The Crossing

Robert Locke, a sergeant in the US army at Fort Bliss in Texas, studies himself in the mirror and contemplates what he sees versus what he feels. He sees a soldier: perfect posture, a neat uniform, a clean cut face, and a single scar across his left temple. However, he doesn’t see the scars that he feels inside from the battles he experienced. Looking around the room, he sees that every item is army-issued and in its proper place except for a whiskey bottle. He drinks some whiskey as he prepares to leave for a club across the border in Juárez, his usual routine on his nights off duty. He often goes to the bar to drink until he is “brain dead” so that none of his friends who died in past battles will “come to visit him” in his memories (16).

The border between Juárez and El Paso is marked by the Santa Fe Bridge and the dry riverbed of the Rio Grande underneath. All the people entering Mexico from the United States must come via the bridge. Beneath the bridge, children from Juárez beg tourists to throw money. When multiple coins are thrown, the children fight over them, and the larger children usually emerge victorious with the majority of the coins. Manny, who is one of the smaller boys, arrives at the bridge to beg. He chooses to stand away from the bigger boys, even though it means standing farther from the tourists on the bridge. Manny catches a quarter thrown from the bridge and must hide it quickly before the other boys see; if they notice him with money, they will use force to take it from him. Manny moves slightly closer to the other boys to be in better proximity to the tourists, and soon, a dollar bill comes fluttering down from the bridge straight to Manny. He snatches it and prepares to run, but one of the larger boys, Pacho, catches and repeatedly punches Manny. Pacho takes the dollar and Manny is left in the dirt in pain. The woman who threw the dollar yells from up on the bridge that someone should help, but Manny knows that in Juárez, no one is there to help him.

Sergeant Locke arrives at his usual nightclub, Club Congo Tiki. Inside, women dance on the stage, including one woman who wears a real snake on her body. Robert does not come to see the women; he comes to drink. He sits at a table in the back corner and drinks Scotch until he is numb and in a fog of intoxication. As Robert sips his drink slowly and lets it take effect, he thinks of a lieutenant he once knew who had been tough and brash but was a phony. Robert and the other soldiers saw that despite the lieutenant’s bluster in battle, he wasn’t as tough as he pretended to be because he sipped his whiskey rather than knocking it back. Robert does the same when he drinks, because drinking slowly allows him to enter a fog that the ghosts of his friends cannot enter. Many of Robert’s friends are dead, killed in the Vietnam War. He drinks to keep their memory at bay. This night is just like all the other nights when Robert comes to the club to drink. He sips slowly and waits, and when the alcohol eventually invades his body and brain, he throws up, goes back to Fort Bliss on the bus, and wakes up to another day as a sergeant.

Manny waits near the river in the dark for the right time to attempt the risky border crossing. The border patrol has bright lights, but the real risk is the coyotes—the guides people pay to take them across the border. Some of the coyotes are deceptive: They claim to help people cross but steal from them and sometimes kill them instead. The men Manny fears most are the human traffickers in Juárez who “kill for nothing” and take children to be sold (37). They come to the river at night and attack the groups of people waiting to cross. The Juárez police are too busy on the streets to worry about people crossing the border illegally, and to the American border patrol, those who are hurt or killed during the attempted crossing just mean fewer people that need to be caught and returned to Mexico.

Manny decides to eat a little of the chicken and tortillas from Maria while he waits. When he starts to eat, however, he cannot stop himself, and eats every crumb of the meal. In the moment that he finishes, the border patrol lights come on, revealing hundreds of people crossing the river. Chaos ensues as people begin screaming and running; the border patrol captures some, but others escape into the night. Manny continues to wait, hoping that border patrol officers will leave with the people they arrested and give him a better chance at crossing. Suddenly, four men come up behind Manny and grab him by the hair. As they talk about selling him to a man named Raoul, the searchlights go out and Manny sees his chance. He kicks the man holding him with all his strength and sprints away.

Manny runs and the men chase him. He attempts to escape into the alleys, a confusing labyrinth of dead ends and winding pathways. He finally loses his pursuers after hopping a fence. Knowing he will not be able to cross the border that night, Manny finds a doorway to sleep in behind Club Congo Tiki. There, he sees an American soldier, Robert Locke, drunk and vomiting in the alley. Manny can see the bulge of the soldier’s wallet in his pocket and knows the soldier is drunk and distracted—the perfect target. Manny reaches for the wallet, but Robert clamps Manny’s wrist in an iron grip. Manny is surprised at Robert’s strength and reflexes; Robert is drunk, yet still powerful and aware. Robert begins walking, dragging Manny along with him. As they near the Santa Fe Bridge, a Mexican police officer stops them. As the police officer questions Robert, Robert experiences a flashback to a memory from when he was in Kansas City and caught a boy by the wrist to keep him from running into the street. When Robert returns mentally to the present situation, he tells the officer that Manny was guiding him to the bridge, and the officer knows it is a lie; everyone lies to the police in Juárez. However, the officer accepts the lie, and waves Manny and Robert on their separate ways, Robert across the bridge, and Manny back to the streets of Juárez.