And no one woke Rafael.
Chapter 27
8 a.m. Friday, Oct. 29, 2020, Burns, Oregon — Ryan packed their meager belongings into the Prius, while Teresa got their son ready for the day. He was smug to see that she came out of the bathroom no less damp than he had on his days as father in charge.
The so-called breakfast in the lobby wasn’t inspiring, although there was Rice Krispies in a single-serving box that Rafael liked. And the clerk helpfully told them that there was a Starbucks in the Safeway store.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Ryan said as they left the motel lobby. Teresa laughed. She walked next to him, his arm draped around her, and Rafael in his other arm. He kissed the top of her head, and in doing so, turned where he could seek the clerk. He was on the phone talking to someone, but his eyes were on them.
Ryan put his family in the car. “I think we’ll get coffee in Bend,” he said grimly. Teresa looked through the lobby window as they drove by. The clerk had come out behind the desk to watch them leave.
“You think he reported us?” she whispered.
“I can’t think why he would, or even why he would know there might be someone looking for us,” Ryan confessed. “But it’s weird. And Bend will have lots of coffee shops.”
It was 9 a.m. when they reached Bend, and sure enough there was a Starbucks. They went through the drive through, and then Ryan pulled into a small city park so they could drink their coffees. He called Vic Riaz, put him on speaker phone, and told them about the clerk.
“It may be that I’m being paranoid,” Ryan finished.
“It is my experience that paranoid people live longer,” Vic responded. “Let me check on something, and I’ll call you back.”
“Hello, Vic,” Teresa said.
“Hi, Teresa,” he said warmly. “Have you decided to ditch that guy sitting next to you and come back to me?”
“I think I will keep this one,” she said, her tongue firmly in cheek, but both men could hear the amusement in her voice.
“I am so sad,” he said, teasing her. Then he turned business like: “I’ll call you in a few.”
Ryan browsed routes out of Bend on Google maps, and decided to take the straightest route to I-5 which would put them not far from Eugene, Oregon’s hippie enclave of liberalism. It was weird to think about where he might feel safe as he traveled. Although truth told, he’d rarely left Portland. Oregon coast. Multnomah Falls. Mount Hood to ski. But he could go anywhere. Safely.
This was what it was like for other people, people who were not white men, he thought, as he headed out. People like Bianca Parks, both Black and Latina, who carried a copy of her birth certificate everywhere. Of Cage, a Black man, who most certainly could hold his own in a fight, but avoided certain neighborhoods in Portland, certain communities altogether. Of gay friends, of women.
“What are you thinking?” Teresa asked, and he told her.
“Yes,” she agreed. “That is what white male privilege is. It’s the not having to think about it. About just assuming things will be fine. About the privilege of obliviousness.”
He nodded. “And that my experience is the default. That if others have different experiences, they must have done something wrong.”
She smiled at him, and for an hour, they talked about privilege, and what she’d learned traveling with her migrant benefactors. He told her about Vic’s comments about his clients wanting a man who had assimilated into the white world, because that represented success and power to them.
“And that makes me sad — furious,” he said.
“But they aren’t wrong,” Teresa said. “Society is wrong. The legal system is wrong. But his clients? They are just being realistic.”
They stopped for a bit so Rafael could play in a patch of snow. He giggled and stomped around, and they laughed as they watched.
Ryan sighed when they got back in the car. “So much has happened in the last few months — few weeks,” he said. “And I need to tell you about them. But I have a feeling you need to know about my grandparents, right away.”
Then he told her about being adopted at age 10 by a very wealthy older couple. That he had given them hell in high school. How he had defied them to go to Portland Community College his first year so he could continue to party with his friends.
“So, they retired. Went on a world cruise. Left me with an enormous trust fund, but only if I would transfer to a four-year-school, preferably Reed.”
“Thereby guaranteeing you went to Portland State,” Teresa concluded. “Deliberately?”
He thought about that. “Huh. I don’t know.”
“So, you are wealthy, but you didn’t live like that!”
“No, I didn’t want it to make a difference. I had the trust pay for the same things any financial aid package might, and I live off what I made at EWN,” he said. “Until this fall. I realized that to bring us together as a family was going to take money. So, you need to know. We have the financial resources we need to go to Mexico, live there, get your citizenship. There are many things to worry about, but money isn’t one of them.”
She was silent for a while, then nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Do our friends know now?”
He shook his head. “Well, maybe,” he conceded. “Emily is very observant.”
Teresa laughed. “Yes.”
That was enough for now, he thought. He’d get into the uglier stuff when he wasn’t trying to drive. It was nearing noon when they dropped out of the mountains into the McKenzie River Valley, and immediately Ryan’s phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and answered it.
“Where are you?” Vic said without any preliminaries.
“About an hour out of Eugene on the McKenzie Highway,” Ryan answered. “What’s wrong?”
“ICE has a BOLO out for your license
