In the Valley of Mirrors
Memory is the only pickup truck you can drive back to places that no longer exist. In the spring of 2019, a friend offered to let me spend the month of April at his ranch in a flat pocket of South Texas Brush Country between Cotulla, Laredo, and Eagle Pass known as the Golden Triangle (not to be confused with the Golden Triangle framing Beaumont, Orange, and Port Arthur). There, he explained, I would have the space and peace of mind required to finish the novel I’d spent the last seven years writing.
I’d be on my own at a small cabin away from the ranch’s busy headquarters, tucked in the corner of an endless maze of mesquite, hard-soil trails, barbed-wire fences, and man-made ponds locals call “tanks.” It is an active ranch that raises horses and cattle, a place where vivacious chickens and feral cats roam around freely. But if you stay quiet in the vast expanse long enough, you might also spot paisanos, owls, deer, turtles, wild hogs, even mountain lions more than once—or, maybe, never. Few ecosystems are as deceptive as the brush land.
By the time my friend’s invitation hit my inbox, the novel was howling with life, haunting me for an ending, demanding that I come closer. It would be the first time I’d spend time alone in the middle of a sprawling vastness a few miles away from the border with Mexico, the country I was born and raised in. I didn’t give too much thought to the prospect of living so close to Mexico for the first time since I left in 2001; I was just intrigued by the ranch’s idiosyncrasies. Whenever I’d go out for walks, I’d have to wear a vest—olive green with bright
