The Crossroads

by Alexandra Diaz

  Vida greeted him with a thousand kisses before squatting in the bushes near the trailer. They shared a turkey and cheese sandwich with ketchup before setting off, Jaime with his sketchbook under his arm, to check on the livestock. The two floppy-eared dairy goats greeted him with loud cries and he told them Doña Cici would be out to milk them soon. For once, Quinto must have done his job before he left for the day because the horses in the paddock and the cows and calves in the corral all had hay and water; the rest of the cattle out in the vast parts of the ranch were used to taking care of themselves.

  From the corral, a trail led into the foothills. Jaime wondered if he could find the mamá coyote again and another part of him hoped he wouldn’t. With Vida along, he didn’t want to find out what would happen if the two canines got too close to each other.

  He came to a dry arroyo carved out by groundwater and skid down the sandy banks. A few meters away a jackrabbit stared at him with its peripheral vision. Next to Jaime, Vida froze. The brown and white hairs on her back rose as they stared each other down. Sketchbook in hand, Jaime drew the outline of the jackrabbit’s large tan ears that looked more like feathers with their prominent veins and black edges.

  Unclear who twitched first, the jackrabbit and Vida took off up the sides of the arroyo. The hare ran for a few strides and then leaped into the air like a horse jumping over a fence. No way the dog could catch it. Not that he would tell Vida that.

  He sat on a rock and continued the sketch as he remembered—the bulging eyes, the long, lean body, the black and gray tail tucked under the bottom that didn’t quite touch the ground because the folded-up legs were too long.

  He sharpened his pencil extra sharp and used the slightest touch to add fur and texture. There, perfect. Vida returned with her tongue dragging almost to the sandy dirt and a look of pure contentment of a flat-out run, even though the jackrabbit had gotten away. The sun in the west said that it would be dark in an hour and his stomach in the present said Tomás should be home by now making something he’d call dinner.

  Jaime kept his eyes on the trail as he headed back. Snakes hibernated, right? And scorpions? Were they awake for the spring yet? But mountain lions didn’t hibernate, did they? And were they nocturnal? He hugged his book to his chest, made sure Vida stayed at his heels, and quickened his pace home. One thing he’d noticed about Nuevo México—as soon as the sun started to go down, it got cold. And fast.

  Tomás’s truck was still missing when he got back to the trailer, but headlights were coming down the hill. Jaime waited for his brother with Vida at his side. The headlights seemed closer together and lower to the ground than Jaime remembered. The dog ran to greet the dusted-up white car that definitely didn’t belong to Tomás. The driver’s door opened to reveal Ángela. Ángela? Driving? A mixture of nervousness and jealousy bubbled inside. Back home, only Papá and Tío Daniel knew how to drive. But then again, neither owned a car for anyone to drive.

  And here was Ángela driving like she owned the road. Now that he thought about it, she had swerved continuously down the ranch track like a drunk driver. What kind of friends would let her potentially kill herself by letting her drive?

  She reached for something in the seat behind her but someone held her arm as if begging her not to leave. She laughed as the person holding her kissed her hand. The car’s interior light illuminated a mop of bleached blond hair. Tristan. If Abuela were here, Ángela would have never acted like that, and Tristan would never have dared.

  “Ángela, vamos,” Jaime said.

  His cousin turned to him and even though it had gotten too dark to see her face in the shadows, he was sure she rolled her eyes. Her arm was magically released and she waved at the people in the car. The car beeped two times before taking off at dust-inducing speeds back to the highway.

  “What is it?” she finally turned to him

  “Tomás isn’t back yet,” Jaime said.

  Ángela shrugged as if Tomás always left them home alone. Which he did, Jaime supposed, but he was always somewhere within Meester George’s fifty thousand acres.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” Ángela said.

  “Should we check in with Doña Cici? Maybe she’s heard something?”

  “They’re grown men looking at a cow—”

  “—bull,” Jaime corrected.

  “Whatever. You know how long grown-ups talk. They’re probably arguing whether black cattle produce better meat than white.”

  “Ours are reddish brown with white faces. Herefords.” Jaime surprised himself. He had no idea he knew their cattle’s breed but apparently he did. Wait til Tomás and Don Vicente heard him ask about the new Hereford bull calf!

  “Which is making me even more hungry. What’s for dinner?”

  “There’s sandwiches and beans.”

  “Great. Let’s put beans and cheese on the bread and put them in the microwave to melt.”

  The worry in Jaime’s stomach changed to hunger. That sounded a lot better then just beans from a can.

  The microwave concoctions made the bread mushy and of course the canned beans tasted bland compared to Abuela’s savory ones, but the overall result wasn’t bad. Jaime had three slices, and this time didn’t share with Vida. Dogs and beans didn’t seem like a good idea.

  They left the rest of the beans in the can, placed them in the waist-high fridge, and raised the counter to reveal the sink underneath. Everything in the trailer either served multiple functions or was nested like Russian dolls. Miguel would have enjoyed the clever engineering.

  Thinking of Miguel led to Jaime remembering their journey and the friends they had made. And how Ángela seemed to have forgotten all about them, based on how she let that Tristan boy kiss her hand like that.

  “Do you remember the first time we met Xavi and Joaquín and Rafa?” Jaime asked while drying a plastic plate.

  Ángela pulled the drain plug and lowered the counter over the sink. She wiped the top of the counter, but didn’t answer.

  Jaime tried again. “We were washing dishes then too and you were acting all weird around Xavi every time he came with buckets of water.”

  The trailer was tiny. There was no way Ángela couldn’t hear him. He tried one last time. “Remember how you told Xavi you were sixteen? Did you ever tell him you were really only fifteen?”

  Ángela went to her bed, which was currently a table, and pulled out a thick geometry textbook from her bag. “Xavi’s dead. It doesn’t matter what I told him.”

  She opened her book with such a bang that Jaime stopped bringing up their old friends. He opened his backpack and pulled out the homework folder. The spelling words he had to memorize and define blurred in front of his eyes.

  Only a few weeks ago guys with machetes and baseball bats had attacked Ángela, Xavi, and him on the train. There had been nothing to do but jump off and run fast. A blinding headlight had caused him, Ángela, and Xavi to split up. A truck had followed Jaime, but somehow he’d managed to squeeze himself halfway into an animal’s den and hide. By pure luck, he had found Ángela in the morning with nothing more than a sprained ankle. Vida had returned on her own. Without Xavi.

  Jaime doodled on the side of his spelling sheet.

  He missed Xavi. And little Joaquín. And sometimes even big-mouthed Rafa. And it stank big time that he didn’t know for sure what happened to any of them.

  Inside his bag, he found the recorder Meez Macálista said he could borrow until the end of the school year. She also lent him a music book. He’d barely gone through one song when Ángela slammed her book shut.

  “You have got to stop. I can’t handle that noise.”

  It isn’t noise, but he sighed and forced himself to finish the rest of his homework before getting the beginner reader book out of his bag. It took twenty minutes to read and he was pretty sure he understood about half of it. Enough to get that it was about a frog and toad, and they were friends who went on adventures, sometimes flying a kite and sometimes cleaning a house
. Of course, the drawings helped a lot.

  He looked outside. It was darker than any night he’d seen on the ranch with only one faint light coming from the annex of the big house. Tomás should really be back by now. He thought again about asking Doña Cici if she knew anything about them, but then her light went out and Jaime figured she must have gone to bed.

  “Think Tomás is okay?” Jaime asked.

  Ángela didn’t even look up. She was reading from her play script by now like she was attempting to memorize the whole thing for her two-line role. “Of course, why wouldn’t he be?”

  “It’s almost nine o’clock.” He pointed to the clock on the microwave.

  Ángela turned a page, keeping her eyes on the script. “They probably stopped for some food.”

  Jaime returned to the window. No lights anywhere. “What if the truck broke down?”

  “Then Tomás is probably fixing it. He’s resourceful.”

  Very true. Tomás called Don Vicente an animal whisperer, while the older man called Tomás a machine whisperer.

  Jaime brushed his teeth, changed into the sweatpants and undershirt he slept in, and beckoned Vida to join him in the bed he normally shared with his big brother.

  The dog happily curled up in his arms as he stared awake at the trailer door that didn’t open.

  The day was lightening when Vida’s bark and a slamming truck door jerked Jaime awake. Heavy boots stomped up the metal steps and the door opened.

  “What happened?” Jaime asked, sitting up in the bed. From his angle, he saw Ángela do the same.

  Black circles surrounded Tomás’s eyes and his face was so pale he could have passed for a gringo. The hair on the back of  Vida’s neck rose and she stayed at Jaime’s side, unsure in the near dark whether she knew the strange man at the door.

  “Don Vicente is in a detention center. He’s going to be deported.” And Tomás with his big cowboy muscles rested his tired head against the thin trailer wall and began to cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jaime jumped out of bed and rushed to his brother. “A detention center? You mean he’s in jail? But he’s not a criminal. What happened?”

  Tomás took a few choking breaths before rubbing his eyes with his sleeves. “Officers blocked the road and demanded to see everyone’s papers. Don Vicente wanted to take the side roads but I said the highway was faster. It’s all my fault.”

  Tomás let out a sob that caused Vida to bark from her spot on the bed. Tomás tossed his car keys into a pile of dirty clothes and turned on his heel back out the door. From their trailer, Jaime watched the shadow of his brother stagger over to the big house. Part of him wanted to go too, the other part was too scared to interfere. A light came on in the kitchen and the shadow of Tomás disappeared as Doña Cici let him in.

  Jaime waited by the door, watching the big house, and didn’t even notice the chill in the air until he saw Ángela huddled on her bed. He draped an extra blanket over her shoulders and returned to his post against the doorjamb, clutching one of Tomás’s sweaters.

  The sun was up over the ridge when Tomás made his way back. With the blanket still draped over her shoulders, Ángela made them mugs of instant coffee—black and sweet for Tomás and very milky and sweet for Jaime; hers just as sweet with a color in between. She had converted her bed back to a table and benches and made a pile of toast smothered with butter.

  Tomás took his coffee but didn’t drink it as he sat on Ángela’s former bed. Vida inched her way to him. He placed a hand on her one ear and she kissed his palm to make him feel better.

  “How’s Doña Cici?” Jaime asked.

  “About ready to march down to the detention center and demand they deport her with him.”

  “She wouldn’t!” Jaime gasped. Tomás shrugged his shoulders.

  “So, what happened?” Ángela asked.

  “Immigration control blocked up the whole highway. Everyone knows about the few fixed points within a hundred miles of the border, but this one was a pop-up. I’ve never encountered one there before and I’ve driven that road more times than I remember.”

  Jaime remembered the checkpoints he and Ángela went through in the southern state of Chiapas in México. Men with rifles asserting their power and scaring everyone in their path. They had witnessed a Salvadoran woman literally dragged off the bus after the officer noticed her Central American accent. His heart had gone out to her, and she’d been a complete stranger. He refused to think about Don Vicente enduring the same thing.

  “At first I thought the traffic was due to an accident. By the time I knew what was really happening I couldn’t turn around.” Tomás said this to Vida as she continued to reassure him with her kisses. His free hand brought the coffee up to his lips but he seemed to forget what he was doing and set it back down without drinking. “They took us both in.”

  “What, why?” Jaime asked. It didn’t make sense. Tomás had a driver’s license from the state of Nuevo México and papers that said he could legally live and work here. And Don Vicente had been here forever. When Tomás had picked them up after they crossed the U.S.-México border, they had come across one of the fixed checkpoints. Maybe the guard had asked Tomás a simple question, but from Jaime’s memory, it seemed like the officer had barely glanced in the truck, had seen a grown-up, two youths, and a stray dog, and waved them by like it was nothing.

  Ángela placed a piece of toast in Tomás’s hand and he ate it, though Jaime was sure he didn’t know what he was doing.

  “They said they were looking for criminals, but I think they were taking advantage of the situation to make as many arrests as possible,” Tomás explained. “In English they call it DWB: Driving While Brown.”

  “What does that mean?” Jaime asked.

  “It means if you look Latino, they bring you in,” Ángela explained.

  “Look Latino?” Jaime asked. There wasn’t one way a Latino looked. Jaime and Ángela were brown with dark, straight hair, but their moms were closer to tan and both had curly hair. “Jennifer Lopez looks nothing like Shakira, who isn’t anything like Cameron Diaz, and none of them resemble Zoe Saldana, even when she isn’t blue or green. How could anyone think Latinos look the same?”

  “Exactly, we’re a culture, not a race,” Tomás agreed. “What they did is racial profiling and stereotyping. They took Don Vicente because he’s brown, has no papers, and doesn’t speak any English. They brought me in because I’m brown and had Don Vicente with me.”

  “But they let you go.”

  “After hours of questions. They were convinced my papers were fake and spent hours interrogating me to catch me lying. When they finally let me go, I said I wasn’t leaving without Don Vicente. I even lied and insisted that he was my abuelo, but they wouldn’t budge. There was nothing I could do.” Tomás rubbed his forehead and squinted his eyes shut. He stayed that way for a few minutes but no more tears rolled down his cheeks. He slammed his hand on the table and finally looked up again. “Hurry up and get dressed. I’ll drop you off at school.”

  “But is it safe for us to go there?” Jaime asked. He didn’t really like the school here and would do anything not to have to go, but this was different. Miguel had died coming home from school in Guatemala. What would prevent immigration officers from stopping his school bus? Or even coming into the school building? He knew he couldn’t be the only undocumented kid at school. What then?

  “Churches and schools are typically considered sanctuary spaces,” Ángela responded instead. “They’re safe places where a police officer can’t arrest anyone unless that person is endangering people, like in bomb threats or school shootings. We talked about that in one of my classes.”

  Jaime turned to Tomás to see if it was true. Not that he didn’t believe Ángela, but she did like school more than he did.

  Tomás nodded. “I can’t see immigration officers wanting to target schools. Most kids don’t carry identification, and besides, it’s a lot of work to look after kids in a deten
tion center. It’s one thing to detain a whole family, because the parents can look after the kids. But if not, the government has to pay a lot more people to take care of them, including teachers, since children are required to go to school. I’m more concerned with you staying here.”

  “Here?” Jaime looked around the trailer. They were down a long dirt road in the middle of a cattle ranch with no visible neighbors. Just the other day Don Vicente said no one would bother coming down here.

  “They know about Doña Cici; they could decide to target her,” Tomás read his mind.

  A breath choked in Jaime’s throat. The trailer didn’t have a lock, and even if it did, it wouldn’t make a difference. He’d seen too many movies and cop shows where the police just barged through thick wooden doors. The trailer door was made of flimsy aluminum.

  “When I mentioned this to Mr. George, he reminded me this is private property and legally, no one can trespass, not even an immigration officer, without permission. Still, don’t let anyone in.”

  Tomás’s message couldn’t have been clearer: Immigration officers were like vampires; you don’t invite them inside.

  “I need to check on the cows and calves, feed everyone, and then we’ll go.” Tomás drained his coffee in one shot and shoved a whole slice of toast into his mouth.

  “You need to sleep.” Ángela got into her demanding mothering role with her hands on her hips. It’d been ages since she did that and it made Jaime smile. Good, the old Ángela wasn’t completely gone.

  But Tomás shook his head as he swallowed. “Sleep can come later. I need to stop by the local sheriff’s office. The sheriff knows Don Vicente and maybe has some connections to help bring him back here. To his real home.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jaime couldn’t focus in school. When Meesus asked him to demonstrate on the whiteboard how to figure out 150 percent of forty-five, he said, “No tank you,” which resulted in staying in during morning recess.