Down a Street That Wasn't There, page 2
Running, running through the night, El Rojo in the lead, and Inés fixed her gaze on his back, as if he were prey she would wear down and finally catch.
By the time they slowed to a walk, many of the migrants were gasping. Everyone reached for water; the less cautious gulped theirs, thinking only of immediate thirst, and not the miles of desert that still lay ahead. Inés sipped cautiously, trying to estimate how far they’d come. Two miles from the border? To the left, the ground rose in a thin, jagged line. The Sierra Pinta, if she was reading their location right. El Rojo would take them through the San Cristobel wash and south of Ajo Peak, to the Tohono O’odham reservation. The people there had rescued more than a few migrants from death in the desert. Not all of those they rescued were reported to the Border Patrol, either; the Tohono O’odham knew what it was like be split apart by a fence. Some of their kin lived on the other side.
They got a short break at sunrise, among a scattering of saguaro that would hide them from distant eyes. Inés took a hat from her bag, then slipped her hand back in, hunting by touch, until she found the rubber-banded tin tucked inside her one clean shirt. She waited until the coyotes were looking elsewhere, then shifted the tin into her pocket, where she could reach it more quickly.
A scuff of foot against stone made her jump. The older man held up calming hands, then crouched at her side and murmured, “Miguel.”
“Inés,” she murmured back, keeping a wary eye on the coyotes.
“You seem well prepared.”
The practiced lie rose easily to her lips. “My brother crossed a few years ago. Gave me some advice.”
He smiled. “Brothers are like that.”
Eduardo had given her advice, when she showed up on his doorstep in Cuauhtémoc. Much of it had involved swearing. Not that he doubted what Inés had to say; Mother had once sent him out into the desert, too, as she had later done with Inés. But he thought she should let it go. Or let someone else take care of it—as if that had done any good yet.
And she owed Javier too much to let it go.
“If an old man can give you advice, too,” Miguel said, even quieter than before, “watch out for that one.” He made a tiny gesture toward El Rojo. “He’s got his eye on you. But not in the usual way.”
Inés’ fingers tightened on her backpack. “What do you mean?”
Miguel shook his head. “I don’t know. The big one, he wants what you’d expect, but the leader…he’s watching you for something.”
For what, Inés wanted to ask—but El Rojo rose smoothly to his feet, and they had to follow. It wasn’t a question Miguel could likely answer, anyway.
With the sun now up, the desert rapidly heated from pleasantly cool to sweltering. Inés and Miguel both took turns carrying the small children, to give their mothers a rest. Why were they crossing now, in the brutal conditions of summer? Couldn’t they wait for milder weather? She bit back the desire to yell at the mothers for stupidity. She didn’t know their reasons. And it would upset the kids, who out of all those here were completely blameless. Not that innocence would save them, if immigration agents caught their families; they would be deported back to Mexico, with or without their parents.
Inés gritted her teeth and kept walking.
When the noon halt came, people sank down wherever they stood, trembling and drenched with sweat. El Rojo wandered among them, cursing and kicking, until everyone was as hidden as they could get. Even in this desolation, they couldn’t assume they would remain unnoticed; the so-called Minutemen rode through here on their self-appointed patrols, and some of them were far too ready to shoot.
Miguel joined Inés in her clump of creosote. The bushes didn’t offer much in the way of shelter, not with the sun directly overhead, but it was all they had. The older man offered her beef jerky; Inés gave him chips in exchange, wishing she had brought more. They made her thirsty, but it was necessary to replace the salt lost through sweat, and she could tell that few of the migrants had known to bring their own. She hoped they found a cache of water left by one of the humanitarian groups; some people hadn’t brought enough.
Murmurs rose here and there as people made brief conversation, then gave it up out of exhaustion. One curt order, though, made Inés stiffen: El Rojo, speaking to the mother whose daughter had fussed the most. “Come with me.”
Miguel’s hand clamped down on Inés’ arm before she could move. “Don’t.”
“I can’t let him—” Inés growled, trying to rise. El Rojo was leading the young woman to the far side of a cluster of ocotillo.
“Yes, you can,” Miguel hissed. “Look.” He jerked his chin; Inés, following, saw Pipo watching her. He wants what you’d expect, Miguel had said—what El Rojo was about to take from that woman. Something else to offer, the coyote in the cantina had said. For all she knew, this was part of the woman’s bargain with El Rojo. Which didn’t make it right, didn’t make it okay—
You aren’t here to rescue them, Inés. Not like that. Don’t forget your purpose.
She sagged back down, defeated, and tried to sleep. It wasn’t the heat and relentless sun that kept her awake, though, but the muffled sounds from nearby.
They rested through the hottest part of the day, then rose to walk some more. Now it was clear that, however hard the night and morning had been, that was only the beginning of their trials; stiff muscles protested, and weariness made everyone clumsy. One of the young men stumbled on his way down a slope, nearly falling, putting Inés’ heart in her mouth; if he twisted an ankle, he was dead. Nobody would carry him, not all the way to the reservation. He regained his balance, unharmed, and they went on.
Until the sun set and the desert air cooled, and Inés, stupid with exhaustion, began to wonder if all this risk and effort was going to come to nothing whatsoever, except an embarrassed trek back to Phoenix, and a passport in her mailbox with no stamp marking her return to the United States. It isn’t nothing, she thought, you know about El Rojo now, and can tell—
“Hide,” the coyote snarled.
The migrants didn’t move fast enough. They’d been stumbling along, one foot in front of the other, like zombies, and now they stared at him; Pipo and the others began shoving people to the ground as distant headlights sliced through the thickening dusk.
Inés remained standing, staring, until Pipo knocked her down, almost into the spines of an ocotillo. Two lights, moving independently: all-terrain motorcycles, not a Jeep. Border Patrol, not vigilantes, and following their trail from the fence.
A low, quiet laugh from El Rojo raised all the hairs along her arms and neck. “Come on, boys.”
Making only a little more noise than the desert wind, he and his three fellows loped off toward the approaching motorcycles.
Inés shoved a hand into her pocket, pulling out the rubber-banded tin. When she rose to a crouch, Miguel whispered, “What are you doing?” He wasn’t close enough to grab her.
Keeping those agents alive. “Stay here,” she hissed back, and ran before he could protest.
She kept low, taking advantage of the scant cover. Already she’d lost sight of El Rojo and the others, but that wouldn’t matter for long. She just needed to get far enough away from the migrants…
Good enough. Inés dropped to one knee, stripped out of her clothes, and pulled the rubber band off the tin.
The pungent smell of the teopatli inside rose into the dry air. Its scent brought memories swarming around her like ghosts: her first visit to Cuauhtémoc, at the age of fifteen, re-united after seven years with the family she had lost. Her mother sending her out into the desert, with teopatli for her skin and pulque to drink and a maguey thorn to pierce her tongue, as her ancestors had done for generations before.
Careful despite her haste, Inés dipped her fingers in the paste, and began to dab it onto her body. Legs, back, arm, face, rings and clusters of spots, and even before she was done she could feel the ololiuqui seeds ground into the paste taking effect. Her vision swam, going both blurry and sharp, and smells assaulted her nose. Then everything came together with a bone-wrenching snap, and leaving tin and clothes behind, Inés ran once more.
The coyotes weren’t hard to follow now. They feared no predators, out here in the desert; Border Patrol, vigilantes, ranchers, all were just different kinds of prey. The coyotes ran together for a time, then fanned out, and Inés went after the nearest, knowing she would have to be fast.
He was on his way up a steep rise, aiming for a cliff from which he could leap. Inés caught him halfway, slamming his wiry body to the ground, her jaws seeking and then finding his skull, teeth punching through into his brain. The coyote died without a sound, as in the distance, the barking calls of his brothers pierced the night air.
The motorcycles growled lower at the sound, but they were still approaching much too fast. Inés ran again, the teopatli giving her strength she’d lacked before. She was made for the stalking ambush, not the chase, but the lives of those two agents depended on her speed. The second coyote died with his throat crushed. The noise dropped sharply; one of the engines had stopped. She caught the third coyote on his way toward the motorcycles, and this one saw her coming; he twisted away from her leap, yipping in surprise, before going down beneath her much greater weight.
Even as the hot blood burst into her mouth, she heard a scream from the direction of the engines—a human scream.
Cold blue light flooded the narrow valley where the migrants had walked. One of the motorcycles had fallen on its side; the rider lay moaning and bleeding. His partner had a shotgun out, and was pointing it in every direction, unsure where the next attack would come from. If Inés wasn’t careful, he would shoot her instead.
Now it was time for the stalk. She circled the area slowly, paws touching down with silent care, nose alive to every scent on the wind. She thought the third coyote had been Pipo—couldn’t be sure—but the last was El Rojo. He was the smart one, the subtle one, the sorcerer who had given them all coyote shape, the better to hunt the humans who came to hunt them.
He knew she was out here. Inés realized that when she found his trail looping upon itself, confusing his scent. He’d heard Pipo die, of course—but maybe he’d known since before then. He’s watching you for something, Miguel had said. Maybe El Rojo recognized a fellow sorcerer when he saw one.
On an ordinary night, she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to approach the overhang. But the strength the teopatli gave her was no substitute for sleep; Inés’ human mind was sluggish, ceding too much control to the beast.
A weight crashed into her back. Pain bloomed hot along her nerves as the coyote’s jaws closed on her neck. Acting on instinct, Inés collapsed and rolled, dislodging El Rojo. When she regained her feet, she saw at last the creature she had come all this way to hunt.
His coat was different than the others’, more uniform in color along the head and back. In sunlight, it would be reddish brown. El Rojo, the red one, whose jaws now dripped red with her blood. Who had murdered Javier, and Consuela, and David, ranchers and vigilantes, and probably some migrants, too. Coyote attacks, the official reports said; they were suddenly more common than before. But agents of the Border Patrol died more often in the line of duty than any other federal law enforcement division, and the people in charge were more concerned with human killers than animal attacks.
Only Inés suspected more. She could hardly tell anyone it was nagualismo, though, even if she admitted to being a nagual herself. And so she had gone south, into Mexico, returning as an illegal immigrant, to hunt the coyote who ran on both two legs and four.
They snapped and feinted at one another, El Rojo using his greater speed and agility. But that was a dangerous game for him to play, especially on his own; when coyotes hunted larger prey, they did so in packs, and his was dead. That was why he had ambushed her—and as if he remembered that at the same moment, El Rojo turned and ran.
Inés followed. It might be enough to have killed the others, or it might not. If he could share his nagualismo with anyone, it wouldn’t take him long to be back in business. But it wasn’t pragmatism that drove her; it was the memory of Javier’s funeral, and his sister’s grief. And her own devastated face, staring back at her from the mirror.
The beast wanted his blood.
And the beast was stupid, forgetting she wasn’t the only predator out here tonight. The shotgun blast clipped her right hip, a few of the pellets raking bloody tracks into her fur. El Rojo had lured her back toward the motorcycles, and the agent with the gun. That man didn’t know she was a friend. Inés roared, and leaped out of range.
Bleeding, trembling with exhaustion even the teopatli couldn’t erase, she prayed, as she’d once prayed to the spirit of the day on which she was born. Alone in the desert, hallucinating and exhausted, bleeding from the tongue in the old manner, she’d begged the spirit to come—and the jaguar had answered.
El Rojo was creeping up behind her, not quite silent enough. Inés waited, paws braced against the rocky dirt. Closer. And closer.
When he leapt, she twisted to meet him, with all the speed and power of the jaguar.
One massive paw slammed him to the side. El Rojo yelped, but it cut off as her jaws found his neck. With a single bite, she severed his spinal cord, and his body went limp in the dust.
Panting, she stood over the body of her prey. Not far away, she heard the second engine start up again, and the crunching rush of the motorcycles driving away. The wounded agent was well enough to ride, then, and they’d given up the chase.
For now.
Inés licked her spotted fur clean as best she could. Then, wearily, strength fading again, she padded back along her own trail to her clothes and the tin of teopatli. Changing back to human form brought all her previous exhaustion and then some crashing down; she could barely persuade herself to get dressed. The only thing that moved her was the knowledge that sixteen frightened migrants waited in the darkness, knowing only what they heard: motorcycles and guns, coyotes and the roar of a jaguar. She hoped they hadn’t run.
They hadn’t. In desert territory none of them knew at all, it would have been suicide. Miguel stood up as Inés approached, and a few others followed suit, including the mother Inés had failed to protect from El Rojo.
The silence stretched out. She hadn’t thought this far ahead, to what she would tell the migrants. Lack of energy made her blunt. “They’re dead. The coyotes.”
One of the other women whimpered. Inés stood, only half-listening, as a babble of questions and fear broke out. She didn’t come out of her daze until Miguel drew close and said, “Do you know where we were going?”
The Tohono O’odham reservation, probably, where El Rojo would have had some means for them to continue onward. Inés didn’t know what that would have been. But she knew some of the Indians protected migrants, and sent them along to others who could help.
Miguel saw it in her eyes. “You’ll have to lead us, then.”
Inés opened her mouth to answer him, then stopped. She had climbed the fence with these people; she had paid a coyote and gone into the desert, just like the rest of them, and that made them kin. Here in the middle of the wilderness, she could not say to Miguel, I’m an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol. I don’t do coyotaje. I arrest those who do.
She would take them to the reservation, of course; it was that, or abandon them here to die. But when they arrived, she would have to hand them over, to be deported back to Mexico.
Her gaze fell on the young mother, with her infant daughter. Eduardo had been the same age when their mother carried him across the border. He was eleven when they deported him, with no memory of the “home” they were sending him back to; Mamá, caught in the same raid, had gone with him. Inés, born in the United States, had stayed, and lost her family for years.
She’d joined the patrol to fight drug smuggling, to end violence, not to hunt people who only wanted work and a better life. Sneaking across the desert, risking death every step of the way, was no kind of answer—but they had no other. And Inés could not tell these frightened, hopeful men and women and children that the dream was not for them.
“We’ll rest for an hour,” she said. “Then I’ll take you someplace safe.”
Selection
The application form is seventy-two pages long, and they require nine copies. These people want to know everything. They also want to make sure you aren’t doing this as a joke.
The first few pages are fairly routine. Name, date of birth, Social Security number or local equivalent—yes, you have to give them that. They promise not to use it to invade your privacy, and you trust them, because really, if they wanted to get into your bank account they could, and why would they steal your identity? Then education, medical history, criminal record if any—it won’t necessarily disqualify you—not just for yourself, but for your family, too, and your close friends. (You list more distant family and friends on page seven; they’ll check into those people themselves, if they decide your application is worth considering.)
Then it gets more complicated. The section people complain about the most is pages thirty-two through forty-eight: seventeen pages of moral conundrums that would have a Jesuit sweating bullets. You type up your answers to those on separate sheets. The funny thing is, it doesn’t seem like they’re looking for the right answer. They just want to know how you would answer. So it’s best to answer honestly.
That’s what people think, anyway. Nobody’s really sure. Everybody tries to game the system, but very few succeed.
~
Maybe one in a hundred gets an interview. There are websites where people who didn’t get in collate information on the interviewers; after all, you can apply again, though after a while they probably just toss your form in the trash without reading it. Who knows how good the information is, though. After all, these are the failures. The people who get in don’t post about it. If you’ve just achieved membership in the most elite and exclusive group in the world, why would you help anyone else do the same?
