Disappeared

by Francisco X. Stork

  Sara’s forehead is moist when she reaches the top of the cliff. The morning is cool enough to wear a sweater and she’s already sweating. That is probably not a good sign for things to come. The river, a brownish amber color when they crossed, has a dark emerald tint when seen from above. She takes off her floppy canvas hat and wipes her brow with the red bandanna Emiliano insisted she carry in the back pocket of her white chino pants. In addition to the two-gallon bag of water, she carries another water bottle in an outside pocket of her backpack, as does Emiliano. Is it too early to take a drink? The indigo dawn is slowly transforming itself into cobalt blue. She hears the chirping of birds and something like the tick of a clock. She scampers up the rock where Emiliano is standing.

  “Don’t worry,” Emiliano says. “The rattlesnakes are down in that cane we walked through.”

  “What’s that noise, then?”

  “A grasshopper waking up.”

  “So, we’re past all the snakes?”

  “There’s more where we’re going. But the ones that can kill you for sure are by the river.”

  Emiliano and Sara stand on the rock, looking across the river at the mountains of Mexico. They remind Sara of a picture of an old man that Emiliano showed her after he came back from a trip to the Sierra Tarahumara. The old man stood next to a wooden hut, holding a crooked walking stick, his face wrinkled and weathered by age and hardship. It was the eyes that caught Sara’s attention. It was as if they had been looking at what mankind had done to the world since the beginning of time.

  Someday I will remember this moment, Sara says to herself. Will I ever see you again, my Mexico?

  The image of her mother climbing into the silver-and-blue bus comes to her. The bus driver helping Mami up the steps. Then she imagines her mother looking out the window as the bus pulls into the León terminal. She sees Aunt Tencha hugging her mother—two women who know loss comforting each other. They will embrace and cry a little, and then they will take a bus to the tiny apartment, where Mami will have a cup of coffee and then maybe go lie down in the bedroom filled with pictures of Tencha’s grandchildren.

  Sara sighs. “I miss Mami.”

  Emiliano nods. “She’s happy knowing you’re safe,” he tells her.

  He jumps off the rock, and after a few moments Sara does as well. Now both of them face north. There in front of them is a vastness of reddish dirt, cacti, and creosote bushes that goes on forever, it seems. Way in the distance there’s a barely perceptible line where the sky and the earth touch. It’s as far as the eye can see. A series of hills and peaks gradually rises to mountains to the west. The proximity of the emptiness of the desert and the massive reality of the mountains takes Emiliano’s breath away. It’s as if someone deliberately mixed beauty and immensity to elicit awe.

  “Is that the end of the park?” Sara points at the horizon.

  Emiliano smiles. “That’s where we’ll end up late tonight if we hurry.” He turns Sara’s shoulder slightly and points to the left. “That pile of wood over there is the ruin of the old tramway that Brother Patricio told us about. A little way from there is the abandoned dirt road. You see it? It’s a thin white line like a thread.”

  “How far is that, you think?”

  “Maybe three miles.”

  Sara gulps. “That’s only three miles?”

  Emiliano takes his compass from his right pocket. He moves his hand until the needle trembles on true north. Then he points in the direction they will walk. Navigation, once they get to the dirt road, will be easy. There’s no need for the GPS as long as they stay on the dirt road. The map of the park describes the road as “rough” and recommends travel only with a four-wheel-drive vehicle. They should be able to pass through it undetected. They will see the dust of an oncoming vehicle long before it reaches them. If someone does come, they’ll get off the road and lie flat on the ground behind a bush. Emiliano reminds himself to listen for the mosquito-like drone of an approaching plane as well.

  “Okay,” he says, tightening the strap that connects his backpack to his waist. “I’m going to start walking at a pace that covers four miles per hour while the sun is still low. Then when the sun gets a little stronger, I’ll slow down to three miles an hour. Around noon, we’ll stop and wait for the sun to go down. We’ll go slowly the first day while your legs get used to walking and your back adapts to the weight of the backpack. Then maybe tomorrow we can go faster. Drink some water. You need to drink a gallon of water each day. We’re carrying enough water for three days, and later today we’ll reach a place where there’s water, so there’s no need to be stingy with it. Have some of the raisins and dried figs. From now on, don’t take your hat off.”

  Emiliano starts walking. Sara sees that there is no way to walk next to him. There is not a set path, so they must weave their way through cacti and creosote bushes, and the space between the plants is not wide enough for two persons. She expected to have a hard time keeping up with him, but his pace is measured, comfortable. If they went a little bit faster, maybe they could make five miles an hour. The night before they left for Chihuahua, Emiliano and Sara went over the map one more time, Emiliano pointing out the wavy lines that denoted the hills, mountains, and canyons: The tighter a circle, the higher the elevation of the mountain. Emiliano said then that on the earlier part of the trip, where the terrain was flatter, they might be able to walk as much as six hours a day.

  “Six hours doesn’t seem like much,” she remembers saying.

  “You’ll see,” Emiliano answered.

  Now as they walk, she feels she could definitely do at least eight hours—four in the morning and four in the evening. She does the math. If they walk at the leisurely pace of four miles an hour like they’re doing, and they do that for eight hours, then they could cover thirty-two miles a day. Emiliano and Brother Patricio calculated that the distance from the river to Sanderson was around eighty miles. Once they get within twenty miles of Sanderson, they will also be within range of a cell tower, and they could communicate with the deacon of the Catholic church at Sanderson, who could come pick them up if need be.

  “Watch out for those,” Emiliano says, tapping his boot on a round, flat cactus studded with long, pointed thorns. “It’s called a ‘horse crippler’ for a reason. The thorns pierce through the hooves of horses and soles of shoes.”

  Sara steps over it, making a point to remember that the cactus has deceivingly innocent, pale pink flowers. What was it she was thinking? She was doing some math in her head. Eighty miles divided by thirty-two is two days plus a little more. But if they walked a little faster, say, five miles an hour, and they did that for eight hours, they’d get there in two days. She feels strong enough to go five miles an hour. Yet Emiliano wants to slow down to three miles an hour for six hours. At that speed, it will take a week to get to Sanderson.

  “Stop it,” Emiliano says without looking back.

  “What?”

  “Thinking that we can walk faster or farther.”

  “How … ?”

  “That’s what everyone thinks their first time out in the desert. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “If you’re slowing down because of me, you don’t have to. I’m fine.”

  Emiliano stops to check his compass. He looks to his right and locates the sun. They have maybe four hours before the temperature reaches somewhere in the eighties. The eighties of March are not the one hundred and change of August, but it’s still hot enough to kill you. He takes off his hat, runs a hand through his hair, and feels the moisture in his scalp. He reaches back, takes the bottle of water from the side of his backpack, and drinks. He gestures for Sara to do the same. When she finishes drinking, he looks at her feet. “How are the shoes?”

  “They’re bored from going so slow. We’re never going to get there at this rate.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “A little. You must be too. We haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”

  Emiliano takes two protein bars f
rom the same pocket where he keeps his water bottle. He hands one to Sara and starts to unwrap the other.

  “We didn’t pack much food,” Sara says. The slight alteration in direction that Emiliano made after he checked his compass has given them enough space to walk side by side.

  Emiliano waits until he finishes chewing. “Food’s not that important. The important thing is water. Food requires digestion and digestion uses water needed by your muscles.”

  “And your brain. That needs water too.”

  “No, not your brain. The less you use your brain, the better.”

  Sara speeds up but Emiliano maintains the same pace. “You don’t need to baby me,” she says. “I’m in pretty good shape.”

  “I’m not babying you.”

  “Would you be doing anything different right now if I wasn’t here?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t be talking.”

  “No, seriously. Would you be walking any faster?”

  “No.”

  “Really. You wouldn’t be walking faster?”

  “No. If I were alone, I might go a little farther today than I will with you, but not that much.”

  “Somehow I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe me.”

  The path they’re on narrows again and Emiliano pulls ahead.

  Sara reflects after a few minutes of walking: Maybe it’s not such a good idea to push Emiliano to go faster. The more time she’s out here with him, the more time he’ll have to realize that living with Papá may be what is best for him at this moment in his life. In the United States, you can be the Emiliano God wants you to be. What did Mami see or sense in him to make her say that? Why was Emiliano reading Papá’s letters the night after the party? All that Sara can think of is that he was seeking guidance for some grave decision he needed to make.

  Emiliano motions for Sara to stop. He looks up, tilts his head. After a few moments, he kneels beneath the outstretched arms of a tall cactus. Sara does the same.

  “What is it?” Sara whispers.

  “A car,” Emiliano answers in a normal voice. He lies on the ground behind a small mound of red dirt and brush. He motions for Sara to lie down as well. They see the dust of a vehicle traveling south on the dirt road they want to take north. “That’s strange.”

  “What?”

  “Brother Patricio said no one uses this road anymore.”

  “Looks like a sports car,” Sara says, squinting. They watch in silence as the black car reaches the southern end of the road and then stops. No one gets out. “What are they doing? Just sitting there? There’s nothing to see.”

  Emiliano points to a small rectangle of shade under a cactus. They crawl there and sit. “We’ll have to wait until they leave.”

  “Is it the Border Patrol?”

  “In a Corvette?”

  “You can see what kind of car it is?”

  “It’s easy to make out the shape of a Corvette,” Emiliano says. He looks concerned. It’s the first time on this trip that Sara has seen fear on his face. “It’s not the kind of car that someone visiting the park would drive on that road.”

  “Then who?” Sara asks, now afraid herself. “Maybe they’re smugglers and they’re waiting for a shipment of drugs.”

  Emiliano remembers the fast-looking car parked in Armando’s garage. That was a black car as well. But Armando’s car was smaller, a Porsche maybe.

  “They’re getting out,” Sara whispers.

  In the distance, Emiliano sees a man with a black cowboy hat emerge from the driver’s side and a man with a brown hat from the other side. The man with the black hat is wearing black pants, a white shirt, and a black jacket. The man with the brown hat has a beige jacket. Who wears jackets in the desert? They stand in front of the car, looking toward the river. Then the man with the black hat turns and looks in their direction. Emiliano presses his face against the dirt and pushes Sara’s head down as well.

  “Are they coming over here?” Sara asks.

  “Shhh.” The men are a good quarter of a mile away, but sound travels far in the desert. Emiliano looks behind them. Other than the small mound of dirt they’re on, there’s no place to hide until you get to the cliffs near the river. He raises his head slowly. Now both men are looking straight at them. One of them reaches into the car and takes out a pair of sunglasses. “I think they saw us,” Emiliano whispers. “If they start walking this way, we run back to the river. Leave the backpacks and run.”

  “Who are they? Do you think they’re looking for us?”

  Emiliano can hear the same fear in Sara’s voice that he feels in his chest. He needs to calm down so he can think clearly. People wear those kinds of light jackets to hide the pistols on their hips. Maybe they’re undercover Border Patrol agents, but why would the Border Patrol need to hide their identity? And why would they risk ruining the suspension on an expensive car? It’s impossible that the men are looking for them. Who knew where they were going to cross? No one. They didn’t tell anyone their plans. Did they?

  “Are they still there?” Sara asks, her face pressed to the dirt.

  Emiliano takes off his hat and sunglasses and raises his head slowly. The men are conferring with each other. He notices a pair of binoculars hanging from the neck of the man with the brown hat. With binoculars, it would have been easy to see Sara and him make their way from the cliffs above the river.

  The good news is, there is no way that they can use the car to catch them on this path, and if they come on foot, he’s sure they can outrun them. He’ll let Sara run ahead, and if they catch up to him, he’ll do whatever needs to be done so she’s not caught.

  “Remember that place where I showed you the dove’s eggs?” he says. “If we need to run, head back to that spot and crouch in the cane.”

  “What about you?”

  Emiliano doesn’t answer. He watches the men approach the edge of the road. They seem to be contemplating the distance they would need to cover to get to Emiliano and Sara, and they’re not the type of men who like to get their shoes dirty, he thinks.

  He’s right. The two men get back into the car. They turn it around and drive slowly away.

  “Are they gone?”

  Emiliano kneels on the ground and Sara lifts herself up to sit. They watch the car until it is a dot in the distance.

  “They’re after us, aren’t they?” Sara asks. “Hinojosa’s men?”

  “It sure looks that way.”

  “But how? The only people who knew where we were crossing were Brother Patricio and Mami.”

  “And our dear father.”

  “Emiliano, come on. Even you can’t possibly believe that.”

  “Did you tell Ernesto maybe?”

  “No. I told him we were coming to the United States, but I didn’t tell him how or where.”

  “We need to figure out what we do now.”

  “We can’t go back, can we?”

  “I don’t think so. If we return to Boquillas and try to make it back to Chihuahua, someone will find us on those long, straight roads. At least here it’s hard to get to us. We need to keep on going, only we won’t travel on the road like we were planning. We’ll go that way.” Emiliano points to the ridge of mountains to the east.

  “Can we do that?”

  Emiliano clears a few rocks from the ground and sits so that he can still see the car in the distance. Then he opens his backpack and spreads a map of the park in the space between him and Sara. “The road the car is on was the one we were going to take north, up to this east-west road here.” Emiliano points to a line at the northern edge of the park. “Instead of going straight north, we’ll go northeast, up here to the beginning of the east-west road. From there we travel through these canyons and ridges toward Sanderson.”

  “Is that longer?”

  “Longer and harder. I was counting on the flat surface of the road and on the places in the park where we could get water. But it’s doable. And th
ere’s no way those guys can get to us in that car.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s go, then.” Emiliano stands. The car is a black dot on the long straight road, but it has stopped again. If he can see the car, the two men can see them with binoculars. “We’ll head back the way we came, and then when they can’t see us, we’ll turn around. They’ll think we went back to Mexico.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sara says, picking up her backpack. “I don’t understand how they could find us.”

  They move on, first in the direction of the river and then, when they reach the cliffs and the car is no longer visible, north toward the mountains. The early morning warmth is transforming slowly into heat. They walk in silence, full of a dark foreboding.

  “Do you have that flash drive with all the asylum evidence?” Emiliano asks Sara.

  “Yes, I have it right in this little secret pocket inside the backpack.”

  “Take it out and put it in your pocket.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because if we have to run, we’ll need to leave the backpacks behind. You need to have that flash drive.”

  “Okay.” Sara stops, takes off her backpack, opens it, and pockets the flash drive.

  “What about Hinojosa’s cell phone?”

  “It’s in the front pocket of my backpack.”

  Emiliano kneels down, takes the silver pouch with the cell phone from Sara’s backpack, and sticks it in the left-hand pocket of his pants.

  “Why you?” Sara asks.

  “It’s better if I carry it.”

  They put their backpacks on and continue. Sara lets Emiliano move ahead. She looks at his bulging backpack. She had a hard time lifting it off the ground when she tried before they crossed the river. He is carrying twice the load she is, and now he has the cell phone as well. It’s as if he wished to take away all her heaviness, all danger, and put it on his shoulders.

  There’s so much love in her heart for her little brother at that moment that it hurts.

  Emiliano picks up the pace and so does Sara. Now they’re moving—only they don’t seem to be making much ground. The terrain requires concentration, or else you step on one of those horse-crippling cacti. Sara is a few steps behind Emiliano, although there’s enough room to travel side by side. She’s thought about walking next to him and talking to him, but Emiliano seems to be weighed down by thoughts. Thoughts can be heavy. Sara knows because she’s lugging a few herself. Juana told the bad people where Sara lived, knowing what they could do to her and to her family. That thought is so hard to carry. There must be something lighter she can think of as she walks down this endless road. Linda. Thinking about her gives Sara strength. What is Linda doing now? Surely she’s with her family, her mother, maybe Joel. “That’s nice,” she says, imagining the scene.