The Devils Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea

Author:Luis Alberto Urrea
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: United States - Emigration and Immigration - Social Aspects, Illegal Aliens, Mexican-American Border Region - Social Conditions, Mexico - Emigration and Immigration - Social Aspects, Social Science, Mexico, CUR000000, Mexican-American Border Region, Emigration & Immigration, Illegal Aliens - Crimes Against - Mexican-American Border Region, Human Smuggling - Mexican-American Border Region, Economic Conditions, Crimes Against, Political Science, General, Ethnic Studies, Hispanic American Studies, Human Smuggling, United States, North America, History
ISBN: 9780316746717
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2004-04-02T10:00:00+00:00

The cutters know many things about a person by the nature of his tracks. They learned something about Mendez and his pollos in the days to come. Mendez always walked point, taking the lead as if he knew where he was going. The men shuffled and stumbled along behind him, wandering off path and straggling, but generally moving ahead. The scuffed fans of grit in their tracks suggested moans and curses, sighs and shouts and whispers. Their sign left a cut across the face of the desert like the grooves in an LP record. Their greatest hits were there, in order.

Thin scab of dried urine beside a brittlebush had the spatter sound and the sigh of relief etched in it like bug-sign. The knee scuff where a man fell, and the smeared tracks of the two companions who helped him up, carried echoes of their grunts, and their exhortations, and an embarrassed, muttered gracias. Empty candy wrappers in the bushes told which way the breeze blew, and carried the crunching of teeth and the smell of chocolate. Empty bottles talked of the growing crisis.

Once the trackers got the tread marks of each shoe, they could follow the ever more delirious steps right up to the feet of each dead body. The sign told them much about each man. One thousand steps; fall, scramble; five hundred steps; lie down on the ground and stare at the sky; one thousand steps; sit, fall over, up on knees, crawl, fall, get up one last time.

This guy walked alone the whole time. This guy walked with his brothers. This guy had his arm around his son some of the time: their tracks interwove and braided together as they wandered. This guy tried to eat a cactus.

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