Crossing the Wire: Chapters 8–12

Loping along in the shadow of one of the towering, enclosed automobile carriers, the boy sized it up as if picking out a horse.

With all the racket and motion, my stomach churned and my head swam.

Julio was pretty sure that the carrier wouldn’t be searched until the final inspection before the crossing of the border, when every nook and cranny of these vehicles would be searched for people and drugs.

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.

Every window was barred with heavy wrought iron.

Narrow lanes led up the gullies and into a neighborhood on the hillside where dogs barked and the headlights of cars fell on kids kicking balls in a rain of dust.

Some of the houses were made of concrete blocks or adobe bricks, and looked like my family home.

There was garbage strewn around, some spray cans, the smell of urine, but no one was there.

His face was flushed and he smelled of liquor.

“I'll be around,” he said, and shambled away.

The protected places under the colonnades were already marked off by families and were filled with their belongings, with kids keeping guard.

Julio popped the stiletto blade and carved some hunks off the cheese.

We got to the guardrail above the raging arroyo.

Dozens of cholos went back into the tunnel to reclaim what was left of their empire.

In the moonlight, his swollen face was a terrible thing to see—broken nose, jaw askew, stitches above his right eye.

“It is,” he said with disdain.

His wounds and his pain and his sleepy eye unnerved me.

“Going north to join your father?” my guide said gruffly, as he reached for a tortilla and broke off some cheese, then grabbed a pepper.

This man would hate it if I groveled.

"If it wasn't the Border Patrol, who beat you up so bad?”
"Vigilantes. I had always heard about mojados crossing east of Agua Prieta, on the flats. You saw that stretch from the bus. It looks easy. Hundreds do it every night. I got past the strip of government land, where the Border Patrol are so thick, but then I got caught crossing the private ranches. Lots of coyotes lead their mojados through there. Some groups get caught, some don't.”
"By vigilantes?”