© 2012 by Michel Stone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
First printing, March 2012
Cover design: Lisa Jones Atkins and Dorothy Chapman Josey Interior design: Corinne Manning Author Photo: Carroll Foster
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stone, Michel, 1969-
The iguana tree / Michel Stone.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-891885-88-4 1. Families—Mexico—Fiction. 2. Human smuggling—Fiction. 3. Illegal aliens—Mexican-American Border Region—Fiction. 4. Illegal aliens—Crimes against—Mexican-American Border Region—Fiction. 5. United States—Emigration and immigration—Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.T6569I48 2012
813′.6—dc22
2011037779
Parts of The Iguana Tree have been previously published as short stories or excerpts: “Beyond This Point,” (Raleigh, NC) News and Observer, September 24, 2006; “Pollos,” (Raleigh, NC) News and Observer, January 23, 2005; “Dance of the Coyote,” South Carolina magazine, August, 2004.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts
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For Beth and Roy Smoak
Hope is a waking dream.
— Aristotle
prologue
LILIA LINGERED beneath the shade tree and watched her husband leave, though the morning dawned mild, and she had no need yet for the canopy’s cool shadows. Héctor slipped from their courtyard, past two brown hens scratching among weeds, down the narrow, dusty lane on which Lilia had always lived, then rounded a slight bend and was gone. She knew he would make his way to the bus stop at the edge of the village, then on to Oaxaca City, and then … Then she did not know what would become of her Héctor, or how far the trip to the border was, or how far beyond the border he would go. She must put these thoughts from her mind now.
Lilia gripped her mug in both hands like a prayer, inhaling the scent of coffee and cinnamon, and watched the sky and buildings to the east color pink then orange. The dark sky to the west remained unaffected. She drifted from the shadows into the center of the courtyard and lifted her face to the rising sun, closing her eyes, basking in its radiance. It was a constant. A familiarity. Cold weather existed elsewhere, not here. America had cold places, but they seemed as distant, as foreign, as the weightlessness of outer space or the sunless floor of the Pacific Ocean. All were places for which she felt ill-equipped and fearful. Héctor viewed America as The Great Opportunity. Lilia saw it as The Unknown.
Overhead, yellow-headed blackbirds flitted among the tree’s dense foliage, flapping wildly as if to distill the perfume of waxy blossoms half-hidden amid wide, verdant leaves.
Beyond her courtyard wall Lilia’s village slowly awakened: the crow of a cock and the bray of a burro in reply, the clanking of the fishmonger’s wagon winding its way to the pier, and other sounds that were all Puerto Isadore’s own, all Lilia’s own. She caught a trace of orange incense in the air. Crucita is awake, she thought. Each morning before her coffee, often before dressing, Lilia’s grandmother lit an incense stick. Today she burned orange. Yesterday had been orange, too. Or maybe sandalwood. Lilia could not remember.
The western sky had lightened to pastel. A goat pulling a trash cart made its way past her in no hurry. Lilia watched him pass in silence, then walked inside to nurse her infant daughter—an only child—Alejandra, leaving the courtyard smelling of goat and incense.
1
“I WANT to show you something, amigo, to be certain you understand.”
He looked Héctor in the eyes. He was a man to be feared, confident, calculated, experienced. He knew far more than Héctor. His pulse would not quicken when he stabbed a man to death. He would take no pleasure in the act, nor would it haunt him. His dark eyes gave no indication of a soul. Héctor turned away, watched the passing landscape.
Then he saw it.
“The border, friend,” the coyote said.
Héctor looked at the border, then back at his driver.
“You wonder why you need me, heh, friend? You see this simple metal fence, rusted and worn and easily transversible, and you say to yourself, ‘This is nothing. I do not understand. One could walk across that line right now and be in America.’”
Héctor said nothing, confused by what he saw, and suddenly wondered if he had, indeed, no need for a coyote after all, if this were all a trick, a scam to lure innocents to the border, to steal their money.
But seeing the border and the desert wasteland beyond it answered no questions. The mystery remained, grew. He saw no guards, no guns, no watchdogs, no border patrol. He saw men, women, and children now, dotted all along the shabby wall. He had not noticed them at first. They waited, watched, though for what Héctor could not possibly know.
“They are pollos, chickens, friend,” the coyote said, jutting a finger toward a small cluster of men crouching near a gap in the metal. This was a term Héctor had not heard before regarding those heading north. Héctor thought about chickens being led by a coyote. That did not fit. A coyote would devour a chicken.
“They are foolish, and they will cross on their own, or with some cheap, inexperienced coyote,” Héctor’s smuggler continued. “They will all be back in Mexico within a day. The rare few who are not caught will likely die of thirst in the desert.”
He nodded toward a group of six, huddled by another gaping hole in the metal fence.
They seemed to have nothing with them, no provisions, no bags.
“They will need at least two gallons of water a day to survive out there. Look at them,” he said in disgust. “They carry maybe a gallon or two among them all. Sometimes the ones who make it deep into the desert find a mesquite tree, hang themselves by their belts, preferring death to come quickly and surely rather than slowly and with uncertainty. Do you know about death in the desert, friend?” he asked.
“I can imagine it,” Héctor said.
“No. You cannot imagine it. But I will tell you about it. The heat bears down unlike any you have experienced. The desert has no ocean breeze like you have in your village. The sun scorches your skin and your tongue, and breathing is an agony. Lips crack, bleed. Dried blood cakes in your nostrils, and you ask God why your tongue has grown scales.” He stopped, as if he wanted Héctor to consider his