Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail

Story Eighteen

Story Eighteen Blessed are the gentle. Blessed are the raucous. Blessed are the ones who walk. Blessed are the guides—the moon, the stars, the sacred mountain. Blessed are the resting places—the shadows, the roots, the rocks, the arroyos. Blessed are the ones who laugh. Blessed are the ones who dream. Blessed is the night train. A ll strangers, they began the journey down the rabbit hole where night becomes day. They would travel in darkness at night and stop to rest amid the rattlesnakes in sunlight. Only two nights and a day, assured the tall pollero, the guide (literally “chicken wrangler ”). We’ve gone this way many times. There were four polleros. The tall one was thirty years old, the others in their midtwenties. The twenty-four people crossing included four young women; the rest were men between twenty-two and fifty years old. The group had left the lights of Nogales half an hour earlier and was passing through the darkness along the cemetery wall. Sal already felt the heaviness of the backpack, adjusting the straps of the mochila to lessen the pain on his shoulder. He made the sign of the cross again as they passed the high wrought-iron entrance to the dead. I’m glad I’m not alone, he thought. There was no moon, just the smell of dampness in the air. The polleros ordered them not to speak, but his footsteps slapped the ground in unison with the others. That is why he heard so clearly when the man jumped the fence and landed with a heavy smack on the road in front 100 stories from the migrant trail of them. The bandit, purple and brown bandana tied around his face, jerked the pistol side to side, pointing it quickly at the two polleros in front, then at Sal. The woman behind Sal screamed, and the second thief ran up to the rear of the line, which was flanked by the other two polleros . The thief pushed the polleros forward, causing two men to fall, then the next two fell like dominos. And the chaos began. The thieves worked quickly, ripping necklaces off the women, ordering everyone to throw cash, watches, jewelry into burlap bags. The thief with the long carving knife ordered two young brothers to remove their shoes. They were expensive black and silver tennis shoes of the highest style, never worn before. Along with the brothers’ other belongings and the three thousand dollar crossing fee, all the families in the brothers’ small pueblo in Michoacán had chipped in to buy the shoes. Families had organized for weeks, pooling money and property, preparing for the brothers’ long dark journey. They were the hope of the town. The entire pueblo stayed up all night with the family, waiting for dawn to send the young men off. Everyone talked and cried as if it were a funeral, sending the boys al otro lado, to the other side. And now in five minutes, the shoes were gone, and so were the thieves. The women stopped crying, and the polleros quieted everyone. The problem was clear. Everyone was grave. They all understood the enormity of the theft. A man cannot walk the desert without shoes and live. The appointed time for the journey had come, and there would be no returning to Nogales to look for shoes. A couple of compadres gave them socks so the brothers had three socks on each foot. Moving into even more intense darkness, weighted down with dread, the travelers began again. Sal was joined by a fear that was never to leave him. He knew he wouldn’t make it. They left behind the last lights of civilization and began climbing silently into the small hills, no flashlights to guide the way. Sal was already bone-tired traveling from his home in Acapulco to Nogales. The previous night he had been in a hotel full of immigrants, lying on the floor in a room with no furniture. Lying next to strangers, he couldn’t sleep. All this day he was tired and nervously waited for night to begin the journey. He was grateful as the terrain changed to a flat plain. Clouds hid the moon; so it was hard to see even the young woman in front of him. At least there was a little breeze. He thought of his enchanting five-year-old girl, who wouldn’t let go of him when he got in the...