After less than five minutes of driving, the truck stops.
A half-dozen men line the porch of the motel. They watch us climb out of the truck, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. They smoke cigarettes, talk quietly, and mostly ignore us.
I take one look at the motel and have a good idea why they are on the porch and not in the rooms. It’s filthy. Most of what could be broken is. Railings bow outward and dangle from the second floor, one threatening to fall with the next gust of wind. Whatever paint remains on the outside is coated with uneven splotches of dirt. Several windows are busted out, leaving empty frames with a few lingering shards of glass. Boards are rotting or already rotted. This isn’t a motel. I may not have stayed in one before, but I’ve certainly seen them, and they don’t look like this. This is somewhere you’re told to wait. For as little time as possible. A place so unwelcoming you can happily walk into a miserable desert and never look back.
I look again at the men on the porch. They are us, and we are them. Our stories are different, but we are the same. We are all waiting to cross.
Sr. Ortíz waves us toward what should have been the front door but is only the front doorway. The door itself is gone.
As we approach the steps, a truck pulls up behind ours—a flatbed—the kind usually used to haul equipment. The porch empties quickly, leaving only one man behind. The men pile onto the back of the truck, pull their hats low, and ride away. I watch them with envy. I want to start this trip now, not wait around this…whatever this place is.
I make eye contact with the one man remaining on the porch. He nods, and I nod back.
We get a key and climb the stairs to the second floor.
The inside of the motel matches the outside well. There are two mattresses, both of which lack frames. Lying on the ground, they’re more inviting to bugs than people. A lone bulb dangles above our heads. I’d sooner cross the border twice than touch the wires that support it. And the toilet, it flushes. That’s the nicest thing I can say about it.
We open a door to a balcony, which overlooks an alley behind the building. The whole balcony slopes downward toward an iron railing with flakes of rust that flap in the wind. None of us step outside. We keep the door open for the breeze.
We return to the truck to gather our supplies and carry them to the room, unsure of when mañana might arrive.
Marcos and Gladys lie down on one of the mattresses, eyes closed, surely trying to imagine they are elsewhere. Arbo does the same, though I think he’s mostly trying to avoid talking to me. Sr. Ortíz takes the truck to get some food from a market we passed a few blocks away.
Which leaves me alone with my new book. I can’t concentrate, with the heat, smell, and mood in the room, so I leave to find a better spot.
I walk downstairs to the porch. The man I had nodded to earlier is still there, alone. I walk to the opposite end and take a seat on the floor, settling into a creaky wooden plank. I open the book.
“¿Qué lees?” he asks.
“Las aventuras de Huckleberry Finn.”
I know I shouldn’t be talking to anyone, but it seems more suspicious to get up and leave.
“Never heard of it,” he says.
“Me neither. A friend got it for me.”
“Well, it’s good to have something to do out there. Something to take your mind off the heat.” He crosses to my side of the porch and holds out a pack of cigarettes.
“No, thanks.”
He lights one.
“You’re young to cross.”
“How do you know I’m crossing?”
He laughs. Quietly at first, then louder, turning his head from side to side as if wishing someone else might appear to share in this gem.
“Claro. You’re on vacation and this is your favorite hotel.”
“Are you waiting to cross?”
“I’m waiting to meet up with a friend. And then, yeah, we’re going to cross. This is number four for me,” he says.
“Wow.”
“Do your parents know what you’re doing?”
I don’t answer.
“Mine didn’t the first time I went,” he follows up. “I was older than you, but I wanted to prove I was a man. Send them money, you know. Prove I could make it. On my own. I did.”
“My parents already crossed over,” I say.
“Both of them?”
“Yeah.”
“They left you here with other family?” he asks.
“Sort of.”
“That’s rough, but it happens.”
“So why are you crossing for the fourth time?”
“It happens too. I’ve got a wife. And a daughter.”
“So I guess the trip isn’t that bad?”
“No seas pendejo. It’s an hijo de puta.” All pleasantness falls from his face as he chides me. “People die. You’ve got a guía, right?”
I lower my voice. “We’re waiting on a coyote to take us across.”
He takes a long drag on his cigarette.
“You don’t have a clue… Ni una puta idea,” he says. Smoke chases the words out of his mouth.
I start to speak, but he cuts me off.
“Coyotes don’t cross. They organize. They’re the leaders. You talk to them, and then they set you up to cross with a guía. And you know what you are?”
I shake my head no.
“Un pollo. A chicken. Just an animal they take across the desert for money. Y nada más. Do you know this coyote you’re supposed to meet?”
“He’s a recommendation from a friend.”
“He’d better be. If you try to find a coyote here, you’ll be a fried chicken. That’s the number one rule of crossing. These cabrones on the border will leave you for dead in the desert.”
“Do you and your friend have a guía?” I ask.
“Por supuesto. Of course.”
“Why not go on your own if it’s the fourth time?”
Again, he laughs, but only for a second. He drops his cigarette and smothers it with his shoe.
“You need to listen or you could die, okay?”
I nod.
“Necesitas un guía.”
I nod once more.
“I’m going to say it again. You need a guide. For two reasons. One, he knows the way. Once you step into that hellhole, you start dying. There’s no wall out there. You know why they haven’t put one up?”
I shake my head.
His eyes widen. He stares at me like he’s looking deep inside of me. “Because that wouldn’t make it any harder than it already is. Are you from somewhere near here?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you know how hot it gets. Now imagine it even hotter. You’ve never felt heat like this. It feels like your lips are going to melt off your face. During the day, it’s fifty degrees, or one hundred twenty if you measure it like they do up north—I always thought that sounded hotter. And at night, when it cools down, it doesn’t cool. It never gets much below the temperature of your body. It strangles you. You know how much water your body needs every day out there?”
I shrug.
“About six liters. Every single day. But you can’t carry that much. So you take less than you need, and it’s a race to get out. Three days, five days…seven days. How many days do you think you can last? A good guía will make it fast. Without him, you can walk in circles for days and have no idea. You don’t find roads or water walking in circles. You die. And if not burning alive isn’t a good enough reason for you, here’s another—the gangs control the border. They charge you to cross if you don’t use a guía. If they find you alive, that is. And they’re looking. You don’t want them to find you if you haven’t paid anything.”
I feel my Adam’s apple move down my throat as I swallow a mouthful of dusty spit.
“So you pay either way. Might as well get a guía. But do you know what can really kill you out there?”
“No.”
“Everything. The sun. The heat. Poisonous plants. No water. Bad water. Snakes. Scorpions. Spiders. Wolves. Cougars. Bears. Chupacabras. And that’s only the desert stuff. Then there’s the human element. If you get caught and you’re lucky, you’ll meet the U.S. migra. Their border patrol is your one-way ticket back. All it costs you is a beating. Not much. A black eye, a broken arm. Most people live through it. They’re the nice ones. If you run into our migra, they’re not as gentle. They hate that you’re leaving our country, and they won’t let you forget it. But the people you really don’t want to run into are the gringos themselves. You think they want you in their country? They don’t. They look so friendly when they drive by on the way to the beach here, right? Well, they’re not. At least not the ones you meet in the middle of the desert, when no one else is looking. They have their own patrols. They ride around in the night, looking to take out their anger on anyone they find. They know what happens when la migra sends you back—you try to cross again. So they don’t send you back to Mexico. They send you back to God.”
I let this sink in for a minute.
“If it doesn’t work out with our coyote, do you think your guía could—”
“You don’t get it. Don’t trust anybody you meet here. You don’t know who I am. You met me on a porch.”
“But—”
“But nothing. I could be anybody. Everything, everyone in this town is trouble. You got it? You want to stay alive, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then wait for your coyote. And if he doesn’t come, leave. Find another one somewhere away from here and then come back. Your mom and dad will wait for you.”
I hate that he has no idea how much that comment hurts, and I can’t show it either.
An enormous, dusty pickup truck parks in front of the motel. Its loud diesel engine booms with a force I can almost feel in my chest.
“Maybe that’s your coyote,” the man says.
Two men sit up front and two are in the back seat. They’re all looking in our direction. They could be here for any reason, but I don’t like the way they’re looking at us. Or more specifically, at me.
“Relax. They never look friendly.”
I don’t relax. My whole body tenses. They’re passing something back and forth between them. I strain hard to see what it is. Each time I’m close to getting a good look at it, it gets passed again. Finally, it moves to the driver and he presses it flat against the steering wheel.
I leap to my feet and race back into the motel, nearly knocking over the man on the porch. The dingy hallway whizzes past me in a blur. I take the stairs three steps at a time. I start yelling before I even get to the room.
“Get out! Get out!” I blast through the door. “We have to leave, now!”
All three bounce from the mattress to their feet in one fluid move.
“What’s wrong?”
I lock the door and bolt it shut.
“They found us! ¡Vámonos! ¡Ahora!” I say, charging toward the open balcony and looking out. It’s a one-story drop to the dirt alley below.
“How?”
“I don’t know. They have the newspaper with our pictures in it and they saw me. They’re coming! Let’s go! Now!”
“Here?”
“Yes! Now!”
Boom!
The room shakes from the pound at the door. It’s not a knock. It’s an attempt to knock it down.
Gladys shrieks.
“¡Abre la puerta!” a voice shouts from the other side of the door.
Marcos blows by me and onto the rickety balcony. He kicks the railing, knocking the top clear off. He kicks again at the bars and the rest of the railing swings downward, clinging upside down by its base. As it does, the entire balcony starts to fall. It stops suddenly, as if catching on something. Marcos tumbles off the balcony to the dirt below.
Boom!
Gladys eyes the balcony. It slants downward like a ramp at a loading dock. She puts a hesitant foot on it, then starts to shuffle toward the edge, to reduce the distance of the jump.
I hear a loud splintering noise. I throw an arm around her and anchor my other hand on the side of the doorframe. I yank her back as the balcony plunges.
Marcos leaps back, and the balcony crashes, just barely missing him.
Boom! Crack!
The doorframe behind us starts to split.
“Come on!” Marcos yells. He braces himself and beckons Gladys with his arms open wide, just beyond the jagged remains of the balcony, its rusty handrail now protruding up toward the sky.
Gladys jumps. Marcos doesn’t catch her but breaks her fall. Almost before they can get out of the way, Arbo launches himself into the alley. He hits hard and flat, missing the edge of the hazard by next to nothing.
He’s slow getting up. I’m about to try to jump over him when Marcos yells. “My bag! Get my bag!”
The bags!
I turn, fling myself back into the room, and clutch his bag. Huckleberry Finn sits right next to it, where I had apparently tossed it in a panic. I grab it and am about to reach for the other bags when the door snaps open, sending tiny splinters flying across the room.
I don’t wait to see who’s on the other side. I bolt for the balcony and jump, without looking below. Arbo has moved out of the way, but it doesn’t matter. I would have cleared him. I sail to the far side of the alley, hitting the dirt so hard if feels like it breaks my hip. There’s no time to whine about it.
I pick myself up and we run. We run hard. We run like our lives depend on it, because they do.
I look back. A man appears in the open balcony door. He’s heavy and older. He hesitates, then jumps. He doesn’t clear the wreckage, landing on a broken piece of the rusty iron railing. It shoots through his foot. He howls.
We tear down the alley, with Marcos in the lead. Gladys and I nearly keep pace with him, while Arbo trails farther and farther back. As we approach the nearest corner, another man appears. He points a gun in our direction.
Marcos banks a hard left around the corner. Gladys and I are on his heels, but Arbo lags a few seconds behind.
“Run, Arbo!” I yell, peering around the corner.
His arms flail in random directions—left, right, up, down. His frame leans so far forward that with each step he gets closer and closer to falling facedown in the alley. It is the most ungraceful body in motion I have ever seen.
A bullet hits the corner just as he clears it.
The market is three blocks in this direction. Marcos turns up and down different side streets, making the run nearly a kilometer. We keep a pace that Arbo can hold, which still leaves us all breathless.
When we get there, Sr. Ortíz is leaving the market, walking toward the truck.
“They…found…uth!” Arbo wheezes across the parking lot.
“Who?” he asks.
“¡Por favor! We need…to go!”
We hurdle into the bed of the truck, crashing into the sides and one another, as Sr. Ortíz climbs in the front and starts the engine.
A thunderous motor revs on the street alongside the market. As a pickup speeds by, the driver turns and sees us.
Screech!
The truck skids to a stop, then turns around, leaving a curling trail of four black marks on the cement. The wheels spin smoke into the air as the vehicle accelerates back in our direction.
Sr. Ortíz punches the gas. The four of us tumble into the back wall of the truck. He takes us down a narrow side alley next to the market. The other truck follows.
Sr. Ortíz makes a hard, tight right around the back of the market. It feels like we’re going to flip. The truck behind us tries to do the same, but it’s larger and going faster. Its tail end skids and slams into a wall, stopping the truck dead. The tires squeal and spew out puffs of smoke. It buys us a few seconds at most.
We turn down an alley on the other side of the market and soon launch into the street. A block later, they’re back on our tail. Within seconds it’s clear that, despite their damage, they have the faster truck. Our engine howls at a painful pitch, and we’re losing ground.
Marcos reaches into his bag and pulls out a handgun, the same one he used at the quinceañera. None of us had forgotten about it, yet we’re all startled by its emergence—Arbo, in particular, as he is directly behind Marcos. He flops down low in the bed of the truck as Marcos raises the weapon.
Marcos shoots twice. Their truck swerves and the shots miss.
We soon discover the problem with this plan. An arm extends out of the window of their truck. This is now more than just a car chase.
I flinch as a bullet strikes our truck. Where, I have no idea. Marcos leaps up, fires another shot, then drops back down. I doubt he’s even aiming.
I peek over the wall of the truck bed. They’re less than half a block away. I glance at Marcos. For the first time, he looks shaken. Scared.
He props himself up, slowly, and raises the gun with both arms.
Again, one of their shots hits our truck. This time, there’s no guessing where it strikes—a bullet hole appears just above the back window of the truck cabin, missing Marcos’s head by a few hairs. He never even flinched.
Marcos closes one eye and fires.
His expression grows confident.
I pop up my head in time to see their truck swerve off the road. There’s a bullet hole in the windshield, right in front of the driver. The guy in the passenger seat is grabbing desperately for the steering wheel.
Marcos remains in his pose. Rigid and frozen.
But not for long.
Sr. Ortíz turns hard around a corner, causing us all to slide into the side wall of the truck bed, including Marcos. As he tumbles, he keeps the gun raised high. When he hits the wall, his wrist smashes into the top edge. The gun soars out of the truck and into the street.
He screams in pain, clutching his wrist. “Stop the truck!”
We keep going.
Marcos steadies himself and pounds on the back window of the cab.
“Stop the truck! I dropped the gun! We need that gun!”
Sr. Ortíz fumbles with the window and opens it while racing forward.
“We can’t go back!” He turns hard onto another street. Again we tumble.
“We have to go back! We have to go back!”
The truck continues.
“It’s too late! They’re back there,” Arbo shouts.
“I shot them!”
“You shot the driver. What about the others? You think they can’t drive?”
Sr. Ortíz yells, “Turning!”
We all brace ourselves again. Marcos stares at us, looking for support for his case.
It’s too late. I’m not sure how I feel about this.
“How is your wrist?” Gladys asks. Marcos still clutches it with his other hand.
“I wish I could trade it for that gun,” he says and slumps against the wall.
Sr. Ortíz turns down a few more streets until he finds a highway leading away from Sonoyta. He takes it and we head west, along the border.