Born Under The Lone Star

Back to you, sweet baby. You know how much I love you, my sweet, sweet baby. Hey! Was that you? Did you just give me a little tiny kick? Awesome! Truly, truly awesome!!!

Man. I can’t wait to see you!

You will be a beautiful baby, I bet. How could Justin be the father of any other kind? You will have his perfect, wavy dark hair. His dark brown eyes. Maybe even tiny baby muscles that are shaped like his gorgeous big ones.

I guess I can’t think about your daddy, either, sweet baby. Because that makes me want to cry, too.

Oh, Diary! Why did he leave me? Wasn’t I good enough for him? Didn’t he understand how much I love him? I gotta go now. Because now I am starting to cry again.

JUSTIN KILGORE ROLLED INTO Five Points on one of the five highways that radiated out in a star pattern from the town, the one that angled up from the southwest. As he looked around at the familiar buildings, he thought, For ill or good, I’m committed now. For ill or good, he had come back here, back to the ranch land of his Kilgore forebears, back to the home of his first love, his only love, Markie McBride.

Memories of her started to flow through him as soon as he’d caught sight of a windmill on the highway. Some sweet, some disturbing.

Like the sound of her mother’s voice when she answered the phone the first time he called their farmhouse.

“It’s some boy,” he’d overheard the woman say in a hateful tone. It was the first indicator he had that Markie’s childhood had been far from gentle.

He’d heard Markie say it was probably something to do with the campaign. When she’d picked up the phone, she’d offered a careful “Yes?” and Justin got the impression the mother was listening. He could hear dishes clanking in the background.

Man! Markie’s voice on the phone! Clear and sweet and sending tightening sensations through his core. Right then, he’d suspected he was falling in love with her.

He’d asked her if he could come out to the farm and pick her up and take her into town for a Coke. Later she’d told him her parents would chain her to the bed before they’d let her date a college guy. And they’d make her stop volunteering in campaigns if they knew she was meeting older guys doing it. She told him that wasn’t the reason she volunteered—to meet cute guys—but it sure didn’t hurt! Then she’d gone on to say the boys that do stuff like that are head and shoulders above the stupid jocks at Five Points High, but she never dreamed one would actually call her. How unsophisticated she’d been back then. How innocent.

He’d watched her that first night when they were stuffing envelopes, being so nice to the old ladies in tennis shoes. He got up and moved his stack of fliers and envelopes to her card table. The old ladies smiled to themselves, but he hadn’t cared.

Some lady named Fran did all the talking, so they didn’t get a chance to say much. But her eyes. Oh, my, her eyes! Every time he looked up, he felt like he was looking into them for the very first time. In all these years he hadn’t forgotten how they’d thrilled him. Blue as the Hill Country sky. Sparkling with intelligence. He’d give anything to look into those eyes again.

“I’m not allowed to go out on school nights,” she’d said. “And besides, I have choir practice tonight.” It was a code to avert the shrill mother, one that he caught onto immediately.

“Where?” he’d said.

“Old St. Michael’s.”

“That tall old brick church that’s set back off Dumas Street?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Can I come and listen in?” He’d sit in the back of a church on a handful of thumbtacks if he had to.

“Uh, yeah.” She hadn’t sounded too sure.

“What time?”

“Uh, seven.”

“I’ll stay in the back. I don’t want to disrupt your choir practice. I just want to look at you,” he’d said, bold as you please.

He’d looked at her, all right. And he remembered, to this very day, how beautiful she was. So many memories. All of them revolving around Markie McBride.

The divided highway narrowed as it became Main Street. The town looked about the same to Justin, spruced up a bit, maybe, because of a recent holiday or parade or whatever. The old diner, the Hungry Aggie, was still tucked in between the bank and the optician’s office on Main Street.

He could see the steeple of the church where Markie had sung in the choir off in the distance. He turned the car down a side street, headed there. The priest had called him on his cell phone while Justin was out riding the fence line. Lorn Hix, the foreman out on the Kilgore, had given the priest the number. A girl, the priest said. All alone. Being held in the municipal jail. At least she had known to make her one phone call to the local Catholic church. Could Justin help? the padre asked. The truth was, Justin was buzzing with excitement at having his first case, his first real rescue.

Justin parked and went inside the small limestone jailhouse that crouched beside the small limestone fire station.

“She’s another one of those illegals, probably dumped by coyotes,” the guard tossed the words over his shoulder with no small amount of contempt as he led Justin to a back room. “I’m glad the priest called you. I don’t have the space or the time for these people.”

“We call them undocumented immigrants.” Justin laid some emphasis on the word undocumented, but he doubted this man would appreciate the distinction. “And she won’t be that way for long.” That was the reason he had started the Light at Five Points, known among Mexican crossers simply as La Luz, the Light. As he and his very bare-bones staff often told the desperate crossers, You’re an undocumented alien now, but not for long. We will help you get your citizenship. We will help you learn English. We will help you find a job. We will help. It had become Justin’s mantra.

“Stinkin’ coyotes,” the guard said. “Getting a girl this far into Texas and dumping her. Bet they took all her money and, you know, probably did some other things to her. But I have no choice but to pick up these illegals when the store managers call. I did get her name out of her. Aurelia Garcia. Stinkin’ coyotes.”

Justin would never say it to a guy in local law enforcement like this one, but in Justin’s mind the young men who devolved into coyotes were victims of sorts, as well. They were bad hombres, to be sure. Living a subterranean life that fed off of the human bondage and desperation of their own people. But in the beginning most of them had been lured away from all that was wholesome or sacred in their culture by something that only those crushed under the weight of poverty could fully understand.

Money. Lots of money, and all that it represented. A coyote could get as much as two thousand dollars a head for moving crossers north under cover of darkness. A smart one could make nine or ten thousand dollars a day, easily. Justin knew how it happened. He just didn’t know how to stop it. He didn’t know how to save girls like this one or boys like the Morales brothers who had shown up out on the Kilgore last week, looking for ranch jobs, looking for food. But he was determined to try.

The deputy brought a tiny girl up out of the holding cell. She had straight black hair, nearly to her waist, huge eyes, nearly as black, frozen wide in terror. Despite a filthy face and clothes, her beauty still shone. In the few pictures Justin had seen of his mother, she looked like this. Fragile and beautiful.

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.