Vaya con Dios

I had just arrived at the hostel in Austin a few hours before. I was out on the river dock, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, feeding pieces of bread to the ducks that swam up.
A guy walked up behind me and asked me a question, but I couldn't hear what he said, so I turned around and asked him.
"Do you have any hooks?" he asked, in Spanish. He and a friend of his were standing behind me on the dock. Their Mexican skin was dark and tough from overexposure to the sun, and their clothes were the kind of clothes you'd wear on a construction site and nowhere else.
"Hooks?" I said in English, drawing a shape of a hook in the air. I'm still not sure how I'd made the connection, as I'd never used the word before.
They nodded their heads.
I chuckled a little to myself, because believe it or not, I did have some hooks in my car, left over from earlier in the summer when I'd done some fishing with a cousin of mine.
I told them that I had the hooks, and they told me that they were trying to catch some fish cause they were hungry. I offered them some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and that began our 20 minute conversation in Spanish.
They asked if I knew of any jobs, and I told them that I myself was looking for a job. I asked where they were from, and they said, "Mexico." They said that they had traveled for a few days. "When did you get into town?" I asked. "Today," they said. It was at that point that one of the ducks stole a sandwich I had given to them, so I made them another one.
I'd worked with a bunch of illegal immigrants before, and regardless of my political views on the whole process, I was curious and, at the same time, wanted to help these guys out. "How did you cross the border?" I asked. I figured that if they knew that I knew they were illegals, a question like that couldn't hurt.
"We swam."
"The Rio Grande?"
"No, Rio Bravo." I didn't understand what they were talking about, but when I checked it out online later, I found out that there's a city called Rio Bravo on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.
Our conversation lapsed into the daily piddlies of life. I had gone back to the car and brought back the hooks, and one of them had tied a hook to a string wrapped around a plastic coke bottle. He began to fish on the dock, and I warned them that since this was a well-policed area, it wouldn't be a good idea to fish out in the open. Also, there were turtles swimming all around us in the water, and I didn't want one of the turtles to get caught, as unhooking them would be a painful experience for both sides.
At that point I decided that it was a good idea for them to move on, so I told them to wait a little and I went back to my car to prepare a little travel bag of amenities to help them on their journey: sunscreen, soap, toilet paper, toothbrushes, some razors, etc. - things that I had lying around in my trunk, odds and ends that had become scattered throughout the car in the wake of the cross-country voyage.
I brought back the bag for them, explained to them what was in it ("This soap is for your body and face, this soap is only for when mosquitos [I made a biting motion] you").
I warned them to not stay in this place for too long, as the owners of the hostel would probably do something about it eventually.
We shook hands, and they said, "Thanks brother," and I said, "Go with God," and they went on their merry ways.
I told some of the friends I'd met there, mostly Britons and Americans, about the experience. I explained that some random illegals had asked me for some hooks, and that I'd for some odd reason had a few in my car, and that we'd talked about life for the next 20 minutes, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and feeding bread to the ducks and turtles, laughing at the way the two sides fought for food against each other and amongst themselves.

Even though it happened a month ago, I still can't get the story out of my head. I look for some moral, or bit of wisdom, perhaps a truth that has escaped my analysis so far. Can't seem to find anything. But somewhere in there, amidst their struggle for survival, me just happening to be the guy they asked at that place and time, knowing enough of their language to help them out, having hooks in my car, sharing the simple pleasures of life...
The fact is that I don't know, and may never. There's just something about it that rings of purpose, stinks of predestination.