I woke with a crick in my neck, wishing that I’d had the good sense to add a blanket or a sleeping bag to the supplies I’d packed. We headed north with the first morning light.
It hadn’t rained for weeks and the ground was covered by tracks, both recent and old. The hoof marks of unshod horses, the spiky piglike marks of javelina, and a dozen different prints from sneakers, some of them brushed out by a torn mesquite branch that trailed behind the traveler, by the looks of it.
As the path detoured to the east, the land began to fold in on itself, straining toward the peaks in wave after wave of rock. Bear grass and hedgehog cactus gave way to madrone, mountain sage, and cottonwoods. I heard birds for the first time since leaving Nogales.
The canyon narrowed in front of us, split by a dry creek bed that might run only a couple of months of the year. Sheer, vertical walls of rock stepped on the toes of the dry wash, looking to claim more territory. The wind had carved the cliffs into ribboned undulations, as smooth and rounded as blown glass.
I used the creek bed as a path, slinking past the limestone walls and over gravel bars and stepping stones. It was the path of least resistance, and the way any other traveler would have come.
We stopped deep in the canyon, where three small pools of water were trapped in the shadow of the cliffs. Except for manmade Peña Blanca Lake five or six miles away, this was probably the only fresh water within a day’s march. There were signs of previous passage through the slippery canyon, but none looked more recent than the pad prints of a large cat that were pressed into the damp earth. A mountain lion? It looked too big for a bobcat.
“Should we wait here for El Vez’s northern counterparts?” I asked. We had to be at least four miles from the border. “What’s this trip going to prove, anyway? That the Braceros are involved with moving illegals across the border? We already know that.”
“I need to see who shows up. What their moves are. If Carlos wanted to put a stop to something, the proof will be here in the desert.” Guillermo wiped his face with his shirttail.
We moved north through the canyon. Pajarito Peak and Manzanita Mountain were behind us now, but smaller hills and rolling grasslands filled the horizon. I swatted at a tenacious fly. What path would the Braceros expect the travelers to take? Would they cling to the mountainous terrain in order not to be spotted out in the open? Or would they trek across the more level ground at night to put as much space as possible between themselves and the border?
“What’s that?” I said, peering west. It was hazy in the ground-level heat, but it looked like hundreds of white skulls, spaced perfectly equidistant from one another and aligned in a row across the horizon.
Guillermo started to run toward them. The ache and pull of the cut on my leg slowed me down, but I followed as quickly as I could.
The image cleared as we got closer. Not skulls, but white plastic one-gallon water jugs, all empty and all marked with a number in thick black ink.
“What the fuck?” Guillermo muttered.
We followed the line of jugs. Number 134. Number 165. Number 166. The last jug was marked 177. Beside it was a small wooden sign with a paper message tacked to the board. There were bits of paper from previous postings caught in the staples. I bent down to read it. “Ni Uno Más. Not One More. One hundred and seventy-seven people have died crossing the desert this year alone. Turn back! Do not become one hundred seventy-eight.”
“Might have been better if they’d left the jugs full,” I said.
“Might have been better if they’d put up the sign at the border fence—before the travelers got this far.”
We continued north. Half a mile farther on, the foot-wide path had broadened to a dusty, four-wheel drive road, cleared but not leveled, with stony outcroppings that would cripple a car if it were moving with any speed. We had descended into a shallow ravine when I heard, softly, a woman’s voice on the breeze.
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.”
Guillermo motioned me to slow, and we crept up the other side of the wash until just our heads were above the edge. Less than a hundred yards away, a man and a woman were unloading boxes from the bed of an old blue pickup truck. Off to the side, several others squatted in the shade of a thick creosote bush.
The singer was a young woman, with straight blond hair down to the hem of her walking shorts.
The man unloading the truck was equally blond, although his hair only reached his shoulders. He added a wooden case to the cardboard box and six plastic water jugs in the center of the clearing.
“Illegals?” I whispered.
“Maybe the ones sitting down. I don’t know about the others. Maybe birders or just some kids camping.”
We rose slowly and approached the group with our arms held out to our sides. “Buenos días,” Guillermo called. The seated figures rose like a flock of doves and began to scatter. “No se preocupe! We’re travelers, too.” They held still as we came near.
“We heard you singing,” I said in greeting.
The young woman smiled and pushed her hair back off her forehead. “I pretend that it makes it cooler out here.”
“That would be a good trick. My name’s Jessie.”
“Eldon Dallas,” the young man said, offering his hand. “This is my wife, Polly.”
“And your friends?” Guillermo asked, nodding at the Mexican family that stood ten feet away. The wife’s eyes were wide with fright, the two little girls’ with fatigue.
The white couple glanced at each other before replying. “Our church is part of a group called Save A Life,” the man said. “We’re not doing anything illegal here. Just making sure that people don’t die in the desert for no reason.”
Guillermo looked at the bundles and boxes they’d unloaded from the truck. “You give them supplies?”
“We leave water, clean socks, bandages—some nonperishable food,” Polly said. “We’re not helping them cross. Just helping them stay alive.”
“Are you going to give these people a ride?” I asked. The supplies would have helped them, but a forty-mile ride to civilization would have helped even more.
Eldon shook his head. “It’s illegal to transport anyone we find. Or to help them cross.”
“But you’re here right now, and these two little girls are tired.” The girls peered up at me as if they knew I was talking about them.
“You don’t understand,” Dallas said. “We’re supposed to tell the Border Patrol when we find someone. We could go to jail just for stopping to help these people.”
“Have you heard any stories out here about kidnapping? About coyotes taking the children of illegals as payment for crossing?” Guillermo asked.
“There was a woman last month,” Polly said. “Her son had been taken from her.”
“Do you know who’s doing it?”
“Does it matter?” Polly said. “There’s always some animal ready to prey on a weaker animal.”
“We’ve got a lot more drops to make before nightfall,” Dallas said quietly.
Guillermo had moved off for a private conversation with the family that hovered at the edge of our debate. He turned back to us. “We’ll walk north with the Delgados for a while.”
We gave the little girls our PowerBars and the parents our remaining beef jerky. Guillermo and the father hoisted two water jugs and the family’s bed sheet-wrapped belongings. The mother and I lifted the little girls to our hips as the blue pickup drove away.
“Como te llamas?” I asked the little three-year-old clinging to me.
“Magdalena.”
“Me llamo Jessie.” Satisfied with the ride and my response, she poked me in the cheek then tucked her head under my chin.
We moved north across the desert. It was forty more miles to Tucson, with only desert, shadeless sun, coyotes, and Border Patrol agents in between.
A mile farther on, we stopped so that Mrs. Delgado could rewrap the rags around her thin sandals. At first I’d thought it was to smudge out her footprints, but soon realized that it was protection, however minimal, from the thorns, sharp rocks, and volcanic heat of the trek.
They were headed to southern California, the man said, to work in the strawberry fields in the central valley. It would have been shorter to cross farther west of Nogales, but that would have taken them through Altar Valley and that route was even more dangerous.
“They call it Cocaine Alley,” he said.
And OTM Alley: Other Than Mexican. The valley was a primary route for drug smugglers coming across the border from a dozen different nations.
“You’d be safer traveling at night,” Guillermo said. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard on the children.”
“We have many miles to go. We have to sleep a little and walk a lot.”
I saw a scorpion tail of dust off to the right, a single dark vehicle, moving fast.
“Border Patrol?” I asked Guillermo.
“I can’t tell yet.” He put down the water jugs, the bundled bed sheet, and his backpack, and turned to face the oncoming truck. I set down my load and bent to get the knife from my boot.
“Ricky Lamas,” he said, when the truck slid to a stop in front of us and three young Latinos got out. “Just the man I wanted to see.”
Carlos’s supposed friend. The guy who, with Chaco, may have lured us to the place where we’d found Carlos’s dead body.
“Hey, jefe. What are you doing out here? I never thought of the Ochoas as wetbacks.” Lamas strutted toward us, his pointy-toed cowboy boots kicking up dust with every step.
“We’re just taking a little stroll with our friends here.”
“Let us help you. We’ll give these folks a lift. Help them get on their way.” The other two Braceros circled around behind us.
“No thanks. It’s a nice day for a walk.” Guillermo held his knife behind his leg and turned to keep the biggest of the thugs in view.
“At least the little ones,” Lamas said. “They’d probably like a ride.” He made a swipe at Magdalena’s arm. She let out a screech and pulled back to her mother’s side.
“Drive away now, Ricky. Write this one off as too much trouble and go get somebody else.”
Lamas continued to circle him.
The mustachioed Bracero tackled the Mexican father, sending them both sprawling to the dirt. Mr. Delgado had no weapons but his hands and he used them, gouging and flailing.
Lamas and his partner went for Guillermo. The big one pinned Guillermo’s arms behind him, and Lamas concentrated his fists on Guillermo’s face and stomach. I gripped the knife and slashed once across Lamas’s bicep to get his attention.
“Over here,” I whispered, the death wish clear in my voice.
“You want some of this, chiquita?” He didn’t seem weakened by the gash in his arm. Unbuckling his belt, he drew it from its loops, held the tongue in his hand, and circled the buckle end overhead. “I can teach you a few things.”
The belt struck like a snake and the buckle connected with my cheekbone. It hurt like a son of a bitch and I blinked away tears. I shuffled to the left, looking to draw Lamas away from the mother and little girls who were frozen in place beside me.
He swung again, and this time I ducked under his arm and swiped the blade across his stomach. He jumped back to assess the damage and I turned to check on Guillermo. He must have done something to the big guy’s eyes; the Bracero was rolling on the ground with his hands over his face. Guillermo yanked the pistol from the man’s waistband and turned to Lamas, spinning him around and shoving the gun between his lips.
“Tell the others to give it up.”
Ricky Lamas wasn’t brave with a gun barrel in his mouth. “Bastante,” he said around the hot metal. The Bracero fighting with Mr. Delgado took three steps back and held his hands up. The big guy was still curled in a ball and didn’t have to stop anything.
“What do you do with the kids?”
“I was just joking,” Lamas tried.
Guillermo shoved the barrel back in his mouth, the trigger guard up against his lips. “I wasn’t.”
Lamas put his hands up and Guillermo withdrew the gun.
“Okay, Okay. It’s something that Chaco’s got going with some big shots in Tucson. I don’t know what they do with them.”
“What big shots? Darren Markson? Paul Willard?”
“I don’t know. I swear.”
“What did Carlos have to do with it?”
“He wanted to stop it.”
“And that’s why he was killed?” That was venom, not curiosity, in the question.
Lamas shook his head. “Not just that. He took one of the kids. A girl.”