by Luanne Rice
“Don’t tell me about it,” Jack used to say to her. “You’re undermining what we’re doing. You’re encouraging them.”
“We’re keeping a few of them alive,” she said. “Sweetheart, the fence, the wall, is inhumane. People are dying.”
“That’s their choice,” he actually said. “They come here illegally, that’s the chance they take.”
“When did you get so hard?” she asked, holding his face between her hands. “They’re human beings like us, looking for a better life for their families. You understand that, don’t you? You did it for us.”
And it was true—at the start of their marriage, jobs were scarce and Jack didn’t have a college degree—just two years at Northeastern that didn’t count for much. He’d wanted to join the FBI, like his grandfather Brendan Leary, but they wouldn’t take him because of his lack of education. He’d given up his dream of working for the federal government, got a job selling copy machines.
God, had he hated that. It was the most soulless work imaginable, going into hermetically sealed office buildings and trying to sell pieces of crap designed to break down just so the businesses would be forced to buy the service contract as well. That job kept him and Louella afloat for a whole year, until he saw the posting for the Border Patrol position.
He could have called one of his granddad’s old protégés at the Bureau, but he hadn’t done that when he applied to the FBI and he wouldn’t do it now. If he couldn’t stand on his own feet, he didn’t deserve the job.
But he got it. And he was good at it. At first he carried with him his grandfather’s mission of public service, but right around the time the fence was built he changed. Seeing so much suffering, and chasing people through the desert just to keep them from dying and to deport them back to where they came from, dragged him down. And that’s when he got hard.
Louella loved him anyway, even when he came home in a mean mood. She told him it was because he was losing his humanity.
“It’s a humanitarian crisis,” she said. “And you’re part of the problem. That’s why you can’t sleep at night.”
He hadn’t even told her about the beatings his guys gave the migrants they caught, sometimes pushing their faces into cacti. They were supposed to carry water in their vehicles, and half the time they didn’t, and the people they picked up would be delirious with dehydration, and they’d drop them off at the processing center, take away their medication—some of them diabetic, going into insulin shock. More than once Jack had himself used his blackjack to hit migrants trying to escape.
Louella dressed in white to go to her volunteer job. Long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a white scarf around her neck, and a wide-brimmed white hat. Jack knew it was because white reflected the heat, and where she had to walk carrying water to refill the agua stations—sometimes a mile or so into the desert—it was hotter than blazes. He often thought of what the migrants must have thought, seeing her appear like an apparition, calling out in Spanish, “Hola, mis amigos! Tenemos agua, comida, y medicina para todos.”
He plucked some dead blossoms off the flowers he had planted at her grave. She had been moved by the Rosa Rodriguez story. Of course he had told her, and by then she had helped him start meditating, relaxing, seeing his work as a way to help, not hurt others. She was his savior.
He remembered one of the last cases before he retired—Fernanda Cruz Castillo. Her group of thirty had been walking at night when they tripped a sensor. ICE sent helicopters to hover over the migrants, very specifically to churn up the desert sand and create a dust storm. It disoriented everyone, temporarily blinding some, made them disperse. Agents with night-vision goggles picked up most of them, but several evaded arrest. Fernanda was one—not because she was adept at hiding, but because she’d gotten blisters and could barely walk and had fallen behind.
Her husband, Diego, had been among those picked up. He kept telling people at the processing center about his wife, but they didn’t respond. It was seventy-two hours later, when he was on the deportation line, that he caught Jack’s attention. He told him about Fernanda. Louella had just died, and he swore her angel was sitting on his shoulder. She told him what to do. Jack pulled Diego out of the line, took him in his Explorer to the spot where he’d last seen Fernanda.
Diego had been sitting with her, trying to encourage her to keep going, just before the helicopters came. They had three children at home in Oaxaca, staying with her parents, so Diego and Fernanda could try to get seasonal work in the States, make enough money to feed the family for the year. “Do it for the hijos!” Diego had begged her. “One more step, another step . . .” But her feet were raw and bleeding, and she couldn’t walk. She sat there crying, knowing she was letting everyone in the family down.
When the border agents came to capture the group, Diego ran to tell them about Fernanda. They shoved him into a prickly pear, the long spines going into his arms, hands, and face. They kept saying, “Show us your papers, your passport.” And he just kept telling them about Fernanda.
Driving him back to the spot, Jack saw that he had not received medical treatment. The cactus spines were still embedded in his skin, crusted with blood and pus.
“She has beautiful long brown hair, and she’s wearing an orange shirt,” he said. “Jeans and a pair of Nike sneakers.”
By the time they reached her, her shirt was no longer orange. Jack tried to get Diego to stay in the vehicle, but he ran ahead. The sight that awaited the two men remained burned in Jack’s mind.
The sand was wet, as if water had been spilled. But in fact the moisture was all of Fernanda’s bodily fluids and body fat, melted into the dirt. Carnivores and insects had devoured every part of her they could reach. Her long brown hair was a tangled nest above her bare skull, and her shirt had been torn off, and her body ravaged—her skin gone, and all her internal organs eaten—so that just her skull, spine, and rib cage remained. Her arms had been torn off and dragged away. Her legs and feet remained encased in the jeans and Nikes.
Diego tried to gather her bones into his arms, to hold her as he cried. Jack had to pry him away. He radioed for agents to come and retrieve the body. Then he drove Diego back to the deportation line. That was the last he saw of him.
Now, driving away from Louella’s grave, he knew he had a mission. He put on Tim O’Brien’s CD for inspiration. Julia Hughes had shown up at his door for a reason. The fact that she was Irish and connected to John Riley, that old ghost who connected the Mexicans and Irish and reminded them of their own hearts, was part of it. He knew fate had brought her into his life—Louella would have been the first to say that.
He headed to a dirt field by a long gap in the big border wall west of the Tohono O’odham Nation, near where Roberto and Rosa’s group had crossed, and where Latham had tracked Rosa. It was also where Louella and her friends from Salvation gathered on Wednesday mornings with water to distribute to the water stations they had created in the desert. When he saw the cars and trucks, and people dressed in white, he knew he’d timed it well.
“Jack!” called Patricia Finnegan when she spotted him.
His arm shot up. Patricia was just who he wanted to see. She’d been Louella’s best friend. She and her husband, Mike, had frequently gotten together with Jack and Louella for dinner and to play bridge, one week at the Learys’ house, the next at the Finnegans’—before Mike had died of a heart attack a month after retiring—he’d been a border agent with Jack, a great guy.
“How are you, kid?” he asked, giving her a big hug.
“Good, Jack. And you?”
“Fine. I was just out to see Louella.”
“I miss her every day.”
“Me too.”
“We miss her here, too,” Patricia said.
“Well, she loved doing it. As much grief as I gave her for it.”
“You came around,” she sai
d. “Mike did, too. Are you telling me you want to join us today? We could always use some extra muscle—that water is heavy.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m on a job . . . sort of. But I wanted to ask you something, Patricia. While you’re out there, you find things people leave behind, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she said. “You know. You’ve seen the jackets and backpacks and empty water jugs and photos . . .”
“Yeah, I remember. I wonder if you ever come across any dolls.”
“Many,” she said. “A lot of the children start out carrying their favorite toys, but leave them along the way when they get too tired and the toys get too heavy.”
“It’s been years since this one was lost,” he began.
“It could still be there,” she said. “The desert mummifies everything. Objects seem to last forever.”
“Will you keep your eyes out for a doll with angel wings? They’re homemade, sewn on by the child’s great-grandmother.”
“I will,” Patricia said. She didn’t ask for the child’s story; out here one tragedy blended into another. “You know, you might check with Kathryn Martin. She’s an artist from L.A. who collects things left behind by migrants and makes sculptures out of them.”
“Sounds like a scavenger to me.”
“Found objects,” Patricia said. “That’s what they’re called. It might even be the name of her gallery.”
“Huh. I’ll check it out,” he said, making a mental note to tell Julia about it. “Anyway, good to see you, Patricia.”
“You too, Jack.”
They hugged, and he left the parking lot determined to make Latham Nez tell him what he wanted to know.
chapter ten
Julia
The night was hot, so she swam in the pool. Jack had called, and she was touched by the way he was taking this on, pursuing a new lead, and telling her about the gallery of found objects. At the end of the conversation, he asked about Jenny and said he felt that Julia was dedicating her search for information about Rosa to her own daughter.
Now, swimming in the dark under the stars, Julia thought him very perceptive. She’d been tempted to tell him the whole truth of how Jenny had died, but couldn’t bear to say the words out loud. As she stroked from one end of the pool to the other, over and over, she felt tension leaving her body. When she paused in the shallow end, catching her breath, she looked up and saw Roberto.
“Hi, she said.
“Hola,” Roberto said. He was walking up the hill from his cabin and came over to crouch by the side of the pool.
“Is it nice in there?” he asked.
The underwater lights shimmered on his face, and she thought she saw him redden.
“It’s beautiful and cool.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. He seemed to want to say something, and she knew she did, too. She reached up, touched his chest. Then she bunched his T-shirt up in her fist.
“Come in,” she said.
“I can’t swim,” he said.
“I’ll teach you.”
He paused as if considering, then stepped a few feet away to take off his T-shirt, jeans, and boots. She watched him fold his clothes, lay them neatly on the ground. He wore black boxer briefs. He crossed his arms across his chest as if he were cold—but he couldn’t be. There was no breeze tonight, and the temperature hovered around eighty degrees.
The steps into the pool were wide and curved; she stood on the bottom one and gave him her hand, and he took a step toward her.
“It’s only up to my waist here, see?” she asked. “You can stand.”
He walked into the pool, and she could see him smiling.
“Feels good, right?”
“Sí,” he said.
“Duck down and get your shoulders wet,” she said, and he did, and his smile got bigger.
“Can you float?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Ever tried?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve never been in a pool before.”
“A river, a pond?”
“No.”
“Okay,” she said. “It’s easy. Just lie on your back in the water. You know your feet can touch bottom. But just trust the water to hold you up.”
He seemed hesitant, but she nodded encouragement. He leaned back the way she showed him and instantly sank. He came up in a panic, sputtering.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Julia said. They stood waist-deep facing each other. His brown eyes looked deep and warm, and were gazing intently into hers. “Do you trust me?”
“Claro que sí,” he said.
“Okay. Then know I won’t let you down. I’m going to support you while you float.”
She put her hands on his shoulders, and began to ease him down. His tan skin felt so smooth under her fingers. He lay on his back, and she stood beside him and supported him with both arms. His body was rigid, fighting the water. If she weren’t holding him, he would sink.
“Relax,” she said. “Breathe . . . let me see you breathe.”
He took a gulp of air.
“Not like that,” she whispered. “All the way in, down to your belly, then all the way out.”
She held him close, against her body, and as he began to breathe deeply, she felt him start to unwind. The night air was heavy, perfumed with lemon and coastal sage. Roberto closed his eyes. Gradually Julia held him less securely: first with her arms extended under his back and legs, then with both hands, finally with one finger under the small of his back.
He had stopped struggling, and she felt him giving up control. She knew he could do it; he’d given himself over to the water.
“You’re almost there,” she said. “I’ve still got you, but in a minute I’m going to let you go. I’m right here, and remember, you can touch bottom.”
“Okay,” he said.
“You ready?”
His smile was his reply.
She supported him a few more seconds, then stepped away. Roberto floated on the water, arms extended outward. She felt so happy. Swimming had given her a lifetime of pleasure; floating was a first step, but now that he’d learned to trust his own buoyancy, she knew he could do it.
“Wow,” she said. “How does it feel?”
The question broke the spell—although he didn’t panic like before. He just came out of the float and stood with his feet on the bottom. There were four inches of water between them. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she felt the shock of his touch. Then he pulled her body against his.
“Is okay?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer, and he kissed her. She felt a tidal surge, nothing to do with the warm water surrounding them, his kiss soft at first, sending tremors through her body. His mouth warm on hers, parting her lips, making her want something she thought she’d lost or forgotten or never ever had before.
Now he took her hand, led her up the steps and out of the pool. He kissed her again on dry land, and she sensed him hesitating and wondering. His cabin was one way, the main house the other. She waited just as long as she could, and he decided. He picked her up and carried her toward his cabin.
It was small and rustic, one room, with a narrow bed. They stripped off their wet bathing things, and he pulled back the covers and laid her down on the mattress. The windows were open, but no breeze came through. The heat enveloped their bodies, and the way he touched her and the heavy lemon-scented air made Julia dizzy. She arched her back, pressing her body into his as he filled her, and she felt an ecstatic shiver electrify her skin, all the way into her bones.
They fell asleep in each other’s arms. She awoke to the sound of his heartbeat, or maybe something else. A moth beat against the windo
w screen above them, then flew away, leaving wing prints of white dust. Julia stared up at them, tiny images imprinted on the mesh, and she thought of angel wings in the desert and at the beach and in the midst of the lemon orchard.
Roberto
Driving home to Boyle Heights on the 10 freeway, he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t dreamed it. Holding Julia, waking up with her in bed, he had stared into her blue eyes. He felt in awe of her beauty and shocked by the way she was looking at him, as if she felt for him the way he did for her.
He had no idea where to hold Julia in his mind. She was his bosses’ niece, American, a gringa, the occupant of the big house on the hill. He had pride, dignity, he knew how to act, but what did this mean? His feelings had been exploding almost since she’d arrived, that first time they’d talked about Rosa and Jenny.
Sometimes he’d imagined she had them too, strong emotions for him. But he’d always tell himself he was wrong. Even his father had warned him in very few words about hoping for something he had no right to hope for.
The traffic was bad at the exit to the 405; he slowed down and didn’t care. He was in no hurry to put miles between himself and the Casa, between himself and Julia. She had given him an address, told him it was an art gallery, and asked him to meet her there that night. An art gallery! He had never been to one before. He didn’t know what to wear, and he was embarrassed to ask her.
She seemed not to care that he was Mexican or poor. Being with Julia made him feel good about himself and think of his good teachers instead of the bad ones. He thought of Rigo, the teacher who cared the most. He encouraged the kids. Rigo saw that Roberto was intelligent, and he had him memorize El Brindis del Bohemio by Guillermo Aguirre y Fierro. The poem was long and complicated and emotional, and Roberto remembered it still.
And on Mother’s Day when Roberto was fourteen, skinny, six feet tall and embarrassed by his height, Rigo had him stand in front of the whole assembly, all the students’ parents and Roberto’s grandmother, and sing Juan Gabriel’s “Amor Eterno.” At first he had felt his face turning red, feeling as if he would combust, but then he got comfortable, felt good, and he finished the song and at the end all the mothers and his grandmother were crying.
