The older sister is still babbling, something about every house in California having a swimming pool, when El Leon hisses, “?Callense la boca!”
He cocks his head toward the hill. I hear something, too.
A clopping.
Growing louder. Horses!
A gunshot echoes off the hillside.
“ Vigilantes!” El Leon yells.
My stomach tightens. Our village priest warned me about the vigilantes. Not policemen. Or National Guard. Or Border Patrol. Private citizens, gabachos, calling themselves the Patriot Patrol. Maybe protecting their country or maybe just taking target practice with their friends. Maybe one day shooting Mexicans instead of road signs and cactus.
“ Run!” El Leon screams.
But where? On one side of the path, a steep upward slope. On the other, a creviced, dry wash.
The two campesinos leap into the wash and take off, the spines of prickly pear tearing at their pant legs. El Leon leads the others back toward the border. But I cannot follow them.?Mi papi esta en los Estados Unidos!
I scramble up the steep slope, grabbing vines, pulling myself hand-over-hand. The horses are so close now I can hear their hooves kicking up rocks on the path. “Yippee ti-yi-yo, greasers!” A gabacho’s voice. Gruff and mean.
Two men on horseback in chaps, boots, and cowboy hats. One man holds a large revolver over his head and fires into the air.
“ Git on back to Meh-ee-co! Look at ‘em run, Calvin.”
Calvin, a big man with a belly flopping over his jeans, coughs up a laugh. “Whoa, what do we got here, Woody? Looks like a pinata on Michelins.”
I see her then, too. The pregnant Honduran girl in her tire-tread huarches, trying to hide in the shadow of the hill.
” Someone aims to have herself an anchor baby,” Calvin says.
I know what the man means. Anyone born on this side of the border is automatically an American citizen. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Mexico, Guatemala, or Mars. If el Diablo himself fathered a child in Los Angeles, the unholy offspring would be an American.
“ Welfare and food stamps and diapers all on the taxpayer’s dime.” Woody spits out the words.
Gripping a vine at its root, I keep still. Afraid to dislodge a stone. Afraid the gabachos will see me. And ashamed of my fear.
On the path below me, the girl tries to run back toward the border, but the best she can do is a duck waddles. The two men cackle and whoop. Calvin grabs a lariat from his saddle. “Where you goin’ chica? The amnesty bus already left the station.”
He twirls the lariat and tosses it over the girl’s head, where it settles on her chest. He pulls it tight, nearly yanking her off her feet.
“ No!” she screams, clawing at the rope. “?Mi bebe!”
“ If there really is a kid…” Calvin hops off his horse. “Let’s have a look, chica.”
He struts toward her, bowlegged, his belly jiggling over his wide belt, which is studded with silver buttons.
I want to fly down the mountain and take the gun away. If they give me any trouble, I will shoot one in the kneecap and the other in his big, fat belly. Isn’t that what a valiente — a courageous man — would do? Take any risk, fight any foe, protect the weak, punish the wicked. But I am a boy. And they are grown men with guns.
“ You with that coyote calls himself ‘El Leon?’” Calvin demands
The girl’s head bobs up and down.
“ El Leon’s a narcotraficante. You carrying his cocaina instead of a kid? You a mule?”
“ No! Mi bebe!”
“ C’mon. He always uses kids and women to carry his drugs.”
“ Not me.?Te lo juro por Dios!”
Calvin slips the lariat off the girl, then yanks up her blouse.
Even from this distance, I can see her bulging stomach, creamy white in the moonlight.
“ She ain’t lying,” he says to Woody, patting the girl’s belly. “Maybe we should deliver the baby right now. Save the county some money.”
The girl screams.
“ You got a knife, Woody?”
“ You know I do. Bowie knife.”
I must do something, but what? My arms feel like they’re dipped in boiling water. I try to get a better grip on the vine, but it tears from the dry earth. I dig my sneakers into the slope.
Calvin says, “Who’s gonna operate?”
“ You do it, Woody. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”
The girl chants in Spanish. Asks God to take her own life but save her baby.
I do not expect God to answer her prayers. He did not answer mine when my mother was sick. It is up to me.
Can a valiente be afraid?
I tell myself yes. If he acts with courage, despite the fear.
I grip the vine with my left hand, pick up a rock with my right. Round and jagged, the size of a baseball. I throw the rock at Woody, the gabacho still on his horse. It sails past the man’s head, clunks into the dry wash.
“ What the hell!” Woody turns in the saddle, faces the slope, revolver in hand.
“ Up here, pendejos!” I yell.
“ It’s a kid,” Calvin says, pointing. “Right there, Woody.”
“ C’mon down here, you little jumping bean,” Woody orders.
“ Come and get me, culero! ” I throw another rock, adjusting for the downward arc. Woody never sees it coming out of the darkness, and it plunks his shoulder. He yelps and his horse does a little dance under him. He turns the revolver toward the slope and fires. A bullet pings off a boulder. Not even close. I think maybe he is not such a good shot.
“ I work for El Leon!” I yell, waving my backpack in the air. As if I’m carrying cocaine and not just a pair of jeans, three t-shirts, and a first baseman’s mitt.
“ Little greaser’s the mule!” Calvin sounds as if he’s just made a great discovery. Now, I think maybe the men are not too smart, either.
“ I may be a mule, but you’re nothing but chicken-hearted bandidos!”
I start up the slope again, clawing at rocks to make my way.
“ Stop, you little punk!”
I keep going, hoping they will try to follow.
Another gunshot ricochets off a boulder far over my head.
“ C’mon down here, you little peckerwood!” Woody shouts. “Give us the coke and we’ll let you go.”
I reach the top of the slope and look down toward the vigilantes. “So long, pendejos!”
“ Go around that way, Cal,” Woody orders, tugging the reins and pointing into the darkness. “We’ll meet up on the far side.”
The vigilantes turn their horses and take off in opposite directions. They will try to cut me off on the other side of the hill. And they may succeed. But at least, they have left the girl alone. I glance one last time down the slope. The girl waves and says something to me I cannot hear, but in my head, I think she is chanting a blessing for me. I wave back and scramble on hands and knees over the top of the hill.
Minutes later, I am stumbling in the dark, tripping over roots and trying to avoid prickly pear with spines as long and sharp as porcupine quills. The slope becomes too steep, and I slide part way down on my butt, ripping my pants, and scraping my hands. Near the bottom, I stop and listen for the sound of horses or the shouts of angry men.
But what I hear is a wail. A cry of pain.
“ Broke my damn ankle, Woody. Can’t put an ounce of weight on it.”
“ Hang in there Cal.”
I peek around a stand of organ pipe cactus. Two horses, but only one man. Woody is bent over the edge of a cliff, his hands yanking at his lariat, which is stretched taut. “Damn rope’s fouled in the rocks.”
“ Git it loose, Woody. Hurry! Jesus, ankle’s swole up and hurts like hell.”
Calvin’s voice, raw with pain, coming from over the side. The vigilantes must have stopped here and gotten off the horses. The big man never saw the cliff. Now he was over the side.
It is more than I could have hoped for. A perfect distraction. I can work my way around them in the darkness. I can get away.