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The Long Road Home
Valor Brown
This drive is different than other drives. Normally I might be looking at the saguaro cacti or the vast, arid and strangely refreshing beauty of the desert. This drive is over an hour when speeding and there is usually a balance of peace and urgency due to the monotony. One straight line, while on both sides escorted by purple mountain tops. Tempting and unattainable they seem, for they are far from this flat landscape; even more so knowing I don’t won’t be looking at them again. At least I have the breeze of a moving vehicle. My palms are sweating and my heart is spasming uncontrollably it seems. If I dared to look at my chest, I might see it like never before amid its desperation. I don’t.
I have to keep my eyes on the road. I have to smile and wave when I see the border patrol SUV’s. Not too much and not too friendly, but just enough so that they can be distracted from my passengers. I won’t look in the backseat, because that will be like acknowledging that they are there and I cannot dare to do that. Acknowledgement is the first step to guilt and I am totally consumed with breathing normally at this point. My passengers are my salvation on this day. They are also a painful reminder of what I’ve become.
They are two large green duffel bags, overflowing w/ compacted marijuana. Alex didn’t have a chance to strap it to the bottom of the car like he promised. We had to move fast. Upon arrival to his trailer his dog growled at me as usual and he burst out of the door w/ more alertness than usual. He looked around intently and suspiciously, obviously straining to move slowly. He told me there’s at least one Border Patrol vehicle over that hill, but they aren’t paying attention. I wanted to hug him and say “Thank You” and so much more, but the wheels had already been set in motion and there were no brakes for this train. There was no room in my trunk-too small. So there they were, in plain view in the back seat of my little car. I was worried, but it was too late. He asked, “Do you want to back out?” I told him, “I can’t, I need the money Alex”. His condolences ended there, because he was a business man. You couldn’t let his drug habits or sentiments fool you. His baby’s face concealed his shrewdness and survival instinct. I didn’t know it upon first meeting him, but he was a regular at cock and dog fights and apparently had been importing drugs for years. I might have preached to him in another life, but this was not that life. He was my only open door. Suddenly dog-fighting and coke-snorting all move to the acceptable pile, when you are in a world on fire and he is the only person helping you to extinguish the flames.
All of these feelings and recent memories swirl quickly and I have to struggle not to hyperventilate. I see one border patrol car. “Smile and wave... smile and wave”, I tell myself. They don’t even follow me, like they used to when I didn’t have 100 pounds of marijuana in my car! It becomes increasingly more difficult during this long drive to keep my cool. I then resort to talking out loud in my car and saying “Almost there, keep it calm... you’re fine, fine, fine”. I do this so my mind does not have a chance to fully comprehend the possible consequence of this act. I try to nonchalantly dry my very slick palms w/ the air-conditioning vent, as the next border patrol car passes by. I am only able to smile with out waving this time. Did they notice?
During periods like this in one’s life you cling to any bit of encouragement. That is how I found myself reading my horoscope that morning. It said, “Do not pass up this opportunity. It will only be available today.” Being the impetuous alcoholic I am, I rode with it. I immersed myself in the fantasy. The horoscope was speaking to me, I reasoned. What originally was going to be a let-down conversation with Alex, turned into a full-fledged moment of truth. Normally I’d be fidgeting with the CD player trying to find the appropriate song or lighting my cigarettes off of one another, but today I can only hold on to the steering wheel and look straight ahead. This place does this to you. It cuts us all down to size. When I first arrived at the ranch and Valerie pointed out The Border, my first question was, “where is the fence?” Her response: a laugh. It was confusion and then I removed it from my thought process. Maybe if I had been more aware, I could have seen it coming. It was a slow denigration of my integrity. I was not only on the border of the US and Mexico, I was on the border of civilization itself.
There were unspeakable crimes committed within hearing distance and more just out. Hearing about people traveling miles through the desert with their infants and all of their earthly possessions, is one thing, but meeting them is another. Hearing the wranglers talk about witnessing some Brazilians being robbed at gunpoint by Mexican thugs is a lot closer to home. I want to get as far away from this place as possible after this. I will. Just one leap of faith, one bargain with the devil and I will be free of this place, it seemed.
So I wait in the parking lot on the edge of town, just as promised. The duffel bags silently read me the riot act in the rearview, reminding me of all of the charges I could face, if someone figured out how long I’d been sitting in my car without entering the grocery store. I smoked and thought calm thoughts. These things happen every day, even Valerie and her husband from the city new that their law degrees couldn’t protect them from licking flames of the border.
Alex was calm and laughed quietly while he counted out the hundreds for my payment, and he asked, “So, you want to do another one?” He meant another drug run. I told him my heart couldn’t take it, but the truth was—my luck had run out. Another spin of the roulette wheel, and I don’t know where it would land. No, this was my one chance out of this place. As I drove east toward home, the wind whipped fiercely like a gale at sea. It must be the same feeling when a sailor survives a storm in the Bermuda Triangle—with less trash and more glory. I turned the radio up then for the flames were at my back now and any new song promised to be better than the last.
