Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Mexican Migrants (6 page)

“
First, we need to blow it up,”
explained one. All of us took turns, and I was glad, because the deep breathing helped get rid of some of my nervousness, and finally being able to
do
something helped alleviate the complete sense of helplessness I’d been feeling. Meanwhile, one of the kids rummaged around the floor of the shack and dusted off a couple of the planks, which I now noticed had been carved into crude paddles. We squeezed the thing out the door, and suddenly were being led quickly toward some trees which Alonso realized must line the banks of the river.

“
We’re there!”
he said excitedly.
“La línea divisoria!”
It was a shock to realize we were so close to the river and a surprise, at least, to see that we were going to cross in broad daylight. We had to negotiate two broken-down barbed-wire fences to reach it, but the kids showed no caution until the river itself was visible. Then they crouched low, surveying the opposite bank through the trees. Alonso, farther behind, took the opportunity to visit a nearby tree.
“My last pee in Mexico,”
he explained with a grin.

The banks of the river harbored a world different from that of the dusty shacks behind us—one of greenery, cool breezes, and dancing shadows. Somehow, though, the murky waters of the Rio Grande beyond did not exude the epic quality that I had expected after talking with Mexicans for so many weeks. It looked too tame and weedy, too mundane to serve as the great symbol of division between two cultures, two economies. Though apparently deep, it could not have been more than fifty yards across. And the U.S. side, grassy and treeless with a couple of junked cars visible: this was the promised land?

From where we crouched, a steep and muddy slope dropped to the brown water. The three boys negotiated the mud with the raft, looked around again, and then signaled that the way was clear. Alonso and I skittered down the bank to the water line. As the small raft was placed in the river, we were told to take our shoes off—
“so that they won’t damage the bottom.”
Alonso, meanwhile, noticed a rapid stream of big bubbles emerging from underneath one side of the raft. One of the kids smiled sheepishly.
“We’ll have to hurry”
was all he said.

Knees to our chins, Alonso and I packed ourselves in between the two paddlers, someone gave a push, and we were off into international waters. As the current was strong, the boys paddled furiously. The tiny raft bobbed and twisted. About halfway across I spotted the trampled spot on the opposite bank for which we were aiming, some twenty yards downstream. The front paddler was slow, and we almost missed the landing spot. Then, all of a sudden, we were there, and Alonso was out—
“careful! careful!”
hissed a kid, as the raft lurched—and then me, both of us scrambling up the bank barefoot, shoes in hand, heading for a patch of tall grass. It felt like a war movie, guerrillas penetrating enemy lines.
“Did you see anybody? Did you see anybody?”
I asked Alonso.

“
No! Relax!”
he said, tightening his laces.

The kids had given us directions to downtown Laredo, and cautiously Alonso led the way, through the grass and shrubs of the floodplain, past larger trees and then a house. Some of the reports on the “flood” of aliens entering the United States had led me to think the path would be well worn, but instead we had to pick our own way, deciding which routes would be least likely to have one of Immigration’s motion sensors—devices which detect the vibrations of footsteps and transmit the information to a main computer—and which ones offered the best concealment. Onto pavement, then past two stop signs and a traffic light, a right-hand turn and ... downtown Laredo lay before us, about two miles ahead.

Strangely opposite emotions swept over Alonso and me as we walked those streets of Laredo. I suddenly felt a great excitement and wave of relief, a joy at being home again after so many weeks, out of the hands of the
coyotes,
away from Mexican law enforcement, back in a place, I thought, where I could explain myself out of most predicaments I might find myself in. A joy, in other words, at being
alive.

Alonso, on the other hand, was now out of the frying pan and into the fire: suddenly an “illegal alien,” subject to arrest, almost alone in a foreign land where he didn’t know the language. His nervousness grew perceptibly with his vulnerability. When we crossed the path of two uniformed deliverymen at an intersection, for example, Alonso walked to the other side of me and whispered,
“Stay between so they don’t see me!”
Then, perhaps in some sort of habitual deference to the
gringo
on his own turf, he began to walk behind me, as though he were my manservant. The confidence with which he had led the way in Mexico evaporated. It looked very conspicuous. I was about to point this out when down someone’s front steps walked a postman also in uniform and with a cap. Alonso seemed to hop a foot in the air, and the postman looked startled.

We continued our afternoon walk down the wide, warm, quiet, and
paved
streets of Laredo. It was probably the poor side of town, but worlds away from the poor side of Nuevo Laredo. People watched us from their porches, probably wondering more about the connection between us—Were we gay? Was I some kind of a smuggler?—than whether Alonso had just crossed over, which no doubt they already knew.

The sun was beginning to set when we reached downtown, and our first priority was finding a place to spend the chilly night. We walked side street after side street, looking for some warm and inconspicuous spot, and ducking more than once into an alley or doorway to avoid being seen by the omnipresent, light green vans of the Border Patrol. Finally, in a park, we met an old Mexican-American drunk who, in exchange for sharing our quart of beer, told us in Spanish the location of a parking garage. In the back of this garage was a grating through which warm air was ventilated. And there Alonso and I passed our first night back in America.

*

The next day Alonso spent alone, figuring out his course of action. From other Spanish-speaking people he learned that finding work in Laredo was next to impossible. The risk of getting nabbed by Immigration was great. Smugglers’ rates for rides away from the border zone were nearly as high as they had been in Nuevo Laredo. The Trailways bus station was hot, but, according to at least two people, the Greyhound station at night was not. This information Alonso shared when we reconvened in a park that afternoon; it was the sort of intelligence, we had agreed that morning, that having me along might make hard to discover. I had spent the day exploring a different side of Laredo. At a fashionable department store, I told Alonso with surprise, I had eaten lunch in a cafeteria where no employee, including the cashier, spoke any English at all.

“
Maybe
they
would give me a job,”
he said, hopefully.

“
I think it's all women down there,”
I replied.

“
I think I’m going to take the bus then,”
he said after a while.

“
To where?”

“
Well, maybe Houston. I worked there two years ago. I was on a lawn crew, and I worked for some cement pourers. Here
—
see
?—
Larry gave me his phone number. ”

Alonso showed me the inside cover of a matchbook, where, after a few beers on the last night of work, Larry, the cement boss, had penned his number for Alonso.

“
He said he would give me my job back if I wanted. Would you call him for me? Larry said to call collect. ”
Alonso explained that Larry spoke very little Spanish, communicating with his workers via those who spoke some English.

“
Okay, sure.”
Houston, I remembered, was well known for its reliance on undocumented labor in the construction industry. It might be a good tip—and Alonso said Larry might even have a job for me, which would be a good way to be able to stick together for a while.

From a pay phone in the park I reached Larry. I explained that I had just met Alonso, that I spoke Spanish, and that I was calling for him as a favor.

“I’m trying to remember,” said Larry. “Is he a little short guy?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the one. He wasn’t here too long, but he worked hard. Yeah, you can tell him there’s a job for him here.” We worked out the particulars of how Alonso would find Larry, and I made some small talk about Houston.

“Business pretty good right now?” I asked offhandedly.

“Oh sure, I got more than I can handle,” said Larry.

“Well, I tellya, I’m asking because I just got back into the country and could use some work,” I said. “I worked construction a few summers in Denver and even poured cement once or twice. Any chance you might put me on, too?”

There was a long silence. “Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t want this work. The hours are real long and I can’t pay you as much as you’d want. ”

“Hmm. How much do you pay?” I knew from Alonso that Larry had paid $6.00 and $6.50 an hour.

“You know,” said Larry, sounding slightly agitated, “really I’d rather not say. Anyway, we just work with Mexicans.”

Undaunted, I pressed on amiably. “Well, you know, Mexico is where I just came back from. I can speak Spanish pretty good and—if you’re worried about having a white guy on the crew—I get along pretty good with Mexican guys. I really could use the work. Maybe I could help you ou——”

This time Larry interrupted. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think it’d work out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” said Larry, and hung up. Slowly I hung up too. Seeing I was upset, Alonso asked if it were bad news.

“
Well, not for you. Larry says you can have a job.”
Alonso was thrilled. He had already checked the Greyhound schedule, he said, and there was a bus leaving for Houston in just a few hours. If I could loan him ten dollars, he’d have enough for the ticket and could be there by morning. He wasn’t quite sure where the street Larry mentioned was, but he thought ...

Alonso went on. I had stopped listening. Slowly I was growing angry. For the first time I began to understand the frustration of a blue-collar American who really needs work. The work was there—at a living wage—but the Mexicans had it, Mexicans with no legal right to be in the country. A white on the crew could be disruptive—if he got upset about something, he could mess things up by notifying Immigration of the situation. But I thought about Larry. Did the guy feel no guilt? Probably he rationalized it by reasoning, “All the other contractors do it. If I didn’t, I’d go out of business.” And probably there was some truth to that. But that didn’t mean it was right ...

Alonso was looking at me worriedly.
“What’s wrong?”

“
Oh, it's just that Larry wouldn’t give me a job too.”
I didn’t want to ruin Alonso’s happiness by going into why not.

“
It’s only because he doesn’t know you. If he knew you, he’d give you the job for sure. Why don’t you come along? I can introduce you.”

At first I said no, but then slowly I reconsidered. He had been a good traveling partner, and I would miss Alonso. And maybe, I thought, there was something to be gained by seeing how he settled into life in Houston, how he found a place to live and who his friends were. Maybe this adventure was just beginning. I’d give it a try. I told Alonso, and his smile returned.

We boarded the Greyhound around 9:30 P.M. Though there was no sign of Immigration anywhere, Alonso and I boarded separately and took seats a couple of rows apart. You never knew if there might be an inspection along the highway, or in the next town down the road. A couple of minutes later, Alonso quietly got up and walked back to the lavatory. To create the illusion that no one was inside, he would not shut the door. Rather, he would stand quietly behind it until the bus had pulled out—just a precaution against a last-minute check.

I heard the station’s final call for the bus to Houston, and saw the driver climb in. Right behind him was the Immigration officer. He strode unostentatiously down the aisle, glancing to his left and his right, and asked two people for their papers. Both apparently had them. With my racing pulse and the lump in my throat, one might have thought he was looking for me. But quietly he walked ... to the empty back of the bus, to the lavatory. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him push open the door ...

I didn’t turn around to watch my friend leave the bus; he did me the favor of not looking over as he followed the officer down the aisle. The bus door groaned shut as they stepped out, and the Greyhound shifted into gear. Alonso was crossing the street to an Immigration van as the coach lumbered out of the station and away to Houston.

SPRAWLING PHOENIX
is a city wrested from the desert. Its existence is made possible by dams, canals, some very deep wells, and the refusal of its inhabitants to accept that Nature made the land for jackrabbits and Gila monsters. Air conditioning has also played a part; only in cold, northern climes do so many drivers keep their windows up. The main streets in the daytime have the stark, dusty, commercial look of a Nevada gambling town. But Phoenix neighborhoods boast jealously kept green lawns, small shade trees, and swimming pools. The occasional palm or fountain evokes an overblown oasis; decorative citrus trees (“reach right out the window and pick an orange”) remind one that for many, Phoenix is a long-awaited retirement paradise.