The Line Becomes a River

by Francisco Cantú

  On our way back to the academy, I sat in the backseat of Morales’s truck. In the front, Morales told Hart about growing up on the border in Douglas, about his uncles and cousins on the south side. Hart asked what kind of food they ate and Morales told him about hot bowls of menudo and birria in the morning, about the stands in Agua Prieta that sold tacos de tripa all through the night. Morales described how his mother made tortillas, how his grandmother prepared tamales at Christmastime, and I sat listening to his voice with my head against the cold glass of the window, staring at the darkened plain, slipping in and out of sleep.

  —

  Robles ordered us from the mat room into the spinning room and we each took our place atop a stationary bicycle. At the front of the room, Robles climbed atop a machine that had been situated to face us and shouted for us to begin pedaling. At no point should your legs stop moving, he yelled. When I say stand, lift your ass off the seat and keep it in the air until I tell you to sit. He snapped his head toward a stout man in the front row named Hanson. Is that clear, Mr. Hanson? Yes sir, Hanson shouted, already out of breath.

  As the minutes passed, Robles prodded us to work harder—sit, he shouted, move those legs, stand. Your body is a tool, he announced, the most important one you have. A baton is nothing, a Taser is nothing, even your gun is nothing if you give up on your body when it becomes tired, if you can’t hold it together when every muscle cries out for you to quit. In the Border Patrol, Robles continued, you will be tested—I can promise you that. In my time, I have taken a life and I have saved a life. When I was brand-new to the field, like all of you will be, my journeyman and I jumped a group of El Sals in the lettuce fields outside Yuma. A man ran from us and I chased after him until I thought my legs would give out. I stumbled and tripped over dirt berms and rows of lettuce, but I kept chasing him until we came to the edge of a canal and the man turned to face me. He came at me before I could react and we went to the ground fighting. If I had given up, maybe the man would have killed me. But I didn’t. I grappled with him in the dirt until I knocked him over the edge of the canal into the water. The man couldn’t swim, none of them can, and so an hour later me and my journeyman fished his dead body out of the water at a buoy line.

  Robles’s eyes seemed to detach from his surroundings, as if his gaze had turned inward. A year after that, he continued, I chased another man to the banks of the Colorado River. He ran out into the water and was swept away by the current like it was nothing. And I’ll tell you what I did. I swam into the river and I battled to keep him afloat even as I inhaled mouthfuls of water, even though I can’t remember ever having been more tired. I saved that man’s life, and still, there’s not a single day I don’t think about the one I took before it.

  As Robles fell silent, we stood sweating over our bikes, our legs pedaling weakly. In the front row, Hanson dropped his head, his ass falling to the seat. Robles snapped his gaze from the middle of the room and turned his head toward Hanson. Get back up there, he roared. Don’t give up on me, Mr. Hanson. Do not give up.

  As the sound of our labored breathing settled back over the room, I thought briefly of the man from El Salvador and wondered how the news of his death might have arrived to his family, floating in the air like a corpse in black water. At the front of the room I watched Robles standing tall atop his bicycle, sweat dripping from his brow as he thrust his shoulders downward with each stroke of his legs. I wondered at his unwavering exertion, if his body was still being driven to make good for the life he had seen blink out in the swift currents of the canal. I wondered if he thought of his body as a tool for destruction or as one of safekeeping. I wondered, too, about my body, about what sort of tool it was becoming.

  —

  Before we took to the range one afternoon, the firearms instructor gave the class a PowerPoint presentation in a darkened room. Agents arrested more than 700,000 aliens on the border last year, he told us. If you think that’s bad, when I first got to the field eight years ago, back in 2000, that number was over one and a half million. And I’m here to tell you that not everybody coming across that line is a good person looking for honest work.

  Our instructor beamed images of drug war victims onto a screen, grisly photos of people killed by the cartels in Mexico. In one image, three heads floated in a massive ice chest. In another, a woman’s body lay discarded in the desert, her feet bound, a severed hand stuffed into her mouth. The instructor paused on an image of a cattle truck with twelve dead bodies stacked in the back, all of them blindfolded and shot execution-style. These twelve weren’t gangsters, he told us, they were migrants kidnapped and killed for some meager and meaningless ransom. The next image showed a group of Mexican policemen shot dead in the street, and then an image of a bloodied body slumped in a car seat—a newly elected mayor who had promised to clean up the drug violence in his town, shot dead on his first day in office.

  This is what you’re up against, our instructor told us, this is what’s coming.

  —

  So far seven have quit, whittling our class down to forty-three. Sullivan left exactly one week after Santiago. I didn’t know him but his roommate said he complained a lot. Serra, one of only three women in the class, quit two days later and no one knew why. She kept to herself, everyone said. Golinski went next, taking indefinite medical leave for a hairline fracture around his left knee. When I saw him at the computer lab the night before he left, I asked him what he would do when he got back home. He looked at me as if he didn’t understand the question. I’ll wait for my knee to heal and come back to the academy, he told me. I’ve had two tours in Iraq—I know I can do this job.

  Hanson quit after receiving a job offer from his hometown police department in Illinois. It pays almost as well, he told us, and I won’t have to move my wife and kids. On Hanson’s last day at the academy, Robles lined us up at the start of PT and had us stand shirtless while he measured our body fat percentage. Hanson stood next to me in formation and I saw for the first time the loose skin that hung from his waist. When Robles came to take his measurements he glanced at the extra skin and then up at Hanson’s face. How much weight did you lose? Robles asked. A hundred eighty pounds in a year and a half, Hanson said, staring straight ahead. Robles nodded. Let’s hope you never put it back on.

  Dominguez, Hart’s roommate, was next to quit, dropping out after failing his third law test. For days I wondered if I could have done more to help him pass. One night Hart and I sat eating dinner together at a cafeteria table. Why didn’t you invite him to study with us? I asked. He was your roommate, you should have looked after him. Hart looked at me incredulously. Fuck you, he said, tossing his dinner roll onto his plate. Dominguez could have passed if he wanted to. He was too busy talking on the fucking phone all night. Listen, he said, Dominguez was smart enough to pass the U.S. citizenship test in high school and he was smart enough to earn a bachelor’s degree in construction management after that. You’re not the only one who went to college. Hell, he was even smart enough to run his own construction business before the housing market went to shit, did you know that? Hart picked the dinner roll off his plate and ripped off a bite. Instead of studying, he continued, Dominguez spent all his free time talking to his family, and it’s sure as hell not my fault or anyone else’s. I sat thinking for several moments. What did they talk about? I finally asked. Hart shrugged his shoulders. How should I know, he said, I don’t speak Spanish.

  —

  My mother flew in from Arizona to see me for Christmas. She picked me up from the academy on Christmas Eve and we drove through the straw-colored hills, leaving behind the trembling Chihuahuan grasslands as we climbed into evergreen mountains. We stayed the night in a two-room cabin, warm and bright with pinewood. We sat in chairs around the living room table, decorating a miniature tree with tiny glass bulbs. Then, wrapped in blankets, we laughed and drank eggnog with brandy until the conversation finally descended into a discussion of my imp
ending work.

  Listen, my mother said, I spent most of my career as a park ranger, so I’ve got nothing against you working for the government. But don’t you think it’s sort of below you, earning a degree just to become a border cop? When people ask about you back home and I tell them you’re in law enforcement, they give me the strangest looks. I realize I don’t know what more to tell them, I don’t really understand what you want from this work.

  I took a deep breath. Look, I told her, I spent four years in college studying international relations and learning about the border through policy and history. You can tell whoever asks that I’m tired of studying, I’m tired of reading about the border in books. I want to be on the ground, out in the field, I want to see the realities of the border day in and day out. I know it might be ugly, I know it might be dangerous, but I don’t see any better way to truly understand the place.

  My mother stared at me, blinking rapidly. Are you crazy? she asked. There are a hundred other ways of knowing a place. You grew up near the border, living with me in deserts and national parks. The border is in our blood, for Christ’s sake—your great-grandparents brought my father across from Mexico when he was just a little boy. When I married, I insisted on keeping my maiden name so that you’d always carry something from your grandfather’s family, so you’d never forget your heritage. How’s that for knowing the border?

  I lowered my voice. I’m grateful for those things, I told her, but having a name isn’t the same as understanding a place. I gestured toward the window. I want to be outside. Not in a classroom, not in an office, not sitting at a computer, not staring at papers. Do you remember, I asked my mother, how you joined the Park Service because you wanted to be outdoors, because you felt you could understand yourself in wild places? My mother narrowed her eyes at me as if I had suddenly changed the subject. It’s not that different, I said. I don’t know if the border is a place for me to understand myself, but I know there’s something here I can’t look away from. Maybe it’s the desert, maybe it’s the closeness of life and death, maybe it’s the tension between the two cultures we carry inside us. Whatever it is, I’ll never understand it unless I’m close to it.

  My mother shook her head. You make it sound like you’ll be communing with nature and having heartfelt conversations all day. The Border Patrol isn’t the Park Service. It’s a paramilitary police force. I glared at her. You don’t have to tell me that, I said—I’m the one getting my ass kicked at the academy.

  Listen, I know you don’t want your only son turning into a heartless cop. I know you’re afraid the job will turn me into someone brutal and callous. Those people who look at you funny when you tell them I’m in the Border Patrol probably imagine an agency full of white racists out to kill and deport Mexicans. But that’s not me, and those aren’t the kind of people I see at the academy. Nearly half my classmates are Hispanic—some of them grew up speaking Spanish, some grew up right on the border. Some went to college, like me. Some went to war, some owned businesses, some worked dead-end jobs, some are fresh out of high school. Some are fathers and mothers with their own children. These people aren’t joining the Border Patrol to oppress others. They’re joining because it represents an opportunity for service, stability, financial security—

  My mother interrupted me. But you could work anywhere you want, she said, you graduated with honors.

  So what? I asked. This isn’t necessarily a lifelong career choice. Think of it as another part of my education. Imagine what I’ll learn—imagine the perspective I’ll gain. Look, I know you’re not an enforcement-minded person, but the reality of the border is one of enforcement. I might not agree with every aspect of U.S. border policy, but there is power in understanding the realities it creates. Maybe after three or four years I’ll go back to school to study law, maybe I’ll work to shape new policies. If I become an immigration lawyer or a policy maker, imagine the unique knowledge I’ll bring, imagine how much better I’ll be at the job because of my time in the Border Patrol.

  My mother sighed and looked up at the ceiling. There are ways to learn these things that don’t put you at risk, she said, ways that let you help people instead of pitting you against them. But that’s just it, I offered—I can still help people. I speak both languages, I know both cultures. I’ve lived in Mexico and traveled all across the country. I’ve seen towns and villages that were emptied out by people going north for work. Good people will always be crossing the border, and whether I’m in the Border Patrol or not, agents will be out there arresting them. At least if I’m the one apprehending them, I can offer them some small comfort by speaking with them in their own language, by talking to them with knowledge of their home.

  Fine, my mother said, fine. But you must understand you are stepping into a system, an institution with little regard for people.

  I looked away from her and a silence hung between us. I glanced down at my hands and weighed my mother’s words. Maybe you’re right, I replied, but stepping into a system doesn’t mean that the system becomes you. As I spoke, doubts flickered through my mind. I smiled at my mother. The first job I ever had was bussing dishes with migrants from Guanajuato, I reminded her. I’m not going to lose sight of that. I’m not going to become someone else.

  Good, my mother said. I hope you’re right.

  We hugged, and my mother told me she loved me, that she was happy I’d soon be working back in Arizona, closer to her. Before bed, we each opened a single present, as we had done every Christmas Eve since I could remember.

  In the morning we ate brunch at the town’s historic hotel, feasting on pot roast by a crackling fire. Afterward we climbed the stairs to a narrow lookout tower where people huddled together in jackets, walking in slow circles to take in the view. Below us, a sunlit basin stretched westward from the base of the mountains. I watched as the landscape shifted under the winter light. Behind me, my mother placed her hand on my shoulder and pointed to a cloud of gypsum sand in the distance, impossibly small, swirling across the desert below.

  —

  At graduation we stood before friends and loved ones in our campaign hats and full-dress uniforms with iron-creased pant legs and shirtsleeves, our boots and brass buckles polished to shine under the fluorescent light of the academy’s auditorium. Our instructors made speeches about the value of our training, about the importance of our pending duties. We received awards, badges were pinned to our chests. We stood side by side and turned to face our audience, holding up our right hands as we stared steely-eyed at the room’s pale walls. I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

  —

  We caught our first dope load only two days after arriving at the station. We were east of the port of entry when a sensor hit, just three miles away. At the trailhead, Cole, our supervisor, pointed to a mess of footprints stamped in the dirt. He followed the prints up the trail and after several minutes motioned for us to pile out of the vehicles. We’ve got foot sign for eight, he told us, keep quiet and follow me.

  For five miles we walked toward the mountains with Cole leading the way. He called us up one by one to watch us cut the sign. Keep your vision soft, he told us, scan the ground about five or six yards out. Try to cut with the sun in front of you, never at your back, so that the sign catches the light. If a trail gets hard to cut, look for small disturbances—toe digs, heel prints, kicked-over rocks, the shine of pressed-in dirt, fibers snagged on spines and branches. If you lose the sign, go back to where you last had it. Learn to read the dirt, he said, it’s your bread and butter.

  We found the first bundle discarded among the boulders at the base of the pass. Th
ey must have seen us coming, Cole said. He directed us to spread out to comb the hillsides, and after ten minutes we had recovered two backpacks filled with food and clothes and four additional bundles wrapped in sugar sacks spray-painted black. Those ought to be about fifty pounds each, Cole told us. He kicked one of the bundles with his foot. Two hundred fifty pounds of dope—not bad for your second day in the field. I asked Cole if we should follow the foot sign up into the pass, if we should try to track down the backpackers. Hell no, he said, you don’t want to bring in any bodies with your dope if you can help it. Suspects mean you have a smuggling case on your hands, and that’s a hell of a lot of paperwork—we’d have to stay and work a double shift just to write it up. Besides, he said, the prosecutors won’t take it anyway. Courts here are flooded with cases like this. He smiled. Abandoned loads are easy though. You’ll see.

  Cole had us dump the backpacks and I watched as several of my classmates ripped and tore at the clothing, scattering it among the tangled branches of mesquite and palo verde. In one of the backpacks I found a laminated prayer card depicting Saint Jude, a tongue of flames hovering above his head. Morales found a pack of cigarettes and sat smoking on a rock as others laughed loudly and stepped on a heap of food. Nearby, Hart giggled and shouted to us as he pissed on a pile of ransacked belongings.

  As we hiked with the bundles back to our vehicles, the February sun grew low in the sky and cast a warm light over the desert. At the edge of the trail, in the pink shade of a palo verde, a desert tortoise raised itself on its front legs to watch us pass.

  —

  At night we stood for hours in the darkness along the pole line. After we had tired of the cold and the buzzing power lines, Cole had us lay a spike strip across the dirt road and return to wait in our vehicles, parked in a nearby wash. We sat with the engines on and the heat blasting, and after a few minutes of silence, Morales asked Cole why some of the agents at the station called him “Black Death.” Cole laughed and pulled a can of Copenhagen from his shirt pocket. You have to be careful, he said, the Indians out here, when they’re drunk and walking at night between the villages, they fall asleep on the fucking road. He packed the can as he spoke, swinging his right arm and thumping his forefinger across the lid. When it’s cold out, the asphalt holds warmth from the sun, even at night. A few years ago I was working the midnight shift, driving down IR-9, and I saw this fucking Indian asleep in the middle of the road. I stopped the truck and woke his ass up. His brother was there with him, sleeping in the bushes. They were drunk as hell. Cole pinched a wad of dip into his mouth. His lower lip bulged, catching the green light from the control panel. I gave the guys a ride into the next village, he said, dropped them off at their cousin’s place. Told them not to sleep on the goddamn road. He grabbed an empty Pepsi cup from the center console and spat. Maybe nine or ten months later, same fucking spot, I ran over the guy, killed him right there. Same fucking guy, asleep on the damn road. I never even saw him. After that, they started calling me Black Death. Cole laughed and spat into his cup and a few of us laughed with him, not knowing exactly what kind of laugh it was.