Dawn Patrol

25

The girl walks on the trodden dirt path on the side of the road.

Her skin is a rich brown, her hair black as freshly hewn coal. She trips over a brown beer bottle that was thrown out the window of a car the night before, but she keeps walking, and as she does, she fingers a small silver cross held by a thin chain around her neck. It gives her courage; it's her one tangible symbol of love in an unloving world.

In shock, not really sure where she's going, she keeps the ocean to her left because it's something she recognizes, and she knows that if she keeps the water to her left, she will eventually reach the strawberry fields. The fields are bad, but they are the only life she has known for the past two years, and her friends are there.

She needs her friends because she has nobody now. And if she can find the strawberry fields, she will find her friends, maybe even see the guero doctor, who was at least nice to her. So she keeps walking north, unnoticed by the drivers who rush past in their cars-just another Mexican girl on the side of the road.

A gust of wind blows dirt and garbage around her ankles.