Flash

by Jim Miller

  I saw Hank come in and met him at the door with a hug. He smelled like cigarettes and he looked tired. He had dark circles around his green eyes. When he rubbed them he let his finger linger by the scar under his left eye—the one he got when he came to stay with me for a weekend as a young boy and ran into the corner of my end table. It took me years to live that one down. I noticed he seemed thinner. We each got French dips and sat at a booth by the bar to eat.

  “What’s up kid?” I asked.

  “I just quit my job,” he said with a half sheepish, half triumphant look about him. “I couldn’t take my boss anymore. He was always on me about every little thing.”

  “What are you going to do now, take more classes?”

  “With what money?”

  “Aren’t Trisha and Kurt supposed to be helping you? That’s what they always tell me when I ask about you staying with me and going to school in San Diego.”

  “They’re so far up their own assholes they don’t even have time to think about it.” He had a pained look and I stopped pushing. I’d learned long ago that my role as weekend hero only gave me limited authority.

  “How about the Lakers?” I asked stupidly.

  “I think Kurt is cheating on Mom,” Hank said, ignoring my question. “He’s never around and she’s been really mopey. It’s such a drag to be in that house, I’m telling you.”

  “Has she said anything to you?”

  “No, I can just tell from the vibe they’re giving off. It’s like they have some kind of cold war going on that they are trying to keep between themselves, but it’s obvious what’s going on.”

  “That’s quite a metaphor,” I said unable to stop smiling.

  “Fuck off, Dad,” he said laughing a bit. “The Lakers are the Kobe show as usual. As long as he’s healthy, they’ll be alright.”

  “Good supporting cast though.”

  “I wouldn’t want to see an injury. Kobe gets hurt, they’re done.”

  “You know,” I broke in, “you could think about moving to San Diego if the situation at home is so bad it gets in the way.”

  “Is that all you ever think about, my finishing school? It’s not like a degree is going to guarantee me anything better than you’ve been able to do.” I looked at him tenderly as he rubbed his mustard-stained hands on his napkin. His thick, shaggy, brown hair was uncombed and he had on a plain black t-shirt that half-covered the skull and crossbones he’d had tattooed on his left shoulder. It said “carpe diem” under it. This was always where the conversation ended, with his idealized version of my dead end career as a “journalist.”

  “You’re smarter than me. You could do better,” I said trying to make light of the situation while still driving the point home.

  “Bullshit,” he said with finality. I gave up, and when he asked me what I was doing, I told him about Bobby Flash. He was pretty fired up about it. He’d read a little bit about the Wobblies in a history class and thought they sounded cool. He had also been intrigued when I passed on the family legend about our leftist progenitor. It was then that I thought it might be fun to take him to Llano.

  We paid for our lunch and grabbed a cab back to the motel parking lot where my car was. It was still early afternoon and we had plenty of time to get out to the Antelope Valley before rush hour locked up the grid. We took the 10 East to the 15 North through the smog-brown heart of the Inland Empire. On the way to the turnoff for the Pearblossum Highway, I told Hank about the roots of the old colony and mentioned that Aldous Huxley had lived out in Llano and that the highway had been the subject of a pretty cool collage by David Hockney. Just as I was about to say something about Huxley and his LA days, Hank took out his iPod and plugged me in as I drove toward the exurbs on the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It was a song by Frank Black, of Pixies fame, called “Rio del Llano.” I smiled and listened to Frank sing about looking for utopia “in the stucco grids and the tumbleweeds.” There was even a line about looking for Huxley “between the power lines and the purple flowers of mescaline.” I unplugged myself and asked him why he didn’t tell me that he knew about Llano earlier. He just smiled at me with a rare aura of superiority.

  “The wind tastes like gasoline out here,” he said paraphrasing the song. We drove out into the desert through Pinion Hills until we found Llano. I pulled off the highway and we walked out to the ruins, gazing up at what remained of the old hotel’s stone arroyo walls and columns. We saw a big round building with square holes that may have been windows or something else. Hank strolled around silently inspecting the stones. He looked strangely moved by the whole thing. I looked over across the desert toward the mountains in the distance and tried to imagine Bobby Flash hauling these stones. Where had the ball field been? The orchards? The almond grove where he listened to music with Molly O’Conner? It was probably just my imagination, but I felt a sense of presence somehow. Hank kicked an empty Coke bottle and it flew up in the air and bounced off an abandoned tire sitting amidst the scrub brush and creosote. Lots of the locals seemed to have found utopia a suitable spot for a garbage dump. I was surprised by how much traffic there had been on the highway in what used to be the sticks. Now it was just another place to commute from.

  Hank had climbed up on a wall and was sitting down, staring toward the horizon, at nothing in particular. I climbed up next to him and put my arm around him. He let me. If I could have thought of a way to express my absolute wonder at the fact that my baby boy was now a man I would have, but everything that came to mind seemed utterly trite. He was the only gift I’d given to the world that was full of hope. I thought of trying to say something about how everything would work out fine, how his Mom would survive even if Kurt left for good, but I didn’t. We just sat there, side by side, as the afternoon surrendered to twilight, mingling with unnamed ghosts and pondering the ruins of the perfect future.

  8

  When I got back into San Diego after my week off, I checked into the office and Neville was uncharacteristically friendly. He asked about my son and told me he hoped I’d gotten some rest. Something about his effusive welcome and sudden concern about my family life gave me pause, but I didn’t push it.

  Unfortunately, the freelance photographer I was supposed to take with me to my follow up visit to Tijuana had the flu. I had to go that day and I only had one back up, my old girlfriend Samantha. Sam and I had broken up badly. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she’d dumped me like a hot potato for a guitar player, ten years her junior. He was the lead guitar player for the Crystal Meth Trailer Park, a local band that was the next big thing. She’d gone out to take a few shots for our music writer, who was doing a review, and ended up going home with the guy that night. We were done by the end of the week and she acted like it was no big deal. Well, I’m not the jealous type, but I was amused that the review turned out to be a pretty bad one, “Trailer trash disappoints.” It ended up that the guitar player disappointed too, dumping Samantha, while on tour, for a younger model. He just showed up at their next local show with the new one and cut Sam cold. Instant Karma, I thought.

  In any event, I called Sam and got her right away. She was not particularly enthused at the idea of working with me.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked when I pitched the gig.

  “Nope, I need you bad,” I said, enjoying her discomfort.

  She agreed hesitantly and we made plans to meet in San Ysidro by the trolley stop.

  “How’s the rock star?” I inquired, with a shit-eating grin.

  “Just shut the fuck up and be a professional about this,” she said as if that meant anything to me.

  “Just curious how you’re doing,” I said with as much feigned innocence as I could muster. “Is that a crime?”

  “You know what happened,” she said. “Maybe I should just get back on the trolley and head home if you’re going to be an asshole.”

  “No, no. Please stay, I’m sorry,” I said, still smiling. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

>   “Can we not talk about this?” she asked, pleadingly.

  “OK,” I said after a long pause, “let’s go meet Ricardo.” As we made our way through the border maze, Sam walked in front of me and I watched her purposeful, yet graceful stride, and admired the way her long red hair was arranged underneath a bandana. She was in her late thirties but could easily pass for late twenties with her rosy-cheeked exuberance. Only a certain elegance of carriage revealed her age. I felt bad that I had been so tough on her. After all, it must have been humiliating for her to get thrown over by some kid. She was supposed to be the one tossing men aside. It was probably a stark reminder that time was not on her side, not on anyone’s side. I followed her through the clanging metal turnstiles to where Ricardo greeted us warmly. I introduced Samantha and we walked over to Ricardo’s Jeep for our tour.

  Before we got to the neighborhood where the Madres Unidas lived, Ricardo asked us if we’d like to see the industrial part of the city. We agreed, and he drove us to a street lined with several large maquiladoras. The first one was a place were they made television components. We parked across the street and walked over to a lunch truck where Ricardo lingered to see if the security guards were up front. They weren’t, so he took us stealthily around a corner where we looked inside a window at rows of workers packed into the warehouse. When a door opened, you could smell the pungent fumes pouring out. Sam snapped a few shots, and Ricardo motioned for us to follow him and pointed out a huge metal tube that was pouring what, at first glance, appeared to be water down a hillside that led to a neighborhood below.

  “Toxic,” he said. “And where does it go? Right into the streets down there.” A pair of large men rounded the corner behind us and Ricardo didn’t need to tell us to run as we read the menace in their expressions. We got to the Jeep with about twenty-five yards to spare, and Ricardo took off at full speed with the men running behind us for about half a block.

  “They would have taken your camera,” he said calmly, “and kicked my ass.” We drove about a mile and stopped outside another factory where one shift of workers was leaving, to be replaced at once by another. I thought of a scene in the silent film Metropolis where the workers walk in rows into the door of a factory that has been transformed into the gaping maw of a monster. A group of workers recognized Ricardo and walked over to shake his hand. They looked behind them as they spoke. Another set of security guards started to walk across the street and Ricardo took off at once.

  “Those men both have cancer,” he said. “Everyone who works there long enough gets sick in one way or another. The company just hires new workers when the old ones get too sick. They deny any connection between the chemicals in the plant and the illnesses. And the workers are too powerless to do anything.”

  “What do they make in there?” Sam asked.

  “That’s where your batteries come from,” he said pointing to her camera. She looked down, took a shot of the row of factories behind us. We passed a place that made dolls, a place that produced IV tubes, a place that made lenses for glasses where the workers went blind from their labors. Finally, we stopped at the site of the old battery factory and walked over to the top of the hill where the waste was buried. Down below us was the neighborhood where Las Madres lived. Sam took a good number of shots of rusty barrels and a fading warning sign complete with a skull and cross bones. She took a few more shots of the neighborhood below.

  “When it rains,” Ricardo told her, “the waste pours down the hill to where their children play.” We walked back to the Jeep and drove down a winding dirt road to meet the women. A group of them were there with a plate of tamales to share with us. I could tell that Samantha was touched by the gesture. I watched her eat one carefully and compliment the cook before she got to work. I shook hands with the women I remembered from my first visit. They were all there but Marisol, the older woman.

  “Donde esta Marisol?” I managed in my bad Spanish.

  “She is at the doctor with one of her grandchildren,” Ricardo said after Rosa whispered something in his ear. I got a few more quotes for my piece and walked down the street with Sam as she worked silently, but efficiently, taking pictures of houses made out of discarded garage doors, children playing soccer next to puddles of toxic waste, women cooking over makeshift stoves for their families after twelve-hour shifts in the maquilas. Sam walked over to a group of children and got them to pose for a picture, and I took the time to ask Ricardo if the security was unusual today.

  “It was nothing,” he said. “I’ve been arrested many times, beaten up, threatened with guns. The police are on the side of the maquiladora owners, so are the politicians.” I nodded and noticed that Samantha had stopped and was checking her bag. She found her last memory card and went over to take portraits of the women. A man in one of the houses offered us beers. I said thanks but no, as did Ricardo. He was looking up at the dirt road where a van was heading down the hill fast. It was a group of men from one of the maquiladoras. They screeched to a halt and bounded out of the van demanding Samantha’s camera from Ricardo. He said no and a big man in a cowboy hat and dark glasses got up in his face and screamed something I couldn’t understand. Then he struck Ricardo on the face with his hand, hard enough to knock him to his knees. As he got to his feet, I noticed that a group of men from the neighborhood had come out of their houses with bats and pieces of wood. Behind them, some of the women had pans or garden tools. The crowd grew slowly with more people coming to join them. The man who had hit Ricardo looked over at Samantha with her camera alongside a group of women standing in front of Rosa’s house. He said, “Be careful with that, bitch” in English, and motioned to the other men to get back into the van. They sped off, and Ricardo took off down a different road with us and a group of men in a neighbor’s pick-up truck. “Print the pictures on the front page,” he said as we drove off hastily.

  The guy driving the pick up took a long circuitous route that got us to the border without further incident. Along the way, we got a tour of the poorest barrios in the city, gazing out the back of the truck at shack after shack full of people not lucky enough to even have a crappy job in the maquilas. I was covered with dust by the time we got to a paved road, and Sam was staring out of the side of the truck silently, deep in thought. The men dropped us at the line, slapped us on the back, and drove back to the dust and menace. Standing in line at the border, I apologized to Sam for getting her in the middle of a fix.

  “Don’t apologize,” she said. “It was incredible, those women, the courage of those people.”

  I told her I agreed and thought she’d done an amazing job. She wiped some dirt of the side of my face and kissed me on the cheek. We crossed the border and were greeted by a crowd of men waving American flags and signs that said, “Keep America American.” It was the New Patriot Militia, the same group I’d covered when they started patrolling the border a few years ago. At the time, they’d gone from driving down en masse and aiming their high beams across the border to setting up extralegal checkpoints manned by armed “patriots.” They had an official website that shied away from controversy but anybody who’d ever been out there with them had heard the racial slurs and threats.

  When the counter-protesters showed up, things got ugly, and someone across the line ended up getting shot, but they lived and nobody was ever charged. I’ll always remember one day when the militia caught a migrant woman with a small child and tried to detain them for the border patrol, and the counter-protesters, a mixture of kids in local MEChA groups and immigrants rights advocates from around the region, started pulling her away, with the kid in the middle. The chant of “Let them go!” broke out, followed by a general melee. The woman and her kid got away but there were some bloodied activists afterwards. By the time the border patrol got there, it was he said/she said, but they started separating the groups after that. It was only a matter of time until one of those fuckers in the militia was going to kill someone.

  After today, I was in no mood to be scre
wed with by vigilantes. One of the patriots tried to pass me a flyer and I told him to go fuck himself. He shoved me and I knocked the sign out of his hand. I looked him straight in the eyes with my best, “don’t fuck with me” look, but he sneered at me and started to go for something in his pocket. Just as he was reaching and I was raising a fist, a cop came over and broke us up. Good thing too, because I could have killed the asshole. Samantha had gotten a shot of the guy pushing me before the cop got there. The cop told her to put the camera away and she took his picture instead. He put up his hand and I got in between them.

  “We’re going,” I said, grabbing her around the waist and walking her toward the trolley.

  “I can’t fucking believe them,” she said.

  “It’s been a long day,” I replied. She calmed down and told me she’d driven and could give me a ride back to my place if I wanted. Heading up I-5, we debriefed about the day and figured out our timeline for the story. She said she’d get right on the pictures that night. When she parked on the street by my studio, I leaned over to give her a kiss. She put her hand on my leg and looked at me tenderly.

  “I think we’re better off being friends,” she told me. I got out of the car and watched her drive away, wondering what had gotten into me.