Crossers

by Philip Caputo

  “I will, Mamá. I vow it.”

  “Alive or dead, do not fail me.”

  “I won’t.”

  The past is gone? Yvonne asked silently, continuing to look out the window. The past is never gone. The arrow of time was all one thing, the notch and feathers of what was, the shaft of what is, the tip of what is to come.

  She motioned to Julián to shut the door, both for privacy and to dampen the racket outside, then took the chair he had just vacated. He sat in the only other one in the room, a worn armchair jammed against the wall opposite the desk, between two bookcases that reached almost to the ceiling. The shelves were empty, the books having been shipped out with the furniture.

  “All right, the future,” Yvonne said. “As I said, I am going to buy the San Ignacio ranch.”

  “And I had mentioned the slight problem that it isn’t for sale.”

  “This place wasn’t for sale a few months ago, but I persuaded Señor Amador that it would be in his best interests to sell.”

  “Your methods of persuasion will not work on the other side like they do on this side.”

  “There are other methods. Listen. I am going to make those gringos suffer. I am going to make their lives miserable. When I get through with them, they will be begging for someone, anyone to take it off their hands.”

  Again, the voice like a thorn, pricking, stabbing. “So this is all about Abuela, isn’t it? Abuela and her old nonsense.”

  “It is about justice.”

  Folding his hands on his lap, Julián looked up at the bookcases. “We should buy a library, fill up those empty shelves. It would warm up the room.”

  “Stop being cute. Did you hear me?”

  “Impossible not to,” he said, and bent toward her, hands on his knees, as if he were about to lunge at her. She could think straighter than his father ever did, except when it came to this. In this, she was as crazy as Abuela had been. “There is no room in business for sentiment. No room for waging some old woman’s vendetta with no profit in it. You did everything you could for Abuela. She died a rich woman. What need is there to do anymore? She is in her grave. Let her grievances lie there with her.”

  “What a fine speech! Grievances—is that what you call them? Pues, they are my grievances, too. It was my father those people murdered and got away with it.”

  “You never even knew him!” Julián said, raising his voice.

  “I made a promise to her on her deathbed. A promise like that is sacred.”

  “That word does not sound quite right on your lips. If you insist on settling old scores, why not send Marco and Heraclio over there and shoot the gringos? Blow their fucking heads off. Make an end of it.”

  “You know, I had considered doing that very thing. I decided it would be too risky.”

  Julián relaxed and slumped back into the chair. “That represents some evolution in your thinking.”

  “‘That represents some evolution in your thinking,’” Yvonne mimicked. “This isn’t purely a personal matter. Getting my hands on that ranch will be a very good move from a business standpoint. I am sure you see the advantages.”

  “I am not sure you do.”

  “With that place and this one in our hands, we will own both sides of the border for a distance of twenty kilometers,” she said, to show how well she knew. “When the airstrip is finished, we will fly the merca in—our mota, the Gulf’s perico—load it onto backs or into trucks, and send it across. We will have our own people on the other side to guide it through and to keep an eye on what La Migra is up to. No problems with some cowboy calling the cops because he sees suspicious people, a suspicious vehicle. And we won’t have so many expenses paying mordida to customs inspectors at ports of entry because—”

  “We will have our own port of entry,” Julián finished for her.

  “Precisamente. For us, there will be no border.”

  “I like this kind of talk much better. Now you are talking sense.”

  “What? Did you think I had not taken all of this into consideration? I have thought of every detail that can be thought of.”

  “It is your motives that trouble me. This—this passion of yours to get even for something that happened so long ago could cloud your judgment.”

  “Nothing clouds my judgment,” she said with indignation. “I am a practical woman.”

  “Then tell me, mi mujer pragmática, how you are going to persuade our American neighbors to sell out?”

  She paused for a moment. “I won’t tell you. I will show you. Vicente’s nephew, Billy Cruz … I sent word to him to come today. For this very reason.”

  “Billy Cruz? That pollero?” asked Julián, incredulously. His mother despised migrant smugglers.

  “Him,” she replied. “Go outside and see if he’s arrived. Tell him we would like a word with him in private.”

  She studied Cruz as he came in with Julián, a black Stetson pulled low over his forehead. She had met him only once before, and then briefly. Vicente told her that his nephew had been a prizefighter in his youth, and she saw that now, in his middle thirties, he retained a boxer’s physique, its pleasing lines accentuated by his snug striped shirt and tight Levi’s.

  “Buenas tardes, Billy,” she cooed, rising and extending her hand.

  “Buenas tardes,” he responded in a high, boyish voice that didn’t match the macho man’s body.

  “I am a traditionalist about certain courtesies,” she said. “Please remove your hat.”

  He snickered and bared his head. A good-looking guy—why hadn’t she seen that on their first meeting? Dense, flaxen hair, dark brown eyes, a square chin. His nose had been broken—in the ring, she supposed—and scar tissue marred his blond eyebrows; but these imperfections added to his appeal. Un buena cogida, she would bet.

  “Have a seat,” she said, motioning at the chair. “I figure you would prefer we speak in English.”

  “I’m okay in Spanish.”

  She propped herself against the desk, palms on its edge, and flirted a little with her eyes. “But I think my English is better than your Spanish, and I wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us.”

  He slouched into the chair with a studied nonchalance, placed his hat on his lap, and clasped his hands behind his head. Julián stood leaning against the door.

  “First of all,” said Yvonne, “let me say that I’m sorry about Tío Vicente.”

  “You’re a little late. He died nearly two months ago.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Yvonne said. “But I was sorry to lose him. He was very clever at devising ways to conceal merchandise in trucks. One time he cut out the gas tank and installed a false tank inside, and you couldn’t see the welds with a magnifying glass, and dogs couldn’t smell the merca.”

  “Yeah. He ran an auto body shop for years. In Nogales.”

  “But maybe he wasn’t so clever in other ways,” she said.

  Julián pushed off the door. “We heard that he stole a load of perico from Joaquín Carrasco. He ordered your uncle’s assassination.”

  “Don’t know a thing about it,” Cruz said.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” said Yvonne. “But you know, after he came to work for me, I sometimes asked myself the same question the girlfriend of a married man asks herself—if he is cheating on his wife with me, will he cheat on me with someone else?”

  Cruz sat up straighter and fingered the brim of his Stetson. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

  “No. You seem a little … tense. Like a drink? A beer? A shot of bacanora? Tengo lo bueno.”

  “I’ve got all afternoon to drink.”

  “I want you to know something, Billy,” she said. “If I had been in Carrasco’s shoes, I would have put out a contract on your tío. But I’m in my shoes, and Vicente was working for me when they killed him. There will be a settling of accounts.”

  “I stay clear of that shit,” Cruz said. “So I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

 
“Yes, it’s good to be deaf sometimes. Your uncle told me you’re a businessman. You have a little business in Nogales.”

  “A shuttle service. We take people to Tucson and Phoenix. Mexicans, mostly.”

  “Documented Mexicans,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But your main business is with the other kind. So tell me about that business. I don’t know much about it. It’s a good business?”

  “Thinking of getting into it?” Cruz asked, smirking.

  He seemed to be feeling more sure of himself. She was surprised that his cocky manner didn’t irk her. In fact, she liked it. At that moment, unbidden, a fantasy flickered through her mind, like scenes from a triple-X movie: Billy lay flat on his strong young back on her canopy bed, she on top of him; the vaquero who had called her an old woman was manacled to the bedpost, watching through the gauzy curtains as Billy pumped her full of the sweet marmalade of his little limb. La mermelada de membrillo. Look at this, cowboy, look at me ride this one, and then tell me I am an old woman. The picture shook her composure. Several seconds passed before she recovered it.

  “I’ve got enough to keep me occupied,” she said, once more in command of herself, though her voice had grown husky. “I’m curious, that’s all.”

  “Rip the seats out of a nine-passenger van, and you can fit eighteen, twenty pollos inside. Mexicans, you gross fifteen hundred a head. Central Americans, it’s five grand. Chinese, Arabs, ten thousand.”

  “You’ve smuggled Chinese and Arabs? At ten thousand a head? Better money than I thought.”

  “Not many. Ninety percent of my customers are Mexican.”

  “What happens if a load gets busted? Lose a load of mota and you’re out of luck.”

  “We charge up front. And I don’t lose too many loads.”

  Es un poco presuntuoso, Yvonne thought. He is a little smug. “That’s right, your tío told me you’re very proficient. You know the trails, the back roads in the San Rafael and the Huachuca mountains like the back of your hand. A human map is what he called you.”

  “I know the country pretty good. I have to.”

  She paced around the desk and sat behind it, facing him directly. “And do you know a ranch over there, the San Ignacio?”

  “It’s right across the line from you, ten miles from here, I’d guess. An old lady and her son own it.”

  “And have you been herding your chickens through that ranch?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Cruz hesitated and began to fidget with his hat again. “There’s two brothers in Santa Cruz who own the routes into the San Rafael. I rent my routes from them. It’s a kind of toll, and right now the ones that go through that ranch aren’t for rent.”

  “That toll must add a lot to your overhead.”

  “A cost of doing business,” Cruz said in his high tenor. He sounded like a sixteen-year-old.

  “These Santa Cruz cowboys, these brothers, work for Joaquín Carrasco.”

  “I—I don’t know who they work for. I stay out of that.”

  “Take it from me, Carrasco is their mero mero. So this toll you pay them goes into the pockets of the man who ordered your uncle’s murder. Doesn’t that trouble you, Billy? Where is your family loyalty?”

  Julián, she could see, was growing impatient, but she was having fun with this.

  “Like I told you, I stay out of that shit,” Cruz said. “I don’t know and I don’t care who works for who.”

  “And who do you work for?”

  “I’m self-employed. I work for myself.”

  Yvonne shook her head. “Trabajas para mí. You work for me.”

  Cruz widened his eyes in mock astonishment, or maybe it wasn’t so mock. “Since when?”

  “Since right now. For your Santa Cruz cowboys to move their merca into the San Ignacio, they would have to move it through here first. Do you see any? No. I own this rancho. That means that I own the routes through here. Anybody who moves anything across the line from here—I don’t care if it’s mojados or mota or coke or a load of fucking onions—doesn’t do it without my permission. And I’m not giving it, except to you. Do you have anything to say, Billy?”

  “Not much. I guess you do.”

  “I do talk a lot,” Yvonne said, falling back into an amiable tone. “I’m a sociable person. No matter what you may have heard about me, I’m actually easy to get along with.”

  “As long as you do what she wants,” Julián interjected.

  “How’s that for a respectful son?” She rose and moved round to the front of the desk again, perching atop it, her ankles crossed. “And what I want you to do is the opposite of what you’re doing now. From now on, until I tell you otherwise, you’ll herd your chickens through here to the San Ignacio and nowhere else. Every other route in the San Rafael Valley is off limits. You’ll be doing me a service and yourself one—

  I won’t charge you any tolls. All I ask is that you see to it that your strawberry pickers and toilet scrubbers don’t fuck this place up. What they do on the other side is another matter. The more they fuck it up, the better I’ll like it. Now do you have anything to say?”

  Evidently he did not. He scowled, his scarred eyebrows crawling together like yellow caterpillars with segments of their bodies missing.

  “You’re worried about what your Santa Cruz cowboys will say about this arrangement?”

  “It’s something to think about.”

  “But not for long, because what they’ll have to say is exactly, precisely nothing.”

  Cruz jerked his shoulders up to touch his ears. A shrug? A twitch? She couldn’t tell. “What’s this all about? You want me to create a diversion, is that it? If the Border Patrol is busy chasing my people, there’ll be less of them to chase yours?”

  “That’s part of it, Billy. The rest isn’t your concern.” Giving in to an urge to touch him, she hopped off the desk, crossed the room in two quick steps, and took hold of his hands, rubbing his calloused palms with her fingertips. “Strong hands. You know, a strong man out here in all this big, open country might think to himself, ‘Shit, I can do as I please out here. Who is there to see me?’ He might be tempted to herd his dirty chickens in the wrong places. That would be a bad idea.”

  He said nothing. Yvonne, never content to make a point without underlining it, went on. “There was a terrible incident this past January. Not too far from here. Some bajadores ambushed a carload of mojados and killed all of them. Do you remember that incident? It was in all the newspapers.”

  “Sure do remember. Those were my people.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that,” she said truthfully. All the better, a fortunate coincidence. The dead chickens continued to serve a purpose. “So that’s one load you did lose.”

  “Yeah. And it wasn’t bandits. Nothing was taken. Not a watch, not a wallet. They were killed for no reason.”

  “Yes, that’s what the newspapers said. You know, the man who used to own this ranch was so frightened by those murders that he put it up for sale. I talked to him about it. He said that anyone who could commit such a horrible act was likely to do anything. It was just too dangerous for him to stay here. But then, he was very old and alone.”

  Cruz dropped his gaze, raised it again. Holding on to his hands, she sensed the tension in him, the fear. She owned him. Bought and paid for. “Anything on your mind, Billy? Anything you’d like to tell me?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “All right, then.” She let him go and stepped back. “What do you say to our new arrangement?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “What do you think?”

  “And you, what do you think?” she asked Julián after dismissing Cruz.

  “You should try to make yourself less obvious. You were looking at him like you wanted to tear the clothes off his back. You’re almost old enough to be his mother.”

  “Maybe it was you who wanted to tear his clothes off.”

  �
�Eres una perra. Siempre tienes la regla.”

  “I stopped the rag two years ago. The plan, mi hijo. What do you think? Dozens of mojados, maybe hundreds, running through the San Ignacio week after week, like a plague of locusts. A few months of that and—”

  “They will be begging for someone to take the place off their hands.” Julián, a shoulder to the wall, hands in his pockets, adopted a reflective air. “But you know, these rancheros are tied to their land. Mexicans or gringos, no le hace. They are all tied to it. And those are difficult ties to break.”

  “It wasn’t so difficult to break the ties of the guy who owned this place. Everything is for sale, that’s what my real estate cousin says, and he’s right. I am going to make our American neighbors so afraid of losing everything they’ve got, they will be greedy for anything they can get.”

  “You are becoming a philosopher, mother.”

  “Philosopher? No, a general. Like Pancho Villa. He invaded the United States, so I am going to invade a little piece of it myself.” She felt giddy. She laughed. “Señor Cruz will be my field commander, his chickens my army.”

  “Don’t get carried away with yourself,” Julián said. “Pancho Villa lost his battle.”

  12

  SPRING IS NOT THE SEASON of renewal in the Sonoran Desert. It is the dry time of year, an annual drought. From mid-March till late July, the skies really are not cloudy all day, and after a while the clear blue overhead becomes monotonous and oppressive. Trees do leaf out, the cottonwoods first, the mesquites last, and desert flowers blossom, adding splashes of color to the dun landscape; but the grasses soon turn brittle as old newspaper, dirt tanks shrink from ponds to puddles to cracked mudholes, and rattlesnakes stir from their winter dormancy, each one as mean as a man awakening with a bad hangover, likely to strike at anything that draws too near, human, horse, cow, or dog. Spring is the season when migrants die in greater numbers, hundreds every year, their naked corpses (naked because in the derangement of extreme dehydration they rip off their clothes) sprawled in the greasewood and brittle-bush thickets, sometimes within sight of the road or highway they were struggling to reach. Spring is the season when even the lightning is dry, igniting range fires and forest fires on the mountainsides. And spring is the season when farmers and ranchers on both sides of the border talk endlessly and obsessively about rain. They think about it, dream about it, wait anxiously for it. The summer monsoons begin in July, hustled into Sonora and Arizona by the chubascos whirling in off the Gulf of California, and they end two months later; but their arrival and abundance is never guaranteed. Like a precocious child, they might show early promise and then fail; or they might withhold themselves and then pour forth torrents too late; or they might turn capricious—long arid days or weeks punctuated by brief biblical downpours that do little but scour the soil, wash out roads, and produce awesome flash floods, thundering and frothing in the arroyos, plucking giant trees by the roots like so many dandelions; or the rains might not come at all.