Into the Beautiful North

by Luis Alberto Urrea

  “Hey, Arnie,” he called to the black agent. “That’s Nayeli. She rules.”

  “Nayeli, huh,” said Arnie. He opened the gate. “Let’s get you processed, Nayeli. You can get back to invading the United States in an expeditious manner. Get to you in a minute.”

  “¿Qué?” she said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Agent Arnold Davis had seen it all. After twenty-seven years in government service, he was close enough to retirement that he was bulletproof as far as the bureaucracy went. He had so much retirement built up that if they were to fire him tomorrow, he’d get close to a full salary anyway. It was what he called “f-you money.”

  He had sore feet and a bad back. He’d been in counseling twice. He had hemorrhoids. Insomnia. His prostate was probably the size of a Krispy Kreme doughnut—he peed five times a night, and it ruined what little sleep he got. And his left knee was shot. Join the Border Patrol—taste the glamorous life.

  His wife had left him in 1992, and she’d taken his kids. They didn’t talk to him, but they did accept his monthly checks. He drove a Ford pickup, but the gas bill was getting crazy, and he was actually thinking of trading it in. But… a USBP senior supervisory agent just didn’t belong in a Hyundai. Maybe they’d come up with a hybrid Mustang.

  He looked around the station and tried to block his sense of smell so he didn’t have to breathe in all the sweat, panic, despair, piss. He tried to ignore the ugly lighting that, the older he got, felt more and more like a personal insult to his eyes. As he walked around the floor, holding his limp to the barest minimum so nobody could see it, he was secretly looking into the back of his brain, at retirement and escape and Colorado mountains and trout streams. Elk. He wasn’t going to shoot them—just watch them walk on by.

  Even now, there were not a lot of black agents in the Border Patrol. Hell, there were barely any agents at all. Oh, there were bodies, all right. There were more people in uniform than ever before. Homeland Security had flooded the Border Patrol with gung-ho new Terminators. But they didn’t know squat about the border, not really. How could they? It took a guy ten years to really get it.

  Arnie had served at Wellton Station in Arizona. It had been a tight little unit of almost thirty guys. Then DHS had started pumping in the fresh bods, and the station swelled to three hundred people jammed into the crumbling building. They had to tear it down and build a bigger station, not to hold more wets but to hold the overflow of agents.

  Arnie had relocated to Calexico, and now he was on loan to San Diego. He put on his reading glasses to study the papers on his clipboard. He glanced into the cage.

  The little smiley Mexican girl was looking at him.

  My black skin, he said to himself, is beautiful.

  He laughed out loud and moved on.

  The government knew a secret that the American public didn’t: the numbers of border crossers were down, across the board. Maybe the fence, maybe the harsh new atmosphere in the US, maybe everybody had already fled Mex, like the old guys occasionally joked. But all these new agents were here, pumped, eager for action. The DHS paranoia and training had them searching for terrorists under every desk. Arnie shook his head. They actually believed an atomic bomb would be discovered in one of these backpacks, tucked under the underpants.

  So they had to do something, now that talk radio and cable TV were so fascinated with every bit of border enforcement—until the next election season, anyway. The suits and the big dogs came up with a great assignment for the new Terminators—they were being sent out to arrest wets who were leaving the United States for Mexico. Hey, if you can’t catch ’em coming in anymore, bust ’em when they’re doing you a favor and trying to get back out.

  Arnie thought a lot about that “f-you money.”

  Elk, man, elk.

  He came back for Nayeli. Crooked a finger at her. Opened the gate for her.

  “Gracias,” she said, shyly grinning.

  “We’re not going on a date,” he replied.

  Photographs. Fingerprints. They sat at a table surrounded by other tables with worried paisanos and bored immigration agents. Arnie made some notes on a form. He wanted to know why she was carrying American money. Drugs? She shook her head. Hooker? No! When Nayeli started to tell him her story, he stopped writing. His mouth hung halfway open.

  “Hey,” he said to the guy at the next table, “you gotta hear this.”

  Nayeli told her story again. The agents shook their heads. It was the dumbest thing they’d heard all night. But they handed her all due respect: Nayeli had the most original wet story they’d heard in a week.

  “You’re taking them back,” Arnie said.

  She nodded. “I am here as a service to both our countries.”

  He laughed. He looked around. He dropped his hands on the table.

  “Well, well, well,” he said.

  He laughed again, wiped his eyes.

  “Do you not believe me?” she asked.

  “Not really. But it’s a great story, I’ll give you that. Extra points for originality.”

  She crossed her arms and frowned.

  “I am not a liar,” she said.

  “No. Just an illegal immigrant. That makes you so reliable!”

  “I am not illegal!” she insisted. “I am on a mission. I am a patriot.”

  He put his hand to his brow.

  “Okay,” he said. “Whatever.”

  He was thinking: the last time he’d seen his daughter, she was wearing a Kangol beret and mouthing hip noises and saying, Whatevs, dawg. Dawg? Who really said dawg, anyway? He shook his head. Nayeli was her size and close to her age. Almost her color.

  “What am I gonna do with you kids?” he asked no one in particular.

  He patted his own arm.

  “Thanks for the compliment, by the way,” he said.

  He got up, gestured for her to rise. The place was loud and awful. He wanted to be in the high country. Snow and ravens standing on the crowns of lightning-struck lodgepoles. He had a hold of her arm, but he didn’t go to the holding pen. He didn’t know what he was doing. He was going on instinct. Who could fire him? Who could write him up? He’d go fishing.

  Arnie bought Nayeli a cold Coke from a battered machine. He bought some Zagnut bars and M&M’s from the agents’ machine for her friends. Then he locked her in the holding pen.

  He stared in at her.

  She smiled back.

  “Don’t let me catch your ass again,” he warned.

  A dog began barking savagely at a small group of young men.

  More terrorists, Arnie thought as he walked away, ignoring the whole thing.

  Nayeli burned with shame.

  She had thought the Americanos would be happy to see her.

  We’re going back to Tijuana?” Yolo snapped.

  They had found one another in the big pen. They never spotted Candelaria. Tacho was feeling his money belt, amazed that nobody had discovered it.

  “We’re starting all over?” Yolo yelled.

  “Would you rather be in jail?” Nayeli snapped back.

  “I would rather be in Tres Camarones!” Yolo said. “I would rather be home!”

  She shoved Nayeli.

  One of the migra agents waded into the crowd.

  “Hey!” he said. “¡Calma!”

  “Sorry,” said Yolo.

  “Do I have to separate you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m watching.”

  “Sorry.”

  He signaled another agent, and they stayed close enough to the friends to intervene, should trouble erupt.

  “Great,” Nayeli said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, girl,” Yolo replied. “Thanks for what? I didn’t get us arrested! I didn’t get us deported!”

  “Come on, now,” Tacho said. He was stroking poor Vampi’s tangled vampire hair. “Let’s not fight.”

  Tacho thought sadly about La Mano Caída. He was missing the counter and the drink cooler, th
e cement floor and the stinking evil iguana in the window that snuck in every day to steal his mango and pineapple slices. He was suddenly worried that Aunt Irma wasn’t taking proper care of the lizard.

  “I can’t believe this!” Yolo said.

  “I know,” Tacho said. His voice could be soothing when he wanted it to be. “I know.”

  Yolo crossed her arms around her stomach and huffed. She had tears in her eyes. The people jammed in with her bumped into her and pushed against her. She had never hated people as much as she did right then. One tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek.

  Nayeli reached out for her, to give her a hug. She resisted, then gave in.

  “I’m sorry,” Nayeli whispered.

  Tacho said, “Just think of home. That’s what I do when I feel bad. I think of home.”

  It was so noisy. Fences were clanking. People shuffled, muttered. The buses pulled up and the agents were yelling and the pneumatic doors were pulling open and the chain link was rattling. Migra agents moved through, telling them it was time to go home. The friends had to yell to be heard.

  “What?” Yolo shouted.

  “Home!” Tacho yelled. It was so absurd, he started to grin. He yelled as loud as he could: “Think about home!”

  “What about home?” Vampi clled.

  “I think about La Mano Caída!” Tacho yelled.

  “¿Qué?”

  “¡LA MANO CAIDA!”

  Instantly, the Border Patrol agents froze.

  “Al Qaeda?” the nearest one said.

  “What?” said Tacho.

  “Did you say Al Qaeda?”

  “¡No! ¡Dije ‘La Mano Caída’!” Tacho shouted a little too loud.

  The agents jumped on him, wrestling him to the ground.

  “This guy’s Al Qaeda!”

  People shouted and surged away. The gate stood open and the bus loading began. The three girls were forced from Tacho, who was under a pile of ICE agents. People shoved. The girls shrieked. A man’s voice yelled, “Get them out of here!” They were borne onto the bus.

  Agents were wading into the crowd from all sides, heading for Tacho.

  The bus doors slammed.

  The bus lurched away, and the girls were trapped inside, watching them manhandle Tacho.

  They sobbed and banged on the glass.

  But the bus did not stop.

  Norte

  Chapter Eighteen

  Morning.

  Tijuana street toughs with nothing better to do entertained themselves by jeering at deportees as they came back to Mexico, tired and dirty and downtrodden. Old hands among the returnees knew the border game and faded away and vanished among the tough guys and headed back to the fences. But the fresh meat, the crying ones, the hunched and scuttling guilty-looking ones, they were the source of sport and derision.

  The barracudas could smell helplessness on them, and the bad guys laughed and flicked cigarettes and called insults and offered to relieve the women of any sexual tension they might be feeling. It was better than TV, better than drinking in the cantina, to watch the weeping and broken stumble and look about themselves, lost. Anything could happen. Who would know? Do-gooders? Missionaries? The Red Cross? Everyone was tired of these wanderers—everyone who mattered, anyway.

  These men said dreadful things, and boys joined in because that is what boys do. Some of the women had lost track of their children and come back sobbing and frantic, and if they hoped for help or compassion back in border zone Tijuana, they were mistaken. The street toughs merely pointed and laughed.

  Beyond the few nasty bastards at the fences, there were worse men waiting—coyotes selling the immediate return. Bottom-feeders. How much could a deportee pay? Chances were, not much. But they found ways. After all, they had nowhere to go—this homecoming reminded them that they had no home. Nobody but Nayeli’s gang was on a quest to protect and repopulate their villages. They were there for food, to send money home. These invaders, so infamous on American talk radio, were hopeless and frantic with starving compulsion. So they would make whatever desperate deals their guides suggested, or they would borrow money or dig hidden rolls of cash from their own orifices and gamble their last stores to try again. And the agents of despair were there for them, offering an immediate return. They didn’t care where the money or the promises or the barter of the bodies came from. It could all be washed off. All they offered was the simple promise: I can take you back, back to Libertad—or beyond, east into the mountain or desert wasteland, where the legendary fence merely stopped. There was nothing out there but a few traffic barriers and fires and rattlesnakes and cowboys. And among these hustlers, there milled taxi drivers heading nowhere. On some days, a pimp might try to recruit a young woman or a boy with promises of quick money, short service, and protection, mostly lies.

  The good people of Tijuana went about their business, looking away from the returnees, hurrying on into their days. Most citizens of Tijuana had never seen a pimp and wouldn’t give him the time of day if they did. Outside the borderlands, Mexicans seemed to believe that every young man in Tijuana was a hustler or a coyote, but most of the citizens of Tijuana had never seen a coyote and wouldn’t know one if they saw him. They didn’t think about the border—they had no time for it. The border was an abstraction to them at best. Many citizens of Tijuana crossed it every day to shop for a better cut of meat in San Ysidro, or to buy polyester underwear and stretch pants in the secondhand shops and factory outlet stores. Hundred of women walked through the Immigration turn-stiles and boarded the red trolleys that fed them into the hills and valleys of San Diego, where they vacuumed and dusted and wiped out toilets and cooked grilled-cheese sandwiches in the homes of other women who could afford to hire people to do their household chores for them.

  And many hundreds of others never went to San Diego at all, never even really looked across the river. They did not have time for returnees. They didn’t like all these newcomers who crowded their streets and brought dirt and panic into Tijuana. They suspected all crimes were inspired by these people. All drugs came with them. Old people remembered a day when you could leave your doors unlocked in Tijuana. When you knew all of your neighbors, and everyone kept an eye out for one another. Not now, not with these tides of aliens pouring in from everywhere. So Nayeli and Yolo and Vampi came into the hard sun, crying and wiping their noses, dirtier than they had ever been, afraid and lonesome and homesick, and nobody cared at all.

  They walked in a huddle, hugging one another, holding hands.

  “¿Taxi?” a chubby man called. “¿Centro?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Mamacita,” a laughing smoking boy cooed. “Come here.”

  They walked on—Indian women in clothes like Doña Araceli’s sold trinkets and chewing gum and held out dark brown palms, making small mewling begging sounds. Big, hearty Americanos in madras shorts and straw hats and baseball caps and bowling shirts jostled them and marched on, laughing like they always laughed, owning the earth and secure in their mastery. Nayeli wanted what they had, but she did not know what that was. Loudness. No cares at all. Nothing slowed the Americans, nothing made them silent. Americans did not cower. When cholos insulted them, they walked through the clouds of anger and hatred as if deaf, as if they didn’t have time to hear such foolishness, and if they did hear it, they raised a middle finger or laughed or said something tart and marched, marched, marched into the laughing world. There were so many Americans in Tijuana that she didn’t understand what the border was supposed to be. People in the holding pens had told her that it was the same in el otro lado, that there were so many Mexicans milling around San Ysidro and Chula Vista that it looked like Mazatlán. There were more Mexicans in Los Angeles than there were in Culiacán. She spun in a circle and saw nothing but barbed wire and guards. The whole border was the same dirt scrub dust stinking desert blankness. With helicopters.

  “¿Taxi?”

  “No, gracias.”

  The girls were despo
ndent. Nayeli did not know what to do now. How would she keep her troops going? Had they lost Tacho forever? She could not imagine how she would find him again. How could they go ahead without him?

  She looked up.

  Standing at the end of the cracked and upthrust sidewalk, leaning on the staff, one foot planted against the opposite knee, red bandanna now gone, and shaved head gleaming in the sun, was the Warrior.

  “I am Atómiko,” he called.

  He leads them through the hot streets, his pole over his right shoulder. Nobody looks at him. They have seen men with poles before. They have seen stranger things than him. And the girls follow in a cluster. Nobody looks at them, either. They have seen men with poles leading groups of women. They have seen everything.

  He stops at a food stand carved out of the side of a white-and-blue building with cursive writing in red slanting over the opening that promises SEAFOOD! SHRIMP! OYSTERS! FRESH WATERS! By waters, of course, they mean fruit juices and rice water and hibiscus tea. Atómiko knows the girls are dehydrated. He plants his staff and points at the counter and says, “Buy juice.”

  Nayeli is so relieved to see any friendly face, even his jackal’s countenance, she meekly goes to the counter and digs out money and buys them tall glasses of iced fruit juice. She can’t believe how delicious it is. They gulp like people lost in the desert. Atómiko sips at a glass of agua de Jamaica, red as blood and tart. He thinks he would rather be drinking Mexican beer, the best beer in the world. Yolo guzzles tamarind juice, Vampi drinks horchata sweet rice water, and Nayeli is chewing chunks of strawberries floating in her glass.

  Atómiko points down the street with his staff, and they follow. He leads them to a small motor court. A motel, white with blue trim. Three cars are parked in its sloping blacktop lot. A Mixtec woman sweeps the sidewalk in front of the rooms. A sputtering neon sign sizzles orange against the morning light. The cardboard sign taped in the window lists a reasonable price for rooms. Atómiko points, scratches his chest, and grunts.