Illegal

by Francisco X. Stork

  “Yes.”

  “Remember when you asked me why I was helping you?”

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t answer you then. But the answer is because I don’t know if I have ever met anyone who believes in doing good regardless of the personal cost as much as you do. That’s who you are. I know it is easy to forget who you are in a place like this. But I’ll be here to remind you. Don’t lose your faith in this country. We want people like you here.”

  “Yes. Yes. I will keep the faith.”

  I heard a clanking. It was the doors of the trailer opening. How many seconds did I have before I was found? How many hours or days before I was sent to Mexico? How long after that before I was found by Hinojosa’s men? How long did I have left to live? The seconds after the doors opened were happening so very slow. They were crawling up the Sierra Madre mountains, it seemed. I tried to swallow but there was no saliva. Then there was Gustaf’s voice.

  “You’re one of Antonio Lopez’s boys, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. Raúl Lopez.”

  “I thought I recognized you from your high school days. You played football with my son. Jimmy Larsson.”

  “Sure, Jimmy L.”

  “You were the best defensive end the Eagles ever had.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Careful. Don’t stand right in back of him. He’s ornery. I better take him out if you want to go in and look.”

  “No, that’s all right. You go on ahead. Have a good day, Mr. Larsson. Sorry for the stop. We have orders to stop everyone today.”

  Then there was movement again. Was that it? I imagined the Border Patrol officer remembering Jimmy Larsson, waving Gustaf on. I made it! I escaped detection. I laughed to myself. Three weeks before, you could not have dragged me into the United States and now here I was, rejoicing to have made it in. We traveled on for another twenty minutes and then another stop. I heard the back ramp open and Gustaf’s voice: “You can come out.”

  I rose out of the hay and placed my hand on the horse’s forehead.

  “Gracias.”

  I lingered a moment in that touch and then moved away.

  Gustaf was standing outside, putting a plug of chewing tobacco in his mouth and staring at the road we had just come from. “That was close,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for you …”

  “Naah.” Gustaf waved me off. “I remembered that boy. Jimmy brought him to the ranch once. He was afraid of horses. He was just looking for a reason not to go in that trailer.”

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my arm. “Where’s my father?”

  “He’s coming. The Border Patrol pulled him to the side to search the van. I saw it in the rearview mirror.” We exchanged knowing glances. Gustaf didn’t want to say I told you so, but I knew what he was thinking.

  I was glad I had resisted my father’s plan. I coughed and dug a strand of hay from under my collar. I looked around. Nothing but nothingness. A tumbleweed rolled across the road. This was it, then. Now it hit me that I would be living with my father for … who knows how long. I wondered if he and his new wife had plans about what I would do in Chicago.

  “Things aren’t always as bad as they look,” Gustaf said, still watching the road. “Work with whatever life throws at you, good or bad.”

  I saw the van, a white dot in the distance. “That’s your advice?”

  “It’s worked for me, more or less.” Then he took two twenty-dollar bills out of his pocket. “Take this. I owe you much more for all your help around the ranch. This is just so you’ll have a little money in case of an emergency.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the money. I knew Gustaf well enough by then not to argue with him. And I needed money to buy a burner phone as soon as possible.

  When my father’s van pulled off the pavement onto the gravel side road, I said, “You should name the horse. He should have a name.”

  “Name him. Go ahead.”

  “Amigo.” It was the first and only word that came to mind.

  “Amigo it is.”

  My father got out of the van slowly. His shoulders were hunched. He had considerably less energy and bouncy optimism than when I first saw him earlier that morning. “I can’t believe they stopped me and searched the van. First place they searched was the tool compartment where Emiliano was going to hide. I guess you were right.” He looked at Gustaf. “I do look like someone who would sneak in a Mexican.”

  “Don’t take it personally,” Gustaf said.

  “Hard not to,” my father responded.

  Gustaf winked at me. Apparently, he decided not to tell my father that they were stopping everyone that day. And I was all right with that.

  “Ready?” my father asked.

  I nodded. I turned to Gustaf, shook his hand, and looked into his eyes for the briefest of moments. Then I went to the passenger side of the truck to get my backpack.

  “I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done for us,” I heard my father say to Gustaf. “I’d like to pay you.”

  How could my father say something like that? Gustaf saved my life. He took care of me and made me feel like a member of his family. He showed me a way to live I had never known before, and just a few moments ago, he smuggled me into the United States at great risk to himself. How could you ever offer someone money for that?

  “No,” I heard Gustaf say after a long silence.

  “Here. Take my business card at least. If you ever need an air conditioner or anything.”

  I came back with my backpack and saw Gustaf take the card without looking at it. Then he was opening the truck and getting in. He was moving uncharacteristically fast, like he was trying to keep me from rushing at him and asking him to take me back to the ranch with him—which is exactly what I wanted to do. And what I knew he’d welcome.

  My father and I watched the truck and trailer move away in the same direction we were going. Gustaf was going to drive up to the next state road and then turn back to Sanderson a different way.

  A knot inside me began to come loose.

  We drove in silence. I was thinking about the close call I’d just had and how unexpectedly afraid I had felt when I thought I’d be found. Was it always going to be like that? That fear of being found out only a heartbeat away?

  I looked out the window. What was the difference between the desert landscape I was seeing out the window and the landscape I saw on the drive to the border with Sara and Brother Patricio? The land was similar, but it felt different. It was like I was watching a movie instead of driving through the land. The windows of the van were closed, and the air conditioner blasted cold air into my face. In Brother Patricio’s beat-up Toyota, the hot air from the open windows was more real. There were smells back then: roadkill, burning brush, the magical odor of eucalyptus appearing out of nowhere. The only smell inside the van was my father’s cologne, a mixture of alcohol and something flowery that was making me nauseous. How is it that a person cannot smell himself? The height of the van, the cold air, the smell, these were not the only differences. Outside, the land was all fenced. There was no inch of territory that was not closed in by some kind of wire. Thin, green aluminum poles held the strands of wire, barbed and not barbed, in place. Somewhere back in that desolation, there must be a ranch with a few cows that are let out to graze; otherwise why the need for a fence? A few places had fences that were ten feet high and I couldn’t understand why until I saw the sheep and then I knew that the fence was not so much to keep the sheep in but to prevent someone from stopping by the road and putting one of the animals in their truck.

  My father seemed preoccupied, upset about something. Now and then he would shake his head and whisper a word that sounded like “ship.” I smiled when I finally understood that he was swearing softly about being searched by the Border Patrol. Was he upset that his plan nearly got me sent back to Mexico or that he got treated differently than Gustaf? I wondered how my father saw himself. Did he see himself as fully American? Sara t
old me once that he had obtained a permanent resident visa through his new wife and had applied for citizenship. Was that enough to make you feel offended when the Border Patrol stopped you?

  “Your English is pretty good,” my father said. “The five words I heard you say.” There was a slight, sarcastic grin on his face.

  “You don’t talk much either.”

  “I apologize.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. “Those phone calls I got when I got to the ranch were from Abe.”

  “Abe?”

  “The owner of the company. My boss. You know Able Abe? On the side of the van.” A pause, then, “He’s also my father-in-law.”

  It took me a few seconds to realize what father-in-law meant.

  “Your suegro?”

  “Yup. Mi suegro. Abe Gropper is Nancy’s father. Nancy, that’s my wife. Nancy Gropper. Gropper is spelled with two p’s.”

  “Gropper,” I muttered. Nancy Gropper was his wife. Good for him. At least he didn’t say she was my stepmother.

  “It’s also my name now,” my father said, interrupting my thoughts. The van swerved briefly onto the opposite lane as my father dug in his back pocket and pulled out a thick wallet. He held the wallet with the hand holding the steering wheel while he pulled out a business card. He passed me the card and I read.

  Able Abe

  Commercial and Residential Heating and Cooling

  Robert “Bob” Gropper

  Director of Sales and Marketing

  There was a telephone number and an e-mail address below that.

  “Bob Gropper? This is you?”

  “The same.”

  I could not restrain a chuckle.

  “I changed my name after I met Nancy. I didn’t have a permanent visa then. It just made things easier for everyone.”

  “Okay.” I handed the card back to my father. Bob Gropper. I tried out the name silently. It was hard to believe. Why would anyone in their right mind exchange Roberto Zapata for Bob Gropper?

  “Keep it,” my father said. “It has my cell phone number.”

  I dropped the card into my backpack. My father reached up to adjust the rearview mirror and I noticed his disfigured pinky finger. I was ten years old when I saw a cement block fall on my father’s hand. It was a Saturday and my father had taken me to the construction site where he worked. After the block smashed his finger, my father had a coworker pull the finger as close to its former shape as possible and then went back to work. That crooked finger now belonged to someone named Bob Gropper.

  “A penny for your thoughts.”

  “What’s the name of your son?”

  “Which one? One of them is named Emiliano.” I remembered my father’s old charm. Only it wasn’t working on me right then.

  “The other one.”

  “Trevor,” my father said. “He’s been asking a lot of questions about you. You’re going to like him. He’s super smart.”

  There was something odd about my father’s words, but I had no time to find out what because I was suddenly filled with an emptiness as barren and desolate as the view outside my window.

  “I told Abe I’d be there tomorrow at noon. Nancy’s been filling in at the office while I’m away, but she’s got her own job at the firm. She does all the books. And, of course, there is Trevor.” My father began to tap the screen of his phone. He was glancing at a GPS map, making mental calculations. “Springfield, Missouri, is about twelve hours. We can get there around eleven tonight. Get up at four a.m. We could be in Aurora by noon tomorrow.”

  “I can drive,” I suggested, not eagerly.

  “Yeah? When did you learn?”

  “Brother Patricio showed me.” I hadn’t meant it to come out the way it did, as in since you weren’t around.

  “Maybe.” Then he added, “But if you have an accident, Abe will kill me. Our insurance only covers employees of the company.”

  My father took out a phone charger from the console between the seats. He tried to connect the charger to the phone and the van swerved again. I took the charger and the phone and finished the task. I wasn’t quite ready to give up on my miserable life.

  “We should talk about what you’re going to do,” he said, fiddling with the radio.

  “In Chicago?” Of course, in Chicago, where else?

  “Actually, like I said, we’re going to Aurora. Our house and the company are located there. It’s next to Chicago, a suburb, but a separate city. Aurorians don’t like to be lumped in together with Chicago.” He spoke like a proud Aurorian.

  “Aurora. Sounds Mexican.”

  “The first immigrants in Aurora were Irish, but there’s lots of Mexicans living there now, all right. About a third of the people who live there are Hispanic. Mostly of Mexican descent but more and more from Central America. Guatemala, El Salvador. Honduras.” My father didn’t sound all that happy about these last migrations. “Part of my job at the company is getting the Latino business.”

  “Fixing air conditioners.”

  My father coughed into his hand. “When I started with the company five years ago, I fixed air conditioners and furnaces. Now I’m an officer in the company. The equivalent of a vice president, only we don’t have titles like that.”

  “Vice president,” I repeated, impressed. Not bad for a man who had been building brick houses back in Juárez. There was no doubt that I got my love for work and hustle, my wheeling and dealing, from him.

  “We have a fleet of eighteen vans. Sixty-two employees. Abe wants to retire next year, so he’s giving me more and more responsibility. I pretty much run the place now. When he retires …” He stopped himself. The van slowed down abruptly. Ahead of us, in the middle of the road, stood a jackrabbit with ears as big as a mule’s. My father honked, and the rabbit scampered out of the van’s path in the nick of time.

  “Jesus,” my father said. “That’s one big rabbit.”

  Brother Patricio called those rabbits black-tails and said they were the golden eagle’s favorite snack. The eagle glides five thousand feet and then silently swoops down on the unsuspecting jackrabbit. The image made me grab my backpack with Hinojosa’s cell phone and put it on my lap.

  My father was speaking again. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure we can get you into school this year. Nancy made some calls while I’ve been here. It’s going to take us a while to get the necessary paperwork. Vaccinations, transcripts from Colegio México. You don’t have to be … documented … with a visa … to go to school in Aurora, but … maybe it would be better to wait until next fall.”

  It came to me that I had not given any thought to what I would do all day in Chicago. How would I spend the hours, minutes, and seconds of each day? The only thing I knew was that I would call Yoya as soon as I got there and get the phone to people who could help us. But then?

  My father continued. “I wanted you to work at Able Abe’s. Go out with the guys on their daily rounds, learn how to install cooling systems. It’s just that the laws against employers hiring undocumented workers are … they’re cracking down. ICE is coming down hard on businesses. With raids and everything.”

  “I don’t have to work in your company,” I said, trying not to sound hurt. “I can work in other places. I will find work.”

  “Nancy and I thought that you might want to take care of Trevor in the afternoons, after he comes home from … kindergarten.”

  My first instinct was to say no. Actually, I wanted to shout no. Babysitting was not in the cards. Then it hit me. “How old is Trevor?”

  My father hesitated. Then spoke softly, the way one speaks when the question you’ve been dreading is finally asked.

  “Six.”

  He kept on speaking, but I had stopped listening. I was doing the math in my head. My father left for the United States five years before. Trevor was six. “Trevor is not your son?”

  My father slowed the van to sixty. “My adopted son. Nancy was married for a brief time and then divorced. She got divorced before Trevo
r was born.”

  I crossed my arms, tucked my hands in my armpits to keep them from shaking. Why should it make a difference that my father chose to adopt a son rather than come back to the one he already had? Why all the old anger rising up again?

  “You all right? You look kind of pale. Want me to stop?”

  “Did Mami know? Sara?”

  “Know what?”

  “That you married a woman who had a son?”

  “Not at first. I told your mother later, after I married Nancy. I told you about Trevor … in my letters.”

  The letters that I threw unopened into a shoebox in my closet.

  When my father spoke again, the tone of his voice was serious. “When I first came to the States, I used to stand outside a lumberyard, waiting for carpentry jobs, or any kind of jobs. Abe Gropper came by and said he needed someone to put a new roof on his daughter’s house. That’s how I met Nancy. Trevor was eight months. We … fell in love.”

  “I don’t need to hear this.”

  But my father was determined to finish the story. He spoke faster now. “We moved in together. Abe wasn’t happy. He hated me. Blamed himself for hiring me to fix the roof. But then, finally, when the divorce with your mother came through and I married Nancy and adopted Trevor, after I changed my name and everything, he gave me a job at Able Abe’s. I got my plumber’s license in three months, went to community college to learn English. He saw how hard I worked, how much I cared for Nancy and Trevor. Then …”

  “What’s it like, the detention center where Sara is being held?” I interrupted. I could not take any more of my father’s newfound happiness.

  “Detention center is just a fancy name for prison,” my father said, a twinge of anger in his voice. “I only saw the place once. Imagine a one-story brick school with a gym in the back, a big playground and a soccer field all enclosed by a tall fence with spotlights and cameras all around. The place is in the middle of nothing but cactus and tumbleweeds.” My father pointed to the barren landscape outside the window. “There was no need for her to turn herself in. She could have filed her asylum application from Aurora.” My father opened a small compartment between the seats, took out a pair of aviator sunglasses and put them on. “The lawyer should have never let her turn herself in.”