The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [51]
The almost cool air hugging the hardpan, not yet ignited by the white flames of the sun, felt blue. It moved slowly with the last stalling breezes of night. Where the predators had made their kills, white down and scattered gray pinfeathers waved like seaweed in a tide. Crickets, wasps, bees. A rusty understory of insectile melody.
Before the heat dropped on their heads, the lost men were drowned in music.
The coming sun was white. The Growler Mountains collected the light and poured it on them like lava.
That heat sizzled at the edges of things, then slammed into them, instant and profound. It opened certain blossoms and closed others. The desert was full of color, though they couldn’t see it from the valley where they awoke. The mesquites had small flowers, the prickly pears showed colors in their buds. The last bats sipped their last saguaro nectar. The first hummingbirds swarmed up from Mexico and took their place. The beavertail cacti had half-moon voids chopped into them by the impervious jaws of javelinas, those stink-pigs already nestling in brush and paloverde shadow for their morning snooze.
Rattlesnakes eased from dens and unfurled in the light, soaking up the day’s warmth. Tarantulas backed timidly into their burrows. Scorpions wedged themselves in dark crevices.
For some reason, Mendez decided to break with the pattern. Perhaps he really thought they were only a few miles away from their target. If Maradona had been with them, he’d have known the trails better. But Mendez made his third major error that morning. First, he’d gotten started too early, and they’d been precooked by extra hours in the sun. Then, he’d taken the wrong turn at Bluebird. And now, he started walking in the light. As the men followed him again into the Growlers, they had already begun to die.
As Melchior Díaz once demonstrated, not only Mexicans die in this desert.
Campers dot the sand at Buttercup Valley in the Imperial Dunes of California. It’s just across the river from Yuma, yet part of Yuma sector’s patrol area, perhaps one hundred miles from the spot where the twenty-six walkers began their journey. Happy off-roaders sputter and zoom all through the back country. Dirt bikes, ATVs, and dune buggies swarm these dunes. The signcutters leave them in peace, sitting nearby and watching the sky for buzzards, a sure sign that illegals have perished. On that day in May, there were go-carts kicking up rooster tails and VW buggies cutting doughnuts in the sand. White folks in RVs cooked breakfast and watched the Today show on their little TV sets.
Jump-cut to late June 2002.
Lisa Scala and Martin Myer went camping at Buttercup. They took their dune buggy along for some backcountry fun. Lisa Scala was twenty-nine years old—a good-looking woman with blond bangs and a warm smile. Martin Myer, forty-two, was recently laid off from the Goodrich Corporation. They probably just wanted to forget their worries for a weekend.
They headed into the desert, no doubt sure that they’d be back in camp in time for a cold one and a grilled hot dog. They hit the dunes and bounced into the land on a beautiful hot day. Neither had taken the recommended two gallons each of drinking water. They didn’t need it—they could drive back to the camp in a few minutes. No doubt a cooler full of melting ice sat in the shade under the picnic table. Brewskis, diet sodas. Then a pin jostled loose from the steering arm, and the steering wheel broke off the column. They were suddenly stranded.
Lisa was found a few days later, still sitting in the dune buggy. She died waiting for somebody to come save her. She apparently never got out of her seat.
Martin had tried to walk out. No doubt he told Lisa to wait right there and he’d be back in a matter of hours. A kiss goodbye. A Don’t worry. Probably even