by Jack Lopez
Silent the whole way, Amber refused to drive no matter how much I asked, and I didn’t have good feeling because of it. I wouldn’t beg, though. It was as if Tijuana reminded her of our carefree actions, and now we had to pay the consequences for them. “Beware your friend,” Half-man on Skateboard had warned me. At the time I thought he was referring to Amber.
When it was our turn to be interrogated by the Border Patrol agent, I stopped my mother’s 4Runner next to the little booth, with a bad feeling in my gut and a sinking heart. It had been hot and dry while waiting in the endless lines to reach this point, but now, under the postmodern arch that sheltered all the re-entry bays, it was shady and breezy, almost cool. I wished we had just walked across, but that wasn’t happening. Besides, the car …
“Citizenship?” the border cop asked.
“U.S.”
“Citizenship, miss?” he asked when Amber didn’t respond.
She still didn’t answer, only twirled Jamie’s sunglasses. She put them on. I could see tears on her cheek.
“Do you have a problem? Can you not speak?” the agent said.
“She’s U.S., sir,” I said.
“I asked her.”
“She’s upset.”
“I can see that. What are you bringing with you from Mexico that you wish to declare?”
“Nothing.”
“Will you please both step out of the car?”
I exited the car on the driver’s side. Amber remained seated. Leaning into the window, I said, “You’re blowing it, Amber.”
She said nothing. She looked straight ahead, Jamie’s aviator sunglasses obscuring her face.
The cop walked around the car, looking in all the windows, looking at our boards and clothes, at the general disarray of our things.
Amber took off the sunglasses and began fidgeting with them, finally setting them on the driver’s seat.
When the agent stood in front of me, he poked me hard in the waist with his flashlight. He wore black leather gloves, and they gripped his steel flashlight with authority.
“Hey!” I said, recoiling.
He paid me no mind, opening the car door, reaching under the seats, poking around. He stood up, outside the car, and seemed to notice for the first time Jamie’s glasses on the seat. He leaned forward, putting his hand right on the glasses, breaking them while he looked under the front seat another time. He gave Amber a hard look and then one to me. I gazed in the asshole’s eyes, not blinking.
He walked around to Amber’s side of the car and told her to get out. She just sat there, looking at the glasses. He went back to his little booth and made a phone call. When he came back he went straight for Amber, opening the door and pulling her out. Amber resisted, becoming dead weight. Once he had her out, he searched under the seats for whatever it was he looked for. While he was bent over, Amber kicked him in the ass.
He was a big man with a crew cut, and I didn’t think he could move quickly, or with such agile grace, but he did. He was on Amber in a heartbeat, pinning both her arms behind her back, pushing her toward the office on the right side of the bays.
“Wait!” I yelled, taking off after them. Before I’d taken two steps I found myself on the ground with a knee in my back and my hands pinned behind, cuffed.
“Tell me your story again,” the man said. He was some sort of detective for the DEA, and he thought that Amber and I were smuggling drugs. I’d told him the truth, the whole story, but he believed that Jamie was following us, with the drugs. He stuck to his scenario, and nothing I said could disabuse him from that notion. Because of his belief, my mother’s car was entirely torn apart: side door panels off and on the ground next to it; headliner shredded and the pieces lying on the ground as if a windstorm had blasted through the car’s interior; air filter and other engine bolt-ons spread out over the ground; Greg Scott’s sleeping bags ripped apart, flung on the cement with the other objects. I could see all this through the interrogation room window. They’d wanted me to watch them destroy my mother’s car, probably hoping I’d come clean rather than have the car damaged, but I had nothing to offer other than the truth, which was something this man had no use for.
“Just let me call my parents,” I said for the umpteenth time.
The man was old, probably in his forties, fit, with a thin mustache and large ears. His hair was short and dark. He wore a suit and tie. “Why did your friend attack a United States agent?”
“She didn’t attack him. She kicked him in the ass because he broke her brother’s sunglasses on purpose.”
“That hardly warrants a federal charge, does it?”
“She’s upset. Her brother’s missing.”
“Yes, that’s right, so you claim.” He cracked his gum and rolled it between his upper teeth and lower teeth.
“That’s right.”
“On this island.”
“Yeah.”
“Where is the island again?”
“I already told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“South and west of Ensenada.”
“That’s right. And what’s its name?”
“C’mon. Aren’t you bored? I am.”
“Just tell me again the name of the island.”
“La Isla de Los Delfíns.”
“Why isn’t it on any maps?”
(We would find out much later that Jésus had used the common name for the island; the proper name, of course, was on the map.)
“I wouldn’t know.”
I looked at the man who interrogated me. He sat in a chair with a back and armrests. On the table he had a stained coffee cup with a big chip on the lip. He also had an endless supply of gum, which he chewed with abandon.
“I find your entire story odd. I think your friend, the one who’s supposed to be missing, has drugs. I think you and his sister were going to meet him along the barrier, where you would then place the drugs in that car and he would join you. You’re going to tell me your meeting place.”
“I want to call my parents.”
“You’re a car thief. The car you were driving was reported stolen. You have no rights. I don’t care how many television shows you’ve watched, you’re nothing here, okay? You don’t get shit unless I okay it. Understand?”
I sighed. I knew his drug theory, but hadn’t known that my mother’s car was reported. “Yes, sir.”
“Where are you meeting your friend?”
I’m not sure, I thought.
CHAPTER 15
I sat on a long bench in front of an institution-green picnic table, my mother across from me on its counterpart. I couldn’t look her in the eye. She was dressed for work, hair done with hairspray, jewelry that was simple yet stylish, and a pantsuit and low heels. My father was so angry that he wouldn’t come. Evidently my mother had taken the train to San Diego to get me out. I was held in a detention center for juveniles, a ward of the San Diego Sheriff’s Department. I’d been arrested for grand theft auto, and my experience so far was nothing like the game!
My mother told me she had reported the car stolen before she realized that I was gone, otherwise she might not have done so. She wasn’t sure. At any rate, the damage was done.
In a big empty room my mother was the only other human, if you didn’t count the burly guard who blocked the only door. After being in the hands of law-enforcement people, I was wondering whether or not some of them were human. Many of them were like pit bulls; once something was in their mind, that was it, end of story, fuck you. For some people reality and truth have nothing to do with anything. I realized that those kinds of people exist everywhere, but it just seemed that there was a disproportionate number of them associated with my incarceration.
“Why didn’t you come to us?” my mother said.
I wanted to say, “You’re really crabby when awakened,” but said only, “We didn’t want to bother you.” I couldn’t tell her about the approaching swell, our expectations of big waves, good surf, a perfect wave. That was just to
o selfish.
“You did get my message, right?”
“Oh, yes, we heard you. Why … ?” she broke off, looking away toward the ground. When her gaze came back to me she said, “And you’re sure about Jamie? You’re not lying?”
I looked onto the hard, cold cement floor. There was an old wad of chewing gum hard-melted into a white spot. Suddenly my nose burned, and I tried not to cry.
“Okay, sorry,” she said, turning away and dabbing her eyes. “But, I mean, you didn’t have to run away.”
“We thought Jamie was going to get arrested.”
“He might have. But that’s better than what happened, isn’t it?”
I looked at my mother. She looked tired, and for the first time I thought of what she must have been like when she was young. I’ll bet she would have helped her friend out; I’ll bet she would have. “So what happens now?”
“I’m not sure. Jamie injured Frederick. He’s in the hospital.”
“But F attacked him.”
“Use his proper name, please. I know what you kids call him.”
“Whatever. Anyway, Jamie was attacked. He just defended himself.”
“That’s not for us to sort out. When did Jamie get so mean?”
“He’s not mean! Not at all.”
“When did he turn so hard?”
“He didn’t, Mom; stuff just kept happening to him.”
We sat in silence, the huge bureaucratic building ticking with a life of its own. The building and all the pit bulls still hadn’t found Jamie.
“Where’s Amber? Can she come back with us?”
“She’s been released.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. These people aren’t exactly forthcoming with their information. And I haven’t talked with Claire.” And then with no segue, “Are you hungry?”
I still had no appetite, even though I’d not eaten in God knows how long. “No, Mom, they fed me.” I wondered what she meant about Claire not speaking with her, but said nothing.
“I’m seeing a bondsman in awhile. He’ll try to get you out before the weekend, but he may not be able to, since it’s Friday. He’ll do his best. I’ll do my best.”
“I understand, Mom. I’m so sorry.” And after thinking on it for a moment, I said, “Are there charges against Jamie?” We might be in the same boat.
“I don’t know.”
After my mother left I was transferred to another part of the compound, the drunk tank. With adults. Men. Drunk men. I supposed it was to teach me a lesson. Seeing all those drunk guys coming in hour after hour, vomiting on the floor, on themselves, on anyone who was close to them, was disgusting. The stench was enough to make a sober person vomit, and I dry-heaved, but there was nothing in my stomach. Was I drunk when I stole my mother’s car? Was I drunk to help my friend?
Finally I was released in the early evening, and my mother and I drove north. She didn’t stop, except for gas, and the only comment she made about her formerly new and now torn-up 4Runner was to gasp upon seeing it.
I’d imagined the Border Patrol agents might put everything back together — you know, put the side panels on, try to put back the headliner. But no, they’d piled everything in the back of the car, a constant reminder of my criminal status, and how I’d dragged my family into it.
“What were you thinking?” Raul said. He stood in his former room, my room now, leaning against the dresser. Even though I sort of reveled in my bittersweet privacy, I missed my brother a lot. I’d seen him every day of my life, and now the only way I could hang out with him was if I stopped by his apartment. But he was never home because he worked a full-time job.
“I guess I wasn’t, not really. It just seemed like the cool thing to do. I didn’t want Jamie to get in trouble, and things just kept happening.” Now I was the one arrested!
My brother had done his share of shit, but nothing that could compare with the mess I was in. “But stealing the car? Jamie drowned? You’re not covering for him?”
As the bridge of my nose got edgy and my vision clouded I fought back the tears. “He didn’t drown!”
“Okay,” he said in a softer voice.
My mother was making a big Sunday meal and had invited my brother and his wife over. Bonnie, who was just starting to show in her pregnancy, was in the kitchen talking with my mother.
“How come there’s no island on the map?”
“I don’t know.” Did I dream Jésus? Did I dream the wave Jamie took off on? Had I only dreamed my nights with Amber? “It’s really weird.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe only the fishermen know about it. Maybe they don’t want people to know where it is. The simple thing would be to find that fisherman again, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Jamie’s there. I know he is. Would you take me back?”
My brother just stared at me. We looked alike, the same brown hair, the same long black eyelashes, the same lean profile, though I was more developed in my upper body from surfing all the time. He cared about his clothes, I didn’t.
Before he could answer, my mother called us to dinner and we left the safety of the room. It was no-man’s-land for me in the house anywhere my father was. Nestor was pissed off big time but couldn’t do much right now because Jamie was missing.
At the table I let Bonnie sit in my seat, my brother took his old seat next to her, and my little sister and brother sat across from them. I was seated next to my mother, who sat at the opposite end of the table from my father. I wanted to be as far from him as possible. On a collapsible chair and using a corner to set my plate, I tried to eat.
Nestor started to dig in but my mother made him stop. “We’re going to say grace from now on,” she announced.
My father looked at her oddly. “I don’t think so.”
“I think yes,” she said with all her female authority. “In fact, I think this family should start going to church on a regular basis again.”
Oh, God, what havoc have I wreaked on my poor family?
My brother and Bonnie smirked, but my mother led us in grace, thanking the Lord for my return, and hoping that Jamie found everlasting peace.
“Stop acting like he’s dead,” I said. “He’s still down there.”
“Let it go,” my mother said in her soft and quiet way.
“No.”
“You stop this crap!” my father said.
I didn’t want to cry in front of Bonnie or anything, so I ran outside in the backyard, where I climbed on the block wall and looked toward the ocean. There was no swell, the wind was blowing hard, and I sat on the wall with the sea breeze all around me, thinking how odd things had turned out.
I was facing a felony charge of auto theft. Because of bail I was under some sort of house arrest; I couldn’t leave without parental supervision, and as far as my father was concerned I could rot in the house. I was grounded until I was eighteen, I figured. He still hadn’t talked to me. Just ignored or yelled at me.
Amber was in Oklahoma with relatives. Robert Bonham had gone with her, I heard. Robert Bonham picked her up in San Diego too. Greg Scott had told me. He came by, and so had Herbie and Ricky, a few of the guys I surfed with. Just to hear the story. The lawyer my parents hired was trying to cut a deal so that I would be charged with a misdemeanor, with probation. So far the D.A. had resisted. I was not to contact Amber, but couldn’t since I didn’t know where she was.
And F? F was fucked up. Some brain damage or something. His beating precipitated a stroke or something, something so that his brain didn’t get enough oxygen, and he was major fucked. He was still in the hospital, though it was for therapy now, and not because he was in any danger. And Claire wouldn’t talk with any of my family. Greg Scott heard that she blamed me for everything that happened. But I didn’t make F attack Jamie, and I didn’t make Jamie give F brain damage, of that I’m sure. Besides, when Jamie returns he’ll set things straight
I wondered what he was up to? How could he survive on that
island? And how would he be after going through all that stuff alone? We had to get back to him, somehow. Somehow I’d have to find him.
Inside the house I could hear the quiet buzz of conversation as my family continued with the meal. Let nothing stop the meal! Not the fact that my best friend was still on an island down in Mexico, not the fact that I haven’t seen Amber, not the fact that I may face a trial and so could Jamie when he returns. Let the meal go forward! Life goes on.
CHAPTER 16
We didn’t have to run, I know now. In fact, stealing my mother’s car and running away were about the stupidest things I hoped I’d ever do. I was facing a felony charge, Amber wasn’t around, Jamie was still in Mexico, and I would not return to school until he was found. I just couldn’t face it. My English teacher, Mr. Vance, who was also my homeroom teacher, immediately enrolled me in SISE, an acronym for Short-term Independent Study Education. I got my work every day from Greg Scott, and sent back the previous day’s work with him.
Until things were resolved regarding Jamie and my pending case, I refused to go back to school. The only way it worked with Nestor was because I had told my mom that I just couldn’t bear to return without Jamie, that I couldn’t face the other kids’ knowing what I had done. And it worked; she was sympathetic and argued my case to Nestor.
For a brief time I was a person of interest with law enforcement regarding Jamie’s disappearance. And for a time, a very short time, there was some interest in the story in the local newspaper, where I was an unnamed participant whose name was withheld because of age. But as the newspaper interest had faded, so had the notion that I had somehow been involved in foul play regarding Jamie’s disappearance. They — some detectives — interviewed everybody in sight, even Greg Scott and some of the other guys who were on the beach the day that F attacked Jamie. Everybody knew I couldn’t have done anything bad to Jamie.
The D.A. was holding off my trial date until there was some break regarding Jamie’s disappearance. They had been hoping they could charge me with something more serious, my lawyer speculated. Part of the problem was that nobody had jurisdiction over how to find Jamie. Since I was arrested at the border by Homeland Security and then transferred to the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, technically they — the Sheriff’s Department — had the jurisdiction if a crime were committed. But no crime had been committed in San Diego County, so they didn’t care. And back in my county, the crime that had been committed was GTA, which I was charged with. Both the D.A. and my lawyer were waiting for something to break regarding Jamie. But it had to come from the Mexican authorities, who didn’t seem much to care about it, for nothing ever seemed to come of the inquiries made on Jamie’s behalf, or so we heard.
