California State Police officers in white crash helmets, face masks, black leather boots, and khaki uniforms come across the platform in formation. They carry pistols in holsters. At a barked order, half of them draw their weapons. The other half have clipboards. These are some of California’s notorious Processing Officers. When they catch people trying to escape the holding pens, they mark them with indelible green dye.
Suddenly a man in full radiation gear comes into the car from the side opposite the platform. He is carrying a small black device with a digital readout. It has a long, thin probe attached. He waves it back and forth as he moves down the aisle, touching some of the passengers with it, inserting it down the collars of others. He squirts a bright red aerosol on the back of one man’s hand, and tells him that he’s got to go take a detox shower and get an issue of paper clothing before he can even get port-of-entry processing.
Jim and I are examined without comment. Apparently this device only measures present radiation. My high lifedose is still my own business, unless I try to enter a hospital without a health card.
At the far end of the car he blows a whistle. Immediately, Processing Officers appear at both doors. Behind the man at the front is one of the clipboard carriers. “California registered citizens,” he shouts, “show your colors.” Four people pull out red plastic cards.
Captain Clipboard runs them through a device like a credit-card verifier and reads something in the screen of a portable computer.
One after another, the citizens are given the precious right to stay on the train.
One man is not as lucky as the others. “You aren’t computing,” Captain Clipboard says affably. “You’ll have to step over to the customs shack for manual verification.”
“What’s the problem, officer?”
“You don’t come up on the computer. Maybe your card’s defective. Go over to customs—it’s the yellow door.”
Uncertain, nervous, the young man rises from his seat. He goes to the rear of the car. As he is leaving, Captain Clipboard calls out, “Arrest him, he’s a jumper.”
The young man leaps down and dashes across the platform, heading for the chainlink fence that separates it from the parking lot. A voice calls in a blaring monotone, “Stop, or we’ll have to shoot.” Then, more gently: “Come on, kid, take it easy.”
When he is three-quarters of the way up the fence, two of the U.S. Army types raise their machine guns.
“Look, kid, you’re going to die in ten seconds if you don’t climb back down.”
The young man stops. He sags against the fence. Slowly he climbs down, into the arms of two other soldiers, who handcuff him, then connect the handcuffs to leg irons and lead him clanking away.
“Okay,” Captain Clipboard calls out, “everybody hold up their entry permits.” Hands thrust up full of green paper. “Hey, good car! This is gonna be a nice day.” He casts a frown at Jim and me.
From another car there rises the sound of female screaming. It goes on and on, trembling into the heat.
Captain Clipboard works his way along the aisle. One after another, he puts the green forms on his clipboard and goes over them with a lightpen. Two people are sent to the yellow door. They walk quickly across the platform, pointedly ignoring the chainlink fence, carrying their green forms and all of their belongings in their hands. Others, from other cars, straggle along as well. Finally there is nobody left in the car but us illegals.
“All right, now it’s joker time! All of you displaced persons off the train, line up along the white line on the platform, and don’t make sudden moves. You’d be surprised how nervous those dumb army boys get, standing out there in the sun. Let’s go!”
Sixteen of us shuffle off the train, mostly threadbare, eyes hollow, about us all the furtive look of the new American wanderers.
We are facing the toughest port-of-entry system in the United States. The odds are that all sixteen of us will be on the outbound train later this afternoon.
“Hey, Sally,” Captain Clipboard calls, “you recycle fast, sweet-heart.”
“I’m working on a tunnel,” one woman mutters in reply, her head down.
I wonder how many of us are repeaters. But, watching the soldiers across the platform watching us, I decide not to strike up any conversations. At a barked command, the soldiers move forward until they are facing us. “All right, folks,” the giant voice says, “single file to the pen, please. Move out. Double time!”
As we shamble away, the train gives a long blast on its horn and starts to roll. Not a few heads turn back, watching it pass the open track barrier. The lucky few inside are already reopening their newspapers and settling back for the run to L.A.
We are herded into a fenced-off area about three acres square.
There is a cyclone fence twenty feet high, topped by razor wire. At all four corners of the enclosure there are guard houses. Fifty feet beyond the fence there is another barrier: a run occupied by six huge hounds. I see light towers stretching off into the distance, wonder if the whole California border could be lit. As we won’t be here past 4:00 P.M., when the outbound train arrives, I’ll never know.
“Bomb-out,” I say to Jim.
“Maybe. I think we ought to try to talk our way in.”
I assume that as a newsman, he’s more practiced at this sort of thing than I am. “What do you suggest?”
“We can try the reporter gambit. I’ve got my News Herald ID.” We walk over to the gate.
A soldier, smoking a cigarette, closes his eyes for an instant and then regards us with a blank expression.
“I’m a reporter for—”
“No talking.”
“—the Dallas News Herald.” Jim holds up his press card.
The soldier stares, his eyes glazed with boredom.
“This man is also a writer. We’re on our way to interview the Governor of California.”
There is a flicker of interest. “You have any verifying documentation?”
“I’d have to make a call.”
The flicker dies. “Then take the afternoon train to Kingman, which is the first place you can get off, and make your call from there. They’ll mail you letters of entry and give you an access code for the border police.”
He starts to walk away. I decide to try another approach. “How long have you been doing this?”
I can see him sigh. “I was drafted in ’91. Six weeks of basic and a month of crowd-control training and here I am.”
“You’re with a U.S. Army unit?”
“That’s right. Regular Army, 144th Military Police, to be exact. And I ain’t supposed to be talking to you.” Again, he starts to walk away.
“Look, is there any way out of here?”
“Sure. People get out all the time.” He laughs. “Two, maybe three in the eighteen months I been here. And they were caught within the hour. I got to tell you, all those signs you see warning you about gettin’ shot? They’re for real. I’ve seen it happen. I’ll tell you another thing. Captain says, soon as he sees you two, ‘We oughta just go ahead and paint those assholes. They’re gonna be trouble.’”
This time he does walk away, smartly. An officer is approaching, a tall, gray man with sparkling, sad eyes. On his chest is a nameplate that reads O’MALLEY. He wears the oak leaves of a major. “Keep this area clear, Private,” he says. His voice is dry and quick.
“Yessir!” The private snaps to attention and salutes his superior officer. There is a spit-and-polish about these men that I don’t remember from the prewar army. But under the surface, they’re still American. I suspect that I could get a good laugh out of both of them if I could remember a decent joke.
“You know what I think?” Jim says.
“What?”
“It’s a pain in the neck to travel in this country. Frankly, I can’t see how we’re going to get through this without illegal assistance. For which I guess we’ll have to go back to Kingman.”
When the afternoon train comes in, we go along
with the rest of the thirsty, sweating mob that has been kept standing for hours in the sun. For those who can’t pay the price of a ticket, there are two “state cars” at the end of the train, ancient and filthy. These people will be able to get to Kingman by train, but then they’re on their own. It’s a tragedy for them. There is no more romance to being a hobo in America. It means starvation, sometimes slow and sometimes fast.
We reach the outskirts of Kingman at eight o’clock at night.
The hobo city seems even larger, transformed as it is into an ocean of flickering cookfires.
As the train stops, dirty children run up with cups of water, shouting, “Penny, penny, penny,” at the thirsty travelers. Their shrill voices mingle with the barking of skeletal dogs.
It doesn’t take long to find the people-smugglers. The moment we jump down off the train to the dirt siding, we see a man in a cap and dark glasses, far better dressed than most. We catch his eye and he strolls up to us.
“Get you all the way, three golds apiece.”
Another man trots over, lean and quick, wearing a clean white T-shirt, jeans, and hand-tooled boots. “Five for both. And watch out for that turkey, he flew right into an ambush last week.”
“Oh yeah? I’d be in prison camp if I’d done that. Why don’t you tell ’em the way you piled up that Tri-Pacer in June, asshole.”
Suddenly a woman’s voice interrupts from behind us. “One gold each. And I’ll take folding at a hundred to one.”
“Shit, Maggie, you can’t even cover your gas!”
“Maggie—look, you guys, she’s got a rotten plane and a worse copilot. I don’t wanna influence you, but as a professional pilot—”
“I’m better’n no copilot at all, which is what you got, George,” snarls a nine-year-old boy. He and the woman come closer. She is pretty in the gloom, her eyes flashing, her lips edged with a smile.
“We fly a Cessna 182, gentlemen. It’s clean and safe.” The smile develops. She nods toward a decrepit pickup parked just down the track. We bring out our money, then follow her and the boy.
“That’s the last time you undercut us, Maggie,” one of the other smugglers says. “Your prices ain’t worth the risk.”
The truck is rusty and the engine sounds like it’s only firing on about three cylinders, but it runs. “You’re lucky you didn’t go with those two. Likely as not, they’re California agents.” The airport is unlighted, just a dirt strip in the desert and a single ramshackle shed. The only sound, as we get out of the pickup, is the humming of a lighted Coke machine. “How d’you like our runway light?”
Maggie says as we pass it on the way to the flight line. I don’t know about Jim, but I don’t like it very much at all. For a nervous flyer like me, things are beginning to look kind of grim.
A coal-black Cessna 182 awaits us. Maggie and her boy start a flight check, walking around the plane, moving creaky flaps and rattling what seem to be loose propeller blades. Or maybe they’re supposed to be that way.
“You guys ready? We want to get moving in case the competition informs on us. This is a cutthroat business.” She smiles. “You got ID cards?”
We don’t, of course, or we wouldn’t be here. I get set to spend some more money.
“You got to be able to show IDs, or you’ll be in the pen inside of twenty-four hours. All California citizens have them.” I remember as much from the train. “We can give you fakes. They won’t work in a computer, but they’ll pass an eyeballing.”
“Is this part of the service?”
“No way. It’s another sawbuck apiece. We had to pay fifteen hundred for the Polaroid machine. Them things are hard to get. Go in there without cards and you’re wasting your plane fare. You don’t want to have that happen.”
We pay our money and get our cards.
The plane bounces along the “runway,” at last shuddering into the air with a horrible popping from the engine. I almost wish it aloft, but it continues to stagger along at an altitude that could not be more than fifty feet. My heart begins to pound. The plane can’t be working. It’s going to crash.
Suddenly the kid starts counting backwards from ten. He has a stopwatch in his hand, just visible in the dim light from the dashboard. At the count of one, Maggie guns the motor and pulls her stick into her belly. We shoot upward, all except my stomach, which remains hanging, sickeningly, at our previous altitude.
“Power lines,” Maggie comments as we dive back to the altitude of my guts. I look at Jim. His eyes are wide.
“They’re flying low,” he mutters, “to avoid radar. Since they can’t see, they’re measuring ground speed against the stopwatch so they can tell when to climb over obstacles.”
“More or less.”
“If that’s a question, the answer is less.”
We fly like this for what seems like hours. In fact, we go through the mountains literally at treetop level, with the boy counting and making check marks on a yellow pad, and the plane popping up and down almost continuously.
When I get airsick, the boy hands back a bag without ever missing his count.
Suddenly, just when it seems that the worst will never end, we are droning along straight and level, approaching the Los Angeles basin. “Palm Springs off to the left,” Maggie comments. The lights of the town are beside us rather than below us. I decide to close my eyes until we land.
But there is no chance. I see L.A. then, and I almost burst into tears. Ahead and a little below are beads, strings, fountains of light It is a vision from the past, wealthy and mysterious and wonderful.
“I’m gonna leave you near Colton Airport. You know L.A., either of you?”
“I don’t,” I say, “but I don’t think we want to be left at an airport. We’ll have to deal with customs, won’t we?”
“I didn’t say at Colton airport. Near it. We drop people various places. We ain’t used this particular spot in a month. I’m gonna land on Interstate 10, just west of the airport. I’m not even gonna turn off the engine. You just pile out and I’ll give ’er the gun and that’s it. You’re on your own. There’s an interurban station right near the airport. Go there. There won’t be anybody around this time of night. Last trolley comes through at midnight. It’s a dime.”
Ten minutes later we are sitting in the brightly lit trolley stop.
There is an ad on the back wall for Yamaha bicycles and a placard announcing,
MARTIAL LAW AREA, OBEY LOCAL REGULATIONS, IF YOU VIOLATE A CURFEW, REMEMBER: SOLDIERS ARE REQUIRED TO SHOOT!
Penciled in below this are Colton’s local laws: curfew is midnight or last trolley. The area commandant is Colonel William Piper, U.S.A., address GPO Colton, phone number 213-880-1098.
Suspicious persons should be reported at once.
Hello, sunshine.
POLL
Opinions from the Two Americas
There really are two Americas now, the first nation being California and its satellite Western states, the second being the rest of us folks—dirty, tired, and radioactive.
Out West, the public impression of the state of the rest of the country is very much worse than actual conditions would warrant.
“Outsiders” are looked upon as contagious at best, and probably downright lethal.
The West believes that
• America is recovering from the war.
• The West is helping the East as much as it can.
• The War Zones ought to be abandoned.
Naturally the East thinks otherwise, and though the War Zones are not broken out separately, they presumably feel that they should be rehabilitated.
Surprisingly, neither East nor West feels that long-term martial law in the War Zones is a threat to the Constitution, though the East has a stronger opinion in this matter than the West.
Do you believe that the United States is continuing to make a recovery from the 1988 war?
- 1993 1992 1991
AGREE 49% 41% 30%
DISAGREE 46 57 67
; NO OPINION 5 2 3
A significant East-West split is reflected in the response to this question. As first noted three years ago, marked differences appear between the states of the so-called War Zone and the remaining states. When asked this question in 1993, these two regions responded:
- East/War Zone West
AGREE 30% 42%
DISAGREE 69 55
NO OPINION 1 3
In terms of assistance for recovery, do you believe that the federal government should abandon the War Zones permanently in order to concentrate resources on those marginally affected areas that could more fully benefit from the assistance?
- 1993 1992
AGREE 47% 49%
DISAGREE 50 47
NO OPINION 3 4
As in last year’s survey, there were sharp regional differences:
- East/War Zone West
AGREE 25% 61%
DISAGREE 73 36
NO OPINION 2 3
Do you believe that the regions of the United States unaffected directly by the war are doing everything they can to assist in the full recovery of the War Zones?
- 1993 1992 1991
AGREE 31% 27% 29%
DISAGREE 62 66 63
NO OPINION 7 7 8
Again, there were substantial differences between East and West:
- East/War Zones West
AGREE 23% 51%
DISAGREE 71 47
NO OPINION 6 2
When asked what more the Western region could do to assist in recovery, or in what different ways it could do so, the responses were as follows:
- East/War Zones West
DO THE SAME 13% 41%
DO LESS 2 22
PROVIDE GREATER CAPITAL ASSISTANCE 31 13
PROVIDE WORK TEAMS 12 10
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