The belt took forever to snap free, and still the cowboy couldn’t get out. His broken arm apparently gave his whole body the limpness of a banana peel. Between María Dolores pushing from inside, Luis pulling the good arm, and Santiago grasping a handful of the no-longer-white shirt, they finally hauled the yowling cowboy out of the car.
Bangs and muffled sounds came from the back of the station wagon, where the couple was trapped—the rear glass remained intact. With a few pulls and kicks, Luis opened the hatchback and set them free. But the collapsed roof prevented María Dolores from climbing over (though now under) the seat to escape.
“¡Santi, fuego!” Alegría cried in his ear. Santiago jerked around. Smoke engulfed the entire hood of the car, but no flames had formed. Yet.
María Dolores thrust her arms through the window. Her shoulders got through fine, but then she got stuck.
“Leave her,” the cowboy said, cradling his arm. “We’re all going to die anyway.”
No, Santiago refused to let that be the case. Refused to give up and let her die halfway through a window.
“Please help me.” He motioned to Luis.
The two of them slid their fingers between María Dolores’s side and the window frame. With Luis’s help, Santiago pulled back part of the warped frame with all the strength he had. He had to free her. Still wrapped around his body, Alegría pressed her weight against his chest. The gap widened a bit, then a bit more. Slowly, and carefully, María Dolores eased herself out.
She inhaled deeply before crawling over to kiss Alegría, kiss Santiago, and kiss them both several times more for good measure.
Until she stopped short. “Domínguez?”
They turned to look at the driver, and it became clear why they hadn’t heard a sound from him.
CHAPTER 12
For several minutes no one said anything. Even the car’s mechanical noise stopped as the smoke began to clear.
“What are we going to do now?” the cowboy demanded.
In response, Luis reached into the overturned car and pulled out his backpack. “I’ve come too far to stop now,” he said in his southern accent. “Domínguez mentioned the slot canyon below those two rocky fingers. I’ll see whoever there tonight.”
He set off without waiting to see if anyone wanted to travel with him.
“Fool,” the cowboy called out. “Crossing the desert on your own is suicide.”
“Yeah, so what’s your plan, sabiondo?” María Dolores demanded.
He held his immobile arm across his chest like some kind of salute. “I’m staying right here. If you’re lost, you stay put so someone can find you.”
María Dolores reached for Alegría, who held out her arms to be transferred from Santiago’s. “Who do you think is coming for you? The guys in the SUV? Or the girl you’re so dressed up for?”
The cowboy’s face burned red.
“I think we should head back to the main road,” Tano said. “At least that road tiene movimiento. Someone will help us from there.”
“And then what? Go back to Capaz to find another idiot to get us nearly killed?” The cowboy continued raising a fuss. “I gave all my money to Domínguez. Actually, I should get it back.”
Vivian raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You’re going to steal from a dead man?”
“I paid him to do a job que no cumplió. I demand a refund. Besides, he doesn’t need it anymore.”
Santiago turned to María Dolores. As much as he didn’t want to retrieve the money, he would if she asked him to. And she surely would. With three of them, she’d paid—and lost—the most. For her, after everything she’d done for him, he’d frisk a dead body. If she asked.
Which she didn’t.
Instead, she taunted the cowboy. “Go ahead, get your money back.”
But the cowboy didn’t budge.
“That’s what I thought,” María Dolores said.
She jerked her head at Santiago. But away from the crash site, not toward it. Again, he marveled at her strange attitude about money. Had it been his cash they’d lost, would he take it back? He honestly didn’t know.
They walked a short distance from the others and kept their voices low. She boosted Alegría back on her hip, keeping the five-year-old from sliding. “What do you think we should do?”
“The cowboy’s right,” Santiago said. His head gash no longer hurt, but another ache took over in his heart: responsibility for these two. “From the stories I heard at the cantina, crossing the desert alone, not knowing where we’re going—we won’t make it.”
“We’re not alone.” María Dolores rested a hand on his shoulder. “We have each other.”
Warmth spread through Santiago’s body that had nothing to do with the blazing sun. But he shouldn’t encourage desert travel on their own. It could go terribly wrong in so many ways. Those migra officers he’d seen with the rifles. He’d overheard one coyote in the tavern mention something about tear gas. Then there were the natural dangers: heat, fatigue, dehydration.
Still, the normal brightness in María Dolores’s eyes had returned. “We have food and water for a couple of days. Plus a phone with a full battery.”
“You won’t get reception here.” Santiago clung to reason.
“No, but I might on top of that mountain range. My sister is expecting a call once we cross; she won’t be more than four hours away, driving. Maybe less.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should go back,” he said. But the idea of being in the crosshairs of those SUV thugs didn’t appeal to him either. He had definitely seen a gold watch along with the gun; he remembered the three thugs in Capaz plotting against Domínguez, despite the fourth brother’s rebukes. Santiago may have been invisible while clearing their table, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t recognize him.
“You really want to return to Capaz?” María Dolores dropped her voice lower.
Going back to Capaz would be that much closer to going back to his old life. No, not an option. Even with the fear of the desert, forward was the only way to go. Especially with María Dolores’s words beating like a mantra inside his head: We have each other.
“Domínguez did tell us where to go.” Santiago worked on convincing himself. “And I’m good at finding my way around.”
María Dolores accepted that as a decision made. They walked back to the others. “We’re checking out the border and trying to cross. Unlike our other friend, we will wait for you if you want to join us. There is safety in numbers.”
Tano nodded. “You can come with us instead. My wife and I are going back to the main road, where we know someone will come along.”
“Well, I can’t go anywhere in my condition, and you can’t abandon me to die.” The cowboy gestured to his busted arm.
“We’re not sacrificing ourselves to babysit you. You make your own choices,” María Dolores said as she set Alegría on the ground and reached into the overturned car to retrieve their backpacks. The smoke from the hood had blown away completely.
Santiago went over to help, careful not to look into the car at the driver. Something red caught his eye near the damaged driver-side. Domínguez’s lighter. Right there at his feet. Santiago pocketed it. Domínguez wouldn’t mind. It had been there, in the dirt. Almost like he was meant to find it.
Once he straightened, Alegría tugged at his hand to be picked up again. Instead he crouched to her level and spit a few times into the hem of his shirt. Carefully he cleaned the blood from the few scratches on her face.
“There, now you don’t look like you’ve been in a car wreck.” He threw her up into the air and caught her as she giggled.
“Mamita,” María Dolores asked Alegría as she held out the three bags, “are you going to walk?”
The little girl snuggled into Santiago’s neck; her cheek muscles against his throat contracted into a smile.
“I don’t mind carrying her. She’s so light, I barely notice.” He threw her up again before he reached for his bag and threaded his arms through the
straps one at a time. Between Alegría in the front and the backpack in the rear, the weight balanced out nicely. It also helped that Alegría rested on his hips and didn’t hang from his shoulders. From the bags, María Dolores extracted their new baseball hats—green for Santiago, grayish purple for Alegría, and rusty brown for her.
“Good luck.” María Dolores waved at the others after settling her backpack on her back and Alegría’s on her front. Santiago walked at her side, and the three of them headed toward the two fingers of the distant mountain range. To the north.
They had barely taken ten steps, when the cowboy called out, “Wait for me!”
Santiago stopped and turned. The cowboy ran to join the married couple as fast as his fancy boots and “broken” arm allowed him to go. Relief washed over Santiago.
Once they were clear of the crash site, but still with no visible signs of the border, Alegría squirmed down from Santiago’s arms. She ran this way and that as she chased lizards and insects. From the corner of his eye, Santiago could have sworn he saw a glittery creature chase after her. Princesa. Maybe the invisible unicorn would look after them. He reached for María Dolores’s hand and received a squeeze as each step they took brought the mountain range clearer and closer.
CHAPTER 13
El otro lado
No river or wall met them at the border. Instead, they only came across strands of a barbed-wire fence that had been cut. One strand rose, attacking Santiago’s leg when he accidentally stepped on it, but it didn’t even tear a hole in his new jeans. Was that it? Nothing more than broken wire to mark an invisible line in the sand and parched grass? Santiago thought he would feel something when he crossed, but he didn’t. Everything remained the same. The same desert sun beat down on them. Nothing changed in the landscape. Even the mountain range seemed just as far away as before.
They kept the setting sun to the left and carried on.
A dirt road cut from east to west. Unlike the rutted one Domínguez had driven on, this one was wide, level, and clear of debris.
“Stop.” María Dolores flung her arms out to keep Santiago and Alegría from crossing the road. “It’s a trap.”
“How can you tell?” Santiago looked at the road carefully. There were no wires that might cause them to trip, and nothing indicated a trigger that would sound an alarm. In fact, he saw nothing on the road other than dirt and dust. Even rocks were scarce.
“Look.” She pointed to the thin lines that went along the whole road. “It’s perfectly grated. And soft. Anything that crosses it is immediately detectable. See over there? Some critter made those paw prints, and we can see exactly which direction it went. If we cross, la migra will know we were here.”
Now that he looked closer, he saw other animal prints, but not a single one made by a human.
Maybe this was the real border. A test to see if they had what it took to cross seven meters undetected.
Behind them, the desert ground was so dry and compact, their shoes had barely indented the dirt. One step on the road, and their prints would light up like a beacon. Definitely trapped.
“We’re not going to be able to get around it.” Santiago couldn’t see where the track ended to the east, and to the west the setting sun prevented good visibility. “The road probably connects two migra outposts. It’s too wide to jump.”
“So we’re going to have to cross it. Exactly what they want us to do.” María Dolores squirmed.
“What if we walk backward across the road?” Santiago demonstrated a few steps, which got Alegría hopping in reverse and trying to land where his feet had been, like backward hopscotch. She laughed at the complexity of the game, several times landing on the shrubby mounds of brittle grass instead of the spot where Santiago’s foot had been. Santiago and María Dolores didn’t laugh. When they crossed the road for real, it wouldn’t be a game.
“We could try walking backward,” María Dolores agreed. “And stepping in each other’s prints isn’t a bad idea either. People going to war would do that to hide their numbers.”
“I can also wipe our path clear if you think that will help.” Santiago picked up some twigs from a chamisa that on a windy day would become a tumbleweed.
María Dolores didn’t say anything, and by that, she said everything. Santiago could read her mind—she didn’t think it would work. La migra were probably trained trackers and not easily fooled by silly tricks. But she also didn’t have any better ideas.
Santiago moved his bag to the front and this time carried Alegría on his back. María Dolores started crossing the groomed road, her backward footsteps sinking deep into the loose dirt. One careful step at a time, Santiago followed with the chamisa broom, trying to sweep away the evidence of their crossing. Didn’t work. From a distance, a driver would see their jagged path across the track in a second.
Once across, María Dolores turned to face forward again and broke into a jog.
Santiago held Alegría’s legs and jogged after.
“¡Dale, caballito!” Alegría squealed like she was riding a pony and wanted him to go faster.
The uneven ground of desert shrubs and small clumps of brittle grass challenged the run. A few times Santiago’s ankles twisted, but not enough to cause real pain. Their scuttle gradually slowed until it became a walk and then a quick stop for water.
Once refreshed, they kept a fast pace. Every few minutes Santiago would pivot, turning to look in all directions for anything amiss. Lizards scurried by; insects buzzed and hummed. At one point he spotted a pair of vultures circling to the south.
Rest in peace, Domínguez.
The sun glowed bright against the ground, making it almost impossible to see to the west. Almost. Something moved in the glare, causing the hairs on the back of Santiago’s neck to rise.
“Car.” The word came out of his throat like a growl.
They scrambled for shelter. María Dolores crouched behind a gray chamisa bush while Santiago eased Alegría off his back and into the long shadow of a branchy cholla cactus. She lay flat on the ground, and he draped himself on top of her, his forearms supporting his weight. A few dropped cactus spines dug into his hands.
“I don’t see it.” María Dolores tried to peer around the bush.
“Trust me, it’s there.” He could almost feel the vibrations through the ground, his body on full alert to the danger.
The sun hid the dust, and the vehicle traveled slowly.
“It’s coming,” Alegría said, and was met with two quick shhhs.
The border patrol truck didn’t travel by any road or path, or even in any obvious direction. North for a bit, then east, north again, briefly west, south, and then back to north.
Finally it stopped a hundred meters away. Santiago slowed his breathing, determined not to let his chest move. The sun had half disappeared, the shadows more then covered them, but who knew what kind of equipment la migra had to detect their prey.
A crackle came from the radio. Between his nonexistent English and the static, Santiago had no idea what they said, and he didn’t dare shift his head toward María Dolores to see if she understood.
Two voices came from the truck as they discussed what to do. More static and robotic voices came from the radio. The truck returned on its jagged course, this time south. Then east until nothing, no dust, no vibrations, no alerts of danger.
They waited a few extra minutes before easing off the ground. Santiago pulled the cactus spines out of his and Alegría’s hands. Only a faint glow from the sun remained. By the time they orientated themselves to continue north, that last sliver had disappeared.
“We’ve got to get to that cave,” María Dolores said. “We’re too exposed out here.”
“I can still see, and the moon should be out soon.”
Santiago led the way, careful to walk around the small, foot-level cacti and not trip over rocks. Even with the sun gone, the mountain range finally appeared to be getting closer. What he couldn’t see anymore were the two rock fingers
. But they had been to the left of the rock face that looked like it had been sliced in half, and that he could still see.
He kept up a steady pace with Alegría on his back and María Dolores behind. A couple of times she passed him a handful of peanuts and raisins and reminded him to drink some water.
Every once in a while, lights appeared on the horizon, but they vanished quickly and never headed in their direction. Beyond that, nothing disturbed the natural desert. No light pollution in the distance, just a billion more stars than Santiago had thought existed, a partial moon, and critters of the desert night. If he’d had the chance, he would have loved nothing more than to sit on a rock and enjoy the nature.
Santiago turned to María Dolores and grinned.
“¿Qué?” she asked sharply, her eyes darting around for danger.
He picked up her hand and gestured with the other at the panorama. “We’ve done it. We’re here in el otro lado.”
She let out a deep breath that she seemed to have been holding for days. Squeezing his hand, she returned his grin. “We made it.”
A large mesquite stood in front of them at the foothills. Two reflective eyes close to the ground stared at them for a second before disappearing into the darkness. Santiago skirted the mesquite to find that it guarded the entrance to a narrow slot canyon. The rocky fingers from the ridge high above weren’t visible from this angle, but his gut said this was the canyon Domínguez had mentioned.
“Hold on to us,” he told María Dolores. Her hand joined Alegría’s on his shoulder as he slipped into the rock crevice of the narrow canyon walls. The moon’s light didn’t reach the canyon floor, and only a strip of stars shone above. He walked blindly with his arms outstretched against the jagged rock walls and dragged his feet across the canyon floor to detect obstacles. His eyes adjusted a little to the darkness. Not enough to see his feet, but enough to notice a large shadow to his left.
From his pocket he withdrew Domínguez’s lighter. The glow showed an indent in the canyon wall. A few more steps revealed an empty cave.
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