Member-only story
Crime in the Borderlands
The victim was angry, even more angry than victims usually are.
The scene he described was tragicomic: every employee in his dealership scampering about in thick smoke to move “over a million dollars’ worth” of recreational vehicles as the grass fire allegedly started by the defendant loomed closer. Mass confusion, with the danger of hitting each other in the clouds of smoke almost as great as the danger of burning.
The defendant, a Mexican youth of about 18, looked miserable. He squirmed in his seat and looked at the floor as the victim’s testimony was translated. Tears were welling in his eyes when he took the oath to testify on his own behalf.
His story was familiar. Leaving behind a large family, hungry and unemployed, he walked across a dry spot in the Rio Grande. Hiding by day and walking by night, he made his way north, following a main highway.
He could not remember how many days had passed since he had eaten when, on I-35 north of Austin, he spotted a rabbit dead in the road. At a nearby service station, he bummed some matches from a Mexican-American attendant.
So the fire, he told me, was meant to cook a rabbit, not a Winnebago. It was an accident. He was sorry.
I believed him.
