by Bella Pollen
‘And how’s that bloody lazy Mexican?’ he asked, his voice slurred. It was midnight for him and the schnapps was kicking in. ‘You’re not letting him rip us off, I hope. I don’t like you being out there alone with him, anything might happen. I wish you would fire him,’ he added for the hundredth time.
I laughed and pretended I thought he was joking. Then I promised to go to the meeting and make lots and lots of new friends. God forbid that Robert should come charging over to slay imaginary dragons for me.
Skimming through the sea of faces I’m surprised to find one or two I recognize. Towards the front is the owner of the second-hand bookshop, a Gulf War vet who dresses in brown polyester trousers with mustard-coloured knitted ties. Behind him, there’s the sweet woman who works the till at the hardware store, dispensing change and information with breathtaking patience. ‘That’s two dollars seventy-seven, thank you, Babs. Door jambs, Steve? A-fourteen, middle aisle, next to four-inch brass hinges.’ I’m interested to note that not every face in the room is white. Dotted amongst the largely blonde hair of the women, a few dark heads stand out like burnt flecks in oatmeal. Certainly, the customs man on the stage, with his swarthy skin and hooded eyes, looks Mexican, and in the back row a white woman holds hands with an Indian who is pouring sweat and transferring his weight from one leg to the other as though in the throes of a heinous attack of claustrophobia. Jeff Hogan sits quietly in the front row, his thin hands resting on his knees, his head tilted, listening intently to a man who has stood up in the centre of the room and begun speaking.
‘Why does the INS not prosecute USA employers who encourage immigrants to keep on coming? Cochise county is the number one point for aliens crossing into our nation.’ He points his finger accusingly at the stage. ‘And for every one man intercepted there’s five who get through. So I ask you again, Mr Chavez, what is the INS doing to stop this?’
‘Yeah!’ someone shouts. ‘Our kids can’t get a job in Burger King because the Mexicans got ‘em all already!’
‘They’re draining our welfare system, hospitals, education!’
‘Why can’t you put troops on the border? Close it!’
The customs official holds up his hands for quiet.
‘Some of you know me, but for those that don’t, my name is Emilio Chavez. I’m border chief for the Nogales sector. Let me tell you something: it doesn’t matter what you read in the press, there is no border that can’t be controlled. Back in Vietnam we had extra-sensory equipment so sensitive that when somebody coughed three miles away you could hear it.’ He pauses. ‘Last time we had mass deportations in this country was in the Depression. Back then there was no electronic database linking immigrants to their whereabouts. Today all I need to track somebody down is their correct name and a date of birth. But let me tell you something, people: if we clamped down and removed all illegals from the USA, there would be economical implosion in both countries and a destabilization of our government. Now raise your hand, any one of you who wants to see ten million Mexicans crossing the border during the course of a single week.’
‘Only if we get to shoot them as they go!’ a voice rings out. There’s a quick smattering of laughter which is quickly self-regulated. Nobody risks a raised hand.
‘Yes! Over there, lady in the white shirt. Jeannie, ain’t it?’ The compère squints. ‘Eyesight ain’t what it used to be,’ he apologizes. ‘Jeannie Steves? That you?’
‘Bob,’ the woman acknowledges. She stands up and looks beseechingly round the audience. ‘I have two boys,’ she begins, barely louder than a whisper, ‘Ray and Terry.’
‘Speak up, Jeannie,’ Bob shouts. ‘We all need to hear what you got to say.’
Jeannie nods; a big woman with pretty features concealed by sun-aged skin, her fingers flutter at the turquoise belt buckle of her jeans.
‘My sons, Terry and Ray, well they’re good boys . . . real good boys and, as some of you know, they ain’t always had it easy. Thing is, they’re teenagers now and they’re growing up real quick.’ Her voice deepens with confidence. ‘Now y’all remember what happened to my sister’s eldest.’ She looks around, acknowledging the collective murmur of the room. One or two people shake their heads and look at the floor. ‘All our kids are at risk like Stanton was. I don’t want my boys hanging around the border. Bars and clubs on the other side, they don’t card the kids like they should. They’ll serve ‘em till they’re stupid with liquor. Our kids can go into Mexican drugstores and get anything they want, twenty-four hours a day, no prescription, no ID and, Lord knows, the drugs over there are cheaper than candy. So what I want to know is what are the customs people doing about that, Mr Chavez?’
‘Yes, sir!’ Bob points from the stage. ‘You have something to say about this?’
The hand waving from mid-field goes down and a jowled man stands up. ‘I lived in Phoenix for forty-seven years till I came down here. Had ‘em practically in my backyard. They lived like pigs. Didn’t even bother to learn English.’
The hall is becoming hot and testy with emotion. Bottoms shuffle uncomfortably on seats.
‘What about you, Doug?’
A whippet-thin cowboy with a long-boned face and eyes that have been beaten back to slits by grit and wind, stands slowly. Up on the stage, Bob strokes the air in a crowd-quietening motion.
The cowboy clears his throat. ‘Folks, I’ve been ran-chin’ for forty-five years. I eat dust fifteen hours a day, seven days a week and it’s back-breakin’ dirty work. I got no pension, no social security worth nothing. I work jest about as hard as a man can and ain’t got a nickel to show for it. But I ain’t complainin’, cowboyin’ is a good life. Only life I ever known. Now we have Mexican fellas on the ranch from time to time and I have to tell you we was awful afraid of them at first.’ He shakes his head. ‘But I ain’t got nothing against ‘em, nothin’ at all. You see one of them fellas up on a horse and there ain’t a single muscle in his body don’t know what it’s doin’. They’re good hard-working cowboys, jest like us.’ He sits down carefully.
‘Doug’s right.’ Another cowboy, with a white moustache that fans out from under his nose like the tail feathers of a dove, jerks up to his feet. ‘No Mexican ever done me no harm.’ His neck suffuses with blood as attention shifts his way. ‘I used to keep goats and sheep, and a while back a mountain lion got into my barn and killed all fifteen of them.’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Just like that. Had a Mexican fella at the time. It was his job to look after them goats. Wasn’t his fault, mind, wasn’t anybody’s fault, but made him cry to see ‘em like that, throats all ripped out an’ bloody an’ all.’ He collapses onto his chair, retracting his neck into his shirt like a tortoise.
The mood softens noticeably. Several people, including the Indian man and his wife, nod in agreement with this.
‘Jeff?’ the compére says. ‘I know you got something to say!’
Hogan stands up. ‘Well yes, Bob, yes, I do.’ Picking up the plastic bag at his feet, he walks up the steps and crosses the stage. ‘Something to say, something to show.’ He looks keenly at the audience then takes the bag by its bottom corners and tips it upside down, spilling rubbish onto the table. ‘You know what this is?’ he asks throatily. The assembly has gone completely quiet and suddenly, to my surprise, I notice Duval. He’s slouching in the corner on the other side of the hall, his black felt hat obscuring most of his face as he works the dirt from his nails with the blade of his Leatherman.
‘This is a tenth of the trash I pick up every day off my property.’ Jeff’s voice throbs with anger. ‘Every damn day, I’m telling you, and the load never gets any less.’ Everyone in the room cranes their head for a better look. Hogan pulls on a pair of Marigolds and begins plucking the garbage from the table, piece by piece. He holds up a milk carton and stabs a finger at the label. ‘Mexican brands. All of ‘em.’ He reaches for a ball of crumpled newspaper. ‘And this,’ he says, ‘do you know what this is?’
No one speaks.
‘It’s new
spaper.’ Hogan has the full attention of the room now. ‘Mexican newspaper and it’s soiled with human refuse.’ For a moment the silence is absolute before it is pierced by the odd manifestations of outrage which gather momentum until they swell into a single long expression of disgust.
Hogan unravels the newspaper, holding it up for everyone to see. ‘This is Mexican shit,’ he cries, ‘and it’s besmirching the face of our own president.’ As one now, the entire front row leans forward to get a better look at the defecated-upon features of Mr Bush.
‘If they would just pick up after them . . .’ a woman in the front row pipes up. ‘I’m sympathetic to their plight, but it ain’t just that it looks bad – the cattle eat that plastic stuff.’
Hogan plucks the repacked rubbish bag from the table and walks round to the front of the stage. ‘Here.’ He thrusts it at the woman, who wrinkles her nose in disgust and quickly plays pass the parcel with the teenager sitting to her left.
‘You want to appreciate what it’s like clearing this day after day? No disrespect, ma’am, but see how you would like it.’ He returns to the table as the bag is handed along and back through the rows like a church collection box.
I’m aware of my own nose wrinkling, yet I’m surprised by the strength of Jeff Hogan’s invective. Texas borders Mexico as much as Arizona and I would have imagined that even up in Houston there would have to be a modicum of peaceful co-existence.
‘It’s time to draw a line in the sand!’ Hogan cries. ‘Either the government must keep these criminals off our private property or I say it falls to the property owners to do it themselves.’
There’s a roar of approval. ‘Who’s for a show of hands?’ Hogan says rousingly. A smattering of hands shoot up, quickly joined by others until the room is a mass of waving arms. I glance over to Duval, but he’s looking to the back of the room where a dim murmur has begun and is rippling through the crowd row by row as a woman pushes her way to the front of the hall.
‘Hey!’ someone shouts. ‘Who asked Nora?’
Powering on, ignoring the muttering and the catcalls, the woman elbows her way through the latecomers until she makes it to the foot of the stage. She’s short, no more than five foot three, and near obese with the sort of excess flesh which suggests either a pack of doughnuts a day or an untreatable lymph disorder. A green baseball hat embroidered with the words Bass Buster is perched high on her head under which long grey hair falls in individual greasy points down her back. As she mounts the stairs, she plucks at the waistband of her trousers, which keep slipping down at the back, revealing a gaping expanse of soft white rump.
Ignoring the three men at the table, she kicks off without preamble, ‘I’m here to raise support for the Humanity Patrol.’
‘Get on home, Nora.’
‘The Humanity Patrol leaves water and helps folk who get themselves into trouble.’
‘Hey! We don’t want no bleeding-heart liberals here!’
Nora pays no attention, simply amplifies her voice until it projects over the growing clamour of the audience. I steal another look over at Duval. He has finished with his Leatherman manicure and is watching the assembly intently.
‘Every man has the right to feed his family,’ Nora bellows. ‘Dying of thirst is too high a price to pay. These people need protection, illegals or not.’
‘Yield the floor, girl.’ It’s the same voice again, coming from somewhere in the back. I peer around the heads trying to identify the caller, as up on stage Emilio Chavez braves an approach. Nora swats him away like a blue-bottle. Chavez, smile tightening, presents the audience with a helpless shrug.
‘Now come on, people, be fair,’ she shouts. ‘Y’all are happy to have Mexicans sweep your porches up in those fancy houses of yours.’
‘Yeah,’ counters the heckler, ‘they sweep the porches, then they case the joint and rob the place.’
Nora clenches her fists as though bracing herself for another bout in the ring, but who she thinks she might win round is unclear. The tenor of the meeting is vehemently against her. Some of the audience cup hands to mouths and boo, and that’s when it happens. From somewhere deep in the back of the auditorium, a milk carton comes sailing through the air. With devastating accuracy, it hits Nora square on the shoulder, then ricochets up to her face before dropping to the floor with a soft thunk.
‘People, people.’ Bob the compère waves his arms ineffectually, but it’s too late. There’s raucous laughter as the crowd caves in to pack mentality and Nora finally cuts her losses. She fixes the room with a look of defiance then stomps offstage.
‘Hey, Nora,’ calls the persistent heckler, ‘better not stick around in the hog season lest you git shot.’
This time I spot him. He’s standing up, a thin feverish man in the back row who’s taken possession of the rubbish bag. In his right hand he’s now holding a crushed water bottle. He weighs it up, judging the length and power required for another shot, but as he pulls his arm back to make the throw Duval steps swiftly out of his corner, and seizing the man’s wrist, twists it sharply behind his back. The heckler lets out a yowl and his face contorts with pain, but all eyes are on Nora as she heads down the aisle, the sheer vicinity of her menace opening up a path before her. On she goes past the rows of detractors, past Duval still holding fast to the heckler, until she reaches the exit doors at the back and punches through them using the flat palms of both hands.
‘People, this is uncalled for,’ Chavez is shouting. He waits for the room to settle. ‘Look, I understand your frustration and I appreciate the problems some of you are having, but nobody wants to be taking matters into their own hands. Nora is entitled to her opinion as are all of you here, but understand this – the government sees its tolerance of illegal aliens as a form of foreign aid. We do what we can with the money we’re given and the laws we live by. If you want things changed around here, lobby your county commissioner or write to your local senator. We need a bigger budget, more helicopters and more manpower. The border is nearly two thousand miles. You want to see a wall that long? You need to build it.’
Only now, as Chavez folds away his notes and shakes hands with Bob and Jeff Hogan, do the people in the back rows begin to pay attention to the mewls of outrage coming from somewhere in their midst. ‘Did you see that?’ The heckler stands shakily supporting his right arm in his left. His eyes dart from one puzzled face to another. ‘Did you see what he did? Look at it!’ His voice rises to a whine. ‘My wrist, I think it’s broke!’
The car park is empty. Most people have stayed behind for crisps and beer but I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough. The townsfolk of Ague, lighting their torches in the darkened gloom of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and I want no part of it. I just want to go home, back to the children and the apolitical bubble of Temerosa.
I’m beginning to think that for all its beauty there’s something mean-spirited about this part of the world. Maybe it’s to do with the land, with its jagged and sinister topography, maybe there’s a faction of the population that has become as twisted and burnt out as the trunks of the drought-ridden scrub oaks. Arizona is full of people who have drifted to the west for their own reasons: because it’s cheap, because it’s warm, because one day their trailer just broke down and they couldn’t afford to fix it. People come to Arizona from all over, crawling out of the skin of their old lives and growing a new, tougher one. Nevertheless for those who have jumped a rung on the ladder there seems to be a tendency to turn round awfully quick and take a kick at those scrabbling just behind them.
I turn the corner of the building and head towards the commercial dustbins where I’d parked the truck. Then with a small jolt of fear, stop. The setting ahead could come from a Hopper painting: the blandness of a deserted car park, the reassuring shine of a street lamp. A scene of everyday banality, yet one suddenly full of threat and menace. In the butterscotch truck, plainly visible, is the silhouette of a man. My eyes drop to the licence plates. There’s no mistake, it’s my tr
uck all right. I stand still, unsure what to do, then slowly force myself to breathe out. People who mean you harm do not tend to sit behind the wheel of your car in full view. Your traditional psycho prefers to lie low, only making his presence known once you are driving through the back-water roads of no safe return. Besides, only two people left that meeting before I did and only one of them had been wearing a black cowboy hat.
Duval winds down the window as I approach.
‘Get in,’ he says pleasantly.
‘What do you mean, get in?’ I say, much less pleasantly. ‘It’s my truck!’
‘True,’ he says, ‘but I’m a lousy passenger.’
Slowly, I walk round to the other door, wondering whether this is a good time to resurrect my inner feminist or simply give in to curiosity.
‘Where’s your truck?’
Duval nods his head out of the window.
‘What?’ I identify his truck from the line-up of parked cars and squint at it. ‘Oh.’ The tyres are flat, all four of them. ‘Wow . . . what happened? Did someone slash them?’
Just as a blind man develops an enhanced sense of hearing, Duval compensates for his lack of words with an entire range of shoulder shifts and head movements, all of which are variations on the theme of shrug.
‘Nora?’ I persist.
‘Nora would never slash a tyre ... a throat, maybe, but not a tyre.’
‘She looked pretty angry to me.’
‘Slashing a tyre is a fool’s revenge.’ He pats down his shirt for cigarettes. ‘Kind of thing a weak person does.’
‘What about wrist-breaking? What kind of person does a thing like that?’
The match flares in the darkness of the cab. ‘I didn’t like his manners.’
‘Ah well, that’s all right then.’ I steal a look at him from the passenger seat as the truck grumbles into life, aware that I seem to be developing weirdly conflicting feelings about this man. I don’t trust him, I can’t even say I like him – all my instincts tell me he’s up to no good, yet ... I like what he did in the meeting. I liked it a lot. I had been fiercely conscious of his presence throughout the evening and now that he’s here, in the car, well the truth is, I’m glad of that too.
