Water
gurgled and hissed as the river rose, and the front wheels of the car were already several inches under water. When Adan moved too slow, the gringo picked him up bodily and tossed the young boy into the trunk. As the trunk began to close, Adan panicked and slid out as the lid closed down, catching his pinky finger by the tip and pinning him to the car.
Everything happened fast after that, and one of the Mexican smugglers jumped behind the wheel, gunning the car into the water, trying to get across as the filthy, debris-filled flood swept down the river. The water’s front edge seemed so filled with tiny, floating bits of wet debris that it resembled a monstrous, undulating black eel reaching from bank to bank.
Adan jerked and struggled to pull his finger loose from the trunk, but it wasn’t until the water swept the Ford into the current and it banged hard against several boulders that he felt his trapped finger rip apart at the joint. Pain so sharp and severe, he opened his mouth in a silent scream, but his panic ran fast, and the adrenaline numbed the finger enough that he flopped through the water and clambered up the far bank in time to watch the car float around the bend of the river amid a roar and hiss of water and trees, of dead cattle and fence posts with the wire still attached wrapped around one of them. He watched in fright as thick brush piles tumbled downstream in an alien river the color and thickness of chocolate milk. A last muffled scream escaped from the car as it floated and bounced downriver.
He trailed a dripping red line from his stump that he noticed when lightning flashed. Finding a location on the bank, he sat and gave attention to the throbbing wound producing a pain that felt larger than his hand. He wiped his eyes and whimpered when he first touched the mangled stub, but there was no one to help him, and he knew it.
Knowing the gringo couldn’t see him in the dark, Adan moved up the bank, freezing when lightning flashed. At the top, several clumps of prickly pear cactus grew by the edge of a small ravine, and he used a sharp-edged rock to cut one flat, green pad from the plant and scrape off the needles and waxy skin, leaving the slick, moist inside glistening every time the sky lit the desert like a strobe.
Scraping the inside into a mushy, tablespoon-sized mound, he put the injured finger’s stump into it and felt an immediate coolness and lessening of pain, enough that his eyes stopped watering. He left it there while he thought about what to do. His shirt was still wet and had several torn parts along the lower edges, so Adan ripped one of them off, giving him a remnant almost a foot long. He used the cactus pulp as a poultice and wrapped the cloth around it, leaving extra folds over the tip for padding. It helped.
He wandered in the dark and wetness until a half-collapsed goat shed showed above the short guajillo and creosote bushes. Adan crawled under it, almost collapsing from exhaustion and shivering from the cold and damp. The space, maybe fifteen feet by ten feet, was dry under the low tin roof. It smelled strongly of goats and sheep, and the ground and old hay on it were covered with animal droppings. Adan went to the driest area under the one still intact roof corner and curled up in a ball, until he faded into unconsciousness despite the storm and wind-driven rain peppering the rusted aluminum roof like a small machine gun. Even when the rain turned to pellets of sleet and rang the roof like a metal drum, he didn’t stir, his injured hand cradled to his stomach for protection. Staying in the shed for three days became necessary because of the fever and chills that overtook him. He drank water from a small watering trough beside the shelter, but had no hunger. At the end of the second day, at an hour before dawn, his fever broke in a light sweat that covered his face and body under his clothes. At sundown of the third day, he left the shelter and hunted for something to eat. Grasshoppers were easy to catch, and he made a meager meal of them, tossing the insects into an old, rusted can and placing it on the fire he built from several dead mesquites. The coals made a hot fire, and the insects died fast and crisped to something like overcooked potato chips, but they did not taste bad.
Scratchy yes, but not a bad flavor.
That day he walked to the edge of Terlingua but didn’t show himself. Adan remained hidden until dark. He saw several trash cans around, and made for them when it was so late, people stopped moving on the streets. A few of the cans had leftover food in them, some half-eaten meals on paper plates, but not a lot of it. He found a discarded coca cola bottle and filled it from a water faucet beside a building, and took it back to his hiding place outside of town.
He didn’t go far over the next several days, but remained in his place near the town. Luckily it didn’t rain again so he remained dry, and when he found the serape, he could keep warm. Several Border patrol vehicles passed on the roads, but he wasn’t spotted, and once a pickup truck with a large star like a badge on the doors stopped and checked the draw he was in, but didn’t come far enough down it to find him.
His finger felt better after that, still achingly tender but not like it was infected. Adan decided it was time to hunt for his father. He began by picking a direction and walking that way until midafternoon. He didn’t want to walk back after dark, at least not then, with no moonlight. When he didn’t see the big white house, he came back to his place and either ate what he’d saved from the day before, or he went into the trash again. Every day he picked a slightly different direction and went out again. For months.
He saw many houses, most of which were small and nondescript, with others nothing more than mobile homes on blocks, and a number of those in poor condition. But there were a few nice ones, and among them were two very large and grand ones, but none of them were white. One adobe was huge, with tan walls and the tips of peach trees peeking above the bordering wall. He looked at it from a low hill a quarter mile distant, and saw the place was busy with people and a few animals. Livestock was in the fenced pasture, mostly cattle, but a few horses as well.
Adan felt frustrated, but continued going out every day, walking mile after mile, searching for the fabled white mansion of his father, only to return tired, dusty, thirsty, and hungry. Most days he had food, but not every day. Water, he had because of the coke bottle and town faucet.
When he walked in another direction one day and chanced upon the golf course at Lajitas, his luck changed a bit. A man gave him money to buy golf tees in the shop for him, and when he brought them back to the golfer, the man gave him five dollars as a tip. After that, he went to the course several days a week, sometimes getting to make a little money, sometimes getting only hard stares from some of the people there.
Always, always he continued to hunt for the father he never met, this Vincent, the man who his mother said was kind and good and would take care of him and all his needs. Adan began to think she told him lies about this man because of her illness and because she didn’t want him to worry. He couldn’t find any mention of Vincent Hart except for the single time he overheard the name Hart, said by a man at the golf course when he added, “That damn Mike Hart is worthless.”
The Hispanic man beside the golfer said, “All he does is drink and chase women. Mike would screw a wood pile if he thought there was a snake in it, and he lives to spend his daddy’s money. Never had a job in his life. No valé nada.”
“When his brother was around, Mike was better.”
Was it his father they mentioned? Adan sat straighter.
When they noticed Adan listening to their conversation, they stopped talking and drove to the next hole in their white golf cart. Another young Hispanic boy about Adan’s age sat near the putting green watching all this.
He said, “What you want to know about that rich guy for?”
Adan looked at him, “Who are you, that you know so much?”
The boy chuckled, “The one whose dad worked for the Harts once, that’s who. Now, what you want to know?”
“What’s your name? Let’s start with that.”
At that moment, a Border Patrol sedan drove down the highway and Adan moved so he couldn’t be seen by the vehicle’s occupants. When he looked for the other boy, he had disappeared. When the sedan cont
inued until it was out of sight, the boy stepped from behind an oleander.
He said, “My name’s Dario, what’s yours?”
“Adan. I saw you hide when the Patrulla drove by.”
“Just like you, except you were smoother. Been doing that long?”
“Long enough.”