Chapter 3

There was an unlocked washroom attached to the warehouse. I gave the girl a towel and some soap from the truck and told her to go in and clean up. I searched around in the sleeper unit behind the cab for clothing she could wear. The best I could do was an old denim shirt of mine that would work as an over-shirt on her current outfit. My shirt would easily come down to her knees.

When she came out of the washroom, she looked cleaner and her crying seemed to have subsided.

"You can sleep in the truck," I told her, in Spanish. "In the morning, I'll talk to the owner of this place about you, and he will help you. He is a good man."

"No, please!" she said. "Even if he is a good man, what is he going to do? He will send me back to my town. I have no one there! Or he will call the police! The police, in these border towns, they are very bad! They will turn me into a whore themselves!"

"But you must have family, elsewhere in Mexico," I said. I didn't say it, but I thought it: Mexicans have big families. Where are her siblings? Her aunts and uncles? Where was her father?

"My father is gone," she said, as if reading my mind. "I do not know where he is, for many years!" I have no sisters and brothers still in Mexico. They have gone to the North -- to the United States."

"I can't take you with me," I said. "It would be illegal to take you across the border with me."

"If you do not help me," the girl said, "my cousin will find me again, and tomorrow, I will be a whore. Please, sir, you must help me!"

"It's getting late," I said. "Get in the truck. You can sleep in the back -- there is plenty of room for you in there. I will sleep in the cab. You will be safe."

"You -- I heard you talking to the young boy. You gave him money for me."

"I gave him money for a whore. Not for a captive."

"If you will take me with you, Sir, I will give you what you have paid for."

"No. You have said you are not a whore, and I believe you. Don't make yourself a whore, now, to get what you want. Got back there, in the sleeper, and lie down. And think about who I can call -- here in Mexico -- to come to your aid. If it is someone near here -- within fifty, sixty miles or so -- I will take you there, to that person. Think of someone! If you cannot, I will have to turn you over to Mr. Martinez, the owner of this place."

The girl did not protest further. I showed her how to get into the sleeper unit immediately behind the driver's compartment. She was impressed with the spacious sleeper. Well, why not? Our Peterbilt was only three years old, and we had a huge, well-appointed sleeper attached to the cab. Most people who saw one of these units for the first time were impressed. It was like a small, hyper-efficient little room, and it included every comfort the manufacturer could think of. There was a refrigerator, a storage area for fresh clothing, venting for air-conditioning, a tiny toilet, and a sink with fresh water for washing up or for drinking. There was actually a small amount of floor space within the unit, separate from the bed, with room enough to stand and move about.

There was a huge drawer-like box under the mattress, for additional storage, that could be pulled out into the walking space within the sleeper.

Fascinated, the young girl examined all the features of the shiny, well-maintained sleeper unit. Unlike many truckers, Earl and I were neatniks. We kept this truck -- all of it, even the sleeper -- in tip-top shape at all times. It was not grungy. The sheets on the mattress were clean. The refrigerator was clean and well-stocked. The storage unit under the bed was not overrun with junk, but was, indeed, available for storage.

Seeing the girl's intense interest, I showed her around the unit. "Sleep here," I said again. "I will not bother you. You should go to sleep now, because it is getting late and the men will be here early to unload the trailer. Then, it will be reloaded and I will leave here, early. Think about what I have said. About where you can go."

I closed the door to the sleeper, giving the girl complete privacy, in better surroundings than she had likely seen up to this point anywhere in Ciudad Juarez. I reclined on the long seat of the cab, preparing to try to get some sleep myself.

The sleeper door opened, and the girl saw me lying there. "If you sleep there, the men will find you in the morning," she said.

"So?"

"If they find you sleeping in the truck, they will wonder why you are not back here, in your bed."

"Let them wonder."

"If you slept back here, with me, they would not know that I am here. I could hide."

"There is no reason for you to hide. Either I will turn you over to Mr. Martinez, or I will take you to a place, in Mexico, where you have friends or family."

"But there is no such place, for me," the girl said. "But this -- room -- you have! It is so big! It would be easy for you to hide me in here, and then take me with you across the river!"

"It's too risky," I said.

Well, it wasn't, really. It wasn't very risky at all. In all the many times I had crossed the Mexican border, going in either direction, no border guard had ever searched the sleeper unit. Occasionally, the guards would make me open the trailer and let them poke around the cargo inside, but the sleeper? Never. Taking the girl across the border would be a small risk. A tiny risk, really.

"Do you have people you could contact, in the U.S.?" I asked her.

"Yes, sir! I have more family, in the U.S., than in Mexico!"

"Who? Where do they live?"

"In Colorado!" she said. "In Trinidad, Colorado, the U.S.A.!"

Trinidad was a small city just over the state line from northern New Mexico, in the southeastern corner of Colorado. From Albuquerque, it was only, perhaps, another 250 miles.