Across the Wire by Luis Urrea Page B

finally came, and the drive to Jesusita’s house became more easy as the hills dried out. Her husband had not been able to find work, she said, but they had covered the biggest gaps in the walls, and they had settled into the house with a certain amount of comfort. Jesusita’s husband was seldom there. “He’s looking for a place with horses,” she’d say.
    He was the topic of gossip. Some people said he was a horse thief. This wasn’t any big deal, especially in the dump. A boy who lived in the pig village had a pony that he’d stolen from one of the small ranches on the outskirts of Tijuana. He used the pony to rustle cattle from the same ranches. He fed his two brothers this way—their parents had disappeared—and he was quite proud of his outlaw status. He was thirteen when he started.
    Something else about Jesusita’s husband caused them all to talk. Crime wasn’t it—crime would have made him something of a celebrity. Perhaps it was that stoic silence of his. His self-possessionseemed arrogant, perhaps, and Mexicans hate an arrogant man.
    They said he’d been involved in a major crime down south and had turned evidence against his accomplices. The rumors said he’d fled north with his family to escape reprisals—both from the criminals and the cops. Now that he was known to the police in the region, he’d be hounded continually, forced to set people up for arrest or worse … even innocent people.
    Jesusita, on the other hand, seemed genuinely popular. She took part in the dump’s church services, attended every event and Bible study. (They had their own church, and their own itinerant preacher.) She and Doña Araceli enjoyed a cordial relationship, and every time we came over the hill into the dump, the two of them barreled into me and lifted me off the ground. It became a regular practice for us to give her a ride down the canyon at the end of the day. The little boys would charge out from the house and play tag with me. One of them delighted in being captured and held upside down. They had gotten some pigs, and I was always ready to heap lavish praise on such fine hogs.
    But one day, Jesusita told me she had to leave the house. They’d been fixing it up, planting some corn and expanding the little pigpen in the back. She insisted someone was making threats. We didn’t believe her.
    The next week, she directed us to the home of an old woman in the valley across from her house. Jesusita told me the woman owned the house and had threatened to harm her family if they didn’t leave. Von and I went to the woman’s house and talked to her. There was no problem, she insisted. They could stay. I was confused. Was Jesusita lying?
    As we left, Jesusita held me hard and cried. “I’m afraid,” she said. I would never see her again.
    From the condition and location of the corpses, police pieced together this scenario: Jesusita and her husband were led up a canyon several miles from the dump (or taken by car to an abandoned stretch of road—I couldn’t get clear details). At least two men accompanied them, and a small boy, possibly Jesusita’s son—the same one who loved to be chased around the yard. The boy escaped. According to the testimony of the children, the men had appeared at the door and had seemed friendly. They told the family that there was a great deal of free lumber at a certain site. They said they knew of the family’s troubles, and they wanted to offer their help. Jesusita and her husband went with them. They took the boy for extra help, thinking there would be a heavy load to carry.
    Jesusita’s husband was held by the arms, and a sawed-off shotgun was notched under his nose and fired. It blew his head to pieces, leaving only the back of his skull, with the ears attached.
    This must have happened very quickly. Apparently, the shooter had his shotgun under a coat.
    Jesusita and the boy ran. The child hid himself. The gunmen went after her. She was not fast—her legs were short, too