by John Moore
Copyright © 2015 John Moore
Second Edition 2017
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-0-9963428-1-0
(print)
Dedication
For those who dream
Table of Contents
Chapter One: On the Road
Chapter Two: Sarah’s House
Chapter Three: Charlotte’s Web
Chapter Four: Death in the Family
Chapter Five: California Dreaming
Chapter Six: Constance
Chapter Seven: Dysfunctional Family
Chapter Eight: Piper’s Story
Chapter Nine: Suspicions
Chapter Ten: Time for Caution
Chapter Eleven: A Different World
Chapter Twelve: A Haunted World
Chapter Thirteen: An Offense
Chapter Fourteen: Lighting the Shadows
Chapter Fifteen: Impostor
Chapter Sixteen: Calling on Friends
Chapter Seventeen: Desperate Search
Chapter Eighteen: Looking for Answers
Chapter Nineteen: Lion’s Den
Chapter Twenty: Making Arrangements
Chapter Twenty-One: LA or Bust
Chapter Twenty-Two: Troubles Pile Up
Chapter Twenty-Three: The State
Chapter Twenty-Four: Legal System
Chapter Twenty-Five: Alone
Chapter Twenty-Six: Where Demons Dwell
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Human Trafficking
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Dark World
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Turned Inside Out
Chapter Thirty :A New Home
Chapter Thirty-One: Death in the Dark
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Return
About the Author
Chapter One:
On the Road
This isn’t half bad for a prison cell, I thought. I’m sure there are worse jails in Mexico where guards commit unspeakable acts against helpless prisoners, but this didn’t seem to be one of them. Maybe because we were protesters from the United States, we were receiving the Mexican police’s version of the red-carpet treatment. Fifteen from our group ROLL, which stood for Rivers, Oceans, Lakes League, had traveled to Mexico to protest the pesticides and herbicides US corporate farmers were spraying on Mexican tomato crops. Our protest pissed off the local authorities and landed in this jail. It was worth it because while these international conglomerates were poisoning some bugs and weeds, mostly they poisoned the local residents. These gigantic corporate agribusiness and chemical companies disguised themselves as farm operations. They were really demons destroying the lives of people all over the world in the name of greed.
The indigenous Mexican population experienced an increased incidence of cancer, neurological disorders, and an assortment of other health issues. Was their compromised health just a coincidence? If it was, it was a coincidence shared by people in many other parts of the world where industrialized corporate farming practices prevailed. Sure, industrial farms provided some jobs to the locals. Jobs that trapped them in an endless cycle of mindless, hard labor till their bodies gave out, earning just enough to survive. But quality of life as we think of it did not exist in their world. Their plight reminded me of the days when farmers used mules to pull their plows. They penned the mules in barns and fed them to keep them strong enough to work. Those mules would have preferred to roam vast prairies, free to graze on green grass splashed from coast to coast. Just like the mules, the Mexican farm workers were trapped, with no memory of hope of a better life.
I hated what the corporations were doing to families most of all. Families could no longer support themselves, so children left home to work in sweatshop factories, and their parents were scattered to the winds—often to the US—to look for work as domestic servants or laborers, living in the shadows to avoid deportation. So we came to Mexico to give them some old-fashioned American protesting. I don’t think the politicians cared too much for it.
Poor little Amanda was the youngest among us. She was a twenty-three-year-old, fresh-faced, naive idealist, new to the group. She came along to express her opposition to the overuse of pesticides, having learned in her Tulane University biology classes that the poisons in the pesticides remain in the intestinal tract of everyone who eats the tomatoes. No one seemed to care, even though researchers had concluded they led to liver and kidney problems. If that weren’t bad enough, these toxins circulate through the body to wreak havoc on every cell, causing malaise, loss of memory, and numerous other maladies. No one seemed to care enough to stop gobbling them down as fast as they could in every fast food joint from sea to shining sea.
Like most idealists, Amanda had no idea which pesticides were being sprayed or by which companies, but she knew she was against it. I think our experience in Mexico was more than she bargained for though. She hadn’t expected to be arrested and thrown in a Mexican jail. She thought we would be treated the same as if we were in the US, exercising our right of free speech. Now that she was in jail, she was scared to death. Not like protesting on Facebook, I guess. The truth was, I knew how she felt. As an idealistic young school girl, I had to go to the principal’s office for spreading the word that the food my school was serving us was out of date, when I was not much younger than she. I didn’t have to go to jail, but it scared the living crap out of me. The principal just yelled at me.
Amanda slinked into a corner of the cell, and I slid next to her to calm her. I put my arm around her and reassured her that our stay in the gray bar hotel was temporary. I understood what it was like to be scared. Hell, I’d been scared most of my life. She smiled at me to thank me as Mexican policemen leered at us through the rusty bars. Steel, living long past its natural life, forged during better times. Montezuma’s revenge hid in every bite of tamale on our plates. Tamales, prepared with red chili peppers hot enough to bring the entire 1,896 miles of flowing Rio Grande River to a rapid boil, not the kind of accommodations the travel agents promoted.
“We were just protesting, not committing any serious crimes,” I said to Amanda. “Look at those cops. They are harmless. They just want to see our boobs.” I unbuttoned the top button of my blouse—a little uncharacteristic for me, but what the hell. I was careful not to reveal too much; after all, my mother and the entire church congregation from my hometown in Indiana watched my every move from heaven. At least, I hoped so.
Just enough to show some cleavage, my mind told me. God had graced me with big boobs that sometimes came in handy. I thought the cops were going to crap their pants. “Boobs, the universal language,” I whispered to Amanda. We both cracked up, her smile revealing the snowy white teeth years of wearing braces had straightened.
The incident that prompted me to join Tom’s group of protesters, ROLL, was when Bart Rogan, the Armak Chemical Company’s thug, tried to kill me. He wanted me dead to hide his criminal pollution, theft, and murder, but it didn’t work out as he’d planned. I exposed all of his dirty deeds, and now he was in jail in India awaiting trial for the Bhopal disaster. (Look it up—it was a nightmare.) He was sure to get a long prison sentence. I didn’t think even Master of Slime Bart Rogan could buy his way out of this one. He caused so many deaths, surely he’d rot in a prison worse than this one. At least that’s what I told myself.
ROLL protested pollution all over the globe. They were tame compared to the members of the other secret organizations Tom and I belonged to. One was an offshoot of ROLL called ROLF: Rivers, Oceans, Lakes Fighters. Fight was exactly what our group did. ROLF’s crusade against polluters frequently led to violence, and its membership was a strictly guarded secret. Every member used a code name. “Bab” was mine, given to me by Tom as an
inside joke. Bab was the acronym for Bad-Ass Bitch, but I wasn’t bad at all. I was a small-town girl from an Indiana corn farm. That is, until I was cornered. Then, I’d been known to do a few not-so-ladylike things. Amanda would learn just like I did. There is evil in the world, and you have to learn how to fight it.
This episode wasn’t much of a lesson for her though. Our peaceful protest here in Mexico was only going to get us politely escorted out of the country. At least that’s what I hoped would happen. Amanda seemed to be a lost soul searching for meaning. She had led a sheltered life growing up in South Louisiana. The most excitement she’d seen was the Mardi Gras celebration in her small town of Oberlin. Cajun Mardi Gras didn’t resemble the New Orleans version. There were no beads, nor floats. Their celebration of Fat Tuesday began in the early morning hours when costumed men on horseback gathered in a pastoral area on the outskirts of town. From there they rode to the farmhouses sprinkled along the way, their mission to gather meat for the community gumbo. The captain of the krewe wielded a length of eight grass sacks tied together to form a gargantuan whip. The captain rode about twenty paces ahead of the pack, beseeching each farmer to contribute to the Mardi Gras gumbo. Most farmers turned a chicken loose in their field to be sacrificed for the festivities and food. The captain gave the go-ahead, and riders barely sober enough to dismount their horses chased the doomed chicken, tripping, falling, and running till the unfortunate bird was caught and dispatched to wherever chickens go in the hereafter. The clumsy chase and apprehension were sometimes captured on video and posted on YouTube for posterity. Good times, to be sure, unless you were the chicken, of course.
Once collected, the bounty was taken to town hall by the staggering riders, their masked costumes rank with sweat and discolored with grime. There, the ladies of Oberlin added the meat to a gumbo large enough to feed the entire parish. When the ride was complete, the krewe promenaded down Main Street proudly displaying their colorful costumes and equestrian skills. Families attended the festivities together to have fun, South Louisiana style. I know this because I went to this celebration three years ago. What an experience, real people having real fun. Now poor sheltered Amanda was in a completely different world, feeling more like the chicken than the rider.
I noticed Tom in a corner of the cell talking to one of the Mexican members of ROLL. When we made eye contact, my mind took me to the first time we met at Pat O’Brien’s in the French Quarter. We had instant chemistry, warmth filling my body, the small hair on my arms rising. My thoughts flashed to Mardi Gras night when Tom took me from behind on the balcony of Mr. Broussard’s condo. Right there on Bourbon Street. I could still feel his hands on my hips pulling me to him. Oh my God, what a magical night in an enchanted place. Tom was a good guy and sexy. Not that Tom was an altar boy or anything like that; he was just strong, principled, and all kinds of handsome. Frankly, I don’t understand what women see in the bad boys. I’ve had enough “bad” in my life, thank you very much.
“I was just taking to Hector Gonzales,” Tom said as he put his arm around me and whispered in my ear. Lost in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed he’d crossed the room to nuzzle next to me. “He told me ACC has teamed with a large industrial farming company, Aggrow, to lobby the Mexican government to change farming practices in South Central Mexico. Aggrow is buying up all the land they can from desperate, poverty-stricken local farmers.”
Hearing his voice snapped me back to the present, electricity surging through me when his hand touched my shoulder. “ACC” was what most people called Armak Chemical Company. The company was known to ROLF’s members as one of the most notorious polluters on the planet. ACC was ROLF’s favorite target.
“When we get back to New Orleans, we should research Hector’s story and see if there is something we can do about his problem,” Tom said. But I had other thoughts on my mind, thinking we could also catch up on time in bed.
Tom and I were interrupted by the cell door opening. Two policemen, smelling of corn tortillas, grabbed us by the arms and dragged us out of the cell. They dragged us to an office and sat us in front of a wicked-looking Mexican captain, who was finishing a telephone call, no doubt receiving orders about us. Someone else pulled the strings on men like him. He’d sold himself more times than the prostitutes in a US and Mexico border town.
“You two look like the leaders,” he said. “We don’t like you interfering in our affairs. We may have to charge you as eco-terrorists, and you will both get long prison sentences. Now, if you agree to stay out of Mexico, maybe we can give you a break.”
When I saw Tom’s face redden, I kicked him under the table, and he snapped his head around to look at me. His cornflower-blue eyes were on fire. I put my finger to his lips to help him contain the onslaught of words he was desperately trying to hold in.
“We don’t think we will be back except as tourists to Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, or one of your other beautiful resort cities,” I said, batting my eyes, noticing his were helping him mentally unbutton the next button on my blouse. “You wouldn’t mind that, would you?”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he looked at us both like we were some type of disease-infested rodents. “Do you two have any kids? You know, niños?”
I didn’t know where he was going with his odd question, but I knew it couldn’t be good. “No, it’s just the two of us,” I said, wanting to punch him in his mustache-covered mouth. I held back, to avoid spending the rest of my life in a Mexican jail.
“Take them back to the cell with the others. You may be with us for a while,” he said, laughing as his disgusting belly bounced up and down, rippling like a bowl of brown Jell-O.
We went back in the cell, and Tom thanked me for having a cool head. “No problem. Do you think they would really charge us with terrorism?”
“I hope not,” Tom said. “If they do, the US government probably wouldn’t do much to help us.” He looked around to make sure no one else heard, and whispered in my ear, the light making his eyes look iridescent. “We might be in serious trouble. If they charge us with terrorism, it could be years before they take us to trial.”
My heart raced, and I almost peed myself thinking about being stuck in prison. Amanda was freaking out too. Taking Tom and I out of the cell like that nearly sent her over the edge. Tears ran down her face, and her eyes darted back and forth, reminding me of a trapped rat. Her mind had convinced her we were going to the gallows. I put my arm around her again and calmed her down. Wow, I thought, I remind myself of Sarah. Maybe she was reaching down from heaven to guide me, because I was freaking on the inside but maintained a composed exterior. As it turned out, Amanda didn’t have long to fret. Our jailers unlocked our cells and escorted her and the rest of the protesters to the outer offices to collect their valuables. Tom and I were ordered to stay in the cell.
Oh shit, what did this mean? Were we getting charged with terrorism? Tom still wasn’t showing any signs of concern. He was much more committed to the cause than I. He’d also had much more experience on the front lines. I, on the other hand, was about to pee my pants even more than before.
Tom, still on task, had that “I’m about to deliver a lecture” look on his face. He turned to me and said, “Alexandra, Hector lives in the south-central state of Tlaxcala, Mexico. The state’s name, Tlaxcala, means ‘people of corn.’” Their way of life is threatened by international farming corporations who want to bring industrialized methods of farming to Tlaxcala. Hector told me his family plants several varieties indigenous to their region of Mexico. They make many types of tortillas from their harvested corn. They grind the corn and prepare blue corn, yellow corn, and white corn tortillas. Tortillas are a staple; most Mexicans eat tortillas every day just as their ancestors have done for hundreds of years.”
He had a tendency to lecture a little bit, but I didn’t mind, because smart was sexy in my mind. I’d learned a lot from Tom.
“What do the industrial farmer
s want to do differently?” I asked.
“Hector said they want to plant genetically modified corn in the fields, or, as it is known in the food business, GM. The Mexican government forbids planting GMs in the southern states but allows it in the North. The industrial farmers are attempting to persuade the Mexican government to allow GMs in the South,” Tom said.
“But if the corn has been genetically modified to produce more per acre,” I said, “won’t that help the Mexican farmers?”
“Not according to Hector. Ever since the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the United States has increased corn exports to Mexico. The effect has been to drive the price of corn down. The American corn is of lower quality, but the poverty-stricken locals are starting to buy it. The pesticide- and herbicide-ridden imported corn is replacing the Tlaxcala farmers’ corn,” Tom said.
Then I understood, and I shuddered to consider the future consequences for the local farmers. “Tom, I know you know this, but I just have to say it out loud. Corn farming is subsidized by the US government, so really it’s the American taxpayers putting money in the pockets of these huge industrial conglomerates. Mexican farmers can’t possibly compete. Families will be destroyed. But why is ACC so interested in persuading the Mexican government to change its policies?”
“Alexandra, you know how devious those ACC bastards are. It makes sense. They are teamed with the large industrial farmers. They spray pesticides and herbicides on everything to sell more of their poison. The farm operations know if they poison the insects and weeds and fertilize the shit out of the ground, they’ll get more yield per acre. They don’t care about the environmental damage,” Tom said.
I recognized the flaring nostrils and reddening face as signs of how passionately he felt about Hector’s people’s problems, and I did too. Whenever he explained something new to me, I’d get all worked up—but I knew that to fight something takes time and energy, and we had lives in New Orleans that needed attention. I had a public relations business as well as my family farm in Indiana to worry about.
