Michener, James A. (173 page)

At dusk, with the train long gone for its destination in Houston, Eloy started walking up the familiar road to Monahans, Odessa, Midland and Lubbock. He covered many of the two hundred and twenty-three miles on foot, caught a few hitches, turned down job offers from two different ranchers, and paid American dollars for the bus ticket which carried him from Midland to Lubbock; at the station in the former city a well-dressed woman asked if he needed work and was obviously disappointed when he said no.

As he neared Lubbock on its unbelievably flat plain his heart expanded, for now he was on land he knew and loved. Nodding to several acquaintances in the bus station, he assured them that when summer came he would again tend their lawns, but then he started walking west on Highway 114, and before long a rancher who recognized him carried him on to Levelland, where, with his usual broad smile, he bade the man goodbye and headed for the customary cotton gin, where he reported to the foreman of the idle plant: 'I'm back.'

'Where you working till we start our run?'

'Mr. Hockaday, he asked.'

'Good man. But come August first, we want you here.'

'I'll be here.'

That year he had fourteen different jobs. Everyone he met sought his help, for he was known throughout the community as reliable, congenial and the father of three children down in Zacatecas to whom he sent nine-tenths of his wages. He did yardf

work; one woman of considerable wealth arranged for him to get a driver's license, strictly illegal, so that he could chauffeur her about; he worked at stores cleaning up after midnight; and he did occasional baby-sitting for young couples.

By 1968, Muzquiz had become a fixture at a local cotton gin, supervising the machinery, and as December approached he went to see the owner of the installation. Before he had spoken six words he broke into tears. When the owner asked in Spanish what the matter was, Eloy handed him a letter from his oldest boy: Senora Muzquiz, Eloy's stalwart wife who had run their family without a man, had died, leaving the three children motherless.

'Dear trusted friend, this is a tragedy. My heart goes out to you.'

'Senor, if I bring my children north with me, could you find them work?'

'How would you get them here?'

'I get here, don't I? Senor, I love Lubbock. I love Texas. This is my home now.'

'Any rancher in Texas would want a man like you. If they're good children . . .'

'They are. Their mother saw to that.'

Suddenly it was the owner who was sniffling: 'We'll find a place. Here's some money for your trip.'

As Eloy stepped off the bus in El Paso he found Ben Talbot waiting for him and he supposed that he was going to be arrested, and the tall officer who spoke the peculiar Spanish took him by the arm, led him to a bar, and said, over Dr. Peppers: 'Eloy, the big man has given me hell. Says I let you come in and out of the country as if you owned it. He wants you arrested.'

'General Talbot'—Muzquiz called every officer General, in either Mexico or Texas, for he had learned that such an error produced few reprisals—'you must not arrest me! My wife has died.'

After Talbot studied the sweat-stained letter, he blew his nose and delivered his warning: 'Eloy, go back to Zacatecas. Take care of your children. And don't come up this way again. Because next time I catch you, the big boss insists, you go to jail.'

'But I must come back, General Talbot. And I must bring my children.'

'Damnit, Eloy. There is no way you can sneak past us with three kids. You'll be caught, and into the calaboose you go. Then what will happen to your children?'

'General Talbot, we must come back. We are needed.'

That was the haunting phrase which put this border problem into perspective. The Mexicans who were streaming across in such

uncounted numbers were mostly illiterate and they showed no inclination toward becoming Americanized, as immigrants from Europe had done in the early 1900s, instead, they clung to their Spanish language and their Mexican ways, and there were fifty other things wrong with them, but they were needed. They were needed by ranchers who could not otherwise find cowboys and by young mothers who could not find helpers. They were needed in restaurants and hotels and shops and in almost every service activity engaged in by the people of Texas. They were desperately needed, and as long as this was true, they would be enticed over the border by the millions.

As 12 February 1969 approached, Border Patrol Officer Talbot, who now wore cowboy boots, a large hat and a bolo tie when off duty, and could scarcely remember when he had been a Vermonter, realized that his old friend and nemesis Eloy Muzquiz was due to make his appearance in Ciudad Juarez in preparation for his dash to paradise, this time with three children in tow, so he telephoned a Mexican officer in Juarez with whom he had established good relations, and asked: 'You see a man about forty years old with three kids buying groceries for a dash across?'

'No, but I'll keep watch,' and after a while the Mexican called back: 'Yep. Buying sardines, canned refried beans, canned fruit, juices and a big bag of pinole.'

'Let me know when he crosses.'

As if obedient to some inner schedule, one which had worked j in the past, at about one in the afternoon Eloy led his three children across the dry river and eastward toward the freight yards. From a distance Talbot, marking their progress through field I glasses, saw the father instruct his children as to how they must 1 run to leap aboard the moving freight. He saw the engine getting up steam, the surreptitious movement of illegals edging toward the still-motionless boxcars, and he could feel the tension. Then, to his dismay—almost his horror—he saw that his fellow officer Dan Carlisle had spotted Eloy and his children and was placing himself in position to nab them within the next few minutes. Without hesitation he activated his walkie-talkie: 'Three-oh-three! Two-oh-two calling. I'm on to a crowd that might prove difficult.'

'Three-oh-three speaking. Cannot help. Following my own crowd.'

'Could be I'll need help.'

'You want me to come over 7 '

'You'd better.' With relief he saw Carlisle stop his tracking of the Muzquiz family and start west: When he reaches here I'll think of some explanation.

With his glasses he watched the engineer climb aboard the diesel, saw the trainmen wigwag their signals, and studied carefully the long line of boxcars as it strained to get started. Wheels spun, the engines coughed; the cars started to inch forward. Another spin, then all the wheels seemed to catch at the same instant, and the long train began to pick up speed.

Almost trembling, he watched as Muzquiz started his three children for the boxcars, urging them forward. Christ in heaven, Talbot prayed, don't let them slip. And he watched with strange satisfaction as the two boys leaped for the train, grasping the proper handholds.

Now the little girl, twelve years old, had to make the flying leap, and Talbot watched, teeth clenched, as her father spurred her on, her long dress flapping in the February sunlight. Taster, kid!' Talbot cried under his breath, and he sighed with relief when he saw Eloy lift her and almost throw her toward the train, where her brothers dragged her to safety. 'Okay, Muzquiz!'

He gasped, for at this moment one of the many scrambling wetbacks slipped and fell toward the implacable wheels, which had destroyed so many in such situations. W r as it Muzquiz? Talbot saw the sliding man frantically clutch at rocks, until with bleeding fingers he caught one that saved him, and there he lay as the train moved past, its wheels turning always faster.

Eloy, leaping over the fallen man, grabbed the handholds, swung himself into the boxcar, and disappeared.

At the Fort Stockton stop Muzquiz explained to his children why they must wait till the first frenzied action dissipated, then quietly he led them to the rusted Ford station wagon that still stood beside the road. In it they slept for some hours, side by side, waking when it was time to head cautiously for Midland, where they caught the bus to Lubbock.

When they reached Levelland they were greeted with warmth and even embraces, for many families needed their help. When they were safe in the two-room shack which the plantation owner provided, Muzquiz told his children: 'This is our home now. We will never leave.'

If Ben Talbot developed a feeling of brotherhood toward Eloy Muzquiz because of the latter's decency and courage, he knew another Mexican for whom he felt only loathing, and this slimy operator preoccupied his attention, both when Talbot was on the job or resting beside the swimming pool at the house he and his wife, Maria Luz, had built at the edge of El Paso. His notes on this infamous man explained why he despised him:

El Lobo, real name unknown. Birthplace unknown. Frequents the cantina El Azteca. About thirty-two, slight, neatly trimmed mustache, toothpick in corner of mouth. Always present when some deal is being engineered. Never present when trouble starts. Stays in Ciudad Juarez mostly, but is willing to come boldly into El Paso when business requires it. Occupation: coyote. Smuggles groups of wetbacks to rendezvous in the desert. Collects his fee and often deserts them.

1 Locked 63 wetbacks into a closed truck with space for 16 at most. Drove across desert to Van Horn in blazing heat. More than 20 died.

2. Dropped 17 wetbacks into the small opening of a tank car that had been carrying gasoline, closed the hatch at El Paso yards. All dead when hatch opened at Fort Stockton.

3. Packed 22 into a Chevrolet, plus two locked in the trunk. In order to protect springs on car, wedged wooden posts between them and body Friction from driving set wood on fire. He ran from car, but did not stop to open trunk. Two men incinerated.

4. On at least two occasions led groups of girls who wanted to be waitresses across the desert and sold them to the men from Oklahoma City.

Talbot vowed that he would catch this evil man during some foray i north of the river, but El Lobo was so clever and self-protective that he could not be trapped, and often Talbot had to watch with disgust as the slim, tricky fellow came boldly into El Paso on the I maternity gambit, leading some pregnant peasant girl to Thomason General Hospital, and charging her a fee for the service. Since El Lobo broke no law during such missions, and since the deaths t listed on his dossier could not be proved against him, he moved with impunity, but events were about to unfold in a dusty little I town well south of the border which would place him in real jeopardy.

On the bleak and sandy plains of northern Mexico, mid-way between the cities of Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez, stood the adobe village of Moctezuma, seven small huts, one of which served as a roadside shop dispensing allegedly cold drinks to American motorists. The place was called by the grandiloquent name La Tienda del Norte and was operated by the Guzmans, a widowed woman with two daughters and a son.

The older girl was married to the man who ran the nearby Pemex station, and it was her responsibility to wash the windshields of any cars that stopped, and to send orders to the national gasoline monopoly for such additional supplies as her husband thought he might sell to motorists who found themselves short of

gas on this rather frightening road If one did not fill up at Moctezuma, one could well be stranded before reaching Chihuahua.

It was this constant flow of big cars passing south that caused discontent in the little village, for when one stopped for either gas or a cold drink, the Mexicans could see the wealth the owners possessed: They are all richer than the archbishop. It must be fun to live in los Estados Unidos where money is so easy!'

The young wife, Eufemia, had often thought of this as she tended the rich travelers, but more so now that she was pregnant. Her condition occasioned great discussion among the residents of Moctezuma, for what a young woman did when she was pregnant made a universe of difference, as two of the older women reminded the mother, Encarnacion: 'It is important. It is life and death, really, that you get her to El Paso.'

True, but neither her husband nor any of his friends have done this thing, and they have no way of instructing her.'

'What you must do,' one of the women said, 'is get her to Juarez and put her in touch with my cousin. El Lobo, that's his name, and his job is to slip people into the States.'

The other woman had a simpler plan: To get into El Paso is nothing, you just walk across the bridge. But to leave El Paso for the rest of the States, that's when you need El Lobo.'

'You think that Eufemia can just go to Juarez, cross over and reach Thomason General without getting caught?'

'Others have done it, haven't they?'

And that was the nagging fact: other pregnant women from villages far off the main road had somehow reached Juarez, got across the river and entered the hospital, had their babies and come home with that precious piece of paper, more valuable than gold, which certified that this child, male or female and of such-and-such a name, had been born within the United States.

Such a paper meant that for as long as he or she lived, that child could enter the States, assume his citizenship, get a free education, and build a good life. Without such a certificate, life would almost certainly be one of unending poverty in northern Mexico; therefore, women like Eufemia were willing to undergo any hardships to ensure that their unborn children received a fair start in life, and that was why even the poorest, even the least-educated, headed for El Paso in their ninth month.

But these benefits did not fully explain why so many citizens of Moctezuma yearned to live in the States. Nothing differentiated their land from that of New Mexico or Arizona, and it was actually better than many parts of West Texas; the strain of people was no different from that of people who prospered in those American

states; and the climate was the same. But the sad fact was that in Mexico no way had been devised whereby the unquestioned wealth of the land, almost unequaled in the Americas, could be justly distributed. The wealthy grew immensely wealthy; the Guzmans could see the great cars sweeping north to the shops across the Rio Grande and then come roaring back loaded with goods purchased in American stores. But in the Mexican system none of that wealth filtered down to the peasants who did most of the work. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more cynical system than that which trapped Encarnacion Guzman and her three children, for the national leaders had been preaching since the 1920s the triumph of La Revolution, and each succeeding administration had cried at election time: 'Let us march forward with La Revolucion!' but the same reactionary cadre had remained in power, cynically stealing the nation's wealth and allowing the great masses of the people to plod along, sometimes at the starvation level.