another line of work.'
Five minutes later, Payne was driving south on the 101. His seething anger had turned inward. If self-loathing were an Olympic sport, he'd give himself the gold medal. Yep, he'd changed his life all right. He'd plunged straight to the bottom.
Traffic was light by L.A. standards. In twenty-five minutes, he'd exited the freeway at Broadway, crossed Cesar Chavez Avenue, and hung a right on Ord, where he slowed to avoid a homeless man pushing a supermarket cart filled, incongruously, with empty soda bottles and a flat-screen TV.
By the time Payne reached Main and Alameda, he was certain the day could not get any worse. But as usual, he was completely mistaken.
FIFTEEN
It was morning. An orange glow draped the distant peaks like a silk scarf on a woman's shoulders. Blood trickled down Marisol's leg. Barely slowing, she pinched the spot and pried out the thorn of a prickly pear. The path to the U.S.A., it seemed, was indeed a trail of thorns. For hours, she had climbed canyons and descended into ravines. She was in los Estados Unidos, but it still looked and felt like Mejico.
Six of them-five women and the reptile who called himself 'El Tigre'-had spent the night scrambling up slopes, hand over hand, then sliding painfully down rocky paths on the seat of their pants. The trail was overgrown with spiny cactus and hanging vines. The air smelled of sage one moment and skunk the next. A coyote, the four- legged variety, whooped in the distance, and another answered with a series of mournful wails.
Marisol's legs ached, and a blister had formed on her right heel. She heard one of the campesinas sobbing. Farther back, the two Guatemalan women had run out of water. An hour earlier, Marisol let them sip from a gallon jug she carried. But how long must the water last? Hours or days?
She recited prayers to keep from losing hope. Remembered the words from Exodus. 'I have been a stranger in a strange land.' She thought of her father, the nonbeliever, who would laugh at anyone who expected God to provide manna from heaven or water from a rock.
That boulder, the one shaped like a camel. Didn't we pass it before?
They should have reached the trailhead by now. The American driver should have picked them up and taken them to the stash house in Ocotillo. Did El Tigre have any idea where they were? Huffing and puffing uphill, he carried his big belly like a wheelbarrow filled with bricks. Downhill, he stumbled and tripped, setting off little avalanches of rocks.
Moving gingerly along a rocky ledge, high above a dry wash, Marisol tried to concentrate on every step. But her mind was elsewhere.
Where is Agustino? Where is my boy?
Able to contain herself no longer, she shouted at El Tigre, 'We are lost!'
'Shut up, woman!' He slashed a hand toward the pair falling behind.'?Chucas! Hurry up! Keep together. We are almost there.'
'You don't know where we are,' Marisol countered. 'You have put everyone in danger.'
El Tigre scowled. 'Do you know what they call a woman crossing the border by herself? La chingorda. The fucked one!' He reached down and grabbed his groin, shaking his sack the way a gambler might jiggle a pair of dice. 'Do you know what I have for you here, princess?'
'A vile disease?'
In the fiery glow of the rising sun, his face flared with anger. If ever a man looked like the devil incarnate, Marisol thought, it was this total waste of human protoplasm.
'You are not special, chica. To me, you are no better than those Guatemalan cows shitting in the bushes.'
He continued along the ledge, muttering curses.
What a fool, Marisol thought.
But what of me? How could I have placed our lives in the hands of such a man?
Perhaps it would be better if the Border Patrol captured her. She would be sent back. Tino was still in Mexico.
Or was he?
She could not know for certain. All she knew was that she must survive. It is what a mother does for her child.
She thought of her own parents, remembering the hard times in the village near Caborca when her father no longer wore the crisp jumpsuit of the Ford Motor Company. When she was twelve-Tino's age now- Marisol would run to her father's job site the moment school was over. She carried buckets of nails, climbed scaffolds, learned to hammer straight and paint without making a mess.
There came a time that Edgardo Perez could no longer find work. Each day, he brought a book to a small cantina. There he consumed ample quantities of Octavio Paz's writing and Tijuana Morena's beer. Her father loved debating politics with his neighbors who- uncharitably-called him a comunista.
'Make up your minds,' Edgardo Perez told them. ' Aristocracia or comunista? I cannot be both!'
With money as scarce as desert rain, Marisol's mother took a job in a small fireworks factory, rolling sheets of cardboard into tubes, packing the casings with gunpowder, inserting fuses. Day after day, for eight years, until a horrific fire and explosion killed her. There was not enough left of her to bury. Grief settled over Marisol like a shroud of ashes. Despair filled her, heavy as oil in a drum.
At first, Edgardo blamed the government for his wife's death. Hadn't inspectors taken bribes and ignored safety violations? Next, he blamed Catholicism- 'world's greatest superstition'-for hadn't his wife gone to Mass almost every day for forty years? But most of all, he blamed himself. If he had not lost the job in the Ford plant, his wife never would have needed to work. She would be home now, tending her flowers.
Edgardo halted his daily reading but continued his hourly drinking. Six months after his wife's funeral, he stumbled into the path of a car on a darkened street, and Marisol was alone. Shortly after that, she met Gustavo, who would become the father of her son. But he left town as quickly as a wind through the canyon.
Men, she thought. So unreliable.
El hombre promete, promete, y promete.?Hasta que te la mete!
The man promises, promises, and promises. Until he gets it in!
Now Marisol watched the morning sun slowly turn the rocks into the color of melted butter. Surely, they should have reached the trailhead by now. They were lost. Would the driver wait for them at the trailhead? Would he even show up?
Suddenly, a throttling noise overhead.
Helicopter! Shining silver, a dagger in the sunlight. Border Patrol!
She dived off the path into a patch of buffalo grass, snakes be damned. The others scattered. The whopettawhopetta grew louder.
She abandoned any thought of surrender. She would run. As long as she was free, she could look for Tino.
And she swore on the spirits of her mother and father that she would find him.
SIXTEEN
Payne had big news for Sharon. He just didn't know how to tell her. Surreptitiously, he watched her attack a double-dipped roast beef sandwich, pausing only to gobble her fries. He always admired his ex-wife for eating like a cop and looking like a volleyball player.
And she was both.
Sharon had a business degree from U.C.L.A., where she'd also played varsity volleyball. After college, she competed in triathlons and learned kickboxing. Payne long suspected she could whip his ass.
