The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [60]
Not again.
Where’s the fucking rain this time?
“We’ll rest,” Mendez said.
He collapsed on the ground. “A few more miles,” he said.
Come morning, it would be time to die.
11
Their Names
I will never forget the sadness in my nephew’s eyes when he looked at me, shedding tears, and I was unable to do anything except to tell him not to die.“
José de Jesú Rodriguez was mad; this was his first trip to the United States, and it was going tobe his last damned trip if he had anything to say about it.
Enrique Landeros Garcí was thirty years old when he got lost. He’d come from the coffee village of San Pedro Altepepan. He was walking for his wife, Octavia, even though she didn’t that—twenty–three years old. And he was walking for his son, Alexis. Alexis had cried,“Daddy, don’t go” but, he said, I want to change our lives. Surely, Octavia would allow him the dignity of trying just once to make things better. But Enrique didn’t have the money to pay for the trip. Don Moi was asking 1,739 pesos. Where was he supposed to get that much money? But Don Moi had a way—there was always a way. The Chespiro Network got on the phones and took up a collection: operators were standing by. Enrique nailed a loan, payable upon employment.
Octavia put up a fuss. Enrique didn’t know what to do. All he had was a new pair of cowboy boots. What’s that to a family? So, on the day he was to jump in a pickup and ride down to Don Moi’s bus, he put on his fancy boots and told Octavia he was going to market with the boys, and he’d be home that night.
Once he got to the pickup site, in Martinez de la Torre, he took off the boots and pulled an old pair of sneakers out of his bag. He entrusted his beloved boots to a friend. He asked him to take the boots to Octavia in the morning. She’d understand what he’d done. He didn’t make it to Enrique’s house for two days. By then, she had already figured it out, but she hoped for the best—maybe he was only drunk, or seeing a friend.
When she saw the boots, she started to cry. She hugged the boots as if they were Enrique himself, and they gave up their smell of leather. Then she told Alexis that Daddy was gone.
Reyno Bartolo Hernandez was thirty-seven. He was Enrique’s compa from San Pedro. Coffee farmer. Married for nineteen years to Agustina. Don Moi’s operation lent him eighteen hundred dollars. He wore green pants and matching green socks, Agustina’s gesture to make sure he looked nice for when he got to his job.
Another San Pedro paisano was Lorenzo Ortiz Hernandez. He and his wife, Juana, had five children, aged from three to twelve. Juana was thirty-four years old, and she was ready to bear more babies. The others were proud of him for making so many heirs. The kids were deeply into the ages when they needed things, things he couldn’t afford for them. If the coffee prices hadn’t dropped, they were his own small plantation staff. But no coffee money, no money at all. The other boys were signing up with Moi. He decided to try his luck.
He borrowed seventeen hundred dollars at 15 percent interest.
Reymundo Barreda Maruri was still plugging away with Reymundo Jr. Even though he was fifty-six, the grandpa of the group, he was not going to stop. As hope failed, he had the impetus of saving his boy to drive him. Reymundo Jr. was suffering, flushed, and stumbling. The father held up the son.
At the last minute, his brother Rigoberto had decided not to come along. Well, thank God for that much. Reymundo would be trying to save two lives then. And to think, the last thing he had done right before they left Sonoita was to call his daughter Minerva to tell her everything was great.
Reymundo had once come to the United States to work, but it had been nothing like this. He