A Good Country

by Laleh Khadivi

  Vaya con Dios.

  He smacked the hood and Kelly cursed under his breath and Johnson joined him and Rez said nothing, having heard it all before. He kept his mind on the waves and checked the rearview mirror to get a look at Matthews’s face and saw he was not pissed at all. His eyes were full of relief. It had always been kindness with Matthews, even in third grade, Matthews was just nice. Nothing else. Rez had watched the boys and girls change, turn onto one of many sides, shift depending on the light and the time and the need, but Matthews was always and only good, a single surface all the way around. Rez relaxed and looked out the window and tried not to hear Kelly talk about wetbacks and illegals and fucking Mexicans and how California should start a war and take Baja, which he was going to call basura from now on.

  Basura, you better watch out!

  Johnson laughed.

  Dude. How did you remember the word for “trash”? That’s so fresh.

  And that’s how it came back, with a laugh, and then they were talking again and everyone knew it was fine because they were rich kids with money to pay off cops and no Mexican prison and no calls home and no damage to Freddy’s truck. Now they could just surf and go home and talk about pH levels in Pyramid Lake with their parents and their epic barrels with their friends. Rez felt his gut loosen from all the nerves, and when they turned a curve on the highway, he was the first to see it, the beach, miles long, pristine, at the bottom of a line of short white cliffs. Low in the sky now, the sun reflected off the cliffs so they looked like a kind of pink alabaster or marble or tusk and it didn’t matter because it was as he imagined it and they stopped and got out of the truck and stared way out into the sea as the sets came in long and even and glassy and arced, like the grooves in an old record, one after another after another, in just the right rhythm.

  They surfed under a soft dusk, the half-moon rising in the east. The water was warmer than they were used to and no one wore a suit. Then they all swam to Matthews, who took a plastic baggie wrapped around a plastic baggie wrapped around a plastic baggie from the key pocket of his shorts, and sat on their boards far from shore and waited for their hands to dry so they could use the lighter and smoke a joint. Then they spread out again, each taking his own slice of sea, and the water turned the same navy as the sky and when Rez paddled out far from the breaks to take a rest, the water grew still and he saw little flecks of stars in the ocean, their shimmer mixed with the easy rolls and laps of the sea. Sandwiched, he thought, folded in, a galaxy above, a galaxy below. This abandon was new to him, new to know his smallness in the scope of everything around.

  When they came back to shore, the moon hung on the opposite end of the sky and their skin puckered from the salt. Cool air moved quickly across the sand and Matthews and Johnson gathered driftwood while Rez and Kelly set up the one small tent, not because they were going to sleep in it but to have something to do, a task to keep the feeling of the ocean inside them until there was a fire to take over. Rez had never slept outside, did not know the pull of stars on dreams, had never woken up with a face covered in dew. He did not mention this to Kelly, who took yearly hunting trips with his dad to a logging forest just outside Yosemite. There is nothing like shooting a deer, Kelly once bragged. You own everything after that shot, the whole world is yours.

  Kelly told endless stories about hunting and guns and fishing and airplanes his father landed on secret lakes and everyone pretended to ignore him, but Rez listened, unbelieving that Kelly’s father trusted a sixteen-year-old with a six-inch blade or that he knew how to bleed animals dry by hanging them from trees. My older brother Paul taught me how to do it. And my dad taught him. It’s not that big of a deal, Kelly explained when everyone called bullshit. Tonight Kelly set up camp like an expert. With little of Rez’s help Kelly put together the tent and pulled out the cooler, arranged the tarp and a few headlamps so that they had a little shelter and a little light. It was as if he’d spent a lifetime living out the back of a truck. Rez tried to help but ended up sitting in the sand and looking around at the nothing that surrounded them, the ocean’s even breaks, the sand and water alight under the half-moon, the dark desert that braced against them from the east, and wondered, What have I spent a whole life doing?

  They ate the little food they had left over from the In-N-Out in San Diego and drank all the beers. No one talked about hunger or thirst, their exhaustion was so great. They threw their wallets into the glove compartment, locked it, locked the cab of the truck, and took their sleeping bags and towels to the sand and fell off, one after another, silently, slowly, easy with the earth and with the water too, their shoulders sore, their skin tingling from a wind that blew sand across sand.

  Rez dreamed of swimming, in the open way of an octopus, in constant extension, without confines of air or the stiffness of bones, everything in reach.

  The sun woke them and they took their crusty faces and hair and boards directly into a water that welcomed them and made them new again. Rez rode a dozen waves before stopping to see the place by the first real light of day. An empty beach. Behind it a desert of scrub and brush. Every few minutes a car along the highway, no sound, no faces. No power lines. No cities. No signs of life except for their bodies and whatever lived in the dark sea in which they swam. He thought of home, the view from the ocean toward the shore, all roads and parking lots and groomed parks and fast food all the way down the coast. He’d never been to a beach this raw, not even Old Man’s in San Onofre, which was far from the highway but right up against the two boobs of a nuclear reactor that hadn’t stopped working in forty-five years. He wondered if all the beaches he knew, all the beaches back home, had once been desert too, now dressed up deserts that were made pretty with extra water and gardeners and too many people. Rez circled his feet in the water to turn himself around and paddled back out.

  By midday they were in the truck again, shouting over one another about that tube and that wipeout and that ride and no one needed to be better than another because each had had their own glory. They ate at a taco stand on the side of the highway. The woman who served them was young, and pretty, with a little baby nearby so no one looked at her twice, though they did look once. Rez wondered what it would be like, with a mother, a young beautiful mother. All the girls he fantasized about were from school or TV or porn and they all had the same bodies and so he could not imagine it, the small belly, the full chest, the way her legs touched in the middle and then curved far out and tapered at the ankle but the more he thought about it and the longer he watched her chop at the meat with the side of a spatula, the harder he got. He took two Jarritos from the cooler and went to sit down. They were the only customers and hunger focused them. They ate more than normal and after a while the corners of their mouths and palms were stained red from the chili oil of the carne asada. Kelly looked around and pointed.

  Dude. You guys look like melting clowns.

  It was funny enough and they laughed because no one cared, no one felt the small self anymore, the one that told them, I am Kelly and no one else and I am Matthews and not Rez and I am Rez alone and on and on, and different by father and mother and sisters and brothers, and instead they sat, exhausted and full, with the one self they shared now on this adventure in and out and in and out of the sea.

  After lunch they drove on. Salsipuedes. Shipwrecks. Punta Baja. Isla Todos Santos. Leave If You Can. Drop Point. Rez’s Spanish was better than his Farsi and he rolled the words around his mouth and mastered them. The names had a dark thrill to them and he let their mystery call out as he sat in the backseat and listened to Tupac and felt the dry air blow across his naked chest and neck, certain now how he would spend the rest of his life, and then he fell asleep.

  When he woke up, they were parked under a grove of palms, the fronds clapping insanely in the wind. Matthews had the driver’s seat tilted back as far as he could without hitting Johnson, who had his head against the window and was snoring. Rez unfolded himself from the compacted position he’d slept in and
felt pools of sweat in the creases of his body and a spicy unease in his gut. Outside, beyond layers of low dunes, a beach, busier than the one yesterday, with people laid out in pairs and trios, and an ocean, blue and empty except for an enormous rusted ship hull split in two where surfers jutted out fast and to the right.

  Apostles.

  He tried once and the bodies in the car did not stir. He opened the door and stepped out. Behind him Johnson fell to the side, took up the space Rez left behind, burped and farted and curled into a little ball. Rez slid his borrowed board out from under the others and found a half chunk of wax, covered his board with it, and turned to the beach. He walked past a group of women and girls having a picnic on a rug of woven plastic threads. Their food did not look appealing and even though he stared not one of the women looked up to notice him. Five or six boys kicked a soccer ball. An old woman, fully dressed, napped on her side, a small dog curled into her chest. When the water hit his toes, he turned his attention to the sea and the rusted monster rising from it. Surfers paddled in just at the edge of the ship’s eroded iron ribs and waited for the sets only to ride out quickly, careful to avoid the jagged metal posts. He’s seen guys do it at the Venice pier and once in Santa Monica, but he’d never tried. Fuck it, he whispered to himself, and his soul lifted and he ran in until the water was hip high and then he started to swim.

  The apostles joined him one by one. The swell was perfect and the water was busy. They kept their distance from each other but it was hard to keep space with the other surfers. No one smoked that day, and when Rez caught sight of one of them, their faces folded in with concentration or blank with relief once they had navigated the iron jaws without a scratch, he felt their joy and knew they would return home heroes all.

  The last wave of a set rolled and Rez paddled to it, his rhythm matched by the strokes of the surfer next to him, a surfer his age, maybe a few years older, skinny and strong. Rez wanted to swim some space between them and maybe even give him one of the looks surfers in Laguna give that says Back off or This one’s mine or Go ahead, all yours, but he let it go. What difference did it make? To the ocean they were all the same, so why not be the same? In any case the wave was coming and they only had a few seconds to turn around and paddle forward and jump up and in those quick seconds Rez hopped up and balanced. He looked over his shoulder to see the guy get barreled, his hands up above his head as if keeping the tube open with the length of his body. When the wave shot them out, they locked eyes, nodded, and swam back to the ship without a word.

  No one wanted to leave Shipwrecks but a fog came in and one by one they went and sat on the shore, hungry and spent. They rinsed their boards in the whitewash, loaded Matthews’s truck, and drove as far south as they needed to find a store with food and water and beer. The food was mostly packaged and the beer was only so cold but a small grill sizzled in the back and the old man who ran the place said Sí sí sí when Rez asked him if he made tacos.

  Por supuesto. Tenemos lengua y cabeza. Ricos los dos.

  Rez told the apostles.

  Tongue and brains. He says they are good.

  Kelly doubled over and pretended to vomit.

  Come on, man, that’s rude.

  Matthews hit Rez on the back a few times.

  I’ll take five of each. I am so hungry I’d eat goat nuts if that was all he had.

  Rez gave him a fist bump and they ordered fifteen tacos while Kelly and Johnson ate tostadas and pepitos and something that looked like Mexican Twinkies. They drank beer and sat there for more than an hour and the old man came in and out to give more food and take away empty bags and plates.

  No hay cominda en el norte? he joked, and Rez smiled but he didn’t translate and no one asked. The bill came to six dollars and they spent four more on beer and a kind of Gatorade drink and then looked out at the night and the dark highway and Rez asked the old man, Hay una playa, para camping? Cerca de aqui?

  The old man gave directions to a pullout five minutes down the road.

  No hay nadie. Limpia. Seguro.

  They drove the short distance and parked in a flat sandy spot where cars had parked before them and Matthews pulled out a six-pack and his sleeping bag and, drunk and tired, they all did the same and stumbled to the sand, where they found a stone circle with usable wood still in it, some new, some only partially black, and Kelly worked to stack and light and relight until there was a fire. Rez threw down his sleeping bag and wanted to say, This is the shit. This is the best. I am never going back. But knew he would sound like a pussy and so just lay down and listened to Kelly tell stories about him and his brother Paul in Lake Tahoe last summer and normally one apostle or another would tell him to shut up but they were asleep and Rez heard the stories in fragments that mixed with his exhaustion and he fell asleep thinking about bears, severed legs, ant piles, long hikes in pathless woods, triggers, steady hands, older brothers, and marked men.

  Rez dreamed of a girl from his chess club, Maryam. In the dream she worked at a grocery store and no matter how nicely he asked, she wouldn’t give him his change. She laughed and said, No. Sorry, no change for you. And then went on punching numbers into her toy register. Behind him a small woman had a basket full of breasts and bras, and when the sun woke him with its early light, Rez shook off the dream that left in him equal parts lust, frustration, and disgust.

  The waves at this beach, even and glassy, were the best waves he had ever seen. Rides two or three minutes long. He sat still for as long as it took to clear his head of the beer and the dream, drank what was left of the Gatorade, and when there was no reason to wait any longer, ran to the truck to get a board and paddle out and wash off the sand and sweat and fly through water again.

  The first truck he came to looked just like Matthews’s truck, but it had long white key marks dragged along the sides and there were no boards on top and the driver’s side window had been broken. Sucks for them, Rez thought, and ran up the beach to look for their truck. He jogged a minute and then two and then thought the walk last night was not this long, and there were no other cars parked along the roads and only one pullout. He turned around.

  Fuck!

  Smashed glass covered the driver’s seat and he saw their wallets strewn about, empty of licenses and money and credit cards. In his wallet he found a library card and a Laguna Beach trolley pass.

  Fuck.

  The boards were gone, all eight, including the two he’d borrowed from Matthews. The cooler, the weed in the toolbox, their phones, and the pine-tree air freshener, all gone. Rez stopped himself from crying. Why did he want to cry? It wasn’t his fault. It was his fault. It wasn’t. But it was. The trip was his idea and so this was his fault and even if it wasn’t, it would be, they would all remember it as his fault. He pressed the button for the radio to turn on. Nothing. Worse and worse. He didn’t walk back to the apostles. He sat instead up against the wheel well and waited.

  They got a jump from a delivery guy, his truck covered with pictures of the packaged food they’d bought at the store the night before. When he was done, Rez said, Gracias, and the guy waited for money, a tip, something, and Rez looked back at the truck with broken window and scratches and his pissed-off friends, who walked and kicked the tires and bit their fingernails, and finally the guy said something under his breath and left. Matthews, who accidentally fell asleep with the keys in his board shorts, broke the rest of the driver’s-side window with a rock, cleaned the glass off the seat, got in, started the truck, and they all followed. He turned the truck north and gunned the engine and said the same thing he’d been saying for the last two hours.

  Three hours to the border. Half a tank of gas. No money. No driver’s licenses. We are so fucked.

  They flew down the highway and Rez, tired of talking, tired of convincing them he would pay for the boards, pay for a new paint job, pay back the money they’d lost, confess to their parents, said nothing. He just sat there and looked out the window at the perfect waves lapping the perfect empty b
eaches.

  They were mad the moment they saw it and they stayed mad on the drive, erupting, one by one, until the ire was spent. Kelly bitched that his short board was a present from his dad, for his birthday, hand carved by a pro, and there was no way Rez was going to be able to afford another one. Johnson said his credit card had a fifteen-thousand-dollar limit and if it was maxed out, his father was going to shit a brick and how was Rez going to fix that? Matthews, driving Freddy’s scratched and shattered truck, said the least, and that made Rez feel the worst, and the last hour was silence and Rez rolled the window down to watch the desert stream by and wait for the graffiti and garbage of Tijuana.

  They sat through Sunday-night border traffic in silence. One hour passed, then another, and finally a third and their car—even in the US RESIDENTS lane—had moved less than a quarter of a mile. They knew they had no identification; no cell phones and no paperwork to show the car belonged to them. When the arguments hit a panicked pitch, Matthews broke his silence to explain his brothers went to TJ for the weekend all the time and always came back without showing anything.

  Dude. Look at us. Do any of us look like we are sneaking into the country?

  Kelly laughed from the front seat.

  Rez does look a little non-gringo.

  Everyone turned and looked at Rez, his tan skin and salt-bleached hair.

  Kelly turned around and put on a militant face.

  If they call you out, you stay behind. Understand? You can call your old-school dad to come and get you. You are not our problem anymore.

  Matthews shook his head.

  No, dude. Chill. We went in together, we leave together. Shit is fucked but it’s not that fucked.

  Dusk in Tijuana and the world outside their car, a show of the shitty life, passed by. Women and children and more children and a few men and a girl of ten or eleven, holding a tiny baby, moved slowly through the lines of cars. Rez thought about his father, how his father never wanted to go to Mexico, never wanted to go anywhere. And maybe he was right for that. The shadow that had left Rez alone these last two days was close again, walking leisurely beside the car, lecturing like a teacher on a stage. America is a good country. The shadow looked over the chaos of the border and put his hand on the hood. A good country. We should be grateful. A fair place where even an immigrant like me, no papers, no schooling, can succeed. These poor people. And he walked off into the beggars and broken streets, a dark stain in the form of his father, and before Rez could shake the sight of him, they were at the checkpoint and Matthews leaned out the window as if he had just rolled it down.