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right up your ass, an agent chuckled. And Dan Murray said: That’s the worst river. If you wanna repaint your bicycle, dip the frame in for half an hour and it’ll strip the old paint right off. Ten years ago, you might see the occasional two-headed fish. Now it’s gotten so poisoned that the only life form you’ll see is— illegal aliens.— He told the tale of how he’d dove into that literally feculent river one time to catch a solo and broke out with a giant sore that wouldn’t heal for months. Two years later, when I myself took a cruise on the New River, I was granted a similar souvenir.
    Carlos said that he’d never attempted the New River, but he was considering it. Maybe if he wrapped his bandanna tight over his nose and mouth, he could bear to give himself to that reeking brown cloaca. It would take an agent as dedicated as Murray to go in and get him. Others might let him pass rather than risking their own health and stinking up their patrol car . . .
    Carlos, why do you want to go to Northside so bad?
    I dunno. I . . . I been out of my house for about thirteen years. The best thing that ever happened to me was marriage to that white girl in America. Well, see, I took the train to go to Portland, Oregon. I hopped that freight. I got married. And . . . Well, after awhile I got drinking, and got stopped by the police. I didn’t have no papers to the car I was drivin’, or a green card or an ID, so they took me to jail, and then this Immigration officer questioned me, and they deported me to Juárez. I ain’t never seen my wife again.
    Do you want to try to find her?
    Oh, I dunno, he said listlessly. I dunno if it would work out now . . .

THE WALK
    River or wall, let’s say they got across. Here is what happened next. If the Border Patrol did not catch them right away, they could lie low in the fields of Calexico, El Centro or another of those towns whose colors are muted silver and gold; the greys and whites all semiprecious with dust, the reds, yellows, greens, oranges bleached to a faint warm hue that might as well have been gold; but sooner or later they would need to cross a street or search for water. Shy, dark pedestrians where the streets were so wide and empty, a parked car almost an event, they could not evade the Border Patrol week in, week out. The Border Patrol was everywhere ! Calexico Station, for instance, started as a seventy-man operation (that was what they told me, but we will go back in time and find sixty-nine men less); now two hundred agents operated there. The first time I set up my view camera in Calexico to photograph the international wallscape’s tall narrow rusty bars, there appeared within less than a minute three white wagons, each with a Border Patrolman inside it. And how strangely quiet Calexico was at night, just cricket-songs, the asphalt still hot! Every footfall called attention to itself. The aliens had to go north fast. With luck, they might reach Indio. No matter that the Indio Post was filled with announcements such as: NOTICE OF TRUSTEE’S SALE. File No.—9903005035 Servicer SOURCE ONE #505199724 Borrower—DEL CID YOU ARE IN DEFAULT UNDER A DEED OF TRUST, DATED 7/22/98. UNLESS YOU TAKE ACTION TO PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY, IT MAY BE SOLD AT A PUBLIC SALE. IF YOU NEED AN EXPLANATION OF THE NATURE OF THE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST YOU, YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LAWYER. These dark brown people lurking in the shade of white walls were not here to borrow. They needed no explanations. They would work hard and live quietly. (Any illegals? I asked at the Brown Jug liquor store.—Right across the street. They jump off the train all the time. But they’re dangerous. If you see anybody in this here desert, don’t ever give ’em money or they’ll put the word out.) But the road to Indio was not easy. A few miles south of Salton City on Route 86, or somewhere on the hot and shimmering stretch of Highway 111 between Niland and Bombay Beach, the Greyhound would pull over at a surprise