The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [69]
I saw them without water.
I don’t know why I survived.
Maybe it’s a miracle.
Some of them just died of desperation.
Some of them went insane.
Some of them lost their minds.
You could hear them screaming.
Some fell all alone.
I heard one guy screaming, daring the Border Patrol to come find him.
Stupid things like that.
He was desperate.
He started singing.
We were drinking urine.
We were ripping open cactus.
Some of the boys were saying you could cut the thirst with a cactus.
The majority of them died that day.
I was going to die this morning.
I have spines from these pinches cactuses all over me.
14
Helicopters
Mendez and Lauro stumbled. Lauro was sick. He kept muttering that he couldn’t go on. No, man, Mendez told him. No way—you’re not dying now. We’re there. We’re there. Can’t you see?
And they were there. In desert terms, they were right on the back porch of salvation. On high points and rises, they could actually see the Mohawk peaks. It was incredible, what they’d done. From the valley where they’d left their pollos, they had walked forty miles. It was a major accomplishment—merit badge stuff, Eagle Scout-quality marathon hiking. Considering the condition they were in when they started, it seems almost impossible that they made it so far so fast.
I can’t, Lauro kept crying.
You can.
I can’t!
You can!
Mohawk meant freeway, and freeway meant rest area, and rest area meant water and Cokes and Mars bars and rides and even the pinche Migra. Being arrested by the Migra—oh yes, that seemed like a really good deal right then.
You can make it.
But Lauro couldn’t.
He fell down.
I’m going to rest … right here … right under … this little … tree.
Mendez tried to wake him, to get him up. Mendez got down on his knees and shook him. Slapped him. Lauro only snuffled and moaned, as if he were dreaming some sweet dream.
Mendez took the money from his pockets, what money Lauro had. Then he tried to get up. Was astonished to find that he couldn’t stand. He pushed on the ground, but his legs gave out on him.
How about that?
Those damned legs.
He grabbed bushes and tugged and rose a few inches and fell over. The twigs ripped across his palms.
Ouch.
He got on his knees.
That hurts.
Okay.
All right.
All right, fine. I can do this.
The freeway’s just over there.
No problem.
He started to crawl. He went on all fours, and sometimes he went on his knees like a religious penitent. The world of sin and grace spun in flaming disks around his head. He fell. He rose. He lay. He crawled. He tried to rise. He sat down.
He thought it would be a really really good idea if he just lay down right over here under this little bush for a minute and collected his thoughts. He slumped, he fell sideways.
Just a minute.
The coma came up from the ground and covered him.
Celia? I’ll get up in just a minute.
Sleep.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 23.
Somehow, it became the next day.
Late in the night, more men had fallen, and the small commando group headed out, five of them, led by Mario González Manzano and his brothers, Efraín and Isidro. With them, young Francisco Morales Jimenez. They made the final dash for salvation.
“My brother was talking about water, water,” Mario says. “The five of us said we were going to make it. We were hoping the Border Patrol would see us.”
The five men stumbled, sunstruck, down the mountains. They were facing Barry Goldwater Range. Efraín broke away. The Border Patrol report states that he became ill and they left him behind. The brothers say he went up a mountain to see what he could see. He was too weak to come down and died up there.
Mario: “We went to the cactuses finally and broke them open to try to get water out of them. We had walked very far. We were dying. There wasn’t even a tree where we were. The heat was sitting down on us and we were dying. We were looking for the Border Patrol because we were dying. We were looking to the right and the left for La Migra because we were dying.”
West and north, the vast bombing range sprawled. In its heart, there were