• • 118 • • Our bill showed up in the mailbox, the corporation’s loud, obnoxious, cactus logo bleeding across the envelope. I stared at the amount due, stunned, insulted. Prior to pegging the bill to the fridge, I dropped it on the kitchen floor and scuffed it on the tiles. Hours later Danni Zepeda showed up at my door. She was right on time. “I’m sorry about your grandmother,” she said. “Thanks for leaving the food baskets.” “Least I could,” she said. “How is she?” “In a chair. In the nursing unit. Bad, wouldn’t you say?” We got in my car. It was beginning to get dark. Danni wanted to show me her special spot. As I drove, she rubbed lotion into her bulging forearms , but I noticed a trace of fruity perfume in the air, and I began to suspect Danni had ulterior designs. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” I said. “We shouldn’t do a lot of things,” she said. “It just doesn’t feel right.” “I know something that might feel right.” She turned and I felt her eyes on me. According to a faded brown sign, the town of Sells, Arizona, had 2,800 residents. From the capital of the O’odham nation, I drove south on Indian Route 19, detouring off-road at San Miguel, a remote village on the western margins of the Baboquivari Mountains. My Honda jangled on the dirt road. Danni knew the route, and she itemized for me the obstacles and dangers, summing everything up in terrifying detail. Camera towers could often spot vehicles driving in the desert . There were also drag roads, flattened daily, and if you walked across these, trackers could see foot impressions in the drag and run you down. Some crossers strapped bits of mattress to their feet to sponge out tracks, she said. And of course there were natural hazards: rattlesnakes, mountain lions, bark scorpions, and barbed cholla. The wild jaguar, she also told me, was making a comeback in the region. The car bounced, the headlights leaped, my knuckles ached. Rain had carved the dirt road into a washboard . A jackrabbit raced into the car’s lights and nearly gave me a heart attack. “And there may be other groups out here, criminal elements, humping parcels of marijuana or worse,” Danni said, sucking on her pinkie. “Worse?” “Let’s just find a group to move and get this done. My sister just bought 15 • • 119 • • a new truck. Extended cab.” She exhaled loudly. “She can’t afford it, which means I’ll eventually be taking over her payments.” Night was the time to drive. The dirt cooled and the air chilled and the stars flashed down sad, dead light. Night was also a good time for me to imagine into the darkness, and my thoughts careened to the psycho with the rifle. The paper had mentioned the heartless madman again, who stopped along secluded dirt roads, just like this one, exactly like this one, and took aim at people shuffling toward better lives. He was out here. And he hadn’t been caught. The road ended. Danni directed me through breaches in the scrub, where the road picked up on the other side. Not much farther, we reached the spot. I stopped the car. It was incredible because it wasn’t. I saw a broken fence. And open desert. I realized I’d never seen a darker, more nowhere place. The sky was a black sheet pinpricked with bright holes. Danni pulled an old Mexican blanket from my hatch and swept it like a matador around her shoulders. She turned on her flashlight. “The group will start from here and walk north to the waiting vehicle,” she told me. Her boots crunched as she wandered into the shadows. Fixed above us was a three-quarter moon. “Take a look at that hole. We could drive right through. This thing would only take an hour.” “Border Patrol would stop us in flagrante,” she said. “Migra are all over this land. Can’t see them now, but they’re here. This is my route. Usually I travel at night. Problem is, the Border Patrol likes night. When I’m stopped, I flash my tribal id. They usually let me pass. Walking is our only option. It’s silent, nearly untraceable.” Danni approached the fence and passed into Mexico. She snapped a twig from a bush and threw it in her mouth. “The group will depart at...