“Eh-slow down, por favor,” the man in the passenger seat said, his Spanish accent heavy. Jan, loving the feel of summer wind in her hair, bristled at the peremptory tone behind the polite words. Miguel wasn’t asking, he was ordering her to reduce speed.
She glanced at the speedometer. Sixty-five and rising. But hell, there was nobody around, even if it was afternoon. What was wrong with a little speed? She gunned the motor, taking the van another five miles over the limit.
A quiet voice from the back of the van said, “He’s right, Jan. The last thing we need is to be stopped for speeding. Slow it down, okay?” It was Ron Jameson, strapped into the back of his specially equipped van like precious cargo.
He was right; she lightened her foot and the van slowed. But damn it, she was right too! If Miguel used that tone in front of anyone else, he’d never pass as a migrant farm worker. Humility was as much a part of his disguise as the guyabera shirt and calloused hands.
Anyway, Ron owned the van. He called the shots. So do the double nickel all the way to the lake. Fifty-five, stay alive. Her mind repeated the words like a mantra as her sandaled foot touched lightly on the accelerator. Fifty-five, stay alive. Fifty-five … five.
Five. Five years. Five years if they got caught. That mantra, stronger than fifty-five, stay alive, took root in her brain. Five years, five years, she said to herself. Five years in a federal pen for transporting illegal aliens.
Could she do five years? No booze, no drugs—hell, as far as getting high was concerned, she was already in jail. Sobriety jail.
No men. Jan thought about that a moment, remembered Hal, her ex-husband, still actively alcoholic. Remembered the nameless, faceless men from the bars, men who’d reeked of booze, just like her Daddy. No men. She shrugged; no loss.
No loss for her, but what about Ron? Would they really give five years to a man already imprisoned by paralysis? No, of course they wouldn’t.
Right. And maybe the tooth fairy would drop by and slip some coin under her pillow for the two teeth Hal had knocked out just before he left.
“How far?” Miguel asked, not for the first time. He looked like a typical Mexican-American migrant worker: face dark as a buckeye, wearing a loose shirt and a straw hat. Shorts and dusty huaraches. He had the look of a man who’d spent his life squinting into the sun, squatting over strawberries, sweating over rows of sugar beet seedlings.
That was what Jan was counting on. That the weeks of working in the fields, sun beating down on their faces, had transformed Miguel and Pilar into people who could pass for Mexican-American migrant labor, not a Salvadoran university professor and his family running from the death squads. Running toward Canada, where the asylum laws were more lenient than in the United States.
The trouble was, they looked like campesinos but she couldn’t count on them to act as deferential as real migrants. Pilar had a way of holding her head erect, of staring straight at people, that spoke of a Central American doña used to weekly leg-waxings, not a woman who started the day at five a.m. by putting a pot of beans on the stove. And Miguel—his situation galled him. He was an educated man forced to pretend ignorance, a man who had been respected forced to act deferential, a man who had earned a place in society forced to flee with only the clothes on his back. His hair-trigger temper had led to confrontations back at the Migrant Rest Center; could he pass as a migrant if they were stopped, challenged?
“It’s about ten more miles,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road, consciously not looking at Miguel’s face. Not wanting to see the chip on his shoulder, reflected in a slight sneer around the mouth. Wanting to pretend that he was playing his role.
Ten miles to the lakeshore, ten miles to the boat, Rap’s boat, that would ferry Miguel, Pilar, and little Manuelito to Canada. Ten miles more of heart-pounding fear, of adrenaline rush. Ten final miles on the underground railroad that had begun in El Salvador, traveled overland to Mexico, then forded the Rio Grande into Texas. Now safety was within reach, within tasting distance.
“We’re almost there,” Jan said, glancing at the face beside her. Underneath the bravado, she sensed worry. She knew that feeling; how many times had she done things in spite of the fear, drowning the fear in booze and pretending a cockiness she didn’t really feel? She let her voice fill with confidence and reassurance. “Only ten more miles.”
Ten more miles of high, then back to emotions as gray as Lake Erie, as flat as the beet fields.
God, a beer would taste good.
She clamped down hard on the thought, her first booze-thought of the day. Instead, she concentrated on driving, ostentatiously looking into the rearview mirror despite the emptiness of the rural road.
There was a car behind her. A silver-gray late model that glinted ominously in the noonday sun.
How long had it been there? She didn’t know, thought of asking Ron if he’d noticed it, but decided not to cause panic. That was how it had started before; a car innocently following, then the police descending on them with siren screaming.
Oh, God, her first run by herself and she was going to be stopped. Just like last week, with Ramòn and his family. She and Dana had been driving the church van—was it only three days ago?—when the Highway Patrol pulled them over. At first they thought it was a routine stop, although Jan swore they’d been doing fifty miles per hour max. But then a gray government car drove up and out stepped Walt Koeppler, head of the local Immigration and Naturalization Service, La Migra to the thousands of illegal immigrants who crossed the U.S. border every week.
First line of defense: phony ID showing that the Escobars were American citizens from south Texas, up in Ohio to pick crops like hundreds of other migrant workers. Dana’s ex-husband Rap had copied passport photos onto real Texas driver’s licenses obtained from the genuine Escobars of Brownsville.
Second line of defense: a strong offense. So while Jan sat quietly behind the wheel, Dana, in the passenger seat, went into a carefully rehearsed tantrum.
“Green cards?” she’d said, her tone dripping contempt. “They don’t need green cards. As you perfectly well know, Mr. Koeppler.” She’d raked him up and down, her eyes blazing. “They’re American citizens.” Which was true of the vast majority of migrant farmworkers who came into northwest Ohio for the season; they were Spanish-speaking Texans who lived only slightly better than their cousins across the Rio Grande.
Walt Koeppler didn’t back down. “Can they prove it?” The voice was softer, but no less menacing.
Dana motioned to Ramón, who put his newly calloused hand into his work pants and laboriously withdrew the forged papers.
Jan had taken the papers from Ramòn and passed them wordlessly to the immigration officer, hoping the shaking of her hands would be put down to anger instead of nerves. “This really sucks,” she said as he perused the documents, lifting the sunglasses from his pink nose to peer more closely at the signatures. “These people were born in the U.S.A., same as you, and everywhere they go they get hassled just because they look Mexican.” She hoped her tone was as sarcastic as Dana’s.
It was four agonizing minutes before Walt Koeppler handed the papers back to Jan. Her fingers were so damp she was afraid she’d melt the ink, but all she did was leave a smudge. He let them go. He had no choice.
She couldn’t believe she was driving illegals again after the scare Walt had put into her that day. But glancing back into the rearview mirror, watching the silver car come closer and then fall back, she understood why.
She’d thought it was because Miguel and Pilar and especially Manuelito needed her. Because she needed to be needed. She was doing good, doing important work.
But that wasn’t what had put her behind the wheel of Ron’s van. It was the high. She glanced back at the silver car in the rearview and felt the rush of danger and knew: she was doing it for the high.
“How many are left?” Dana asked. “After Miguel and Pilar, I mean.” She pushed hair off her sweat-soaked forehead and puffed out her cheek
s as she expelled hot, humid air from her lungs. Summer in the fields took a lot out of Dana; every year she swore she’d get to the mountains or the ocean—hell, even Michigan—and every year she stayed in the same sunbaked landscape, hating summer with every sodden pore.
“Twelve Indios from Guatemala,” Rap replied. “And I have one more Salvadoran family over at the Henderson farm.” He pushed his Mets cap back and wiped sweat from his brow with a hand that left a streak of dirt. His eyes strayed from his ex-wife’s face to the sailboat moored at the deserted pier.
“Don’t lie to me, Rap.” Dana cut him off, her voice hard. “I know there are others. Those guys in the trailers at the van Wormer farm make it more than twelve. I don’t know what side deal you have going on, but I want the whole truth. How many total?”
Rap spread his bony hands in a placating gesture, smiling the open, friendly grin that had captivated Dana Sobel fourteen years earlier. The grin that said he had nothing to hide; the grin that she knew from long bitter experience meant he was lying through his crooked teeth.
It wasn’t fair. He was even sexier than he’d been in those days, when she’d first fallen under his spell. She took in the lean face, the wiry torso, the long, tanned legs in cutoff jeans. At forty, Joel Alan Rapaport was a good-looking guy; at thirty-eight, she was a dumpy broad with thirty extra pounds, crow’s-feet around the eyes, and gray streaks in her once-black hair.
“Look, I don’t care who those guys are,” she said, her voice edged with the mock patience of a mother dealing with a teenager. “I don’t want to know. I sure as hell don’t want to know if it’s something illegal. Which, knowing you,” she added, “it most likely is. Just get them the hell out of the factory as soon as possible. We’re being watched, Rap. It’s only a matter of time before—”
“Oh, Christ, not this old song and dance.” Rap’s lateral lisp sprayed saliva in her direction. “You’re starting to talk like Jan, and you know what a flake she is.”
“Flake or not, she may be right. That police car last week had no business knowing we were there. It wasn’t a coincidence, Rap. Somebody informed—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Rap’s agreement was no agreement at all; he waved away the words with a bony hand. “Truth is, babe, it’s not the feds that worry me. It’s Joaquín’s buddies from back home.”
“Joaquín Baltasar? The guy in Ted’s Newsweek article?” Dana squinted at Rap. “The guy who found the contra hideouts in the jungle?”
Rap nodded. “He’s in south Texas right now, signing on with a sugar beet crew. He should be in Liberty Center by tomorrow or the next day, and then it’s up to us to get him to Canada.”
The full implication of Rap’s remarks finally sank in. “You think the contras would follow Joaquín all the way up here?” She looked around at the peaceful freshwater beach as if guerillas hid behind every dune. “Here, in Ohio?” Dana’s voice rose in disbelief. Her own worry that the cops were on their trail paled in the light of her ex-husband’s fears. Talk about paranoia—the idea that Nicaraguan contras could and would make their way north just to take out one refugee … it was crazy.
Wasn’t it?
“Hey, look, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard,” Rap went on. His lean body moved in rhythm to music only he heard as he paced the marshy sand. “You know I hear things, Dane. Those dudes are heavy. They don’t like it that Joaquín told the world what they were doing, they don’t like Ted making him a hero, and they sure as hell don’t like it that he got out of the country before they could take him out. It’s like when Stalin iced Trotsky. He didn’t have to do it, but—”
“Oh, Jesus. Stalin and Trotsky. What the fuck year is this?” But she said the words under her breath.
Rap had a point. Joaquín had beaten the government forces in his own country and by escaping he’d made them look weak. Their balls were on the line, and when men had their balls on the line, there was nothing they wouldn’t do to get even.
“So have you seen anything? Are the other families in danger? Should we move them?”
Rap shook his head. “Moving people too much calls attention. We’d better sit tight after we get Miguel and Pilar out of here. I’ll check out my sources and find out what’s shaking.”
You’ll check your sources, Dana thought. You’ll check your wiretaps, run the tapes on your hidden microphones. Sources, my ass. She took a moment to wonder just where Rap had hidden his little bugs, whose phones he’d tapped into, whose secrets he’d plundered to get his information.
Then she stopped herself. She didn’t want to know. For her own safety and that of their twelve-year-old son, she really didn’t want to know.
The silver car drew closer. Jan didn’t dare raise her speed; she couldn’t give the cops an excuse for pulling her over. The silver car honked, just like any driver on a two-lane road annoyed at a slower car in its path.
“Go ahead and pass, idiot,” Jan muttered. “This is the straightest road God ever made, there’s no double line, so—”
Why wasn’t he passing? Why was the damned car playing tag with her? Was this part of the game? Maybe Walt Koeppler was in this car, not his government-issue clunker. She peered into the mirror, trying to see a face behind the driver’s seat. But all she could tell was that he was male.
“Is he following us?” Miguel whispered, low enough that Pilar in the back seat couldn’t hear.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I hope not.”
“How does he know we are here?” The h sounds came out more like j’s; Miguel was losing his English in his anxiety.
It was a good question. Dana and Rap had talked long and hard about changing the route, varying the site of the boat. So this was not the same road she and Dana had taken last week, nor was it the same time of day. Even the van was different. They’d done everything they could to remain unobtrusive.
So what was this silver car doing here?
And what should she do about it?
The turnoff was coming up. She was supposed to make the turn right after the one for Crane Creek State Park, where fishermen or swimmers went for a day’s recreation. The road she was to take was the one used by occasional boaters, much less traveled.
But would that lead the silver car and the police to where Dana and Rap waited with the boat? Should she keep going and double back to make the turn?
Blood pumped through her veins as if she’d done a serious dose of speed. She was learning that natural highs were even harder to manage than artificial ones. She knew what to do to ensure a soft landing after speed: a little grass, a snort of coke, a glass of wine. Not sleeping pills, that was for housewives. But what do you do to bring yourself down from a high you didn’t make?
God, I need a drink. Or two. Or six.
Second booze-thought of the day.
And meanwhile the miles slipped away under the rolling black tires. The turnoff was coming up; what should she do?
Before she had to decide, the silver car abruptly peeled off to the left, following signs directing fishermen to the inlets off the lake. Was the driver really intent on lake perch or had he just telephoned her location to La Migra?
No way to know. But her turn was next, and she swerved the car to the left. No oncoming traffic, yet her turn was awkwardly done. Nerves.
It was a dune road, bumpy and sandy and gravelly and not much used. Serious boaters rented slips at marinas up and down the lake; this road had long since been supplanted by blacktopped routes to the water’s edge.
She could see water for the first time, ditches and marshes and inlets sparkling in the sun. Manuelito, in the back seat, pointed and said something in Spanish. Pilar murmured a reply; Jan caught the word agua, but not much else.
They were going to make it. Relief, in the form of a waterfall of sweat, flooded her skin. Her first trip as conductor on the underground railroad, engineer of the Enchilada Express, and they were going to make it. She could picture the boat moored at an old pier at the end of the dune ro
ad.
A siren sliced the air like a razor cutting a throat.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Judge LaMont Noble strode onto the bench, his robes flying behind him like the wings of a bird. He was tall; I recalled someone saying something about a college basketball career before law school. His face was angular, his limbs fleshless. Ichabod Crane with African ancestry. His voice was harsh, ravenlike. Allergies? A cold? Or a reflection of an inner impatience with things human?
I watched and listened as the judge called the room to order, then asked where Lawyer Sobel was. Dana answered; I wondered if she’d become a lawyer since I’d seen her last, or if the judges simply permitted her to address the court out of familiarity with Harve and his ways. She was in the middle of an elaborate explanation when Harve himself swept through the doors, followed by an entourage of very young-looking law students.
Before he was halfway up the aisle, Harve started apologizing. I gave him full points for theater; it was like one of those Broadway shows that begin with an actor popping up out of the audience and commanding attention. Taking all eyes off the stage and focusing them somewhere in the middle of the house.
The judge wasn’t pleased that the spotlight had been commandeered. “I’ll hear you when you reach counsel table, Lawyer Sobel,” he said in his croaking voice, “and not a moment before.”
I noted the use of the title. Southern black people used that term, Lawyer So-and-So. Did that mean Noble had a memory of the old civil rights days? Could I get away with reminding the court that Jan and Ron had been working for the freedom of refugees in the same way that civil rights lawyers had worked for the freedom of Southern blacks?
Before I turned my attention back to the bench, the big wooden doors opened once more, this time admitting a tall priest with Marine-short gray hair and an ascetic face. It took me a minute, but when the penny finally dropped, so did my jaw.
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