Ten minutes later, Arbo stops.
“I need to catch my breath,” he says.
I do too. The memory of our lightened load is already fading, and the slope feels as though it’s becoming steeper.
“Are you sure it’s only a hill?”
“No, but let’s walk a little farther,” I say. “The higher we get, the easier it will be to see the lights.”
We resume. I trace Arbo’s footsteps, as they wind to the left and right, dodging the thorny land mines that dot the slope. It’s a dizzying trek that rarely leads us straight uphill. Birds can move in straight lines here—everything else must negotiate.
Five minutes later, the slope begins to level out. We sense that we’re near the top and press on with renewed drive.
Over the next fifteen minutes, we have the same conversation three times.
“Just a few more minutes.”
“We should think about turning back.”
“I think we’re almost there.”
Then it steepens again. Each new step is more up than forward. Loose, sharp rocks roll beneath our feet sending us crashing into the slope.
In my mind, I envision this as the final grueling ascent. Each step we take could be the one that reaches the top and…
And then what? If we see Ajo, what do we do? Can Marcos even walk up this slope right now? It would take all of us to carry him. So, do we try to walk around it without getting lost again? How likely is that?
“Pato, we need to go back,” Arbo says.
I drop down onto the rocks, exhausted. It’s been more than forty-five minutes since we left. All for nothing. It’s not even cooler up here than it was where we started below. If anything, it’s worse. The steamy wind feels like hot breath, as gusts sweep up dust and drive it through the buttons and holes of our shirts, mixing with our sweat and caking onto us, like a gritty paste.
“You’re right,” I say.
He gives me his watch, and I lead us back down. It’s impossible to retrace our steps while zigzagging around every obstacle we come across. The best we can do is walk in a direction that feels like we’re moving straight down the…mountain.
The wind rushes up the slope, forcing me to squint just enough so I can see each step ahead without letting sand fly into my eyes. I fail several times. Each instance requires us to stop so I can blink my dry eyes clear.
I pass the time by not thinking about the walk. My head is elsewhere. I feel like I’ve failed. This was my idea. My plan that got us nowhere, that didn’t take thirty minutes, but more than an hour. And—if I’m being honest—what I’m really dreading is telling Marcos that he was right. With Gladys there to hear.
“I don’t see the flashlight,” Arbo says.
I snap out of my wandering thoughts.
“How long have we been walking back down?”
“You have the watch,” he says.
“Right. About forty-five minutes. We should be getting close,” I say.
“We’ve been looking down to walk. Let’s stop for a few minutes and watch for it.”
“Good idea.”
We see nothing.
We yell into the darkness, but our shouts are swallowed whole by the wind now whipping around us.
“Do you think we passed them?” Arbo asks.
“I don’t know.”
My stomach tightens. We’re in trouble.
Two by Two
We walk back up. Nothing.
We walk back down. Nothing.
We repeat. Nothing.
We shout. Nothing.
We walk back and forth along the slope of the mountain. Nothing.
Hours pass. Nothing.
We try to think of anything else we can possibly do. Nothing.
We remind each other of exactly what we have with us. No food. No water.
Nothing.
We cry. Together.
“We’re screwed,” Arbo says.
“Yeah,” I answer.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“Me neither.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s almost three.”
“We’ve been looking for them for two hours?”
“Yeah.”
I hear his head hit the ground in frustration.
“We should wait until dawn,” I say.
“And do what?”
“Sleep? Lay here? We should be able to see them in the morning. They’ve got to be down there. Maybe the flashlight isn’t working.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
We hike back up the slope so that we’ll have a good view, and we lie down on the dirt. Not long after we settle in, the clouds begin to slide mockingly out of the sky, revealing our map above. North lies somewhere between the slope of the mountain and the angled path I think we had been walking along. Where that puts Marcos and Gladys is beyond me right now. My head is spinning.
I close my eyes and fester. I’m angry. At a lot of things. First, at myself, for getting us into this mess. At La Frontera, because they are going to win—they’ll get us, and they won’t even have to pony up the bounty. At the sky, for betraying me—how many nights have I spent staring into it with wonder, and the first time I call on it for help, it leaves me. At Marcos, for finally letting go of control long enough to allow me to fail.
It’s a giant swirl of bitterness.
And I feel guilty. Very guilty. I look at Arbo. If we don’t get out of this, I will have killed him. My foolishness will be to blame. And to make it worse, he never says so. He never blames me. I wish he would. I wish he would lash out at me, call me names, and put me on the defensive. Then maybe I could throw some of the blame back outward. But he won’t. That’s not him. So I’m forced to swallow all of it whole.
On the very dim bright side, my body is drained, so as much as I want to beat myself up, I can’t stay awake to do so. Even with a mattress of rocks and a book for a pillow.
• • •
“Hey, Pato.”
I feel a tug at my sleeve. I try to open my mouth and my eyes—both feel glued shut. I raise my palms to my eyes and gently rub them open. They are greeted by the soft glow of morning.
“Hey.”
I sit up. If this were any other circumstance, I could stare at the scenery for hours. We are in the shade of what I can now safely call a mountain. Its mighty shadow bulges outward toward the horizon, skirted at the top by a narrow, golden strip of sunlit desert, which fades into the dark blue of the western sky.
“How long have you been awake?” I ask.
“A couple of minutes.”
“I’m guessing you haven’t see them yet.”
“No.”
We both scan below for a few more minutes.
“I don’t get it. We didn’t walk that far,” he says.
“I know. Do you think they moved?”
“No. They said they were going to stay right there. Why would they move?” His voice trails off, and I can tell that the same thought has entered both of our heads.
“They could have moved for a lot of reasons,” I say.
“Like what?”
I can’t come up with any.
“I can only think of one reason,” Arbo says. “Do you think it was because of the flashlight?”
Again, my idea.
“I don’t know, Arbo. We don’t know that somebody found them.”
“But if they did, then they also found our packs. They know that we’re out here too!”
“Okay. We need to calm down.” I’m speaking as much to myself as I am to him. “We don’t know anything. We’re only guessing.”
“But we need to know.”
“Why? We just have to look for them, okay?”
“No. If somebody found them, then they’re look
ing for us, and we need to hide. We’re on the side of a mountain. Anybody down there can see us. But if nobody found them, then we need for them to be able to see us. See? We need to know what happened.”
He’s spot on. And completely wrong.
“Okay. You’re right,” I say. “But we have to assume that nobody found them.” I pause to think through how to soften my next line. I give up. “Because if someone found them, then we’re dead. Whether they find us or not. We need that water, Arbo. We’re not going to last a day without it.” I pause. “I’m so sorry I got us into this, I thought—”
“Stop. It’s not your fault. And you’re right. Let’s assume they’re okay. They probably are,” he says.
“You think?”
I look into his eyes. He’s lying.
“Yeah. They’re probably down there looking for us and asking themselves the same questions.”
“Then we’d better find them before we lose our shade.”
• • •
The sun breaks over the ridgeline and greets us like a torch pressed to our skin. We’ve scoured the mountainside and can’t find any trace of Marcos and Gladys.
The inside of my mouth feels like cotton. I don’t know how we’ll make it through the next few hours, much less the rest of the day. Or beyond. I’ve never known thirst like this before. Arbo sits in a disappointed slump beneath the flame. I’m feeling the heat, but I look at him and can tell he’s doing much worse.
I spot a small desert willow below, offering slivers of shade beneath its skeletal frame.
“Come on, Arbo. We need to get out of the sun.”
I give him my hand and hoist him to his feet. We stagger down the slope to the tree and take a seat in the thickest line of its bony shadow.
Arbo’s lips are cracked and red. His whole body looks flushed. He takes off his shoes and socks. His feet are swollen and his left foot is blistered in several places along the outside edge. He flops his body back into the dirt, closes his eyes, and groans.
“We should take off our clothes and put them in the tree. That’ll give us more shade,” I say.
He nods but doesn’t move.
I stand on unsteady feet and remove my clothes. Bracing myself against the trunk of the tree in my underwear, I’m suddenly aware of how little I have left. With each step forward, I’m further stripped of everything in my life. Until finally—soon—I’ll be naked, alone, and dead.
I hang my clothes on the low branches and turn back to find Arbo in his underwear as well. His shoulders are raw, like mine, from the backpacks we so desperately miss right now. He hands me his shirt and jeans.
We sit across from each other, waiting for the other person to say something, anything.
“You look like crap,” he says.
“I’ll take that. I thought I looked a lot worse.”
“You do. I was being nice.”
“How does your foot feel?” I ask, pointing to his blisters.
“Like the rest of me. At least we’re not walking.”
Which also means we’re sitting still…letting the desert slowly suck us dry.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, breaking me from my darker thoughts.
“Water.”
“How good would that taste right now?”
“I don’t even want to think about it.”
“But you are.”
“I can’t help it,” I say.
“Do you ever wonder why water doesn’t taste like anything?”
“Not really. I guess that means you do.”
“Think about it. Everything else we put in our mouth has some kind of flavor—sweet, bitter, spicy, horrible…”
“I don’t think horrible is a flavor,” I say.
“You know what I mean. But water has no flavor. Try to describe it. You can’t. And it’s the one thing we need the most. Why not give it flavor?”
“Maybe that’s why. Because we need it so much. What if it had a flavor and you didn’t like it? Then you’d be screwed.”
“But you could always put other flavor in it, like how coffee has water in it, but it tastes like something else.”
“But that’s because it doesn’t taste like anything to begin with. What if you poured coffee on your eggs?” I ask.
“That’d be disgusting.”
“Exactly. So it tastes like nothing.”
“Hmm. You’re a smart guy, Pato. I’ve never told you that.”
“If I were smart, we wouldn’t be talking about water. We’d be drinking it.”
“This isn’t your fault,” he says.
“Yes, it is. First, for not saying something about the car, and now this.”
“Stop it with the car. And this isn’t your fault.”
“Whose idea was it to leave them and leave everything we had with them?”
“It made sense.”
“If you’re stupid.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“No, I’m calling me stupid.”
“But I agreed with you, so you can’t call yourself stupid without calling me stupid.”
“Then… I’m calling me stupider.”
“Well, I’m not mad at you,” he says.
“I know you’re not.”
“Good. I just wanted you to know.”
“You’re… You’re better at that than me. I’d be mad at you.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
Maybe he’s right.
I look down at myself, then back at him. Squeezed into the small slab of shade, we’re as close as we can get without being pressed against each other, in nothing but our tighty-whities. We deserve each other. In the best of senses.
That I can still shed a tear feels both surprising and wasteful.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just glad you’re here with me. I wouldn’t want to be out here with anybody else,” I say.
“Almost naked, under a tree in the middle of nowhere?”
“Yeah. Almost naked. If we have to lose these to make more shade I might change my mind.”
We laugh, as much as we can. We try to hold on to the feeling, pushing each other with half-forced chuckles, until we can do it no longer.
“This isn’t good, Pato.”
“I know.”
“We should write a note.”
“To who?”
“Whoever. I’m thinking about that guy we saw, and how you searched over his entire body and couldn’t find out anything about him. Nobody is ever going to know who he is. I feel like we ought to write something down about us.”
“We’re not done yet,” I say.
“I know. But just in case, we should do it.”
“What? Write our names?”
“And why we’re here.”
“Why? What good is it going to do?” I ask.
“What harm is it going to do, and what else are we doing right now? You never know who might find it and what they might do with it. Maybe they’ll tell people back home. Think about the family we’ve got left…abuelita Marisol, or tío Carlitos, or all the kids from our school, our teachers. We still have people back there. They don’t know anything about us now. I know that was the plan, and I know it has to be that way, but it still feels wrong. If something happens, they should find out what we did.”
I know I was the one who was so interested in finding out the dead man’s name, but I still think it’s unlikely that writing our names will accomplish anything. But that’s not what bothers me about it. If we don’t make it out, I’d rather La Frontera never know. I’d want Rafa’s brother—that cabrón—to spend the rest of his days wondering if the guys who killed his brother were enjoying the good life in the glorious North. I’d rather leave a note saying, “Whoever finds this, please send a postcard to La
Frontera from the United States, care of Pato, Arbo, Gladys, and Marcos. We miss you. Give Rafa our best!”
But, more than all this, I want to make Arbo feel half as good as he makes me feel.
“Okay,” I say. “That’s a good idea.”
“I still have the pencil in my jeans. We can write it in the cover of your book.”
“What about Marcos and Gladys? Should we write their names also?” I ask.
The question hangs over us, like the clothes on the tree.
“Like you said, it’s not over yet. This is just in case. We’re still in this together,” he answers.
I fish the pencil out of his jeans and sit back down.
Daniel (“Arbusto,” “Arbo”) Luis Ortega Romero-16
Patricio (“Pato”) Juan Manuel Ortega Maqueda-16
Gladys Solange Salvador Guerrero-15
Marcos Edgar Salvador Guerrero-17
On the run from La Frontera, who murdered our families.
I put the pencil in the inside seam and close the book around it.
“I’m going to try to sleep,” Arbo says. “Please don’t leave. For any reason. We’re staying together, right?”
“Until the end,” I say.
Arbo closes his eyes and falls silent. I watch his chest rise and fall. I’m not expecting it to stop yet, but that thought is not far off. Maybe a few hours, maybe longer.
I close my eyes and try to join him.
• • •
I can’t sleep. I’d blame the heat, but the real culprit is me. I can’t turn off my mind. It’s the same swift current of thought as always.
As I sit up, I discover that the shade has slid past most of Arbo’s body. The midday rays blast into his chubby frame, which now sports a red line, seared on a diagonal. I want to kick myself for letting this happen. I rearrange our clothes so he is once again covered, and I vow to keep watch on our shifting shelter.
I don’t feel much like reading, but Gladys’s gift to me is the only escape I have from my own discomfort, outside and in. I open it and dive with pleasure into somebody else’s misadventure.
Of all places, this story happens on a river! I feel a cool trickle of water in my mouth. I didn’t know a person could drool for water. All my life, I have been accused of becoming so absorbed by books that the outside world vanishes. People call my name, I don’t hear them. Time passes, I don’t realize it. I become entranced. Never has this been more of a gift than now. My mind sets sail along the cool, fresh water of the Mississippi.
The Border Page 12
