Adrian

He finally stops as the sun’s rising. The growing yellow sliver smearing light from the horizon reminds him of the time; reminds him what he’s doing. He’s driven this route enough to know every bump and bush along the way. He wonders if he could drive it with his eyes closed, if memory is enough to get him there after leaving the road. But he knows its tiredness talking. There’s no need to pull over this deep in the desert, so he just stops, gets out of the Nova and waits before shutting the door. He makes sure all he hears is the hissing of the engine in the still quiet of the desert. Under the hood something knocks, settles and that’s all he hears so he shuts the door, walks around and stretches his legs. He drinks from the Marlboro thermos rolling around the backseat, but doesn’t touch the food. He pokes the ground with the tip of his boot and stretches his arms behind his back, hears the crack of his spine as he twists the kinks out. Somewhere close a bird flies out from somewhere into the morning. He’s got about three hours until he reaches the border and something about that makes him kick the back fender of the Nova. The noise scares some more things out of their sleep and into their holes and as he spins on the tip of boot away from the car he feels the sun on his face. He closes his eyes and feels the sun warm through his shirt and then through his jeans. He seriously thinks about opening the trunk, but he doesn’t. He never does. The heat from the sun is making his mustache sweat, so he gets back in the car and drives. Three hours later he’s across the border and just past one of the water stations set up by college students, he stops the Nova. This had been his drop off spot way before the water stations started popping up. Before there were kids spending their weekends in the desert giving water to people trying to cross: rebuilding stations smashed by cops. It’s still early so no one’s around to see him get out of the car and unlock the trunk. He looks down and the two kids hide their faces: from the sun or from him. This is why he only crosses kids- they had been on the road more than ten hours and they were in the same spots as when he locked them in there the second he’d been out of sight of their grandmother. The trunk of the Nova is big enough and they’re small, but they’re still huddled close. The girl still has the envelope with the money in it and some address in Flagstaff written on the outside. She squeezes it as he motions them to get out of the trunk. She starts pointing at the envelope and he laughs a little, yanks it from her as they get used to walking again. He goes to backseat, takes another long drink from the thermos. The girl says something in Spanish and he’s not paying attention. If they walk straight in the direction he was driving they’ll make it to Nogales before the heat gets them. Any other way and they’re dead. He drops the red thermos at their feet and it kicks up dust, he gets back in the Nova and drives back into the desert. He’s got 4 more kids to pick up in Morelia. In the rearview, once they pass the thermos between them they set off walking the wrong way.