Crossing the Wire

The mules and Jarra predict that Victor will die from his snakebite; miraculously, Victor’s leg is fine. He attributes his luck to Our Lady of Guadalupe, who looks after the poor and unfortunate, and is sure his mother has been lighting candles in the church for him back home.

The group breaks for another siesta to escape the heat. From one of the other mules, Rico learns that Jarra and the group leader Morales plan to kill Victor and Rico when their trip is over. The boys decide that they need to try to escape during the siesta. Victor says they should to go up into the mountains rather than down into the valley, which is crawling with Border Patrol. Rico worries about water, but Victor says Miguel told him the mountains always have water.

The boys escape and climb up the mountain. Four hours later, they spot a prospecting shack. They descend to check for water, as they are almost out. At the shack they find water, along with an unconscious Border Patrol agent. They decide to take the agent’s weapons and radio and leave. Victor then throws out the weapons but not the radio, worrying that without it, the agent won’t be able to call for help if he wakes up.

When Victor returns, the agent is awake and tells the boys he was in a gunfight with drug smugglers, who are currently tracking him. His partner was killed, and the agent Victor is speaking with has a head wound. He was hiking up the mountain to get radio reception and call for help when he passed out. The boys realize that the agent, like them, is running away from Jarra. When the agent presses him, Victor admits that he still has the radio. 

The boys follow the Border Patrol agent up the mountain to get a better radio signal. They can see Jarra and one of the mules following them. The agent plans to radio a helicopter to pick them up when he gets service, but they realize they don’t have time. Victor starts knocking rocks over the edge to distract Jarra and the mule while Rico and the agent climb ahead. Victor hears the sound of a helicopter and takes off running toward Rico and the agent.

Rico tells Victor that the helicopter took the agent and left. The agent had passed out and didn’t tell the helicopter pilot about the boys. They keep climbing, and Jarra keeps following. 

Jarra is in good shape from his many border crossings and begins to gain on Victor and Rico. Theboys scale a rock face rather than continuing on the trail, throwing Jarra off. They hide and take turns resting and sleeping while Jarra waits them out below.

Victor wakes from his sleep to see a giant spotted cat. It’s a jaguar, just like the one he’d once seen as a child. He believes the jaguar, an animal his father said had the power of invisibility, was sent to give the boys a message about howto escape. He wakes Rico and convinces him that they need to cross the mountain on a steep ledge the jaguar has crossed, so they can escape before Jarra even knows they’re gone.

They climb up the near-vertical ledge, Victor leads and encourages Rico to follow. After crossing the ledge, they descend the peak into the forest below, where they find water and eat.

They continue walking and see a road. The boys flag down a car that is passing and beg the driver, a man named Dave Hansen, for a ride. Dave is friendly but says he can’t help them because he has to get to work. They continue walking, and Dave comes back for them. He says he will take them as far as Tucson.

In the car, Dave reveals that he studies jaguars, animals that are a rarity in the nearby mountains. Victor tells Dave about his encounter with the tigre. Dave is excited by the recounting. He says the ledge the boyscrossed is known as Lion’s Ledge, but for Dave, it will now be the Jaguar’s Ledge. 

Dave takes the boys to Rico’s brother’s house in Tucson, but when Rico knocks on the door, a woman answers. She points to another house, and Rico thinks he got his brother’s house number wrong. A man opens the door at the new house. Rico thinks it is his brother Reynaldo, but the man says that Reynaldo and his family left town about three weeks ago. The man explains that Reynaldo has been buying and selling stolen cars, and thatReynaldo’s son, Omar, has been arrested for his involvement in a high-speed car chase.

Dave returns, bringing the boys food, and when he hears of their dilemma, he says that he will take them to La Perra Flaca, where Victor hopes they will find Miguel. Miguel is not at La Perra Flaca when they arrive, and the woman they find there say that most of the work for the season is done. They will have to wait until July, when the chilies begin to ripen. 

The boys get good news: a contractor is coming to get workers for the asparagus harvest in Washington state. Victor and Rico join nearly thirty others in the back of a big rental truck for thelong drive. Finally, after two days of driving, they arrive in Washington.

Victor likes the countryside, and enjoys the difficult, skilled work of cutting asparagus. He is paid by how much he picks and makes $60 per day, just like Miguel said he would. Victor learns from another worker that after the asparagus, they willharvest cherries in another part of Washington, followed by plums, peaches, and apples. In the middle of October, they will leave for Florida, Arizona, or California to pick oranges, lemons, and grapefruit during the winter, or they would go to a city like San Francisco and wait in the Home Depot parking lot to be hired for home labor work. Victor thinks he would prefer working in the orchards.

Rico seems quiet, but Victor is happy. On payday, he sends$250 home to his family.

Victor doesn’t understand why Rico seems unhappy. Finally, Rico reveals that he has been thinking about returning to Mexico to attend school, and follow his parents’ original plan for his life. He tells Victor that it is different for him, as he has a family who needs the money he sends home. When he was crossing the ledge back on the mountain, Rico came to see that his parents were more important to him that he had realized, and he wants to return home to be near them:“I used to think it was unfair that my parents had chosen me to be the one to take care of them in their old age. Now, I choose it” (214).

Two days later, Rico boards a bus south. Victor watches him leave.