Alan Falkingham

Moonlight spills from behind the clouds, as I watch her emerge from the river. They don’t call ‘em wetbacks for nothin’. Her dress sticks to her, like a second skin, hair slicked back in a dark rope. I wait until she regains her breath, tired from the swim, then switch on the rack of spotlights on the roof of my truck. She immediately stiffens, trapped at the end of the tunnel of light. I get out and walk towards her, slowly levelling the barrel of my shotgun, and she shies away, like an animal at the slaughterhouse.  

“Te ayudaré” I repeat, over and over, as I approach her, and she turns her head, this way and that, like a bird that hears a house cat creeping along a tree branch. She tries to make sense of things: the words whsipered in Spanish, the gun, the confederate flag on my truck and the baseball cap that tells her I will Make America Great Again.

When we return to town, she lays motionless beneath the tarp covering the truck bed. I swing into the parking lot where the Minutemen meet to land the night’s catch; a line of wetbacks, mostly shoeless, stand there, heads bowed, hands tied loosely behind their backs.    

“I got nothin’” I tell Sheriff Dorsey, “Quiet out there tonight”. I steal a glance at my truck, checking to see if he might catch the tarpaulin breathing.

For every two I catch, I let one go, just like I’d promised. After all, this is how I came to be. My mother risked everything to swim that river. Met my daddy picking fruit, one summer at Al  Olsted’s place. My daddy gave me a photo on his death bed, crumpled from years of carrying it around, moving from place to place, never finding somewhere that felt like home. I glance at it as she slides out from under the tarp, before disappearing off into the shadows,  A photo from years ago. Of a wetback and a golden haired American boy, laughing together, their chins dripping with peach juice, as the sun sets over the river.