by Johnny Shaw
I hadn’t thought about Tomás Morales in years. We had lost touch, but there was a period of five or six years when we were kids that he was like a little brother. His grandfather raised him. But with Mr. Morales running the bar, Tomás mostly played outside. When I wasn’t doing work for Pop, I’d go across the street and hang out with him. Play catch, help him make a ramp for his bike, that kind of thing. I taught him how to play chess and poker, but we stopped playing when he started embarrassing me.
He hadn’t been your average kid. A Mexican nerd wasn’t that common in the Imperial Valley. When he was eight or nine, if you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would’ve said a businessman. He even carried an old briefcase around. I don’t know where he found it, but he carried it everywhere. Home and school and church, always at his side. All he had in it was an old copy of the Wall Street Journal that someone had left at the bar, but it represented his dreams. The same way as when I painted my bike to look like Evel Knievel’s.
I did my best to keep an eye on Tomás, knowing that the other kids picked on him. An eight-year-old with a briefcase better be prepared to catch some shit. I had gotten him out of some trouble here and there, but we went to different schools. He wasn’t much of a fighter, so he did the only thing he could. He learned how to take a beating. That can be as important a skill as learning to fight.
Eventually, Mr. Morales sauntered to Bobby’s end of the bar. Mr. Morales said nothing. Bobby did some talking. Mr. Morales did some nodding, still silent. Bobby did some more talking, annotating his story with broad hand movements. Mr. Morales only nodded. Eventually, Bobby and Mr. Morales shook hands. Then, Bobby motioned for Mr. Morales to lean in. He whispered conspiratorially in his ear. Mr. Morales’s eyebrows rose more than once.
At one point, Bobby pointed back at me, and Mr. Morales nodded. Mr. Morales said a few words, put another two beers on the counter, and walked back to the other end of the bar. Bobby put five dollars on the counter and walked back to our table with the beers. He stood over the table, smiling. I reached for my beer, but Bobby shook his head and motioned to the door.
“Road beers. We’re going to Mexicali.”
The history of Southern California is the history of water rights. And the residents of the Imperial Valley know it. When you live and farm in the desert and get your water from the longest man-made canal in the U.S., you don’t need to be reminded of the importance of water. Many of the older farmers moved from the Owens Valley after the city stole their water. Back then, they only had guns to protect their land. Now, they had lawyers. And guns. Still the feeling remained among the farmers that it was only a matter of time before the city made a grab for its water. The city had the voice and votes. Historically, the city always won. But until they outlawed swimming pools in San Diego and LA, they could get their water somewhere else. Farming is hard enough that you have to deal with that kind of bullshit.
To create an agricultural community in the middle of the desert, all of the fields in the Imperial Valley are irrigated by a series of canals from water that comes from the Colorado River forty miles away. To the disdain of the cities on the coast, the Imperial Valley has the California rights to the Colorado River water, and the district and subsequently the farmers are allotted a certain amount of acre feet at a reasonable rate based on acreage. The Colorado dumps into the All-American Canal, which then delivers the flow into secondary canals, then down to the individual ditches that line the fields.
When it is time to irrigate one of the fields, the farmer orders the water from the IID, the Imperial Irrigation District. They fill the ditch, and then the irrigator lets it onto the field. However, you can’t let the water onto the field all at once. You’d immediately lose the water level, and the furthest part of the field wouldn’t get any water. So, the ditch has a number of gates that must be opened a few at a time. A night of irrigating consists of opening and closing gates every two or three hours, depending on the lengths of the rows. At its best, it’s boring as hell. But when something goes wrong, it’s just hell. And something always goes wrong—a gate gets busted or stuck, overflow, or the water spreads to another row. It could often be a night of muddy, frustrating work made worse by lack of sleep. Because the water has to be changed every couple of hours, you can’t sleep more than an hour and a half, and you can’t go too far away. What you can do is get someone to do it for you. Which is what Bobby did.
Before going down to Mexicali, Bobby decided to check and make sure our old high school buddy, Buck Buck, did like he said and was out irrigating Bobby’s alfalfa.
“Why don’t you just call him?” I asked.
“If I call him and he’s not there, he’ll just lie and say he is. Don’t matter that I’ll find out later. Buck Buck’s like a kid—he don’t know consequences,” Bobby said.
It was fine with me. I was in no hurry to be in Mexicali. I didn’t feel the invulnerability that I once had in high school. Back then, we’d go down to Mexicali almost every weekend and get in trouble. I was older now, wiser, so less likely to get in trouble, but more wary of the trouble that I might find. Mexicali made me nervous.
I looked to the south at the orange glow of the city. We were miles away, but the bug-light-yellow border lights were brighter than the moon.
“What did you say to Mr. Morales?” I asked.
Bobby smiled. “I thanked him for keeping my name out of any police report and apologized for the fire and such. Told him I’d bring him some new cues next time I was in. A peace offering. Never hurts to pay double on a debt a person didn’t want to loan you in the first place.”
“Then you asked about Tomás?”
“He said he hadn’t seen him in a while. That he spends more time on the other side. I felt kind of weird asking to talk to him ’cause I don’t really know him so good. But I said that I remembered that he used to bring the girls up and does he still do that.”
“What’d he say?” I was really holding up my end of this conversation.
“He said yeah, he still brokers the girls, but now he has one of his boys bring ’em. Apparently Tomás has got employees. Didn’t sound like Morales liked the new dude, called him a punk. Got the feeling there’s some bad blood between Mr. Morales and Tomás, but you can’t get nothing from that face.”
“Then he gave you his address?”
“Do I look retarded? Don’t answer that. I was undercover, remember? Had to be subtle. Have a plausible story,” Bobby said. “What I told him was that you hadn’t been laid in five years, and I was worried that you were edging toward queer. Mr. Morales agreed with my assessment, saying something about your long hair. We both agreed it was pretty gayish. He gave it some thought. And seeing that the situation was desperate, he told me where Tomás holds court. Didn’t know if he’d be there or not. But if he is, he said we go there, Tomás should be able to find you a señorita, set you back on the path to Mantown. Or away from Mantown, I guess. One of those.”
“You’re kidding, right? You didn’t say all that.”
But Bobby just laughed.
Bobby pulled his Ranchero onto the shoulder. My side was so close to the ditch bank that I had to slide across the bench seat and get out on the driver’s side. Bobby reached into a cooler in the truck bed and pulled out a six-pack of Coors Light tall boys. He didn’t allow smoking in the Ranchero, so I lit a smoke to get my nicotine fix.
There was a small fire a few yards away, and two figures huddled around it. It was ninety-something degrees. What kind of idiots build a fire?
These kind of idiots. Buck Buck and his brother Snout had a gopher turning on a makeshift spit. They sat on the ground in nothing but boxers and rubber boots, facing the fire. They looked up as we approached, their crooked smiles screaming booze. Bobby handed Snout the six.
Buck Buck shrugged. “You making sure we’re here?”
Bobby ignored him and turned to me. “You remember Buck Buck and Snout, right?”
Everyone I went to high school
with, I also went to grammar school with. It was hard to forget anyone you’d known that long. In the short time I’d been back, I felt like I recognized every face on the street. Like I never left. But I did leave. I knew the faces and the names, but I didn’t know the people anymore.
Buck Buck and Snout Buckley. Buck Buck was a year ahead of me, Snout a year behind. They came from a good farming family and appeared to have accepted their fate with ease. They looked like I remembered them only more so, thirty pounds apiece mostly around the midsection.
It was obvious that they spent their lives outdoors, their skin tan to leather. Buck Buck had always been the leader of the two. He smiled more than he should, often to the point of pissing people off. And Snout—well, he didn’t get the name because he had big ears. Although he also had big ears. But his nose was glorious, starting at the middle of his forehead and making its way to his upper lip. His face was aging into his nose well, giving him a stately appearance. He could be on a nickel.
“Hey, Jimmy,” they said in unison. They turned back to the gopher.
“You’re going to burn it, dumbshit,” Snout yelled at Buck Buck, reaching for the spit. “Let me do it.”
Buck Buck slapped the back of his hand like an Italian mother.
Bobby squinted at the field. “Anything I should know about?”
“You got a low spot on that southeast corner. It’s either going to flood or not get water,” Buck Buck answered, concentrating on the slow-turning rodent.
“Yeah. Scrap land. Thirty-five good acres and five crap. Got to eventually get it retiled, leveled. Thanks for doing this. I owe you.”
“No, you don’t.” Buck Buck smiled. “I’m baling hay in a couple of nights, and it just so happens I need a couple of strong, young men like yourselves.”
Bobby looked the question at me. I nodded. I’ve always liked hard work.
“Just give me a holler and we’ll be there,” Bobby answered.
Snout leaned into the fire, trying to smell the singed gopher. He looked up. “You want some? I think it’s done.”
I answered, walking back to the Ranchero. “That’s okay. I had gopher for lunch.”
“You go down to Mexicali much?” I asked as we neared Calexico. The millions of stars in the sky dissolved in the artificial glow of Mexicali.
“After the divorce, I was down here all the time. Too much, probably. Bad as I was at being a husband and father, I missed it when they were gone. I’m not so good at change. Guy like me, take away the wife and kids, and I’m trouble on a stick.”
“And lately?”
“Maybe once a month. When I’m in the mood for Chinese or I need to get something reupholstered, you know. Not so much for the drinking and ladies.” Bobby smiled as if that wasn’t the whole truth.
But it was no joke that Mexicali had some of the best Chinese restaurants. La Chinesca, Mexicali’s Chinatown, was one of the largest in Latin America, and the fusion complemented the cuisine. Shark fin tacos and chorizo chow mein.
“Mexicali the same as I remember?”
“I don’t know how you remember it, but the answer is no. Don’t you read the papers? Mexico is all fucked up. Got to flip to the back pages. That’s where they put news about Mexico. It’s way worse. It’s always been a shithole, right? But in a totally different way. Maybe we didn’t notice it, but with drugs and illegals and the maquiladoras—them’s the factories along the border.”
“Yeah, I know. They were here when I left,” I said.
Bobby continued. “They had that ‘Operation Gatekeeper’ up in SD. Alls it did was move the shit east. Move it into the desert. Made it more dangerouser for the illegals. But shit, San Diego got the votes, right? They’re happy ’cause the wetbacks ain’t a problem no more. Same time, we’re scraping bodies off the hardpack. People can be fucking dicks. Their idea of taking out the garbage is probably dumping their trash on their neighbor’s lawn and congratulating themselves for a job well done.
“It’s getting nastier. Too many people. They got a slum on the edge of town that looks like how I imagine parts of India look. Hell, there’s gangs in Calexico. Not like we remember. Not a bunch of pachucos in hairnets and that top button. But real, honest to God, Crip/Blood, Mexican Mafia gangs. With guns and shit. You can see their tags all over the place. It ain’t Tijuana bad, but it could get there.”
A green Border Patrol SUV passed us, followed closely by a white Homeland Security SUV. We had entered Calexico and drove past the edge of town with all the box stores and a surprising amount of freshly built industrial parks.
The lights of the border crossing approached. It had definitely changed. Now a NAFTA route, there were six lanes instead of two, and it looked more high-tech. More lights, newer building. Trucks lined both sides of the road waiting to change countries.
Bobby turned off the main road before the border crossing. He drove up Anza, then down First, and found a place to park in front of a mercado that looked like it specialized in creepy dolls and Tupperware.
“We’re walking?” I said, suddenly aware that I was going to have to get out of the car.
“You don’t take a car this cherry that far south,” Bobby responded, not kidding.
“How far is it?”
“Relax. Cachanilla’s, that’s the place, is only a few blocks from the tunnel. Less than a hundred yards. Easier to walk. Faster getting out.”
I nodded, reaching for the door handle.
Bobby grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Where you going? You ain’t ready. Give me your wallet.”
“No. What for?”
“Just give it to me,” Bobby said, reaching over insistently.
I rolled my eyes, but took my wallet out of my back pocket and handed it to him.
“Put your passport in your boot. On the bottom, under your sock.”
After we left Morales Bar, I had stopped by my house and grabbed my passport. Times had changed. You couldn’t just walk across without ID anymore. Scratch that. You could still get into Mexico, but you couldn’t get back into the U.S. without a passport.
“In my boot? Isn’t that a little paranoid?”
“We’re going to a third-world country to find a hooker. We ain’t going to be looking in churches and museums. It’s better to be safe than stupid.”
I took off my boot and tossed my passport in it, and then I put the boot back on. As I laced it up, I watched Bobby pull the cash from my wallet and stuff it in his pocket. “We’ll leave the credit cards here.”
“They’re maxed anyway. Can I at least have some of my own money? I promise not to spend it all on candy.”
Bobby reached into his pocket and pulled out my wad of bills. He picked out a twenty and gave it to me.
“Very generous.”
“You still carry a knife?”
I nodded. Part of the country boy in me. I’d carried one since I was a kid. I felt naked without a knife in my pocket.
“Let’s see it,” Bobby said.
“I really doubt that I’m going to get in a knife fight.” I pulled out the small, two-inch folding Buck knife from the front pocket of my jeans.
Bobby let out a snort. “I don’t want to get all Crocodile Dundee on you, but that’s for cleaning your fingernails.”
He reached past me and unlocked his glove compartment. After he tossed my wallet inside, he rummaged around the maps, tools, and pencils. He found a watermelon knife, a thin, six-inch, folding pig-sticker. When open, a watermelon knife is like a small, foot-long sword. I took the knife and put it in my sock, wedged tightly against the inside of my boot. It gave me no comfort, just more unease.
Bobby smiled. “Now we’re prepared.”
All the fun stuff is in Mexico. And when you live on the border, it’s always tempting. Mexico has a lenient drinking age and booze aplenty. Drugs are everywhere. Women are available and willing. And for the kids, firecrackers, switchblades, and Roman candles are abundant. Hell, you can buy Cuban cigars. You can go to a bullfight, a do
g fight, or a cock fight if that’s your pleasure. What is fun and illegal in the U.S., Mexico gladly offers in a semi-legal, slightly dangerous way. If the law looks the other way, then is it really illegal?
Mexicali is a fairly normal city in the day. A great place to shop, grab a bite to eat, and see the sights. It could be trouble, but it didn’t have to be. Nighttime was a different story. Most of the activity was a varied form of trouble. In high school, we used to call twenty-dollar bills “Get Out of Jail Free” cards.
I could vividly remember the last time I was in Mexicali. Not coincidentally the closest time I had ever come to being thrown in a Mexican jail. I was in the back of the police car in handcuffs and everything. Of course, I hadn’t done anything. I had been there to rent a tuxedo for prom. The “crime” I committed was running a stop sign that didn’t exist. The real crime was that I didn’t have any money on me.
I don’t blame the Mexican cops. They’re underpaid and underappreciated, so they built the mordida system into the economy. La mordida means “the little bite,” and that’s usually all it was. The real mistake I had made was getting angry. Drunk, I would’ve been meek. But sober, I was self-righteous. As I refused to pay for a crime I didn’t commit, they knew they had me.
When I realized my steadfast protest was only going to get me pain and more pain, I gave in. All in all, it had ended up being reasonable. They took my Maglite, an old Playboy (Mensa edition), my Leatherman, and a Billy Joel CD that some girl had left in my car. Only the Leatherman pissed me off. It had been a gift from Pop.
Back then Mexicali was fun and scary and dangerous and welcoming. Now, it just felt scary and dangerous. I reminded myself that it was a city like any other and that most of its residents were just regular people. It didn’t help. I was glad Bobby was with me.
Bobby and I walked down the steps of the tunnel that crossed the border. Half the dim fluorescents were out, and the shadows implied movement. There were a few businesses in the underground no man’s land, but only the magazine stand was open. At the end of the long tunnel was a turnstile, the identical design used at the exit of amusement parks. Once you leave the U.S. into Mexico, you can’t return the same way. It’s just like leaving the fun park and emerging in the harsh reality of the parking lot.