Crossing the Wire: Chapters 13–20

I was taken aback.

Miguel was feeling so good, he sang a ballad about a gunfighter who raided across the border with Pancho Villa.

“It is, if you’re willing to work hard. In the States, it’s possible to start from the ground and reach the top of the tree. In Mexico, if you are born poor, there are no branches within reach, and the trunk is coated with lard.”

“Those vultures are Mexicans," Miguel said. “Migratory workers, indocumentados. Yet no one throws them in the zoo for lack of documents. Well, I'm afraid it's time for us to get going. Even the best horse needs to be spurred. Did your father used to say that one?"

“Those vultures are Mexicans," Miguel said. “Migratory workers, indocumentados. Yet no one throws them in the zoo for lack of documents. Well, I'm afraid it's time for us to get going. Even the best horse needs to be spurred. Did your father used to say that one?"

“There are hundreds. You could cross at Naco, and try to find the Americans in Bisbee who hide people in their homes and sometimes even drive them to Tucson or Phoenix. You could cross into the Huachuca Mountains, the Patagonias, or the Pajaritos. You could try Santa Cruz Valley, the Altar Valley, the Indian reservation, the Organ Pipe cactus park, the Cabeza Prieta—”

I ran into a thicket of catclaw mesquite.

Dawn on the high Chiricahuas made them look like a fortress of cliffs and pinnacles.

By the time I was done, the wind was shrieking through the snags and the crags, and the temperature was dropping fast.

It snowed all night as I stoked the fire to keep from freezing.

All the while, I had to keep ranging farther to find dead branches for the fire.

I whipped around quickly, and there it was, no more than twenty feet away—a huge tawny cat.

The patrolman frisked me.

Outside the parish hall, we fell on each other like we were dying in the desert and had just discovered water.

As I finished and was licking my fingers, two cholos approached, flashing some sort of signs. They sported white muscle shirts, baggy pants, flashy sneakers.

“It’s how I lost my backpack,” Rico replied sheepishly.

One peak in the middle, with square, tapering sides like a monument, stood much higher than all the rest.

The Baboquivari Mountains rose on the border and ran north. Their crest was the eastern boundary of the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation.

“Sitting here in limbo," Rico replied with a shrug.

“Aaah...” the gangster said; breathing out a long plume of smoke.