Across the Wire

by Luis Urrea

  This miracle was going on about ten feet above my head. The American kids never saw it. In the blue-gray haze of moonlight, the windmill looked capable of flight, a ragged gyrocopter on stilts. The clouds thinned out, and the moon seemed to pop through them, hanging beneath them, about a mile above the valley.

  Saturday, August 15

  We all rose to the million jangling sounds of a farm at dawn—cowbells and barking dogs, the arguments of crows and the mindless rusty squawk of roosters. A frog the size of my thumbnail policed the area, then flashed down a crack.

  José, one of the orphans, sang “Sugar, Sugar” as loud as he could. That he didn’t know a word of English didn’t stop him:

  CHOOGAR,

  Da-da-da, da-DAN-DAN,

  O honi honi,

  Jou arr mine CANDOOL-GART!

  Ah jou gommi A-WANNAJOU!!!

  ———

  Driving toward Tecate, we saw a woman walking on the shoulder of the road. She was carrying the tiniest of babies, shielding it from the sun with a square of white cardboard.

  Tecate, in the park.

  Porta-Johns stood like a stockade around the edge of the grass. The runners were registered by age and gender: WOMEN, 20-25; MEN, 25-30, and so on. Drunks were already picking fights—a fat vato in mirror shades shouted, “You scared of me? Are you scared of me?”

  Americans everywhere.

  “I don’t think this picture’ll come out.”

  “Sure it will.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure it will.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay!”

  A man without fingers on either hand sold rubber joke items out of a suitcase—green dog turds, whoopi-cushions, small rubber chickens, bloody rubber thumbs. What did he think of when he sold these? Did he remember his own thumbs? Did he hate his customers and long after their fingers? Did he wish they’d leave their fingers in his case?

  The lines at the toilets were long, but not unmanageable. A slightly disheveled Mexican man in his thirties, unshaven, shirt half untucked, cruised down the sidewalk and stopped to look at the lines of gringos waiting patiently to get to the toilets. He started to walk by, but did a double take. In retrospect, I believe this was where the idea hit. A stroke of genius so fast, so sharp, that at first I wasn’t sure I was seeing it.

  As soon as there was a slight lull in the pressing of the crowd, he stationed himself before the door of one toilet. When the next tourist stepped up, he extended his hand officiously, palm up, and wiggled his fingers. The startled American didn’t protest—he dug out a quarter, and the Mexican opened the door and ushered him in. This ploy worked time and again. The man grew so bold that whenever the people within seemed to be dawdling, he pounded on the door and scolded them. When one of the passing cops slowed to look at him, the Mexican hustled his last customer out of the stall and locked himself in. He must have made a fortune that weekend.

  Some charming friends of the orphanage named Socorro and Pepe lived in Tecate. Pepe was a huge man, with a walrus mustache. Socorro was dark and slender. Their daughter was named Yoloxochitl—a Nahuatl word for “Flower of the North.” Socorro insisted we eat lunch with them, saying, “This is God’s house. People know when they come here that they are home.”

  Over lunch, Pepe told me stories of Pamplonadas past. One year, he said, the lines to get into the toilets were too long, and one of the American women startled the Mexicans by dropping her pants and urinating in the street. Also, a friend of theirs walking with her mother was cornered by a group of American men who then fondled her, trying to pull off her clothes. I asked him what the Mexicans thought about gringos after such displays.

  He pursed his lips. This was a sure sign of approaching diplomacy.

  “We all know,” he crooned, “that only your lower classes do such things.”

  I looked at him.

  “The problem,” he continued, “is that people are starting to think that all Americans are like this.”

  Yes, but what do people really think?

  “Gringos” Pepe said, “act like they’ve been in a box all year. Crossing the border makes them think they have an excuse to run wild. But you know what? I can complain all I want. If you were to ask a merchant out there about the Pamplonada, he’d say it was the greatest thing to ever happen to us.”

  That night, back at the orphanage, a bright thing sat above the horizon, glowing like a fat copper star. It pulsed on and off, then vanished. When I looked again, it was back, drifting north. I felt like one of those UFO ladies on cable TV, wearing their foil caps, chanting the aliens down.

  The children engaged in the tumultuous process called “ready for bed.” The oldest boy in the orphanage had the unenviable duty of foot patrol. He had to check all the orphans’ feet to make sure they were clean and didn’t get their beds stinky. When he found dirty feet, his wrath was understandably fearsome.

  The kids were a little high: that day, the visitors had provided them with a piñata. One of the girls, an immensely fat kid named Carmen, paraded around announcing that she had collected exactly 182 pieces of candy. Several bruised and battered boys had made the sad mistake of trying to outrace her. She clutched the candies to her gut like the highest icons of the greed religion.

  Suddenly, quiet.

  Silence always descends like this in the back country. It’s like a curtain that drifts over the scene, and there is an instant peace. The sound of an old truck grunted up from the valley, and at my feet, a massive stinkbug: the sound could have been his engine, grinding through the gears.

  Sunday, August 16

  Drinking coffee in Pepe’s house. All the heavy traffic bound from Tijuana to Mexicali was rerouted down Pepe’s street to free the main drag for the bull run. Periodically, conversation halted, battered into silence by the roar of big trucks. Some local businessmen stopped by to visit Pepe. One of them lit a cigar that looked like an immense cocoon, the pupating grub of some noxious prehistoric insect. He blew curling smoke all over the room. Yolo and Socorro suddenly commented on how hot the day had gotten. They bustled out of the room and, after some melodic rattling in a closet, reappeared with a tall fan. They plugged it in and turned it on. It was aimed directly at the cigar. Everybody smiled.

  Mike and I began the day at the orphanage’s prayer service, led by the farmer’s wife. Though he is officially the director, she runs the place and directs the religious activities. While she preached, he milked the cows.

  After breakfast, I found him in the kitchen, pouring the fresh milk into pails, straining the curds out with a cheesecloth.

  “Buenos días, Don Victor,” I said.

  He nodded, offering me a clot of pale curd. “Have some!” he said.

  “Is it good?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “it makes a good laxative.”

  We laughed.

  We drank the milk and ate animal crackers.

  Paramedics pulled in to Tecate from Tijuana, Ensenada, and Mexicali. Their blocky ambulances lurked at all the side streets. A double fence of steel bars ran down the center of the main street, Calle Juárez, forming a metal corridor to hold in the bulls and the runners. Plenty of room gaped underneath for people to dive out. A wooden bridge for TV cameras and the press spanned the run.

  I could hear the unmistakable sound of a Mexican marching band: sqwonking trumpets not quite in sync with the tubas, and the drums keeping time to a tune of their own. It was time for the parade. The sound was deafening. A surfer next to me said, “Cheeziz Crize!” And the parade was upon us. Men wore hats made out of beer cans; one of them simply wore a beer carton over his head. Clowns, cops, mariachis. A Mexican motorcycle gang sat astride their hogs in full colors. “Los Vagos, MC—MEXICALI.” (Vago means “vagrant,” “tramp,” “wanderer,” “loiterer.” However, among Mexican hard guys, to be a vago is to be macho. It’s like being a human alley cat. Since this is Mexico, the Spanglish version implies an
other meaning—vague.)

  Suddenly, panic! The Club of Spain’s float was taller than the press bridge. The entire parade came to a halt when the turret of the papier-mâché castle banged into it. The float’s engine raced, then died. Very Important Officials followed their stomachs around, shouting orders.

  ———

  Pepe and I discovered a snake charmer.

  “Damas y caballeros” (Dames and horsemen, literally), “this serpent is the only serpent on earth trained to do card tricks!”

  “This looks good,” I said.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you will see my works! I don’t ask you for money—I don’t care about money! I am not a witch, I am a parapsychologist!”

  Pepe guffawed.

  The snake charmer pointed to a box. “Within, the deadly boa constrictor. An educated serpent!” He pulled the snake from the box—an apathetic four-footer—and waved it at the crowd. Girls jumped back; drunks called insults.

  “Money?” he insisted. “I don’t need money! If you have it, praise God! It was hard to earn!”

  Pepe whispered, “Watch your wallet. These guys have partners who go around the crowd picking pockets.”

  “Do you comprehend what I’m doing?” cried the parapsychologist.

  “Talking too much!” one of the drunks shouted back.

  “You in a big hurry?” snapped the snake charmer. “If you are, then leave! This is a street. You can walk on it!”

  He revealed his secret: he had a magic and sacred Rosicrucian cross made of parapsychologically effective magnets. For only twenty-nine dollars—U.S. cash money—we could have the very same special powers as he. The only power he was demonstrating, though, was a fabulous gift for b.s.

  As we walked away, he was yelling, “I will now show you a card trick invented by the one and only ruler of planet earth—Napoleon Bonaparte!”

  ———

  Pepe is a Charismatic Catholic. This new movement in the Mother Church combines the traditional Catholic Mass with Pentecostal (or Charismatic) excitement borrowed from the Protestants. Their Masses have both folk guitars and priests, the classic Liturgy and cries of “Amen!” and “¡Gloria a Dios!”— with eager arms thrown wide to the sky in order to receive the Holy Ghost. Although Mass is no longer said in Latin, Charismatic services offer an assortment of other “tongues”—a sweeping spiritual flame of babbling that is supposedly ancient Hebrew or Aramaic or the Language of the Angels. It sounds like “Habballa-babballa! Om-betta-bubballa!”

  Like his faith, Pepe continually amazed me. At one point, he opened his wallet and whipped out a microfilm square with the entire Bible printed on it. It measured two inches by two inches. “English or Spanish?” I asked.

  He looked stricken. “Uh …” he said.

  As we walked, he asked, “How do you feel about smoking?”

  “I don’t do it.”

  “Yes, but what do you think of it?”

  “It’s bad for your health?” I offered.

  Exasperated, he said, “Yeah, yeah. But do you think it’s a sin?”

  “No …”

  “Good!” he sighed, pulling a pack of Camels from his pocket.

  Pepe went home. I went back into the park. Recumbent bodies formed a colorful crosshatch on the ground. Words rose like bits of meat in boiling soup—“I take your picture?” “More beer, dude!” “¡Mámi, mira la bomba!” (Mommy, look at the balloon!)

  A thousand registered runners crowded the bull run, joking, limbering up like joggers on a track. I squeezed through knots of people, working my way between the back of an ambulance and the steel fence. I was about a foot from some of the runners. They were talking big, acting fearless. The ambulance crew stood on the back bumper, their rig’s doors open. They leaned on the top rail. I stuck my head through the bars and craned to see down the run: solid bodies.

  A string of firecrackers exploded like a little machine gun, and a surge went through the crowd. The runners giggled. Then a cannon blast. A roar rose at the far end of the run, growing louder and louder as it rolled toward us, underscored by the sound of pounding feet. The runner in front of me turned to look, glazed over for an instant, shouted “Oh my God!” and scrambled up the fence, eyes screwed shut.

  The bulls were almost too fast to see. They sped by in a blur of horn and flank. One man tried to grab a bull and was tossed aside, bouncing off the rails and back to the ground. The ambulance crew from across the street rushed in and put him on a stretcher.

  About a block away, at a five-and-ten store directly behind the grandstand, a bunch of people had climbed on the roof, hoping to get a better look. Smoke began to snake up behind them. The street was still full of antsy runners, waiting for a second charge. The smoke blew across the roof and enveloped the people up there. They scrambled, trying to get off without breaking their necks. We watched the smoke rise. “That building’s burning,” I said.

  One of the ambulance crew said, “The taco stand next door caught fire.”

  A breeze caught the smoke and looped it down into the grandstand and over the runners. They churned. We heard a dull, repetitive thudding.

  The crew chief said, “Something in the store’s blowing up.”

  Sirens wailed, the lights on top of the trucks and ambulances jumped to life. The crowd, instead of dispersing, seemed to clench, to draw tighter. I couldn’t move. The air stank of sweat, smoke, excrement from the bulls. A man near me vomited; a group of men cheered him and applauded. Crashing glass. A voice crackled from a loudspeaker: “Do not panic. Remain calm. Stay away from the area.” Stay away? We were jammed right into it. The smoke had turned chemical, burning my eyes.

  Two establishments caught fire—the store and the taco stand. Then the house behind them. No one had the keys to unlock the bars of the gates in the street, so the fire trucks couldn’t get down the block to the flames. I helped a cop crawl through the fence.

  Loudspeaker: “Please clear the area. Move away. You are in danger. Get your children away.”

  I followed the cop, watched him pull a woman out of the smoke; she was limp. The ambulance I was with couldn’t move. They hauled her through the bodies, and as they lifted her, the last thing I heard the driver say before I lost track of them was “We’ll have to lay her on the roof.”

  A gang of drunken vatos marched through, elbowing people out of the way, chanting, “Tecate’s burning down! Tecate’s burning down!”

  The cop had vanished in the smoke. Whistles bleated, cans crunched underfoot. A bottle flew over my head and broke in front of me. I climbed through the fence on the other side, and I saw a man propped up against a pillar. His face was burned. One of the fire fighters draped a gooey white cloth over his eyes.

  Loudspeaker: “There are propane tanks in the store. You must move at least two blocks away.”

  Mike ran up to me with a camera. “I’m taking pictures!” he shouted, diving into the smoke.

  A cop came up to me, watched me write notes. “Press?” he demanded.

  Instead of answering, I asked, “Officer, how did it start?”

  He puffed up, hands on hips. “This is not known,” he said. (Esto no se sabe.)

  The nephew of the store owner ran up to us. He grabbed my arm. “Americans threw matches!” he cried, then ran back to the store. Another man passing by said, “Four dead.”

  “No!” the cop said to me very intently. “No dead. No hay muertos.”

  There was no way to know if anyone was hurt or not. In fact, later that evening at Pepe’s house, we watched the whole thing over again on the San Diego news. They reported a quaint and boisterous day with a cute little fire. It was pretty entertaining and benign, yet we had seen burned people being carried away. They were taken down the block and into an alley, the mouth of which was blocked off by police. There was also much talk on the street of a woman badly burned and carried away in a blanket. “It makes you wonder,” I said, “if they were in the same city.” Pepe turned off the TV.

  Back
at the fire, a group of gringo college boys stood next to the Mexican firemen, wrestling with hoses.

  The store owners—I saw the nephew in there—tossed clothes out through the broken plate-glass window, trying to save them from the water and smoke. Spectators ran to the window, punching each other, fighting over the T-shirts. One drunk man challenged every male to a fight, calling him “¡Pinche buey!” (Fucking water buffalo!) I was astounded to see a woman come through the crowd with a video camera on her shoulder. Her English-accented voice narrated into the mike: “They don’t want to leave, the people begging for a thrill.” Behind her came a woman wearing a red satin baseball cap with devil horns on it. On a nearby roof, speakers hummed and buzzed, then blasted Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.”

  I stood in the flow, writing, being jostled. Suddenly, a man ran past me, pursued by police. They caught up to him about ten feet from me and bludgeoned him to the ground. People cheered them on. The man began to scream; the sound scratched down my spine. The street was full of violence. We were hysterical as chimps, throwing punches at anyone who came too close.

  Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The whole thing collapsed in on itself, and I found myself in the park, sitting on the fountain, hanging my head. Exhausted people lay scattered everywhere, sleeping the fire off as though it were a huge meal.

  The cops stood around in huge groups, eating little vanilla ice cream cones.

  One skinny officer told his pals about a drunk American woman he’d caught taking her clothes off in the street. She was a redhead. He said he told her to stop, but she refused. He said, “I told her, if you want to put on a show” (he said the word in English: un show), “I’ll lock you in a truck with a bunch of my boys, and then you’ll really have a show! Otherwise, get off the street!”