The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [48]
Mendez had tried to skirt the old trails to avoid the Border Patrol till it was fairly late at night, keeping to high country for much of his walk. Once at Bluebird Pass, he would be able to vector in on the lights of Ajo and hop on Maradona’s tried-and-true walking path for the next two nights. He was firmly within the tradition, now: skirt Ajo on the west side, beat it up to the highway, and wait for the pickup at the mile marker.
Later, they would remember actually walking through Ajo. Some of them whispered that they passed through a city at night, walked among lights and abandoned buildings on the plain. Empty gas stations standing as if haunted under bright spotlights. “We walked among stores, dark houses.”
But this was impossible. This could only be their fevers talking—they never descended onto the town: they crept from crag to peak. And if they were in town, why would they not stop for water or shelter? What midnight mirage did they see? This phantasmagoric town of cold ghostly light and empty streets—where was it? One survivor said it was Phoenix. One of them thought it had no name.
11:30 P.M.
Mendez later claimed that it was all the Border Patrol’s fault. The Border Patrol said it was Mendez making up stories. The survivors still have no idea what happened. All they know is that suddenly they were scattered by light.
Mendez later claimed that the Border Patrol was lurking in the hills, waiting for them to come up to Bluebird Pass. It was an ambush, the spotlights like laser beam attacks in a space movie. The walkers stood like deer for a moment, their eyes bright red, their mouths open. They cursed. They shouted.
“La Migra!” Mendez yelled.
Perhaps it was only a Jeep of some sort, making its way up the pass, missing them entirely, but illuminating the hills with its headlights. Some agent out cutting for sign, rolling up the slope to see what was doing at Bluebird. Maybe looking to eat his midnight lunch out of the way.
Lights, nonetheless.
The men scrambled into the dark, running, they thought, for their lives. The lights, Mendez insisted, followed them, chased them into the wilds. And once they were running, whoever it was who lit them up killed the lights and drove away.
Of all the games played along the Devil’s Highway, the midnight light game of May 19 is the most mysterious. The Border Patrol’s report states: “Sat, May 19, 11:30 P.M. Group arrived at this point and observed lights that they believed to be a Border Patrol Agent at Bluebird Pass.” That’s it.
But why would Mendez panic if he only thought he saw a Border Patrol agent? He had certainly ducked and hidden from scores of headlights in his career. There was no Border Patrol agent in the world who could make Mendez try to commit suicide—and running headlong into the desert was certainly a suicidal gesture. Mendez never explained further.
Was there a Migra truck climbing into the pass for a quick look? Or were other forces on the land? Were wetback-hunters out, spotlighting illegals for fun? Scattering them before the Border Patrol could get to them? So-called civilian border patrols occasionally launched themselves into these hills, but would they let the walkers go without an entertaining chase, or a satisfying few rounds popped off from a hunting rifle?
If not civilians, then it was the Feds.
Why would the Border Patrol illuminate a large group of walkers and not follow? The Border Patrol regularly spends whole days tracking a single foamer. It is not unimaginable that an agent might be tired, bored, near the end of a shift. He might light a group up and watch them run back to Mexico. Maybe he was scared, which is unlikely—La Migra,