Beneath jutting rocks on the hillside ahead of him, patches of new-growth green showed evidence of recent rain. The land had been sere, drought-parched, when he’d left, with dying growth tangling the shallow culvert that sloped away from the unpaved road.
It could rain again. Manuel Hernández shifted his backpack from one shoulder to the other as he peered at the gray masses veiling the horizon. He remembered the rain in California the two days he’d spent trying to follow trails through the mountains—hungry, cold. Blades of the fear he’d felt then darted through him and he paused, panting, for the road was steep and rutted where the rain had washed looser soil away.
Fear, not panic: for he was Oaxacan, from the campo. He knew only how to go forward and not question fate. He hadn’t wanted to leave the pueblo but Azul, his wife Azul, had struck him, spit at him. We have no food! We have no money! I cannot live this way! So as many others had done, he left the Sierras del Sur to head for the border, find work in the United States.
Above him, ominously black against the leaden sky, two vultures soared in interlocking circles, going nowhere, but always searching. Vulture life—who’d said that? One of many indocumentados he’d worked with, like him, earning what they could to send money home: salvaging junked cars, assembling furniture, scrubbing convalescent home floors, picking olives. Finally, he’d latched onto a permanent job at the lumber mill. That was where he’d met Alejandra.
Again, he stopped. Only one vulture was circling now, the other apparently out of sight beyond the crest. A voice somewhere inside him asked, what about Ale? He’d intended to return to her, at least contact her, but.
He pressed his hands against his thighs and closed his eyes as he had done countless times since catching that last glimpse of her, herded with dozens of others out of the mill into the stacking yard, migra in bulky uniforms labeled “ICE,” the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, shoving them this way and that. She’d tripped and fallen when the two of them had run between stacks of lumber, trying to escape after hearing the shouts from inside the mill.
Raid! The migra!
He’d rushed to help her just as three officers lurched past the stacks.
“Let her go!”
That he remembered, clearly, shouting in English. One of the men had grabbed Alejandra; another yelled words he hadn’t understood.
“I only shoved him. I didn’t hit him!” Manuel protested. But was that true? He wasn’t sure. The migra’s head had slammed against the stack of two by fours, and he’d fallen. Manuel remembered seeing blood.
“Instead of saving Ale I ran,” he’d told Nick.
“You couldn’t have saved her; you did the right thing,” Nick had replied. Nick, whom Manuel had learned to consider his friend. Manuel had gone back, briefly, circling through the woods to a point from which he could view the yard. Whether the migra were loading everybody in trucks or just those with counterfeit work permits, he couldn’t tell, but Ale was among them, sullen and defiant. He’d planned to slip into town after the trucks had left to check on Jazmín, Ale’s child, but he’d heard the voices of men approaching. Cautiously, he’d slipped away, climbing through brush and logging debris, up toward the ridge.
He’d never gone back, never seen Ale again. Hitching his jeans higher above his wide hips, he resumed walking. Someone had braced a treadless tire against two rocks as a warning that a portion of the road behind them had washed away, and cars coming downhill would have to thread their way along the half that remained intact.
