies kind of man, he pepped up his step.
His mark was lost in the sounds of the music and the feel of the trail beneath her running shoes and did not notice him until he was almost even with her. She glanced over to see him running powerfully next to her, his chest high, an attempt at a half-smile through his deep breaths when he saw her blue eyes glimpse at him by her side. They continued on another quarter mile or so before she realized he was making a supreme effort to keep pace with her. She glanced one more time just long enough to catch a fading tan line on his ring finger. Ahhh, she thought, I got ya, Tiger.
There was only a month left before the Dallas Big D marathon and if there was one thing she wasn’t going to have, it was a pickup artist distracting her from her training. It was hard enough to get time in during lunch for a run these days. She flicked the mp3 to a secret weapon of hers reserved usually for end kicks, and cranked it.
The small smile crept in first, accompanied by adrenaline and power as though she were in tune with the player. Her body responded with the volume, jetting her off to a stunned and somewhat dismayed would be suitor who realized quickly he was out of his league in more ways than one. Seeing now the show would be for naught, he slowed to a crawl and dropped his hands upon his knees, the sweat pouring from him as he inhaled deeply. He couldn’t help but wonder what song the mystery woman just selected. But alas, he’d never know. Catherine James was gone, baby, gone, nodding her head to the music as the beat played on.
Chapter 4
Yesenia sat on a bus with no air conditioning and filled to capacity. The heat pressed in around her, but she didn’t mind. There was a pleasant smell of food - churritos, and tamales others had brought for the trip. Ortiz had arranged the trip for her, for a price, of course, and like everyone else on the bus she was headed north. The windows were down and Yesenia watched the Mexican desert pass her by, wondering what new adventures she’d have. It would be tough, she knew, but the optimistic spirit of her fellow passengers energized her and filled her with confidence.
“Do you know Fernando Ortiz?” She asked an older woman next to her in an attempt to strike up a conversation.
“Who? Fernando Oritz? No, hija, I don’t think so.”
“Oh, okay. I didn’t think you would. He’s back in Mexico City. He’s the man who planned my trip for me and found me a job over the border.”
“Oh,” said the woman, “How nice. My son lives in Texas. I finally got my papers to go and visit him and his family. They just had a baby.”
“Oh,” said Yesenia. “That sounds nice, too.”
“Did you say Fernando Ortiz?” asked a voice behind her. Yesenia turned in her seat to face a girl about her age, maybe a little younger, with coffee colored eyes and a happy, rounded face.
“Yes. Are you going to work for his friend, too?” Yesenia asked.
“Yup,” said the girl. “I’m Silvia,” she told her, “Silvia Arce.”
“Yesenia Flores,” she responded, and they both touched hands.
“It’s good you two girls already have jobs lined up,” said the woman next to Yesenia. “They’re so hard to come by. Where are you going to be working?”
“I don’t know yet. It’s just temporary work at first,” said Yesenia.
“Just enough to get by until we find other jobs,” agreed Silvia.
“Well, be careful,” said the woman. “Pretty girls like you should watch out for each other if you’re going to be working together. You’re awfully young to be on your own.”
“Tell that to my step-father,” said Silvia. “To hear him tell it, I’m an old woman who should have been gone ages ago.”
“She’s right, though,” said Yesenia. “We should talk and get to know each other a little. It’d be nice to already know someone before we get there.”
Both agreed. Yesenia and Silvia talked so much on the rest of the way that eventually the woman sitting next to her got slightly annoyed and asked Silvia if she’d like to switch seats. So the girls sat by each other and shared their stories all the way to the border. Silvia had just turned 18 and had left home because her mother had remarried to a man who didn’t want Silvia around. She had lost contact with her real father years ago. Her mother had told her she was an adult now and needed to find her own way in life, maybe go north. She had tried telling Sivia it had nothing to do with her new husband, but Silvia knew better. So, heeding her mother’s last bit of advice on what direction she should take, she found herself here.
Yesenia’s story was similar. Her father had been a brick maker in a small village called Santa Rosanna where she’d grown up as a child but he had died the year before from a heat stroke. Her mother had passed two years before that from breast cancer. She’d been living with her sister’s family in Mexico City for the last year, but it was two married couples, three children, and Yesenia all sharing a three-bedroom apartment. Now 19, Yesenia had decided it was time to leave the city. She wanted more out of life. She’d found a flier that advertised work up north and made a call. The man didn’t have anything for her, but he knew someone who might, who turned out to be señor Ortiz, a well-dressed, grandfatherly type of gentleman she met shortly thereafter. Against her sister’s concerns and warnings, Yesenia had agreed to pay him two thousand dollars out of the wages she’d earn once across the border and now the adventure had begun.
The girls talked for hours and eventually Yesenia found herself nodding off. Some time later the older woman who was now behind them was tapping her on the shoulder. “We’re nearly there,” she whispered, “if you want to get your things ready.”
They reached Reynosa just after 10:00 P.M. There, Yesenia and Silvia were both met by a woman who said she worked for Ortiz and that they should come with her. They said their goodbyes to the woman on the bus and went with the new one. She drove them to a house in a beat up truck and told them not to get too comfortable, because they could leave at any moment. She had a cell phone with her and told them they were waiting for a phone call. As soon as she got it, they were going to leave. “I hope you slept on the bus,” she told them, “because you’re going to have to walk for a little while, then cross the river.”
The two girls had barely sat down when the woman’s phone rang. The person on the other end did most of the talking. All the woman said was, “Si, si, entiendo, bueno”, and then hung up. “Let’s go,” she said.
They got back in the truck and drove for about 10 minutes before stopping on the side of the road. There, others were also apparently preparing to take the walk to the river. “You’ll go with them,” said the woman in a whisper to the girls. “There’s a truck on the other side and you two get on with everyone else. Ortiz has already arranged this, but don’t talk about where you’re going to anyone and don’t mention his name. You don’t want any trouble if someone else gets caught and starts dropping names.” Yesenia and Silvia recognized a few people from the bus they had arrived on, but there were many other new faces. All told, there were between sixty and seventy people, Yesenia guessed. Finally, a man told them all to follow him, and they started walking.
They reached the Rio Bravo River, or Rio Grande as it was called on the U.S. side, in the middle of the night. It was a desolate area with no buildings, nothing but the dirt, brush, and the river, with the exception of a tiny red dot that periodically appeared before them in the distance. There by the river was an old Toyota T100 pickup, a 4x4 with its bed piled high with cargo under a tarp. As the crowd of people approached they were met by two men who wore jeans and boots. One had a cowboy hat and held a rifle; the other had a large knife attached to his belt. He also had a small laser pointer, which he put in his pocket.
“Line up here,” said the one with the knife on his belt. All complied. The man with the rifle said nothing, but he glared at the lot. “Across this river is the States,” said the man with the knife again. “There is a truck waiting in McAllen that will transport you north to Houston.” He walked to the back of the pickup truck, which had a large cargo covered in black tarp. “There are some very important things to remember. No talking. No unnecessary noise of any kind. No smoking. The border patrol can see a cigarette from miles away. And once you cross the river, if you see headlights or people with flashlights start coming towards you, you run! If you get caught, you don’t say a goddamn word about the rest of us. You keep your mouth shut or there’ll be trouble waiting for you when they send you back.” He pulled the tarp back and revealed some rubber inner tubes and a load of bundles, all wrapped tightly in black plastic like square blocks, each about the size of a suitcase. “Those of you who can’t swim will use the inner tubes.” He pulled one of the big square bundles from the back of the truck and said, “The rest of you will cross the river with one of these,” said the man.
One of the women protested, “But what of our things? We can’t leave our own things behind, but we can’t carry our things and those as well.”
“These float,” said the man. “You can put your stuff on top of them. If there aren’t enough inner tubes, those who can’t swim or aren’t very good can ride on these but don’t break the wrapping and don’t lose it. If you’re handed one then this is your ticket on the truck. No bundle, no ticket. Do you all understand?”
Everyone nodded and the man began handing them out. There were sixty-eight people and only fifty bundles, so not everyone had to take one with them. There were only five inner tubes, though, and over a dozen people said they either couldn’t swim or weren’t very good, so they were given bundles to float on first. It was decided that the children would use four of the inner tubes, two children to each one, followed by an old woman who was given the fifth. After that, the others who couldn’t swim well were given a bundle, followed by the older people, the women, and what was left of the men.
“What’s in these?” Yesenia asked Silvia.
“Ssshhhh,” said one of the men who had taken the bus with them. “Don’t ask. Just don’t talk about it until you’re on the other side.”
Those with bags of extra clothes bundled them up and held tightly to them as everyone waded into the water. It was very cold, but didn’t seem to be moving too fast, nor was it very deep. “This isn’t so bad,” said Yesenia.
“Careful,” said the same man. “It drops in a moment and there are hidden currents. It’s dangerous to cross here, but there’s less border patrol.”
No sooner had he spoke than the water rose from Yesenia’s waist to her shoulders as the bottom began to drop away. She and Silvia both had bundles, and she was thankful to see it did in fact float as she’d been told. A few more steps later the bottom was gone and she was having to dog paddle to stay afloat. She’d tied her bag of clothes and meager possessions around her back and as the water soaked them they became surprisingly heavy. As a child she had learned to swim in the Nigales River, though, and so she was still able to move forward without much concern.
Other people in the group were not having it so easy. One woman, with two small children with her, was struggling to keep their possessions from being caught up in the current, which Yesenia now discovered was in fact present beneath the seemingly calm surface. The mother had a bundle she was using for assistance as her two children clutched an inner tube which a friendly man had offered to pull for her.
As Yesenia and Silvia moved forward, little circles whipped around them and she occasionally felt a sudden, jerking sensation when she was caught up in one. Silvia was struggling next to her and Yesenia had to reach out on one occasion to keep her from being pulled suddenly downstream.
Finally, they reached the other side. A few others had made it before them and all were met by the scariest looking man Yesenia had ever seen. An unlit cigar hung from his mouth, which he chewed on, and he had both a knife on his belt identical to the other man’s and a pistol sticking out of the front of his pants. As she got closer she saw that the man’s eyes weren’t quite right. One eye looked straight, but the other wandered off to the side in an abnormal manner. Next to him stood two more men, one with a shotgun and the other seemingly unarmed but twirling a black tube in one hand. She didn’t know it, but it was a night vision scope the second man held.
All of a sudden a blood-curdling scream broke the silence over the gurgling river. “Help! Help!”
The cock-eyed man told the other with the shotgun, “Go see what that’s about and shut ‘em up.”
He ran down towards the river and shouted back, “A kid’s caught in the current.” One of the woman’s two children sharing an inner tube had fallen off when a swirl whipped the inner tube around. The man who had offered to help her had just managed to grab the tube again, but the little boy wasn’t able to hold on and was now moving quickly down the river. His mother pushed off her bundle and tried to swim after him, but she wasn’t a strong swimmer. “He’s going downstream!” yelled the smuggler with the shotgun.
“Well, get after him,” shouted the other.
Yesenia heard the pounding of boots as the other man ran down the riverbank. The woman was still screaming and the man pulled his pistol and started towards the river, “She’s going to bring the patrol down on us, stupid woman.” Yesenia was terrified the man was going to shoot her, but instead he walked down to the edge of the bank and yelled at her, “Hey! Shut up! Are you trying to get us caught?”
“My son!” she yelled to him in tears. “He can’t swim!”
That’s when the man noticed the woman had let go of her bundle and it, too, was now being pulled in the current. “Shit!” he yelled. “Look!” He shouted to the man that had already taken off downstream. “Get the bale!”
“What about the kid?”
“Fuck him, get the bale!” yelled the one with the wandering eye. He glared at the boy’s mother.
Seeing that the smugglers were no longer trying to save the little boy, one of the other immigrants who had already crossed quickly took off his shirt, dropped his belongings, and took off down the bank. “Stop!” yelled the man with the cigar, but it was too late. The young man was gone in a flash.
Out in the river others were coming to the woman’s aid. When they finally got her and her other child ashore, she started running down the bank. “No!” yelled the man with the cigar, but the woman ran anyway, a moaning wail trailing behind her as she sobbed, “Save him! Save him! He’ll drown!”
“Shit!” cursed the man with the cigar again. He returned to the rest of the immigrants, telling them to put the bundles in front of them and stay where they were. “If anyone else runs off, I’m leaving all of you here,” he warned. Everyone stood still as statues, quietly dripping and huddled together as they waited for the others to return, everyone wondering what would happen next.
The minutes that dragged by were filled with fear and apprehension. Nobody knew if the little boy was dead or alive. The man with the strange eyes and cigar began to grow impatient and angrier as the minutes stacked one atop another. “What the hell is taking so long?” he cursed.
Suddenly, someone appeared from the darkness. It was the young man who had taken off after the boy. Directly behind him came the little boy, wrapped in his mother’s arms. He was crying and she was hushing him gently. He’d been saved. Yesenia said a little prayer to herself, thanking God.
A few minutes later the other smuggler returned, but this time things were not so well. He did not have the missing package with him.
“Well?” said the one with the cigar and straying eyeball.
The man shook his head. “It’s gone.”
“What do you mean ‘it’s gone’?”
The fear on the other man’s face was evident. He held his hands up, “I don’t know what happened to it. I was running after it, but it was out in the middle of the river. I was going in after it, but then it was gone. It’s dark and they’re black, I lost sight of it. I don’t know if the plastic got ripped and it sank or what, but I saw it one minute and then it was gone the next.”
“Damn it!” cursed the one with the cigar.
“Also, I’m pretty sure I saw some headlights in the distance. I think we’d better go, boss. We’re sure to have set off a sensor or something with all that noise and movement.”
The man chewed on his cigar and eyed the woman and her little boy like a lion sizing up wounded prey. His right hand fell to the grip of his pistol and his fingers played upon the handle. “That bale was worth more than you can make in year,” he told her.
The woman looked horrified. She held her child close and eyed the smuggler’s gun. Everyone held their breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My son can’t swim.”
He stared at her with fire and death in his eyes, as though he’d love nothing more than to kill her where she stood. “Stupid woman,” he spat, his body easing and his hand moving away from the gun. The woman let out a slight sigh of relief. Then, to the other two smugglers, he said, “Let’s go.”
One of them started pointing to people and told them to pick up a bale, continuing to use them as muscle to move the smugglers’ packages. “No talking,” he said as they began to walk.
The young man who had saved the boy picked up his belongings and placed them on top of a bale he’d been told to carry. The woman with the little boy, having lost her bundle, walked up to help someone else with their belongings, but the fierce one with the cigar saw her and held up his hand. “Not you.”
“What?” she asked.
He walked up to her with a venemous stare and said icily, “I said not you. No bale, no ride.”
“But . . .” said the woman, looking at everyone else as though hoping they’d say something on her behalf, but no one did. Nobody could afford to lose his or her passage. The woman’s eyes filled with tears, “But, I’ve already paid half,” she told him. “My husband is waiting for me. We’ve saved for two years.”
“No.” He moved his hand back towards his gun for emphasis.
Some people in the group looked upon with woman with pity, while others, like Yesenia, felt too ashamed to look at her. They wanted to help her, to demand that the smugglers take her and her children with them, but they were all too frightened. With no help, the woman would have to return to Mexico, forfeiting the money she’d already paid. Her husband would be smiling and joyously waiting for his family that was not coming.
The group began to follow the smugglers into the darkness. The woman stood crying, her two children by her side, but the man wasn’t moved. She watched everyone walking away and looked out into the darkness that was the United States, apparently contemplating her options.
The other smuggler who had given chase down the river had lingered and as he walked by guessed her thoughts. “You won’t make it,” he said flatly. “It’d be stupid to even try. He won’t let you on the truck and without a vehicle out here . . . “ he looked at her children, then back at her, “just go back.”
Having no choice, she picked up two of the inner tubes that were left by the bank and told her children they had to cross again. The one who’d almost drowned looked terrified and refused, but she told him they didn’t have a choice. He began to sob fiercely. The last thing Yesenia saw of them was the woman crouched down trying to comfort her child to prepare him to swim back across the Rio Grande.
After an hour and a half of navigating the darkness, the group hit upon a worn path where a truck was waiting. It looked like a small moving truck, one used for transporting fruit or furniture. The smugglers directed the people inside the trailer. “No noise,” said one as the group had begun whispering among themselves, thankful the walk was over. He told them to stack the bundles in the back and then when everyone was inside he closed the trailer door. A thud and click could be heard as the door was secured. Then they were all left in darkness.
When the engine groaned to life and lurched forward, Yesenia leaned over in pain, clutching her arms. They burned and ached from carrying her load.
“Who are they?” asked Silvia, who was also rubbing the muscles of her arms trying to chase the burning sensation away.
“Palleros,” said the man who had talked to them by the river. “Coyote smugglers. They get paid to sneak people across like this. These are moving drugs, too. They’re dangerous people,” the voice said. “I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I knew they were moving drugs, too.”
“Is that what these are?” asked Yesenia. The bales were now stacked at the back of the trailer and she could smell a deep, leafy smell coming from them.
“Marijuana,” spoke the voice, “worth a fortune north. That woman is lucky they didn’t shoot her for losing one. If they weren’t so worried about the border patrol, they probably would have. If we get caught with these, we’ll all be in big trouble.”
“Shhhh,” came one voice.
“Stop talking about it,” said another.
As the truck bounced along, someone else whispered, “I hope they make it back across okay.”
Yesenia did, too, and made a little prayer for the woman and her two children. Then she sat huddled with Silvia against the wall. They looked at each other, both thinking the same thing, but saying nothing. Their new life in America had not begun well.
Chapter 5
Jamie swung her bag on the bed and fell in behind it. “Spring break in Cancun,” she said. “How awesome is this going to be?” They had been planning it for weeks.
Kendra put her own bag on the other bed in the room, followed by Taylor, who looked at the two beds already claimed and asked, “Okay, so who am I sleeping with?”
Jamie rolled her eyes with a playful smile, “I’m sure the guys back in the elevator would love to hear you ask that.”
“Funny,” Taylor responded. Three guys in the elevator, all complete with a beer in one hand and a set of Cheshire grins, had eyed the girls like hyenas licking their chops over a dismembered wildebeest.
“They were such pervs,” Kendra added.
“Oh, you’re just so hot, Kendra. I have to have you,” Jamie joked, running over and throwing her arms around Kendra like a drunken sailor. “Kiss me, baby, kiss me!”
Kendra played back, “Oh, yes, baby! Right here in the elevator! Your friends can watch,” she chuckled.
Taylor stretched her arms out and walked onto the balcony. They were on the 12th floor of the Hutton Cancun hotel, right off the beach with a view like a postcard. “Wow,” she told her friends. “When you two are done being lesbians, you’ve got to come check out this view. I mean just holy shit, wow. Look at this place.”
Jamie and Kendra stepped out to the balcony to a pristine blue ocean brushing against white sand with a blue sky void of so much of a wisp of a cloud. It was utterly perfect.
Someone whistled and Kendra looked up and to the right to see two guys standing on another balcony. “Hey!”
“Oh, great,” said Kendra. “There’s more of ‘em.”
“We got a case of ice cold beer up here if you girls want to come up!” said a friendly voice.
“Maybe later,” said Jamie dismissively. “Oh, they’re just boys,” she told Kendra. “Besides, it is spring break. Boys are kind of the point, right?”
As they looked around they saw plenty more collegiates at their best; either standing on their balconies, down at the pool, or spilling out to that beach Taylor just couldn’t believe was actually right there in front of them.
“This is gorgeous,” she said.
“I told you!” said Jamie. “And you didn’t want to come. I bet you’ve changed your mind now, huh?”
As much as she hated to admit it, Jamie was right. Taylor had been planning on going home for spring break and the idea of being crowded into a hotel with every drunken college kid who’d seen one too many MTV Spring Break specials hadn’t exactly struck her as the best of times at first. But she’d been persuaded and looking at the view from her balcony now, she was glad. “It’s pretty damn cool,” she admitted.
“Oh, Taylor, did it hurt?” Jamie asked sympathetically.
“Did what hurt?”
“When they finally removed that stick you’ve had up your ass for the last two weeks,” she said with that same contagious smile.
“Ha, ha, very funny.”
Jamie, ever the outgoing one, threw her hands over her head and let out a loud “Whoo!” She was echoed by no less than four guys.
“Oh, my God!” said Kendra. “Check them out!” The hotel rose like a pyramid with sides jutting out adjacent to one another around the pool below, and somewhere around the sixth floor were two girls who had ventured out unto their balcony completely topless.
One of the guys above who had invited them up for a beer yelled out to the topless duo, “Oh, baby, I love you!” The girls waved and blew him a kiss.
“What a couple of hookers,” said Kendra. “Hey, look at him,” she said, pointing at one pale fellow down at the pool, “He looks like someone stuffed the Pillsbury dough boy in a pair of surfer shorts.” The young man, who obviously traveled from somewhere way up north with very little sun, stalked the pool down below with his buddies, his bulbous belly quivering as he went.
“Check out that one over there,” said Kendra, pointing to another young man. “Is he wearing a T-shirt or is that his tan lines?” Closer inspection revealed it to be a farmer’s tan.
“Yikes.”
“That looks painful,” Taylor noted. “Sun screen. Get some, dude.”
“Look at the hoochie in the ass-floss,” said Kendra, pointing to a girl who was parading around the pool in her thong.
“Hey, I brought a thong,” said Jamie.
“Oh, Lord.”
After they put their things away in the room, Jamie asked, “So what do we do first?”
“I think we should go check out the beach,” said Kendra.
“I’m all for that,” agreed Taylor. “That water looks unbelievable.”
An hour later the girls were spread out on beach loungers and drinking large frozen margaritas. Jamie, absent a thong but wearing instead a flowered two-piece with sufficient coverage for her curvy frame, turned onto her stomach and unsnapped her top to tan without lines. “This is the life,” she said.
Taylor was staring out at the water, her green eyes dazzled by the blue of everything she saw, and took a long sip, “Mmmm-hmmmm. We gonna go swimming later?”
Kendra raised her sunglasses and looked out to the water. “I dunno. I don’t want to get saltwater in my hair before we go out.”
Taylor licked a bit of salt from the rim of glass as she took another sip. “Speaking of which, what are we going to do tonight?”
“I say we grab a couple of cute and semi-sober guys and hit a club,” offered Jamie.
“Sounds fun,” said Kendra.
“Bah!” answered Taylor. “Do we have to? Let’s just go ourselves and have some fun, a girls’ night out.”
“Okay,” said Jamie, “but boys will be part of the equation this week, just so you know. You can’t avoid them forever and I’m not picketing just because you’re on boycott.”
“I know, I know.” It wasn’t exactly a boycott. Taylor had had a long-term relationship that recently went down in a spectacular ball of fire and wasn’t particularly fond of the male gender at the moment. Her boyfriend decided they were getting too serious and broke up with her right before midterms. Asshole, she thought to herself. It wasn’t that she was so much in love with the guy, but just that he dropped the bomb right before midterms, like she didn’t have enough to worry about.
“You should have a fling,” Jamie announced.
“What?”
“Yeah, it would make you feel better. Just find some cute guy, let him flatter and gush about how awesome you are . . . and you are awesome, by the way . . . and you’ll feel way better.”
“Thanks, but I’m not really feeling the fling thing,” said Taylor. “Particularly not in Cancun on spring break. Sounds like a pop queen gone actress bad movie. ‘She was the girl who had it all until her heart was broken,’” Taylor recited in her best movie announcer voice, “’until a chance encounter in spring break showed her how to love again.’”
“Oh, God, that is bad,” laughed Kendra. “I could actually see something like that coming out.”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Jamie.
“Oooh, there’s a leading man for you now,” said Kendra, as a fat guy walked by with two arrows drawn on his large belly, one pointing up towards his face, the other down to his crotch. Next to the arrows he’d written, “Free rides for hot chicks.”
Jamie looked over and started cracking up. “Wow.”
“Gross,” said Taylor. “That is absolutely disgusting, and JAMIE! . . .” she raised her finger and pointed it towards her friend, “If you whistle at that guy to come over here I swear to God all your clothes are going in the pool.”
Jamie cackled. Her friend knew her too well. She’d been just about to throw a “Hey, hot stuff,” out there.
A half hour later the girls were still lying out when a young Hispanic man with a handsome smile and muscular build approached. “Good afternoon, ladies.”
Kendra leaned up and pushed her sunglasses up again. “Hel-loo,” she said in a singsong, relaxed sort of way.
“Are you enjoying your stay in Cancun?” he asked them in a smooth local accent.
Jamie re-snapped her bathing suit top and sat up, “Yeah, it’s gorgeous.”
“As are you three,” he responded. The girls knew it was a corny line, but he pulled it off with such confidence they forgave him for it. It was entertaining if nothing else. He reached into a duffle bag he had slung around his shoulder and retrieved three yellow pieces of paper, handing one to each of the girls. “There’s a party tonight at Noche Salvaje’s just down the strip. It’s the place to be in Cancun and I would like to invite you lovely ladies to come as V.I.P.’s”
Kendra looked the paper over, “V.I.P.’s, huh? How much is the cover?”
“It’s twenty dollars cover and we have an option for open bar at forty, all you can drink,” said the man. “And we throw the best party in Cancun. All the celebrities party at Noche Salvaje’s when they come here. You don’t want to go anywhere else.”
Taylor huffed and Jamie immediately handed the paper back to him, “Thanks, but I’m pretty sure we can find some place without cover.”
“Ladies,” said the man, disappointed. “Oh, ladies, you don’t know what you’d be missing. Here,” he pulled a pen from his pocket, took Jamie’s flier, and wrote something on it, “Give this to the man at the door, and you three will get in free. V.I.P.’s also get their first drink free. You can’t come to Cancun and not at least visit Noche Salvaje’s. Once you see what I’m talking about you’ll be thanking me. Our club is rated one of the best in the world. There’s no other place like it here or anywhere.”
Jamie took her flier back, “Well, maybe.” She told him. “We’ll see.”
Taylor read her flier over. Fifty-cent beers, dollar tequila shots, two dollar you call it shots, a million dollar sound system, and the most bumping spring break party in Cancun.
As the man strolled away down the beach to court more potential partygoers, Kendra looked her flier over as well. “I think we should go. It sounds like fun. Do you think they pay that guy to go around looking for pretty girls to invite to make the place look better?”
“Well, yeah,” said Jamie, her mischievous smile ever present. “I mean we are looking pretty good, if I do say so myself.” She eyed her friends. “Taylor, how the hell are you already tan? We’ve only been out here like an hour and you’re already darker than me.”
“I tan fast,” she said. She left out she’d been studying by the apartment pool in preparation for wearing her bikini in Cancun. She leaned back and sipped the last of her margarita down with a gurgling noise emanating from the straw, “So let’s go, then. Sounds good to me.”
They sat out and enjoyed one more round until a gray-haired European couple took two chairs near them. The elderly gentleman wore his Speedo as though he was at home in front of the television, the most natural thing in the world to him. Taylor was horrified to see Jamie’s eyes fixated on the man’s weenie-wrapper, red-faced and laughter threatening to escape at any second. The old man’s equally rotund wife didn’t hesitate to strip off her bikini top and proceed to tan stomach up with her sinking breasts resting sadly upon her belly as though they knew they belonged to an old woman and were ambivalent to anyone’s opinion about their never-ending struggle with gravity, which they were clearly losing at an alarming rate. The old woman must have been a habitual tanner as her breasts looked like brown, leathery saddlebags someone had burdened her with.
Jamie boob-checked herself. “I’m done,” she announced to her friends. As they walked back towards their room she added, “Did you see his . . .”