The Line Becomes a River

by Francisco Cantú

  Later that morning I set out to visit Boquillas Canyon. At the trailhead, I read several safety notices. Pack sufficient drinking water. Beware of snakes. Do not purchase souvenirs from border merchants. Do not cross the Rio Grande. Always let someone know where you’re going and when you expect to return.

  The trail into Boquillas Canyon ended at the terminus of a riverbank where the water met a vertical limestone wall. I removed my shirt and lowered myself into the gentle current of the Rio Grande, my muscles tensing at its coolness. Above me the canyon walls hummed like a generator and two falcons circled in sun-heated air. I reached my arms deep into the wet sediment that had settled at the bottom of the riverbed. The waters of the river flowed pale and brown, liquid earth washing over me like so many human hands, like a skin unending.

  As I swam toward a bend in the canyon, the river became increasingly shallow. In a patch of sunlight, two longnose gars, relics of the Paleozoic era, hovered in the silted waters. I stood to walk along the adjacent shorelines, crossing the river time and again as each bank came to an end, until finally, for one brief moment, I forgot in which country I stood. All around me the landscape trembled and breathed as one.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their mentorship: Alison Deming, Luis Urrea, Adela Licona, Ander Monson, Fenton Johnson, Chris Cokinos, Manuel Muñoz, Susan Briante, Farid Matuk, Bob Houston, Gary Paul Nabhan, Terry Wimmer, Marcel Oomen, Linda Pietersen, Floris Vermeulen, and the entire University of Arizona Creative Writing faculty.

  For their camaraderie: Page Buono, Joseph Bradbury, Jan Bindas-Tenny, Taneum Brambrick, and all my colleagues in the University of Arizona MFA cohorts of 2014 through 2017.

  For faithfully steering this book through the world: Rebecca Gradinger, Becky Saletan, Jynne Dilling, Glory Plata, Katie Freeman, Stuart Williams, Joe Pickering, and the staffs of Fletcher & Company, The Bodley Head, and Riverhead Books.

  For their professional encouragement and careful direction: Michael Collier, Rick Bass, David Shields, Wendy Walters, Antonìo Ruiz-Camacho, John Vaillant, Brian Blanchfield, Valeria Luiselli, Beowulf Sheehan, Molly Molloy, Pedro Serrano, and Katherine Silver.

  For kindly guiding me through the publishing landscape: Matt Weiland, Geoff Shandler, Jim Rutman, Fiona McCrae, Steve Woodward, Stephen Morrison, Ben George, Ed Winstead, Ladette Randolph, Robert Atwan, Jonathan Franzen, Scott Gast, H. Emerson Blake, Jennifer Sahn, Josalyn Knapic, Megan Kimble, Adam Berlin, and Jeffrey Heiman.

  For financial support and opportunity: the Whiting Foundation, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Endowment, the Fulbright Program, the Banff Centre, the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, the University of Arizona Institute for the Environment, the University of Amsterdam Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies, and the Migration Policy Institute.

  For fostering my early curiosities about migration and borders: Amy Oliver, Marie Piñeiro, Jack Childs, Daniel Hernández, Todd Eisenstadt, Stephen Randall, Gordon Appleby, Robert Pastor, Margie McHugh, Demetrios Papademetriou, and Deborah Meyers.

  For helping me reconnect with the landscape of my youth: Eric Brunnemann and Elizabeth Jackson at Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

  For their urgent work as translators and poets: Jen Hofer and John Pluecker.

  For his steady psychological guidance and wisdom: Dr. Stephen Joseph.

  For their generosity and sense of place: Bill Broyles and Keith Marroquin.

  For their friendship: Sarah Steinberg, Scott Buchanan, Daisy Pitkin, Michael Versteeg, Kyle Farley, Addison Matthew, Patrick Callaway, Spenser Jordan Palmer, Kris Karlsson, Dewey Nelson, Daniel Troup, Ryan Olinger, Harry Manny, Erik and Dan Schmahl, Holly Hall, Alyson Head, Ryne Warner, Tracy Rose Guajardo, Jacqueline Brackeen, Matthew Thomas, Matthew Chovanec, John Washington, Julian Etienne, Karina Hernández, Stephan Oliver, Yolanda Morales, Citlaly Nava, Carlos Villegas, Víctor Hugo Hernández Rodríguez, Aengus Anderson, Blanca Balderas and Víctor Hugo Medina, Marike Splint, the family of Jesus and Carmen Lopez, the Cocilovo family, and all the other incredible friends and creators who have anchored me through the years.

  For welcoming me into their lives for so many years: Kirsten Boele and the Boele family.

  For his care, his generosity of spirit, and for sharing his beautiful home—a place of immeasurable creative solace: Ron Simmons.

  For their kinship: Grace, Daven, Renn Tsalie, Beverly and Laf Young, Trevor Woolf, Susan Bratton, and the Carr family.

  For my three fathers: Charles Simmons, Jack Utter, Al Carr.

  For her partnership, her inspiration, and her luminous mind: Karima Walker.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © Beowulf Sheehan

  Francisco Cantú served as an agent for the United States Border Patrol from 2008 to 2012, working in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. A former Fulbright fellow, he is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a 2017 Whiting Award. His writing and translations have been featured in Best American Essays, Harper’s, n+1, Orion, and Guernica, as well as on This American Life. He lives in Tucson.

  franciscocantu

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