Illegal

FORTY

Sitting cross-legged in the shade of a corrugated metal sheet propped on wooden posts, Marisol traced letters in the dust.

"T-I-N-O"

Again and again. Leaving a trail of Tino s as she yearned for her missing son.

My boy, my boy. I am so sorry I left you behind.

The driver who brought her here-the old Mexican from the Sugarloaf-called the place "Hellhole Canyon." A farmhouse, a chicken pen, a fenced yard smelling of animal droppings and creosote. An American man with a rifle paced in the sun, guarding the migrants, though the surrounding mountains and canyons seemed sentinels enough. Chickens pecked the ground near the man's feet. He kicked a skinny hen that looked diseased. Sent it squawking, frayed wings flapping.

Marisol tried to focus on her surroundings. Knew she must survive yet another day. She counted eighteen other migrants sitting or crouching or lying in the shade.

Waiting. They had been waiting for hours.

"Don't be thinking I'm gonna feed you." A rifle slung over a bony shoulder, the Americano guarding them had the emaciated look of a drug user. "I ain't no KFC, even if I got chickens coming out my ass."

He was shirtless and wore filthy jeans, with a red bandanna around his neck. A bandolier filled with bullets crisscrossed his bare chest like suspenders. His scratchy little goat's beard was spotted with specks of dribbled food. He had several tattoos, but the one on his forehead drew the most attention. A crudely drawn, blue-green swastika. Marisol avoided looking into the man's eyes, which seemed to float in their sockets.

"Ain't my fault you're starving," the man continued. "Vans are late."

He stomped through the chicken droppings, chewing on a green apple, surveying the migrants. "You people eat roadkill, doncha? Hushed puppies. Asphalt armadillo. Pavement possum."

He cackled at his own stupid joke, drool trickling down one corner of his mouth.

It had been several hours since the old driver had rescued her from the slaughterhouse. As he drove, she tearfully told him about the attack in the locker room and how she had fought off the foreman, perhaps even killing him. Alarmed, the driver called Wanda, repeated the story, then listened a moment before hanging up.

" La jefa says it is too dangerous for you to come back," he told Marisol.

He had driven along a lake, through a desert, across dry washes, and into the mountains. He turned onto a dirt road and stopped at the old chicken farm, virtually surrounded by steep mountain walls. Vans were supposed to be there to take a group of migrants to farms upstate.

"Watch out for the encargado, " the driver had warned her, before driving off. "A drogadicto who thinks he is a Nazi. Probably insane. Just wait for the van and stay away from him."

With that, Marisol was left in the shade among defecating chickens and snoring migrants, the corrugated roof hot as a griddle.

She heard a scream. A woman yelling, "No! No! No!"

Marisol squinted into the sunlight. The woman's husband, a Mexican of perhaps forty, stood with his back against a tree, his hands up by his ears, holding onto a squirming, squawking chicken. Thirty feet away, the Nazi aimed his rifle at the man.

No, that's not it!

The Nazi was trying to shoot the chicken off the man's head. A surreal sight, a scene from a nightmare, a hallucination.

"Hold still, Pancho!" the Nazi yelled. "Christ! Hold that bird still before it shits on your head!"

Trembles shook the man's body. The chicken flapped its wings and screeched.

The man's wife wailed in Spanish, invoking the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

"Stand up straight, goddammit!" the Nazi ordered.

The man's knees buckled.

"I can shoot the freckle off a rabbit's nose at fifty feet. But you gotta hold still, Pancho."

The man squeezed his eyes shut.

The sound of the gunshot echoed off the canyon walls. The man fell to the ground, screaming, his face covered with blood.

"You ain't hit, Pancho! If you was hit, you wouldn't be yelling."

The decapitated chicken flopped on the ground, spurting gore.

"Who's next? Who wants to be in the circus?"

The driver was right, Marisol thought. This man is insane.

"C'mon now! Deadeye Dickie Chitwood is just warming up."

The migrants studied the tops of their boots, sneakers, and huaraches.

"You! Come on down!" Pointing at a man next to Marisol. Mid-twenties. Honduran, she thought, coppery complexion with Indian features. The man didn't resist, didn't say a word. Just walked to the blood-spattered tree and stood there. Like he'd taken orders all his life.

"My man!" the Nazi shouted. "See!" He gestured to the silent migrants under the corrugated sheet metal. "No fear. This greaser's gonna make a lot of money climbing peach trees for Mr. Rutledge."

The Nazi took an apple from the back pocket of his jeans, placed it on the Honduran's head. The apple fell to the ground.

"Pick that up, goddammit! You let it drop again, I'll dig you a third eye."

The man put the apple back on his head. This time, it stayed in place, even as the man's legs swayed.

The Nazi moved back to a mark he had made in the dirt, then sighted the rifle. "Gotta adjust for wind and curvature of the earth." Another cackle of laughter. He was still laughing when he pulled the trigger.

An explosion blew apart the man's forehead, and he sank to the ground as if his knees were made of butter.

"Oh, shit!" the Nazi said. "Gonna be one wet short for Mr. Rutledge."

Her stomach clenching, Marisol turned away.

One more day, Tino, she promised herself.

I will live one more day, and I will see you before I die.