The Coyote's Bicycle

by Kimball Taylor

  I left with a feeling that, for the first and only instance, seemed opposite to that of searching. It wasn’t bated breath so much as deflating relief. I didn’t need to follow these particular bicycles anymore. They’d found their rightful place. They’d descended through the seven rings of fire—of importation, sale, impoundment, auction, contraband, confiscation, and donation—and here they were again in the hands of fresh new cyclists. It was as if the bikes had graduated from weird times on the traveling freak show, having filled the roles of the reptile man, the fire-eater, the sword-swallower, and now in retirement they’d become staid, calm, dutiful, and serviceable again—like postal workers, customs clerks, and crosswalk guards with colorful, secret pasts.

  27

  “When we hear a whistle,” Apolo told the men who huddled among the riverside brambles, “that means the ride is close, and we’re going to run like crazy to meet El Indio.”

  To hurry up and wait was the hardest part. El Indio had gone to meet the levantón, which may have seemed a convincing next step to the pollos but did not always seem that way to the remaining guide. Their position could be stumbled on by a rancher or recreational horse rider. The whine of the Border Patrol quad motorbikes was sometimes within earshot, and if civilians caught a glimpse of the crossers, it was easy to assume they’d tip off the agents. During the day, that sense of apprehension was amplified by the thumping of naval helicopters running maneuvers out of Ream Field. Then, before dusk, nature took over—buzzing mosquitoes that left dime-sized welts on the skin rose out of the swamp. Worst of all was the fear that no one was coming for them. Though Apolo was new, there were rumors of migrants having to jump aboard a city bus with only the few gringo dollars their guides had given them.

  But the whistle came high and clear through the reeds. The pollos left the bikes there on the ground and ran along a path toward Hollister Street. This time, there was a minivan—light blue with its rear window peopled by those stick-figure decals indicating family members. The bumper was plastered with sports logos. Indio had opened the sliding door and he waved the migrants forward from the bush trail. The men dashed and climbed into the cabin. Indio entered from the passenger-side door. “Okay, let’s go,” he said.

  Apolo knew the driver to be Martín, El Indio’s eldest brother. That Indio was said to have worked out a deal with his siblings, and that even his sisters had made runs, was welcome news. But the brother displayed an austere bearing. There was talk of trouble at home.

  They traveled a similar route to the one Indio and Martín had negotiated that first time. They passed the community gardens the earlier group had taken for a shantytown. They passed the old cowboy bunk house that now held a county parks office. Martín slowed to a halt at the last stop sign before the bridge. After they’d crossed, he accelerated onto the wider pavement. As they approached the first, outlying tract homes of Imperial Beach, one of the passengers noticed the wail of a siren. “Trucha,” he said—watch out.

  The siren belonged to a white-and-green Border Patrol truck that now appeared in the van’s rearview mirror. It was coming on hot behind them.

  “La migra,” a migrant whispered.

  “Everybody relax,” Martín said.

  The truck soon blew through the stop sign they’d passed. It crossed the bridge and then its headlights flashed.

  “Pull over,” Indio said. Martín edged the van to the roadside. It was lined by a thicket of wild bamboo. Apolo noticed their clients eyeing the growth, and he soon considered the option of disappearing into the bamboo as well. The instinct to flee ricocheted through the cabin. “Everybody stays in the van,” Indio said.

  The enforcement vehicle and its wailing siren shot past—the windows were so tinted, it was hard to tell if the driver even looked their way. The valley quiet eventually settled back in, like a moist vapor rising from the wetland.

  Had they been arrested, the agents would have interviewed everyone in the van—a central purpose of which would have been to discover the identity of the pollero. They would have checked the ID of each illegal against criminal databases, and asked each where he was coming from and where he was going. They would have searched their cell phone address books and call histories to make connections. The agents would have graphed how each migrant knew the others. There was a chance the relationship between Indio and Martín would have been established—which would have put their entire family in jeopardy. The migrants would have been offered immunity for their testimony against Martín and El Indio. The first offense carried a ten-to-thirteen-year sentence in federal prison.

  An alternative scenario—one polleros drummed into their clients before allowing them to set foot on the inside—required that no one ever admit meeting or talking to a smuggler. They’d simply decided to cross together. Since the bicycle organization guaranteed another opportunity to cross should a migrant find himself deported, the likelihood was high that the clients wouldn’t leak.

  But even in the absence of evidence, the authorities could bounce El Indio from one institution to the next until his business failed, his family members were jailed or deported, and his marriage plans whirled into indefinite and withering limbo.

  Silent and sweating, the migrants wore the slack expressions of castaways. El Indio turned to them. “Amigos, today is our lucky day,” he said. “Those pollos who took to the river on foot must have been fast. Now la migra is rushing around the swamp trying to catch them.”

  Apolo could tell by his cool demeanor that Martín was a good driver. But it was Indio’s words—his ability to shine through that Oaxacan stoicism with an open and honest reassurance—that made the coyote’s professionalism apparent to the new guía.

  “So we’re going to continue.” Indio nodded at Martín. “Okay.”

  The van lurched into gear and they merged onto the road. The migrants remained shaken.

  “That was a close one, amigos,” Indio continued. “It happens. But we need to lighten up. Did you ever hear about the malandro who crossed through la garita on his bicycle?”

  If this was essential information, Apolo hadn’t heard it before.

  “Well, this hombre wheeled into line with all the cars, and just like them, he was stopped at the front. The customs guy pointed to two sacks the man carried on his back. ‘What’s in the bags?’ the man says.

  “‘Sand,’ says the Mexican.

  “‘I need to have a look.’

  “So, the malandro poured out the bags there on the concrete, and sure enough, only sand. ‘Hmpf,’ says the agent.

  “Our guy, he refilled the bags with his hands, loaded them up on his shoulders again, and pedaled across the border. Next day, same thing. The agent demanded to inspect the two bags again. The malandro showed him nothing but sand. This went on every day, until one time the Mexican with the sandbags failed to appear. Some months later, the agent sees the bike rider at a taco shop somewhere around here. This cholo, he was now wearing brand-new tennis shoes, baggy jeans, and gold chains. The agent couldn’t help himself. He taps the Mexican and says, ‘Hola, amigo, it’s been a while. You really had me thinking there on the border with your bags of sand—I knew you were smuggling something. Listen, I won’t bust you, just tell me what it was.’

  “‘Amigo,’ said the malandro, ‘I was smuggling bicycles.’”

  A couple of the migrants chuckled, the others only smirked. Apolo was still on the job, self-conscious but observant. And through the back window, a second Border Patrol truck appeared. It was distant and slow, but steady. One of the clients began to look over his shoulder. Indio, turning in his seat, must have seen it too.

  “What?” he said, suddenly animated. “You don’t think that joke is funny? That’s because you migrants see yourselves as the malandro. Am I right? But believe me, in this joke you are not the malandro. You, sirs, are the sandbags. Gracias to all of you for pedaling my stolen bikes across to the United States.”

  The holdouts chuckled, and Indio guffawed until the cabin er
oded into laughter. At that moment the second Border Patrol truck pulled up alongside the van. The driver’s window was down and an officer peered into their vehicle. Indio looked ahead and grinned. The agent was presented with a slightly used minivan displaying current tags, family stickers on the back, good tires, a driver wearing American-style clothes, and happy, laughing passengers on a sunny suburban day. The Border Patrol accelerated around them and moved on into the baked pavements of the Southland.

  Before the convenience of air-conditioning, it was common practice in Mexico and parts of the West to battle summer temperatures by opening the entire house to the dark breezes of the predawn. Stars still blinked in the well of the sky and windows and doors were thrown open like the gates of a dam. Houses filled with the rushing balm of night-blooming cactus, sage, and moist earth. Before sunrise, however, matriarchs sealed the chilled atmosphere in by shuttering their windows with a series of heavy, layered drapes that insulated the home from both light and heat. Summer’s daylight hours became the darkest and most still of the year as families attempted to trap morning inside like block ice in a cooler. Men returning for lunch could not see their meals. Those with a need for airy openness stayed away. And though El Indio’s mother had known only windowless shacks in Oaxaca, in the United States she’d taken to shuttering the apartment as if it were a Sonoran hacienda—even while her neighbors’ air conditioners thrummed.

  Apolo noticed the architecture wasn’t too different from that of the motel where they’d deposited the clients. The steps were made of concrete, the railings of steel; aluminum framed windows that looked shuttered by seasonal residents. Indio glanced at Martín, who only nodded up the stairs. On the landing, Martín put his key in the lock. As the door opened, a block of light expanded across the carpet. Indio followed but Apolo stepped aside in the entry. “Madre,” Martín called. “It’s not even warm today. Open some windows.”

  Indio turned back to fetch Apolo. “Please,” he said, gesturing at his colleague.

  Their sister, Josie, sat in a corner watching television; the blue of the screen seemed to hold her in its glow. She glanced at them. The room smelled of albóndigas. A large pot, visible from the doorway, simmered on the stovetop.

  “Josie?” Their mother’s voice came from a side room. “Oh,” she said, stepping in and making out the forms of her sons, “the hoodlums.”

  The sister stood and began to draw the drapes. Sunshine lit their mother, whose brown eyes narrowed but did not blink—the eyebrows peaked into sharp angles. Her gaze leveling on El Indio, she stood like a creature without the need for breath.

  “Hola, mamá,” he said. “This is a friend—Apolo.” Indio gestured toward the young man behind him. She offered no acknowledgement.

  “The work that you do is dishonest,” she said.

  “Let him alone,” Josie replied.

  “It is my obligation to tell him,” she said with a wave, “and to protect the family. He does illegal things and now, it seems, all of my children are helping him.”

  “I cross regular hardworking people,” he said.

  “Always wanting to do whatever you please. That’s Pablito.” She clasped her hands at her waist and looked at Martín and Apolo. She huffed. “I made soup. Sit down.”

  Josie and the men gathered around the circular dining table. There were six chairs; the immediate family consisted of seven. Some of the walls held framed family photos, but none from the village.

  Their mother served the bowls of soup. She placed a spoon next to each and remained standing. “The neighbors ask questions,” she said. “They see Martín come and go at strange hours—on the phone like a drug dealer. I think he is at work and his boss calls. I am afraid the man might say something. This morning I see Martín leaving without tools. I tell him if he doesn’t do honest work, he can’t live in my home.”

  “Leave it alone, Mama,” Josie said.

  The guests concentrated on the meal.

  “And if he can’t slip away, he sends your sister to do the dirty work.”

  Martín looked up. His chin and neck were deeply tanned but his forehead paled where the hard hat had covered it on the job. “Our baby brother needs help, it’s our duty to help him.” He flicked a hand at his T-shirt and jeans, always speckled with cement. He pointed at his bucket of trowels near the door. “You don’t have to tell me which kind of work is dirty.”

  “What you’re doing is wrong,” she said.

  The fact that the matriarch had herself engaged the services of a pollero, as had every person close to her, was a thread no one cared to pull. Among the men, Martín had acknowledged that during his crossing, “there was no one laughing.” The coyotes kept them hungry, tired, and scared. Safe passage was the best they could have hoped for. The people Martín dropped at the hotel on Indio’s behalf seemed legitimately happy. And Martín said he could see Indio confident and excited in the things he was doing and saying.

  Apolo sensed that their sister, Josie, got a kick out of the work. But also that a dispute in the family, even between the siblings, “was a true chaos”—a situation that would not stand in the village.

  Indio set his spoon next to his empty bowl. “Mother, what if I bought a real house for you—something nice here in San Diego. Would you be accepting and open then?”

  “A house!” she said. “Oh, Pablito, isn’t it nice to daydream? The only thing I have is my family, and you are putting us all in danger.”

  “If I buy you a house, will you help me out?” El Indio asked soberly.

  For the first time, Josie and Martín looked at him as if he’d gone too far.

  “Ha!” she said. “Let us see you buy a house and then, just maybe, we can talk.”

  When the youngest brother said good-bye, it was clear that the conversation in the apartment was going to continue without him. Finding capable pickup drivers had been a needling, and potentially disastrous, problem. On the stairs, Indio admitted to Apolo, “This is going to be more difficult than I thought.”

  Walking to the van, Martín said that he would try to convince their mother. El Indio took this as more than an offer and asked Martín if he really believed in him.

  “The truth is,” Martín said, “I don’t know.”

  Apolo hesitated to weigh in. He saw the seeds of disaster in Indio’s boastful promise of a house. He tried, in respectful tones, to explain that buying a house was much more complex and expensive than Indio might think. There was the matter of finding the right one at the right price, and then there was the paperwork, the banks, credit history, notaries, etc. “I know all about it, hombre, my uncle is a realtor over here in San Diego,” Apolo said. “For you, I don’t think it’s possible.”

  “Your uncle?”

  The man worked for an outfit called Century 21, Apolo said. Indio asked for an introduction.

  “Compa, houses here cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, even more,” Apolo said. “How are you going to pay?”

  “In cash,” Indio said.

  Martín groaned.

  It was apparent, Apolo said later, “whether they knew it or not, the family was becoming a part of El Indio’s gang.”

  28

  At eighteen, El Negro migrated from the steamy Pacific state of Michoacán to the sunny citrus belt of Southern California. For nearly three decades he resided in the suburbanized farm town of San Bernardino, California, where he worked as a bus driver and machine operator. He married, gained a green card, and raised a family of five. The trajectory of his life seemed set. He would grow old with his family rising up around him.

  But early one evening in 2004, El Negro went drinking with friends after work and on his short drive home he was pulled over at a four-way stop by local police and arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence—it was his third such arrest. Without means to put up a defense, the conviction was a foregone conclusion. In addition to sentencing him to jail time, the judge stripped El Negro of his legal residency and ordered his deportation
following completion of his term. Expelled onto the streets of Tijuana with nothing but his memories and his wits to sustain him, El Negro remembered, “I was scared, man. Even in prison I heard shit about Tijuana.”

  He’d been convicted, but the real-life consequences far surpassed the mandatory sentence. El Negro lost his income, career, home, wife, children, legal status, and identity. The weight of the guilt and remorse he suffered in exile was crippling.

  Eventually Negro made his way along the boundary to Playas de Tijuana. At this tiny corner of northwestern Mexico that widened and shrank with the tide, the dreams of the disconnected were sustained in small ways. At that time, families separated by the border wall could converse through the pylons at the beach, for instance, or at Friendship Park. The myriad smugglers, their astounding techniques, and the stories of successful crossers brightened the deportee’s meager existence with an alluring ray of hope.

  While acquainting himself with Playas, El Negro stumbled upon a construction site near the old lighthouse. He saw that the dark red earth of Monument Mesa was being prepared for something, but that the handful of workers present seemed simply to mill about. So Negro struck up a conversation. A worker told him that a nonprofit organization was building bathrooms there and planning a park, but that the man hired to operate the backhoe had failed to show.

  “So now what?” El Negro asked.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “We might just leave.”

  “I can drive a backhoe,” Negro said. “If you want to work, let me help you.”

  The man consulted with the crew and soon enough El Negro was in the seat of the intimidating machine. He showed smarts and ability, and he was invited to stay on in several capacities. Following completion of the project, the organizers held an opening ceremony in the new park. Negro was asked to work at the bathrooms on that occasion, a kind of concierge of the establishment. And as the event came to a close, almost as an afterthought, an administrator informed Negro that the position was open, and his if he wanted it. He did, and he soon took up residence in an ample supply room in back, almost hidden by the circular design of the structure.