Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail

Story Thirty-one

Story Thirty-one W e are smack in the center of the days of death. Even though I have experienced this heat every summer of my life, it is always a shock. I step out of the cool car into the white-hot heat. It is the moment that begins to unravel the thread from comfort to alarm. Heavy heat wraps around, like too many blankets. It begins cooking from the outside, heating the epidermal layer of skin, while simultaneously warming you from the inside. Moisture starts to leave the skin until it feels equally hot inside and outside. Under my straw hat, I feel heat and pressure like the buildup of afternoon thunderstorms, and then the trickle of sweat starts down my temples. The base of my neck grows damp. It is like putting on a wet suit to hike the desert. And all this while standing still. Every inch of my body is covered with clothing except my hands. Later, as I hike, the backs of my hands will burn. I will turn my hand so the back is hiding against my pant legs, turning the palm to the sun. When that burns beyond endurance, I will turn the hand again. Flipflopping until finally I have to leave them in my pockets. Three of us walk over to the cow graveyard, a hundred square yards of flat desert with remains of a few animals on it. One steer carcass is on the ground, the dark hide covering the skeleton like a blanket laid gently over the memory of a breathing creature. The soft spot under the tail, the eyes and the nostrils, eaten. There is a pile of dirt as tall as we are, with incandescent white femur bones sticking up, half-buried. It must be where cowboys dragged dead cattle and covered them up because of flies. Only they aren’t covered. Later, we would drive onto a ranch road. We drove slowly, looking for the road to public land near the mountains. A cowboy ran toward 162 stories from the migrant trail us, brandishing a rolled-up lasso. He jumped the fence, landing in front of the truck. “What are you doing?” “Going over to those mountains.” “Not on this road, you’re not.” His eyes were flat and his mouth barely opened when he spoke. “But I’ve been this way before. I had permission,” said the driver. “Who gave it to you?” “A ranch hand from here.” “That won’t work.” Eyes even flatter. We turned around and drove to the ranch house. Our female driver walked to the door. A woman opened the door but stayed in the shadow behind the screen. “We just want to cross your property to get back to the mountains.” “The ranch is closed.” “We can’t cross here?” “Closed from March through September.” “Why?” “Vandalism.” Our friend asked the woman a few more questions, but the woman had quit speaking. Finally our friend came back to the car, followed by the other woman, who stopped and stared at us three very white gringas. I was sitting in the back seat, trying to look even more Anglo because we heard that brown-skinned people were not welcome at some of these ranches and that they might get shot. She didn’t even invite us in for a beer. Don’t they have vandalism any other time of year? March through September. Those are the months of soaring migrant deaths. But maybe this rancher is just a very private person and understandably doesn’t want strangers on her land. Or maybe they have something to hide here. Maybe the ranchers have witnessed some of these deaths. In April, Minutemen were given permission to be on this property twenty-four hours a day for thirty days. Or maybe the polleros pay the ranch hands for safe passage. Who knows? The mind tends to run toward suspicion when there is no friendly offer of beverages in the desert. We backtracked on the ranch road to an area unfamiliar to us and started walking. Normally, sound describes what lies ahead, but there were no sounds except our breathing and walking. This was new territory for us. We kept hearing of migrant deaths in more and more remote areas. This was remote. The three of us walked in a line, even though there was no path. We followed the base of...