The Coyote's Bicycle (11 page)

A
Los Angeles Times
review once claimed that Fernandez's photographs “form a knot of narratives.” But like the everyday mysteries in her photos, the mystery of the bikes couldn't be untangled by snap observations alone because, as with the hats and shoes, the people who put them there in the dirt had vanished. Phenomena of the border sprang forth and evolved so fast, few of their riddles were ever solved. The bikes were mysterious. But so was everything else. Fernandez could only return to her central premise—the one thing she knew she could accomplish. Anything that touched the boundary needed to be photographed, documented, cataloged. So Fernandez stepped into the bush and shot the bikes that were set there, “hidden between branches, or in hollows,” as she said, or simply “thrown away.”

I found Greg Abbott on a clear winter morning, walking the sand dunes of Border Field State Park with a tank of herbicide strapped to his back and a spray nozzle in his hand. This was a ritual the state parks ecologist performed during the coldest week of the year,
spraying the invasive “highway” ice plant that bloomed and shape-shifted across the dunes like a slow-moving storm.

In his overworked khakis adorned with the patch of the brown bear on a faded field of green, Abbott looked both rugged and intellectual, as if Papa Hemingway had retired from books to take a civil service post in the southernmost corner of the West Coast. He wore a scruffy gray beard, but you could still see the beach boy blond in it. The saucer-like bullring and brightly colored neighborhood of Playas de Tijuana dominated our southern view. We stood a stone's throw from the mouth of the Tijuana River, where it emptied into the Pacific. Offshore, the Coronado Islands broke the ocean's blue plain. Behind us, the green, tawny, yellow, and rust colors of the valley ascended from scrub to tablelands rising into Otay Mountain, a crescendo of the last unbroken fresh-to-saltwater system in Southern California.

As we talked, a black-tailed jackrabbit the size of a small beagle leapt from a low bush and made a wide, loping arc around our position. Abbott sighted the rabbit's evasion technique and suggested we modify our direction in order to keep the animal from bolting into the streets of Mexico. Nodding at the open land around us, he said, “It looks pristine, but it's not.” I could clearly see the bunkers in Bunker Hill. Somewhere in the vicinity, bovine skeletons eroded from the earth where American soldiers once shot forty head of trespassing Mexican cattle—the first cross-border incident of the twentieth century. Migrant trails snaked the entire reserve. And of course, there were remnant car tires.

“This is an island—an island surrounded by three million people,” Abbott said. “And islands have problems you wouldn't believe.”

Greg Abbott had been a pioneering surfer and a legendary lifeguard—occupations that fit together only in the beginning. His surfing and world travel kept him from ever wanting to commit to a career-track lifeguard gig. As he came of age, state lifeguards were
suddenly classified as “peace officers” and required to carry sidearms. They filled out paperwork and climbed the bureaucracy to soft pensions. That wasn't Abbott. And yet his heroics saving lives at the beach had earned him injuries that ensured he couldn't be a “seasonal” forever—that was a kid's job.

Remembering when he fit that description, Abbott pointed to the spot where he and some other seasonals had once built a shack and a barbecue pit. It was hidden from their superiors by the large sand dunes. The sight of the empty space made him reminiscent. The driftwood shack was so close to the border, Abbott and his cohorts would often dash into Mexico to make saves off Playas de Tijuana. One September, in fact, brought both sweltering heat and a powerful swell that had originated south of New Zealand. The inland heat prodded a record number of Tijuana's citizens to the beach, an egress timed perfectly for a mass encounter with the treacherous waves. There was no lifeguard service in Mexico. At some stage, while scanning with his binoculars, Abbott spotted a swimmer caught in a rip current on the Mexican side. He grabbed his “can”—a red flotation device—and dashed across the border to make the save. Once he got the swimmer to the sand, a mob of beachgoers cheered. But then Abbott spotted another swimmer in trouble farther south, and after, another. “There were so many people at the beach,” he said, “it was like running through a crowded bar.” He kept following dangers until he “couldn't see America anymore.”

Then the first sea fence was built, an iron gate extending into the Pacific that split one beach between two nations. Lifeguards called it “the strainer” because ocean currents often trapped swimmers against its pylons, holding them underwater.

As enhanced border fortifications went up in the 1990s, crossings became more dangerous and the lifeguards soon found themselves making increasingly desperate saves. Abbott once watched a group of migrants attempt to negotiate the Tijuana River mouth
where it meets the ocean. They were already on US soil but their aim was to get to the town of Imperial Beach on the other side. Depending on tide and season, the river mouth will push or pull a tremendous volume of water while appearing placid. “They looked fine at first,” Abbott said, “but just as soon as I turned my head, all five were in trouble.” He bolted down the dunes and into the swirling water. He gathered the group of fully clothed men and women, most still clutching their few possessions. And then he began to swim them to the farther, northern side of the river—a distant crescent of dry sand. This valley comes with a separate set of rules. Abbott knew that if he did the much easier thing and pulled the “illegals” back to the southern shore where they'd entered, the group would only attempt to cross again. “You don't want to have to save them twice,” he said.

In 1998, a North Pacific storm brought the kind of surf the Strand sees maybe once a decade. Some waves approached two stories high. Thirty-knot winds out of the southwest carried rainsqualls, drenching the coast and whipping the waves into a fury. The ocean temperature plunged. In all this heaving gray tone of texture and energy, Abbott spotted a
panga
fishing boat foundering off Coronado Beach. Coming over in
pangas
, open wood boats propelled by outboard engines, had become a popular yet reckless immigration technique. The problem was that
pangas
, while great fishing boats, were poorly designed for long-distance travel. Few migrants swam well enough to justify the risks. Abbott observed a huddle of bodies in the front of this one. His fear was that the person in charge would force the passengers overboard in an attempt to lighten the load. The
panga
pilot approached the surf line but fled out to sea when waves rose up. Then Abbott, as he feared, saw people slipping over the rails. The boat turned and headed back south. Those men weren't going to make it, Abbott knew.

“I called in backup from everybody in the world before I jumped in there,” he said. He'd ordered a Jet Ski. He looked at his watch. Slim
chance the ski would arrive in time. So he grabbed his gear and started swimming out toward a raft of men drifting into the surf's impact zone.

Drowning victims don't often cry for help. That action requires energy and breath, two resources victims conserve in order to survive. Once out there, Abbott met seven Mexican men in their twenties, all clinging to a couple of life vests and a surfboard. Their expressions were those of men at a wake. Abbott understood the challenge was to get the living out of the surf zone as a group. But he couldn't touch any of them. He knew that one or more, in silent panic, would attempt to claw themselves on top of their savior, simply to fill the lungs one more time. So Abbott tossed a lifeguard strap, tethering himself to about a thousand pounds of drowning people. In Spanish, he warned them to keep their distance. If Abbott led the party straight toward the shore, he was certain to lose a few in the pounding waves. It was procedure to swim them farther out to sea. But as he did this, a rare set of extremely large waves jacked up in front of the group. The timing couldn't have been worse. The first wave landed squarely on top of the men. Abbott felt and heard bone grinding in his neck. He struggled to hold the line. His body was tossed and rolled. The cold felt like a tight belt constricting his chest; the vastness of the sea drained energy and body heat. As he attempted to breathe, his lungs made short, violent convulsions. Nearing the point of blackout, Abbott finally felt a cold wind shear on his face. He'd surfaced. And as the waves passed, men popped back up. All of them. Abbott looked for the beach. But a rescue vehicle wasn't coming, and he knew it.

So the old lifeguard made one stroke and followed it with the next. Steadfast ocean sense helped him negotiate lulls in the swell, locate the currents and rips, and coach the men shoreward. By the time they landed—faces blue and lips purple—the entire parking lot at Coronado's public beach was a theater of flashing lights and bleating sirens. Some of the victims stumbled and fell, a symptom of
hypothermia. A migrant wearing a soaked dress shirt threw up blood. All were rushed to the hospital.

The single-handed rescue of seven men in dangerous conditions garnered newsprint and an award. But Abbott thought, “Maybe being a fifty-five-year-old seasonal isn't all it's cracked up to be.” Not long after, the ecologist post opened up at Border Field State Park. The beat was the same, but this time the job entailed saving small life. “Yep,” he said, “I went from being a respected hero to a bird guard.”

It may be due to Abbott's longevity in such an odd and volatile landscape that people seek him out. In conducting research for the novel
Tijuana Straits
, noir author Kem Nunn walked the estuary with Abbott, who enumerated the nine species of endangered birds that nested in the sand dunes, as well as the cats and dogs that crawled out of Tijuana to feed on them. Partly because of their acquaintance, many locals assume that Nunn based his character Sam “the Gull” Fahey on Abbott. As proof, they point to a singular line: “He'd accepted as his charge the protection of certain migratory birds, most notably the western snowy plover and light-footed clapper rail.”

I sought out Abbott for less subtle reasons. As my search through the valley narrowed, I'd surmised that Abbott might be one of a select few who knew where the bicycle plague had come from. And maybe even why. It was Abbott who'd piled the bikes in the Border Field parking area where Maria Teresa Fernandez had found them. When Jesse Gomez mentioned a state parks “ranger” who'd left a load of bikes on his farm, that was Abbott too. Most often, when I questioned people in the valley about bicycles, they pointed in Abbott's direction.

In fact, between the time I met Terry Tynan and sought out Greg Abbott, a filmmaker named Greg Rainoff set up his camera to interview Abbott at a location overlooking the valley. The topic of the interview had to do with the Department of Homeland Security's
decision to override environmental protections in constructing the new “triple fence.” As Abbott spoke before the scenic backdrop, a silky peloton came whistling out of Goat Canyon. The cranks whirred, the wheels rolled. The riders hustled down the dirt track as easy as anything. The sight of them might have seemed unremarkable until one contemplated the only place where they could have originated. The cluster of cyclists became so distracting to Rainoff, his camera wheeled off Abbott to follow its trajectory. Footage of illegal crossers scaling a fence or hoofing through the desert is rare, but this—it was as if a cameraman had set up to interview a zoo official but caught dinosaurs in the background. Rainoff's clip is the only moving image ever captured of the bicycle migrants.

That scene, however, was not new to Abbott. The first time he'd noticed the bikes, he'd been hunched over digging up endemic species of sage from an area of the park soon to be annexed by Homeland Security. Abbott figured that if he collected the plants sure to be destroyed by the new construction, he stood a chance of repopulating these areas later. Bent at his task, he heard a piercing whistle, a signal of some kind. A fluttering of wings then caught his eye. Flushed birds can telegraph any number of events but when Abbott saw a northern harrier shoot from the bush, he knew this was a human disturbance. Then came a sound like a waterfall. Around a bend, a group of riders flanked by a guide of some sort rolled into view, wheels heavy on the road. Abbott watched the lead rider herd the pack and direct it toward the river. The cyclists seemed determined but they weren't sprinting. “The river is one mile from the border,” Abbott said. “An all-out foot run would take nine minutes, at least. But on a bike, it's four.”

As bicycles accumulated in the valley over the following months, the park's staff began to separate and pile them in the same manner they used to clear waste tires, cobblestones, and trash that washed out of the canyons. The sight churned something in Abbott. His
early travels straddled the age of the ship and that of the jet—he once circumnavigated the entire globe with two flights separated by months on deck. Still, he knew his life as a traveler really began on a bike. Those piles of spokes, rims, wheels, sprockets, and metal tubing, Abbott knew, were rockets to unknown worlds. And, well, he couldn't stand waste. So on a number of occasions Abbott loaded bikes into his state parks truck and hauled them to donation centers. But in greeting the
AMVETS
thrift store staff, and pulling the bikes out of the truck bed, he experienced another feeling that tugged at his better judgment. It was the ecologist in him, he told me, who thought: “I wanted to tag those bikes the way we would a jackrabbit. Just to see how fast they slipped into Mexico, and came right back again. I probably donated the same bike several times.”

The Tijuana corridor was the one stretch that the Department of Homeland Security pointed to as secure; this was the example the other 1,942 miles of border might hone to. Abbott remembered the cyclists as just cruising, not racing. At a glance, some could barely ride. And this gave him pause.