Bad Step at Bluebird

It is brutal walking for even the youngest and fittest walkers. The men grumble, but Mendez knows La Migra cannot catch them if they stay in the mountains and cliffs. They cannot be seen by air, and Border Patrol agents will not hike after them. So, they keep climbing.

Mendez is younger than all but one walker and keeps them marching. The Coyotes whistle as they walk so they do not have to talk or listen to the complaints. (This is the beginning of days of walking, and the pollos begin to “lose themselves,” forgetting any of the names and locations they might have heard.) Mendez leads them from his Coyote map of “landmarks etched with transient memory” without proper names.

They are headed to Bluebird Pass, twenty miles north of El Papalote, but there is no direct route to get there; on a map, this journey looks like the marks made by a giant protractor, curving in wide arcs miles from their destination. At Bluebird Pass, Mendez hopes to find the lights of Ajo at night and get back on a familiar track. At eleven thirty, everything changes. Mendez will later blame everything on the Border Patrol, the Border Patrol will claim Mendez is “making up stories,” and the survivors are clueless, though they remember being “scattered by light.” In any case, Mendez shouts “La Migra” when he sees approaching lights, and the pollos run. Mendez later claims they were followed by whoever lit them up before the vehicle drove away. Trying to catch or scatter walkers before they are arrested is a common practice. “Illuminating a group of thirty walkers, however, and then letting them go is not the practice of anyone with authority.”

The only certainty is that at eleven thirty at Bluebird Pass, lights panicked Mendez and his pollos followed him, many dropping bags, hats, and life-saving water. Mendez says the road they need to be on is just over the hill. It is not. Mendez is irrevocably lost and does not have the skills to get his bearings again, but he simply marches ahead. Later, the signcutters who retrace his steps see that always took the lead and the men shuffled and groaned as they straggled behind him. Each painful moment is recorded in the signs as the men grow more delirious and eventually die. The signcutters can see the path of each man’s death or survival.

Mendez’s left leg is not quite as strong as his right, so he does not walk quite as straight as he thinks, which explains the arc in which he leads his walkers. The group walks through the Growler Mountains, stumbling in the absolute darkness. Mendez may be concerned but he does not admit it, always telling his pollos it is “just a few” more miles to walk. It is Sunday morning. They have walked, mostly in the dark, for forty miles. Dawn is coming, and it is bringing a heat wave with it.