the name of the woman to ask for when he arrived in the town. Ramón nodded, frowned, started to speak then bit his lip. We waited. Finally: ‘Could you drop me there?’ Walter sighed, put a hand on Ramón’s shoulder. The creases in his face seemed to deepen. ‘We can’t. We can give you everything but a ride.’ I pulled Walter aside. ‘It’s just nine miles,’ I hissed. ‘Honey, if we were caught… ’ he took off his glasses and rubbed them with the hem of his shirt. ‘You and I would go straight to jail, to begin with.’ ‘I don’t care!’ My skin burned. Each muscle in my face tensed and strained. ‘Well, the Samaritans would be shut down. Do you care about that? We’d be called human smugglers. Discredited. Then we couldn’t help anyone.’ We looked over at Ramón. He sat on a rock, round face tilted skywards, eyes closed. Walter took one of my hands in both of his and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘He’ll make it. I know he will. He’s healthy. He has plenty of water. His English is wonderful. He’s just nine miles from the safehouse.’ The desert swam around me. I could feel its heat rising through my sneakers, crawling up my legs, pumping through my blood. Walter watched my contorted face. I breathed slowly several times, then nodded. I approached the man. Sat beside him. Tried to explain. He nodded, expressionless, then asked me to call his wife – to tell her that I saw him, that he was okay, that he’d call as soon as he made it to a city. He recited her number. I scribbled it down and promised I would call. In Spanish, I wished him good luck. We stopped in the tiny desert town of Arivaca. Walter ran in to use the toilet and I took the slip of paper out of my pocket, ran a finger over the ten tiny digits. I took a deep breath, letting the hot air rush through my lips and swell my abdomen. I dialled. The ringing bleated in my ear. ‘Aló?’ Tripping over my words, I
explained who I was, my encounter with her husband. Concentrating on making my adjectives and nouns agree, I relayed his message to her. I lamely listed all we had given him: water, food, medicine, advice. My bumbling monologue met staticcharged silence. Then, evenly, she asked where we lived. When I told her the Samaritans work out of Tucson her voice became lower and more metallic. ‘And you couldn’t have driven him there? You left him? You left him in the desert?’ I began reciting all the reasons Walter had just given me, but now they sounded not only flimsy but insulting and cold. I trailed off, unable to explain to this woman I’d never meet why we had made the conscious decision to abandon her husband to the violent whims of the Sonoran desert. ‘I feel it so much,’ I pleaded. Another long silence. Her voice returned, dull and hollow, to thank me for my time. I took a long shower that night, letting the hot water pelt my tender, sunburned skin. I leaned my forehead against the slick tiles and shook with sobs. I clawed at myself with words. Coward. Murderer. I had left the house that morning proud to be a law-abiding citizen and an objective reporter, and returned ashamed to be either. All the clear demarcations of my life – legal and illegal acts, right and wrong, balanced and biased – had become blurred in the desert heat. For weeks after, it took effort to smile, to bear up my end of a conversation. I spent a lot of time alone. I pushed food around my plate. In perfectly average, pleasant situations, I struggled not to cry. But I couldn’t sustain my mourning forever. My program ended, and I left Tucson soon after. The physical distance helped me put the desert behind me and move forward in other activist work. I didn’t confront that day until almost exactly a year later, and now, as I attempt to make sense of it, I realise what I’ve lost: the names of the young boys, exactly what Walter said to console me, the