Darlene Graham - Born Under The Lone Star

When she hesitated at the sight of Justin, the guard pulled her forward by the wrist as if she were a child. And she could have easily passed for one, in the States. She couldn’t have been more than five feet, not an ounce over a hundred pounds. She eyed the men with the kind of wary silence that spoke of mistrust from past abuses.

In English, Justin convinced the guard to let him speak to her in private. In Spanish, he told her not to worry and guided her over to a bench. After they sat down, he took off his Stetson. “Aurelia, I’m Justin Kilgore,” he said in Spanish, “and I’m from a place called the Light at Five Points—”

“Ay, La Luz!” the girl cried, clasping her tiny hands together. “I find you! Take me with you! Padre Gusto, he told me about you! It’s a miracle how I find you!” She made the sign of the cross on herself. “A miracle!”

Justin gave her the quiet sign. He didn’t want the local cops to think he was running some kind of underground network. “Father Augustus?” he said quietly. This was the name of his aging friend in Jalisco. A renegade Roman Catholic priest who encouraged the natives in Jalisco and the surrounding areas to blend their native culture with Christian spirituality. Father Gus’s favorite hobby was roaring around on his motorcycle and dispensing condoms to those who needed better sense.

“Sí. He said if I can make it to the Light at Five Points, I would be safe. Please.” Her eyes pleaded. “I think Julio is already there.”

“Julio?” That was the name of the youngest of the Morales brothers. A strong, quiet young man, about eighteen or nineteen, Justin would guess.

“Sí. My man. We are getting married.”

Which might further explain why the Morales brothers had urged him to hurry into town for her. Well, he’d do his best. “We have to be careful here. You were caught shoplifting at the 7-Eleven.”

“Sí. Please.” Aurelia continued to beg. “I’ll cook for you. I am a fine, fine cook. My whole village says so.”

“Wait here. Do not—” he pointed a warning finger at the girl “—run.”

Justin went back to the guard.

“She was hungry. It was only a candy bar. Do you honestly think sending these poor people to jail helps?”

“Nah,” the guard scoffed. “But you and I know about ninety percent of them are out to beat the system. They keep going around in the same old ruts, generation after generation. We can’t let them overrun us, either.”

Justin knew about the ruts, the patterns, the traps. Border crossers knew one another, ran in groups. Whole families, extended families, came to the States in stages. A father or a grandfather would go north and make his way, then call for the others. This process took years, sometimes spanning several generations.

“Then will this help pay this girl’s expenses or her fines or whatever so I can get her out of here?” Justin had carefully folded the hundred-dollar bill so that the numerals showed.

Bribes. Common as the Texas limestone beneath their feet.

The guard peered off into the cells beyond, past Justin’s shoulder, obviously looking at Aurelia, who sat hunched on the bench. He took the money.

“You’re wasting your money, Mr. Kilgore,” he said as he stuffed it in his pocket. “You know this kind of shit always ends badly. These people would be better off never leaving their villages. We should just press charges and send her back.”

Justin thought Father Augustus might surely agree. The priest felt the contaminating influence of El Norte was ruining the simple life of the villages. But how did you convince the young people of that? Once they had seen the big TVs and the big cars and the fancy clothes? How could you send a girl back south who had journeyed more than a hundred miles inside the border through God-knows-what to meet up with the love of her life?

Back out on the highway, Justin didn’t stop in town. There was no need. He had plenty of gas and the girl was skittish, being in the cab alone with him. She hugged the passenger door like a frightened kitten. Justin was relaxed in the seat but tried to keep his six-foot frame squarely on his side. No need to spook her. In Spanish he said, “You’ll be all right now.”

“Sí,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t quite believe him. Though it was another fifteen miles out to the ranch, he was anxious to get her to Julio. So when the highway opened up outside of town, he set his old pickup’s engine to thrumming. They might not encounter another car for miles now. One could put the pedal to the metal on these Texas highways with some impunity.

As the truck gained speed, the girl looked more and more frightened, yet more and more excited, as well. No doubt she was anticipating seeing her true love. Justin tried to remember how that felt. Somewhere deep inside him there was a spark of the love he’d once cherished for Markie McBride. But out of sheer emotional survival he had quelled those feelings long ago.

He glanced at Aurelia. How had she made it? he wanted to ask her. She had mentioned the sign of the Five Points.

“Did Julio send you a star?” Justin asked her in Spanish. He wanted to know if word of his organization had begun to spread yet among the crossers. He hoped so.

“Sí.” The girl slashed a quick star in the air with an index finger.

The Five Points of the Lone Star. The signal that a crosser had made it as far as the Texas town where five highways converged in a radiating pattern. Crossers sometimes sent a Lone Star home to their relatives in Mexico in one form or another—a trinket, a postcard, a pattern stitched on cloth.

Justin had chosen Five Points as his location partly for that reason. Once they got that far, crossers felt safe enough to rest before fleeing in five directions to hide in the caves and canyons and remote ranches of the Hill Country. If he could get to them at that stopping place, he felt he had a chance to make a difference, a chance to interrupt the cycle.

Five Points.

Outside the truck window, the country Justin had loved since he was a boy rolled by. Evening was coming on and the dark hills undulated endlessly against the purple sky.

When they pulled into the ranch drive, Aurelia spotted Julio. He was high up on a two-story scaffolding, repairing some crumbling limestone on a corner of the immense Kilgore ranch house. Justin had been pleased to learn that the Morales brothers were local Maya stonemasons in their home village, as skilled as their ancient counterparts. The renovations they had accomplished on the aging ranch house were nothing short of art. Even in its current state of decay, the house was an architectural monument of symmetry and well-crafted stonework. Constructed more than a hundred years ago by one of Justin’s Kilgore forebears, the place had a Romanesque simplicity that Justin loved. Rows of limestone pillars defined the first-story veranda. It would take plenty of fresh limestone to restore it, and Justin knew just where he could get it on—the Tellchick farm.

Justin’s father no longer made a pretense of keeping a residence in Texas, and the place had been virtually abandoned until Justin returned to it a couple of months ago. The inside was caked with dust, its timeless beauty only enjoyed by the occasional stray cow or shelter-seeking snake. But Justin had come to the house often as a youth, dreaming of restoring life to it.

And of course, he’d brought Markie McBride here often to share that dream.

Aurelia had rolled down the truck window and was hanging out of it, waving her arms and screaming, “Julio! Julio!”

Julio scrambled down off the scaffolding like an ant off a mound. He ran, his boots kicking up dust, until he came up alongside the pickup. He grabbed the door handle before Justin had even come to a stop.