Mexicans are not expected to talk. To redneck tobacco farmers, pig and chicken farmers—all of them wearing American flag patches—Mexicans are beasts of burden, not human enough to have the capacity to think and speak. We do the work, disappear at night, show up at dawn, do the work and vanish into the night again. It’s the way of things in a regime run by white racists whose ancestors were slave hunters and plantation bosses.
He looks at the bricks, smiles and walks out.
I sit until Frog King’s figure shadows the doorway, huge in his denim overalls and plaid shirt, filling up the doorframe.
“That your buddy?” he says, pointing over his shoulder at Chuy in the car.
His slip-on boots are enormous ship hulls, discolored at the toe humps and molded out to bear the weight of his giant frame leaning forward; his immense foot-pads flatten out and strain the round edges of the soles with constant pressure. He trundles forward, with a sigh plunges down like a huge wave into his La-Z-Boy. He dusts off his cap, slaps it against his thigh and grins large.
“Whatcha got there?”
“Two hundred pounds of Mexican weed. I have to take off now, my friend’s anxious to get back. Oh, keep my end of the money for your truck.” It’s that quick.
“Wanna drink of white lightning?”
I lift my right hand. “Gotta pass.”
In a second, I’m in Chuy’s passenger seat, speeding past fields and trees, hugging the blacktop, going back to my redbrick house. No sooner are we in the yard than the phone rings. Frog King tells me to come back.
Ten minutes later, when we drive into his yard, in front of us there are a dozen goats chewing the butcher paper the marijuana was wrapped in, green gobs of marijuana stalks sticking out of their jaws. Bricks are scattered on the ground.
“Pinches locos,” Chuy curses, unable to contain his smirk that these rednecks are completely nuts. He gives a smug chuckle. “Who in the hell would feed mota to their goats!”
I go inside to see Frog King in his chair munching on a sandwich.
“Damn goats won’t even eat that scrap. You brought me scrap!” His voice splits open like an ax cracking hardwood. “I’ll be damned!”
His whole face, gouged dark with menace, suddenly opens with enormous delight, as if the whole episode is genuinely humorous. He roars with laughter.
The weed was no good. Should I go outside, collect it from the goats, take back what isn’t eaten, demand a new load, tell them I won’t pay one red cent more? They screwed me with this trash. I don’t know what to do or say.
“Ain’t nobody buying that.” He pauses, chews, continues. “I’d say, run on back, get some weed we can sell.” He gives me a momentary chilling stare, then covers it with a smile. “What d’ya think?”
His foreman walks in. “What do we do?”
“Get it the hell out, put it back there with the hay, maybe them damn cows’ll eat it.”
When I get back home, Chuy and I call M and tell him the situation. He surprises us by offering to come up with three hundred pounds, adding that we have to have just half the money ready.
“The weed better be good,” I emphasize.
“Tops,” he says, adds they are taking off tonight. Expect him late tomorrow. They’re going to drive sixteen hours straight.
I know that M knows this can turn out to be one lucrative connection, but he has to deliver the goods. He isn’t going to let this connection go, so he’s going to work it for every penny. Even if it means replacing every pound of trashy Mexican weed for high grade.
Chuy takes off back to Texas after I assure him that we’re going to make some money, I’ll call him soon. That’s when M and I go into business. I first meet the driver, Centavo (Spanish for penny), called so because his belt, his bowie knife, its sheaf and his boots are all decorated with rows of Indian head pennies—collector’s items. He’s thin, angular-boned with sharp facial features, a menacing figure with a trimmed beard, black uncombed hair, very dark eyes and a complexion the color of brown leather.
Centavo shows up in a truck stashed with weed, with M following behind in a car. The same day he arrives, Frog King has it sold. The deal goes down right, and Frog King orders more. M wants me to come down, drive it back with him for a considerable discount, I agree. I like him, see the opportunity to make some money. It affords me some respite from the painful silence I’m experiencing with Lila.
I borrow a truck from Frog King, soon I’m making a trip a week to McAllen, Texas, driving the lead vehicle with the weed, M following behind. I plan on saving money to buy some fixer-uppers, tools, work trucks for Camilo and me. I want to pay for his rehab. When the time is right, I’ll head west to start our business. Since the money keeps rolling in, I keep smuggling in order to make my plans a reality.
October in Texas and up past New Orleans is nice and balmy, but once you hit Tennessee, the cold grinds down, makes the landscape rainy and muddy. Highway wrecks litter the roadside with cars sliding on black ice—I have to be careful.
When I get in, no one is home. I cross the road, ask Peter where they are, he says they went to Frog King’s for some kind of election celebration. A party for Frog King’s brother, who was reelected senator.
“Frog King’s mother’s house?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Peter smiles.
When I get there, there are so many people arriving that I have to get in line, wait behind others to enter the mansion his mother lives in. A folding table is set up under a magnolia tree, flood lights bathe the green lawns and rose garden.
When I get to the entrance, I have to stop at the table before I can enter. I think they’re going to give me a pass or something, but these two women and a man seated on folding chairs ask me for a donation. I tell them I have no money.
“Credit card will do. We accept that too,” she pushes.
I shake my head to indicate I don’t have credit cards and walk past them. Inside, balloons float overhead tied to congratulatory post cards. Politicians in tuxedos laugh and toast each other. Senator Booker’s face smiles from wall posters, placards that kids race past, soaking them with squirt guns. Black porters roam. Valets hurry back and forth parking luxury sedans. Twang-talking gentry in expensive suits shake hands, slap backs.
I walk over to the foreman, he points me in the direction of the back patio. Large stadium lights beam up the gardens in back, Chinese paper lanterns float around a swimming pool, cast iron Civil War heroes on horses carrying a Dixie flag scan the wide expanse of shrubs and hedges, laughter and delighted shrieks bubble around the looming white pillars of the porch decked out like massive candy canes.
I follow a flagstone walkway to another building, Lila notices me the second I step inside the auditorium–sized room, where dozens of people cluster amid waiters carrying silver trays with finger food. She sees me, then turns as if she doesn’t want to talk to me and continues her conversation with several women in elegant gowns. I go through the throng.
I scan the crowd until I see a man who looks like Camilo. He grabs several glasses of champagne from a waiter’s tray and gulps them down. As I go up to him, he sways off balance. I catch him. Thinking me a stranger, he turns aggressively, then recognizes me and hugs me.
He and a woman close by him look like tweaked-out grunges in rain slickers with hoodies tied tight under their chins, grinning as they grab finger food and snatch more drinks. They’re blitzed, grated by drugs, shredded by too many meth-charged weeks, but that doesn’t seem to faze the joy on Camilo’s face at seeing me.
“Where you been, little brother!”
I don’t say, “Down in Texas, in Robstown, waiting for another load to cross.”
“Well, what the hell?” he exclaims.
I don’t tell him I was planning to study tonight to take a test to get into night school, get my GED. I hear the wind outside, know winter will soon be pounding Green Mill. He shakes his head and smiles.
“Yo, happy early Xmas, brother. I’m here.”
“What?” I’m confused.
“With my fiancée. We drove my little Fiat all the way out here from New Mexico, even though the top ain’t got no top. Balls to the walls, little brother. Hell, most of the time it was snowing, raining and hailing. Hell yeah!
“That’s right, little brother. I’m here,” Camilo repeats, “Here . . . Green Mill, North Carolina. Sis gave me your address. Where the hell you at?” He snaps his fingers in my face. “Come back, little brother. Nothing stops me when I want to see you. And we’re getting married.”
“Married?” I say, still bewildered.
“Sheryl, the woman I’m with? She won’t have sex with me unless we get married.”
“What are you talking about? Who. . .?”
I’m still thinking about what he said when he introduces me to Sheryl. Her shelf-life expired long ago. Her bearing says titty-bar lap-dancer. Of course later, I eventually learn that’s exactly where they met. Their courtship consisted of several hours, during which she was giving my brother gold-star privileges upstairs, where customers paid for extra pleasantries— probably with the money I send him monthly. He confirms they plan to get hitched this week.
I ask about our sister Karina. We talk. Then he looks to the main entrance. Something catches his attention, and he says he’ll be right back. Sheryl and I small-talk: “Really? You and Camilo drove out in his convertible sports car with a torn ragtop? Wow. Are you really going to get married on such short notice? I mean, you hardly know each other. . . .”
But oh no, it was love at first puff on the meth pipe, love with the first line of coke, love with the rolled joint, love with the first bottle of whiskey. . . . She was sure he was Mr. Right. She’d been married before, she should know the real thing, experience and all. She says she can’t believe they drove all the way across the country in bad weather, because when they left the house it was to go to the store for beer. Romantic. Plans changed after they bought the beer, yahooing, hollering with excitement as they accelerated onto the ramp and sped onto Interstate 40 heading east. “Oh, life is so exciting with him.”
Flashes of red lights sweep across the ballroom ceiling, people turn to the commotion outside. Perhaps it’s an official escort bringing in an important dignitary, like the governor.
Frog King stares at Lila, she comes over and tells me, “Get out there quick before these boys decide to take him out in the field. I mean it. Now.”
“What?” I ask perplexed.
“Not you! Him. Your brother’s stealing ashtrays off the tables in the patio.”
“Ashtrays?”
I hurry past the people, go outside. The cops have Camilo in handcuffs, are trying to put him in the back seat of their cruiser. I run up, beg them to uncuff him.
“Please. My brother, he’s visiting. I work for Frog King. Please, let him go, I promise you, you’ll never see him again.”
Mentioning Frog King makes them pause, look at someone in the crowd behind us, then seconds later resume shoving my brother.
I pull him back, plead with them. “Don’t, please! Don’t take him.”
One of the cops turns in frustration. “You want to take his place?”
Minutes later, I sit handcuffed in the back seat looking out the window. I’m scared, tired, disappointed in myself. My brain is burning up with images of me in DYA. Seeing all those people having a good time with me being driven away like I have some kind of disease. I feel nothing but alone in the world at that moment.
I have so much going for me, and like that, it’s gone. Everyone goes into hiding. No one wants to meet your eyes, except the cop who’s driving: his eyes in the rearview mirror dart at me.
With every mile, my anxiety increases, the sound of the wheels on pavement, the stench of other arrested prisoners’ snot, sweat, blood, puke, feces, urine and tears engrained in the upholstery and floor mats, mixing with the air I breathe in in the back seat. The call-box staccatos with sniper-shots of coded information: “10-20 B, 1377, 3030, officer . . . 10-4. . .” It blurts all the way to the station.
I imagine myself with a razorblade, slashing my wrists. I picture myself bleeding all over, draining every last drop from my body until I collapse and never have to wake up to my life again. All of this can end, I think. I was fooling myself that I could make it.
I’m numb. The tobacco fields, the plowed fields, the night sky with stars, the country road—all of it is nameless. None of it has purpose or substance for me. At that moment, there is no Lord, no decent people, no goodness in the world. No hope.
We arrive. I get out, go inside and what is supposed to be routine for any other prisoner becomes a recurrent nightmare for me. It feels like I’ve been pushed out of a ten-story window, I’m hurtling through space, expecting to hit the pavement, shatter into fragments I can never put back together.
When the guard asks for my hand to fingerprint me, tears fill my eyes.
He notices, surprised. “Hey, it’s not that bad, just an overnighter for disorderly conduct.”
I’m placed in a cell with another guy in the booking area so they can keep an eye on us. I rest my head in my hands, and against all effort not to, I weep. It’s too much. My fatigue. My worry. The end is coming, but I don’t how the end will come. My survival instincts kick in. I have to prepare to defend myself. Automatically, from a lifetime of being institutionalized, I lock the attitude and load the mannerisms of a juvenile who knows this world. I state loud and clear to myself: BRING IT ON.
At some point, a guard passes, says Lila put up the bail. “No worries,” he says, offering a thumbs-up gesture.
The same guard comes by, wakes up the kid across from me and tells him the company is bailing him out, get ready to leave.
The jail noise is familiar: voices yell in the hallways, cell doors clang, constant footsteps drone. . . . The harsh, grim life of being locked up weighs on the air with a toxicity that makes it hard to breathe. The pollution of thousands of imprisoned people’s sorrow before me is caked on the walls, bars and concrete floors. The dried blood, hopelessness and hate, violence almost make me gag.
Every minute that passes feels like a year. Ten years. Twenty years. Thirty. . .
I start pacing back and forth, counting, reminding myself of that night not so long ago when I dreamed a judge was telling me I would never get out—maybe the dream was right. I feel so exhausted that I curl up on the concrete floor and sleep. At some point during the night, I’m awakened to go leave.
Just as I’m about to walk out, the new shift captain says, “Not so fast, little buddy. This is from Frog King.” Three goons armored in riot gear—helmets, shields, batons and mace—storm in and bum-rush me. They lift me off the ground, hold me as each takes a turn punching me.
Before I pass out, the only thought that runs through my mind is the phrase, “Look at me now,” addressed to the whole world out there, to all the people in America: “Look at me now.” America: this is what you made of me, this is how your care ended, this is the result of your religious teachings, me obeying you, me trying to do what was right. Look at me now. It seems, for a second before my mind goes blank, that I’m a boy in the orphanage again, so long ago, the boy. . . . Before America demanded blood from me, America slammed me down, rearranged my face, broke my teeth. That boy begged for an outlet, for mercy, escape. . . .
I regain consciousness again. Someone has thrown water on my face.
The guard tells me, “I hear you like whipping women, you piece of shit!”
I crumple in a corner with my back turned to them, as they swing at me, curse. I crouch in fear from so many yelling at me in America, “If you ever come around here again, we’ll kill you.”
I can’t walk. The next thing I remember is being laid on a gurney, wheeled out to a county van and driven to Durham hospital. I’ve spent the next week convalescing when Lila comes, gets me and tells me someone stole my truck. She says the guards accused me of fighting them, that I was causing trouble for other inmates. Frog King
’s guys were also looking to beat my brother’s ass but he left.
It’s always been smooth sailing for a while, then catastrophe. Open road, then closed. Possibilities, then absence of hope. Freedom, then crushing captivity. I learned early to expect disaster, learned the three most precious words in the English language: get back up.
I call my brother and say, “You promised you’d stop the drinking and drugs.”
“Why do you bring that up?”
“Oh shit, I wonder. The fact that I just went to jail for you.”
Silence.
“It’s time,” I say.
“Yeah, when I visited you at DYA, afterwards I got drunk, tore up the motel room.”
“And another of your fiancées left you,” I say.
“. . . Long list of fiancées,” he adds.
“How can any woman leave a man so handsome?” I say, to lighten the sadness in his voice. “Sooner or later, addicts and drunks vanish too.”
Another silence.
“You know, if you haven’t figured it out, your true enemy doesn’t come as a knife-wielding thug. The worst sneak up on you in nickel and dime bags of heroin and meth. They don’t come at you with a pistol in your ribs asking for your money. It’s your life, not your money, it wants.”
“When you coming back?” he asks.
“Don’t know.”
“Don’t know?”
“I’m trying to figure out how to do it.”
“I need you here.”
“I just can’t go back and do robberies with you. You gotta stop the meth and drinking.”
“And you can’t keep living off that woman.”
“Yeah. I need to make some money so we can get a business, like we planned. . . . Get some money, buy fixer-uppers we’ll renovate, make a ton of money reselling them. But you have to get off drugs and booze. It won’t work otherwise. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, man, that little bit of powder in that little paper may not have a face or body, it’s not someone who breathes and has eyes and hands and lives somewhere, but it’ll destroy your ass.”
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