Cesar smiled, recalling his first journey north—the heat, the people, the sense of hope laced with desperation. What he remembered most vividly was the overwhelming satisfaction of embarking on a grand adventure, of shrugging off his old life and gambling everything on his ability to survive the wilderness and avoid the patrulla fronteriza, the border patrol.
The path undulated like an angry serpent, shattered red and brown rocks fading away to smooth desert floor before abruptly returning. Pebble-filled arroyos crisscrossed the landscape at random intervals, torturing him with constant reminders of nonexistent water.
He got a small sense of comfort from being on this path again, from knowing he wasn’t alone in his quest for a better life. The mental image of thousands of feet marching north on this trail helped put him at ease despite the monumental task ahead.
The sun rode low in the eastern sky. Already blazing, Cesar knew the day would be long and brutal. He figured they had covered twenty-five or thirty kilometers since exiting the old Chevy on the Mexican side of the border. They were well inside the United States by now, far past the point of no return.
The going was slow. His ragtag group consisted of three men like himself, young, fit, and accustomed to working in the hot afternoon sun. However, unlike his first crossing, four women and two small children had also chosen to make the trip.
Cesar was prepared for the journey, had been for as long as he could remember. Ever since his deportation a year earlier following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Kansas City, he had focused every waking moment on preparations for his return. He had worked three jobs to raise enough cash to pay his coyotero and yet, he had fallen short. A five-hundred-dollar loan from his uncle had carried him over the top.
But the others? He knew little about whether they would survive the heat, the blistering pace, and the abject brutality of the Sonoran desert in the middle of the summer. He hoped so. He felt responsible for them, as if his previous experience north of the border had bestowed some sort of divine responsibility, an unseen burden he dared not abandon.
He took a sip of water and hitched up his jeans. At five-foot-four, with shoulder-length black hair tied in a loose ponytail, Cesar looked like a million other brown men toiling in the American service economy. His most distinguishing feature was his easy grin, an infectious, toothy smile that instantly put people at ease.
He started to spit, and then thought better of it, swallowing his saliva instead. Need to conserve water out here, he chastised himself. Every drop counts…
He took another step and kicked a rock to the side. His thoughts shifted to his family in Mexico. His mother, always overprotective of her youngest son, had gotten hysterical when he told her he was going north again. She had begged and pleaded with him, trying to convince him the Americans would put him in jail this time, lock him away for the rest of his life if he was caught.
His father, an unemployed mechanic, had taken a different approach. He understood the economic realities of Mexico; he saw firsthand the desperation of young men with nowhere to go, with nothing to do. He feared the lure of the drug cartels and realized it was only a matter of time before they swept his son into a life from which he would never return.
“The gringos love us when times are good,” his father had said. “But if things are bad, like now, they will turn on you and make your life miserable. Don’t ever forget that.”
There was a rustling off to Cesar’s right, on the other side of a patch of barrel cactus. Conejo. “Rabbit,” Cesar whispered to himself, practicing his English.
He thought of his cousin Efrain. Is he here? Is he lying feet from me, only bones, or did he make it? Maybe he was caught and is sitting in jail? Efrain had left for Idaho three months earlier, but had never reached his destination. His disappearance, another sad example of the risks involved in going north, had been the talk of the town.
Cesar banished the thought from his mind and continued walking. A short, rock-covered hill rose in front of him. He started climbing. From the other side, below his line of sight, he heard shouting. Cocking his head, he tried to catch the words. It took him a moment to realize they were speaking English. What?
A crippling spike of fear tore through his gut as he crested the rise and got his first glimpse of the scene below. Two white men stood at the front of the line talking to Miguel, the coyotero. They carried menacing assault rifles and were dressed in desert camouflage from head to toe.
Cesar’s first impression was border patrol, but upon closer inspection, he realized he was wrong. Neither man wore insignia on their uniform, nor did they have the close-shaved, professional look he associated with the patrol. Also, one was grossly obese, his belly tumbling over his belt like a sack of flour.
The fat man pointed at him. “You! Up there! Get down here!”
Cesar complied, picking his way carefully down the hill until he joined the rest of the group. As Cesar watched, the fat man barked at Miguel in staccato English, gesturing wildly with the barrel of his gun. His jowls shook like fresh jalea every time he moved his head.
Even more than the sun and the heat, Cesar feared bandits. But these men were something else—something new.
“What do you think is happening?” whispered the woman behind him. Cesar shrugged, trying to remain calm despite the ball of nausea percolating in his gut.
The fat man fired a short burst into the air. Everyone stopped talking. The woman moved closer, and her fingers sought out his arm. “Tengo miedo,” she whispered. I’m scared.
“It’s okay,” Cesar lied.
The gunmen turned away and conversed in hushed tones, gesturing repeatedly at Cesar’s terrified group and pointing north.
Cesar put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Get ready to run.” She shook her head vigorously and gestured at the other woman standing to the side with one of the children. “I can’t. That’s my sister and her daughter.” Closing his eyes, Cesar said a quick prayer for the woman and her child.
He checked his rear, looking for other gunmen. It was clear. He visualized a canyon system they had passed a half-kilometer back where he could hide.
Miguel took a step forward, got in the slim gunman’s face, and poked him in the chest. The man laughed and nudged his partner in the ribs. Cesar tensed, preparing for the worst. Faster than Cesar would have expected for a man his size, the fat man raised his rifle and leveled it at Miguel’s face.
One of the children began to cry, calling for his father. Time slowed to a crawl. The gun against Miguel’s head became his everything for an interminable instant, the bridge between the life and death. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Crack! Miguel spun away and fell to the ground. A hawk cried out far above them.
“Does anyone else have a problem?” the shooter bellowed.
Cesar swallowed, his throat his own desert. As the murderer trained his gun on the remaining survivors, his partner kneeled beside Miguel’s body and rolled it over. He rifled through the pockets until he found the dead man’s wallet. Flipping it open, he pulled out a handful of pesos and American dollars and dropped them on the corpse’s chest.
We’re going to die now, Cesar realized with sudden clarity. Right here. My family will never know what happened to me. Like Efrain.
Behind him, the woman was praying, repeating the same bible verse. “Padre me protege porque he pecado…”
The man finished his search, and finding nothing of value, got to his feet. He whispered something to his partner.
With a wave of his gun, the fat man pointed at a towering saguaro. “Okay, everyone. By that cactus! Turn out your pockets!” The time to run had passed. Cesar had no choice but to comply. He cursed his cowardice and went to stand beside the cactus.
“On your knees!” the gunman screamed, his high-pitched voice sounding like one from a little girl on a playground. Cesar fell to his knees, closed his eyes, and tried to think about his family.
The men raised their weapons.
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