The helicopter lifts up from the ground, rotates slightly in place, and disappears with a roar. Sara and the park ranger shield their eyes from the dust. When the helicopter is in the distance, they get into the truck. The ranger makes a U-turn and the vehicle moves slowly away. Emiliano crawls out from under the overhang and stands so that he can follow the truck until it’s out of sight.
“Good-bye, Sara,” he whispers.
Emiliano climbs down the hill and walks to the rock where Sara placed the object from her pocket. He kneels down and picks it up. It’s a map of Big Bend National Park, which she must have found in the park ranger’s truck. He checks both sides, and at the bottom, he sees Sara’s scribble.
Ranger Sandy Morgan. Going to sheriff in Alpine, Texas. Then Border Patrol for asylum. Be good.
He has been holding back tears since the first time Sara walked out of the gully, but now he lets them flow. Who is there to see or hear him? A buzzard circles above him. It smelled Lester’s blood and came hoping for a meal. It is so quiet out here. The ground is warm.
Since when did he become such a crybaby? Tears are valuable liquid he will need.
Emiliano wipes his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his shirt and spreads the map on the ground. He can follow the original plan, the one they had before they saw the black car, and walk parallel to the main road until he runs into the hiking trail clearly marked on the map. Or he could take a shortcut through the mountains behind him and save maybe five hours of walking. That is, if he can walk in a straight line. But there is no such thing as a straight line where there are mountains and canyons.
He takes out his knife, finds north on the miniature compass, and then finds a mountain east of that point to use as a landmark. If he walks in the canyons, there’s no way he can get lost as long as he walks east. Even assuming the compass is off by a degree or two, he will still reach the highway that leads to Sanderson at a point beyond the Border Patrol checkpoint. Walking in the canyons will provide shade, and then he can walk farther and need less water than he will walking out in the open under the sun. The soft silt of a canyon’s floor will be easier on his aching foot.
Another option flits through his mind: He can go back to Mexico the way he came. The road they traveled yesterday is right there in front of him. He can be in Mexico by nightfall, find a place to sleep in Boquillas, and then hitch a ride somehow to Chihuahua. From there he could take a bus to Juárez and mail the phone to Yoya. He is protected. Armando told him so and Lester confirmed it.
He stands, folds the map carefully, and sticks it in his back pocket. He looks in the direction where he last saw the white truck.
He made promises. To Sara—he taps Hinojosa’s cell phone in his pocket—and to Lester, God only knows why. Of course, he’s made promises before that he didn’t keep. The Jipari pledge comes to mind. When he thought about the pledge, the night after the party when he was deciding what to do, he figured the pledge was a promise made to God, and thus meaningless if you didn’t believe in God. But it comes to him here, as he watches the dust from the white truck, that all promises are promises you make to yourself. What happens when you don’t keep a promise? Something in you begins to die. He’ll send the cell phone and make the call for Lester, and then he’ll go back to Mexico, where he belongs.
He turns toward the mountains and starts walking.
The fever starts two hours later. He knows it is a fever because the heat comes from inside him, and the heat continues even when he sits under the shade of a rock. The pain in the sole of his left foot is also getting worse and worse. When he takes off his boot, he sees a clear liquid coming out of two small punctures in the middle of a red welt. He presses on the swelling and the pain almost makes him scream. The liquid on his finger smells like the street where Javier lives. The fever, the swelling, the tenderness, the pus, the smell—all are signs of an infection. He pours water on his foot and cleans it with a strip of cloth he tears from his shirt. He wraps another piece of cloth around the foot, puts his sock and boot on, and keeps on going.
The next indication that things are terribly wrong comes after the sun sets. He has difficulty urinating. The color of the urine is a dark yellow and the liquid burns him. That’s not good. He’s losing more water through sweat than he is putting in. He knows that in addition to the infection—maybe because of it—dehydration has started, and unless he drinks more water it will continue. He unfastens the water bottle and examines it. Five or six very small swallows are left. His mouth would salivate in anticipation of taking that last drink, except his mouth has no saliva. Thirst is a painful, empty wanting. The thought of it expands in your brain until you can’t think of anything else. As much as he wants a drink of that water, just a sip, a tiny sip to moisten his lips, he decides against it. He needs that water for tomorrow. What he has to do now is rest. Rest will not stop the process of dehydration, but it will slow it down. Nothing, except maybe an injection of penicillin, will stop the infection.
He sits and leans against the western wall of the arroyo with his swollen foot elevated on a rock. He takes out the piece of agave cactus that he cut before descending the arroyo and rubs the gooey side on the wound. He remembers telling the man Lester not to talk, but he wishes he could talk to someone now. Anyone.
The bottom of the arroyo has fine white sand. Water flowed through here sometime last century. There were times during his walk where the abundant plant life in the dry creeks gave him hope of finding a spring nearby. He stands on one leg and hobbles to the opposite edge of the arroyo. He picks up a piece of wood about a foot long. The stick smells like mesquite. Maybe it’s the root of a tree that was carried by a flood. He goes back to his spot and begins to whittle the edge of the stick with his knife. When the end is finally pointed, he uses the stick to dig a small hole next to him. One time, the Jiparis camped in an arroyo similar to the one where he is now, and Brother Patricio found water only a couple of feet beneath the surface. Emiliano digs and digs but does not find water. He has only succeeded in perspiring more of the precious and limited liquid in his body.
The fever is making him dizzy. He tells himself to be smart and be calm and simply rest. He lies down and watches the sky slowly darken. The first stars appear—all at once, it seems, as if someone realized it was time to turn a switch on. He is so thirsty. He is burning up inside and outside and someone is skewering his foot with a hot iron. Where is Sara now? Did Perla Rubi know what would happen to his sister when she told her father where they planned to cross? What is Perla Rubi’s father’s name? He can’t remember. That’s not good. He can go back to Juárez because he is protected. Armando told him as much. Today was a humid day. It shouldn’t be so humid in the desert. Humidity prevents the body’s sweat from evaporating, so your body makes more sweat. That never made any sense to him, but it’s in all his survival books. There are lots of things that don’t make sense. When dehydration gets really bad, a person can’t even cry. Or rather, they can cry but tears don’t come out. Crying without tears, what’s that like? He cried this morning. Stars can make a person want to cry for some reason. It’s probably because you feel so small out here, so forsaken. The light from that star, one of the stars that makes up Orion’s belt, took more than a thousand years to reach him. What is the name of Perla Rubi’s father? He can’t remember. That’s not good.