Crossing the Wire by Will Hobbs Page B

I was good at it. I was able to make good money and send hundreds of dollars home to my parents, for them and my brothers and sisters. But then the police came. My aunt and my uncle were always fighting. The neighbors got tired of it.”
    â€œDid you get to keep your job?”
    â€œAre you kidding? They went to jail, and so did I. We were all illegal. If you stay out of trouble up there, they’ll leave you alone. They need the workers. But if you get into trouble, your life is like a tin can that gets kicked down the road.”
    â€œThey deported you back to Honduras?”
    â€œEventually, on an airplane, with a Migra escort just for me if you can believe it. What a view. I was flying like a bird, above the clouds sometimes. Even when you are below the clouds, you’restill so high that the cars and houses look tiny.”
    â€œI can only imagine! What did you mean, they deported you ‘eventually’?”
    â€œThey kept me in jail four months.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œReally. Two months in the juvenile detention, but then it got so crowded, I had to wait in the county jail. Why it took so long, I have no idea. That jail was a scary place, ’mano. Tejanos, Mexicans, Central Americans, blacks, Anglos…it was like five different animals dropped into a barrel.”
    â€œAnglos? I thought all the gabachos were rich. What were they doing in jail?”
    â€œYou don’t know very much about El Norte.”
    â€œWhat were the guards like?”
    â€œThey were mean. They liked to throw the lights on in the middle of the night, get you out of bed, search your cell while a vicious dog growled and snapped at you. They let the dog come within this close of biting you, and then they pull him back.”
    â€œSo, here you are heading north again.”
    â€œWhat else? You never go hungry there, once you find work. When I told my father I was going to go back to El Norte, he said, ‘If you want to go, go.’ In Honduras, on days he can find work, all he makes is a dollar and a half American, and that’s doing construction. Sometimes, when I could get away with it, I could make two dollars, stealing bananas from the company plantation and selling them in San Pedro Sula. If you’re a kid from the village,forget about a real job.”
    â€œHow much did you make in El Norte?”
    â€œSix dollars an hour, ten hours a day.”
    â€œSixty American dollars in a day? Is that possible?”
    â€œBelieve it. That’s why I’m going back.”
    â€œWhat did your mother say?”
    â€œShe said, ‘Okay, go try. God bless you.’ I found a seashell yesterday that I’m going to give her eventually. Who knows when.”
    â€œIn between trains, you traveled to the ocean?”
    â€œGuess what? Mazatlán is on the ocean.”
    â€œI didn’t know it was that close. I always wanted to see the ocean. I missed my chance!”
    It was dark, early evening, when we finally climbed out through the roof of the automobile carrier. Julio was sure we had reached Nogales. We were able to sneak through the train yards, past warehouses and abandoned boxcars with families living inside. A little girl had her hand out begging. We soon reached the lights of the city, with the border wall in sight. The traffic was all backed up.
    â€œThey’re waiting to get through the Port of Entry gates,” Julio said. “C’mon, let’s take a look around.”
    I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been with Julio. He had never been in Nogales either, but from the way he carried himself, you would never believe it.
    The air smelled of broiling meat and onions from the taco carts, and of diesel fumes. That much was like Silao, but there were many more gabachos. Fresh from the States, they were flocking tothe shops down the street. Taxis were honking at kids racing through the traffic to beg work from Mexicans returning