The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [65]
Mendez told them to wait, and he’d be back with water and help. Those with watches checked them.
“I’ll be here in five hours,” he told them. “Stay here or I won’t be able to find you.”
“Five hours, right.”
“He’ll be back in five hours.”
“Five hours,” Mendez said. “No longer.”
Everyone agreed—five hours—they could make it that long.
Some say Mendez and Lauro had a little water; some say they did not.
The men looked for what shade they could find.
Mendez and Lauro marched north.
“We waited.”
—Nahum Landa Ortiz
The day tormented them. Thirst. Pain. Men crawled under creosotes, under the scant shade of scraggly mesquites. It was a dull repetition of the entire walk. As rote as factory work. Their hours clanged by like machines. They were in the dirt like animals.
Six o’clock in the morning took ten hours to become seven o’clock.
A week later, it was eight o’clock.
The temperature screamed into the nineties before nine o’clock.
They waited. They couldn’t even talk. They panted like dogs, groaned. Men put their hands to their chests, almost delicately, as if checking their own pulses. But they were barely awake. They were half in dreams and half in the day, and the day itself was a bad dream. Dry wings swished in the air around them. Voices, coughing. Far above, the icy silver chips of airplanes cut the blue. Out of reach.
Ten o’clock.
“Just a little longer.”
Their arms were too heavy to lift. They couldn’t get their watches up to their eyes. The heat was heavy. The sunlight weighed a thousand pounds.
Their mouths were as dry as the soles of their feet: their tongues were hard and dense and did not want to bend. They sucked and sucked at the insides of their mouths, but they couldn’t raise any spit.
Eleven o’clock.
Reymundo Jr. was sick—his body was cooking from within. His father tried to shade him with his body.
“Does anybody have any water? I need water for my boy.”
Mendez didn’t appear.
Noon: no shadows.
“Where are the pinches Coyotes?”
“Water!”
The temperature was ninety-five degrees in the shade.
Mendez didn’t appear.
One o’clock.
Coughing.
Some of them were fainting, melting on the burning gravel.
“I want to go home.”
Mendez didn’t appear.
A voice cried out: “I don’t want to die!”
Two o’clock.
Mendez didn’t appear.
“How long are we going to wait?”
It was obvious to some of them that Mendez was never coming back. A few of the boys didn’t want to hear it—if Mendez didn’t come back, then surely they were doomed. It might have been Nahum who told them if they didn’t walk then they were all guaranteed to die. Right there. It was their choice.
Julian Malaga turned to Rafael Temich, his brother-in-law.
“Rafael,” he said. “Look, this place is completely desolate. Where are we supposed to walk? We don’t know where we’re going. Let’s wait for the guides to come back.”
Rafael Temich says, “But of course, they didn’t come back.”
They agreed to stick together and walk north. All of them. It had to be north. Mendez had gone north, the bastard, and he was saving himself. They’d follow Mendez.
Once more, the men stood, and they walked.
José de Jesús Rodriguez: “They never came back. Those fuckers left us hanging in that incredible heat.”
Now the illegals were cutting for sign.
They walked. They walked. There was no other story: they walked.
They said cholla cactus looked like trees covered in spike balls.
The group started to break apart as the demons and angels started to sing. They could smell their own stench. It was embarrassing. It was frightening.
Nahum Landa Ortiz: “We kept walking. We were walking all day in that fucking desert, going under trees. That’s when they started dying. When we got to the trees.”
Men stumbled away toward illusions in the brutal light. Men thought they were home, walking into their front doors, hugging their wives, making love. Still, they walked. Men were swimming. Men were killing Mendez. Men were on the beach, collecting shells and watching their children splash. Their women stood naked before them,