Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (6 page)

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 dog 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.

A fat Mexican border agent barely looked up from his skin mag. A small wall-mounted fan made his mustache dance on his upper lip. Sweat poured from his face and over the thick flesh that spilled over his too-tight collar. He didn’t ask to look at any paperwork. He didn’t ask us where we were from. He didn’t say a single thing. Not a word. I’ll hand it to Mexico. It was not a country that lived in fear of the people who crossed over its borders. Maybe they felt like they had nothing to lose.

We walked through the turnstiles and Bobby and I were in Mexico.

Walking over the border can elicit culture shock for people whose Mexican excursions have been limited to getting off the plane in Cancún or Puerto Vallarta. For most tourists, the only concern is whether or not the cab driver overcharged for the ride to the all-inclusive resort. Walking into Mexicali, there weren’t any welcome signs. No
bienvenido
. No tourist board. Just a crumbling set of concrete steps that led you out of a tunnel and onto the bustle of Avenida Francisco Madero.

The air felt different—thicker and dustier with a hint of burnt meat. It might have been in my head, but the difference was acute. We’d walked fifty yards, but it may as well have been fifty miles. I immediately wanted to be back on American soil.

As we climbed the steps, I watched the buildings of Mexicali rise in my field of vision. Not hindered by building codes or common sense, the architecture was a hodgepodge of cinder block, concrete, link fence, and corrugated tin. All covered in slapped-on stucco. Odd angles jutted from roofs made from the accumulation of makeshift repairs. Nothing looked new. Every surface appeared weathered and worn. Wires crisscrossed overhead, cutting the hazy night sky into an irregular grid.

The moment Bobby and I reached the street, we were mobbed by a half dozen
chicle
kids. Dirty faces and sad eyes. Bobby reached into his pocket and without looking threw a handful of change against the nearest wall. The kids bolted for the coins, their little fingers scraping at the silver, then the pennies.

“Can’t stand them kids’ faces. And I ain’t chewed gum since Little League,” Bobby said, almost to himself.

On Avenida Madero, we made our way along the narrow sidewalk, squeezing between
turista
stands and the dense crowd. Clothes, shoes, candles, CDs, DVDs, hats, food, postcards, magazines, books, rosaries, pornography. You name it, you could buy it on the street.

More than once I felt a hand on my back pocket. Either there were a lot of fresh Mexicans, or I was disappointing a whole mess of pickpockets.

I accidentally made eye contact with a young guy leaning against a wall. He gave me his curt sales pitch in heavily accented English. “Hookers? Cocaine?” I continued walking.

Bobby was right. The bar was close, but also closed. We stood in front of a pair of doors with heavy chain wrapped around the handles. Next to the door, painted on the wall in swooping red on green letters, was the name of the place. Cachanilla’s. And beneath it, block letters stated, “Bar and Girls—Floor Show” in English.

“Well, shit,” Bobby said, looking at his watch. “Probably don’t open ’til ten. We got shy of two hours to blow.”

“We could come back another night,” I said, trying not to sound as anxious as I felt.

“Relax, Jimmy. You need to find your sea legs. We ain’t looking for trouble, means we ain’t going to find any.”

“When has that ever been the case?”

“Always a first time.” Bobby smiled.

“It’s been a while. When we were younger…”

Bobby interrupted. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alls you need is a couple of drinks in you. Help knock some of the sand out of your vagina.”

“I don’t know if I belong here anymore,” I said, but Bobby hadn’t heard me. He was already down the street. I quick-stepped to catch up. A couple of drinks might do me good.

Bobby opened a door that I hadn’t seen. What appeared to be a wall covered with posters was actually a door with a small
Abierto
sign hidden in plain sight. Below it a handwritten scrawl read, “
Se prohibe la entrada a mujeres, uniformados e integrantes de las fuerzas armadas
.” Loosely translated, “No women, soldiers, or anyone in a uniform.” I followed Bobby into the darkness of the bar.

The dark hallway opened into a dark room lit by neon beer signs and some Christmas lights that lined the ceiling, walls, and half the bar. An old man played guitar quietly in the corner. Thankfully, he didn’t stop playing when we walked in. There were a dozen customers, all but two of them over sixty. Those two sat in the far corner dressed in Mexican cowboy gear: hats, jeans, rhinestone snap cowboy shirts, and matching boots. One in red boots, the other green. They both gave me the stink-eye, or so my paranoia told me. Bobby either didn’t notice, which I doubted, or chose to ignore them. I felt a cold drip from my armpit land on the skin over my ribs. I could’ve blamed the heat. It was stifling in the dark room, but I knew it was more than that.

Bobby smiled broadly at the approaching bartender. “
Hola! Qué onda! Cuatro cervezas y dos tequilas, por favor.
”

“
Cuatro? Más vienen?
” said the bartender, looking behind us for more people.

“
No. Tenemos sed
,” Bobby said, laughing and turning to me. “Really thirsty.”

“
Dólars o pesos?
”

“American dollarinos,” Bobby said too loudly. “
Cuanto?
”

As the bartender loaded up the bar with our four beers and two shots of tequila, he added in his head. “
Diez.
”

Bobby turned to me, taking my money out of his front pocket. “Ten bucks. I bet this would cost forty in LA. Another reason to love Chicali.” He dropped fifteen on the bar, grabbed the four beers, and nodded for me to grab the shots.

“
Gracias
,” I said more meekly than I meant to.

Bobby found a table. We sat with our backs to the wall, facing the relative darkness of the bar. Bobby took one of the shot glasses and tapped mine. We downed them together. It tasted like it had been made that morning, but the burning felt good. I washed down the shot with half my beer. I started to feel more relaxed. In two hours, I was going to feel right at home, if I could feel at all.

In an effort to ease my mind, Bobby took control of the conversation. I concentrated on drinking and smoking. He talked work and farming and his experiment with marriage and the subsequent divorce. He mentioned Griselda, the woman he was currently seeing, but stopped short. “It’s good. She’s cool. Don’t want to jinx it.” Finally, he moved on to his kids. It made me realize how much of a child I was and how little responsibility I had. Is it better to have responsibility and fail or to choose to remain irresponsible?

“Stacy is in Riverside,” Bobby told me. Stacy was his daughter. She was probably around five by now. “With her mom. And probably some dude who’s not me.”

“What about Julie?” I asked. That was Bobby’s other daughter, born when we were still in high school. A mistake he hadn’t even known he had made until years later. Probably for the best since it kept him from doing the wrong thing by doing the right thing.

“Still in Twentynine Palms. Becky’s with some jarhead stationed there,” Bobby said.

“You see them much?”

“Never. Once, twice a year.” He drank down a whole bottle and started another one. “I send ’em money, birthday presents, Christmas presents, Valentine cards, like that. Make sure I know how old they are, what grade they’re in. I’d say I miss ’em, but hell, I don’t know ’em really. They’re good kids, I think. And their mothers are good mothers. I know that. Probably better for them they’re not around a guy like me.”

“A guy like you? What’s that?”

He ignored my question, continuing. “I like getting the Father’s Day cards, I’ll tell you.”

He took a look down the neck of his bottle. “I know it sounds cliché, but you ever feel like you were born in the wrong time? I should’ve been born in Conan’s time.”

“Wait, what? You mean Conan the Barbarian?”

He turned to me, no smile. “Yeah. I’d’ve been a good barbarian.”

“You know, Conan isn’t real. He’s a fictional character.”

Bobby gave me his best
shut up
look. “Yeah, Jimmy. I ain’t a dumbass. I went to college, too. I also know that it’s impossible to be born in a different time. Why you got to ruin it? Why you got to mess up my barbarian fantasy thing? Why you got to be the guy sitting in the back of the movie theater when the monster shows up, you say, ‘That would never happen?’”

“Sorry, man.” I had touched a bit of a nerve about his kids, and I should have just let him change the subject. Bobby sat and brooded, his eyebrows suggesting that he was working out something in his head.

“Fuck this,” Bobby shouted, smiling his crazy smile and slamming his hands against the table. I wasn’t ready for it, and my waiting beer crashed to the floor. Loudly. Shattered glass and foaming brew. At that moment it was the loudest sound I had ever heard.

The old man stopped playing guitar. Everyone stopped talking. The bartender walked to the edge of the bar, one hand out of sight. He said, “
Esta bien todo?
”

Bobby got to his knees and began picking up pieces of broken glass. “
Esta bien. Lo siento. Un accidente.
”

The bartender slowly raised his hand and grabbed a rag off the bar. I reached for it. “I’ll do it. Let me clean it up.”

He stared at me blankly.

Bobby translated for me. “
Permitalo. Limpiaremos esto arriba.
”

The bartender shrugged and tossed me the gray, wet rag. It smelled like vomit, but I wasn’t worried about the quality of my cleaning job. It was the principle. We were their guests.

The bartender pulled a plastic two-gallon bucket from behind the bar and set it next to Bobby. He dropped his handful of glass shards into it. Bobby reached into his pocket, pulled out one of my twenties, and handed it to the bartender. “
Cuatro cervezas más, por favor. Y uno para usted.
” The bartender took it and walked back behind the bar to get our drinks.

While wringing some beer into the bucket, I caught Red Boots and Green Boots out of the corner of my eye. They were staring at me. One turned to the other, nodding his head toward me and saying something. The other one laughed and nodded.

That couldn’t be good.

An hour, five beers, and a couple of shots later, I was beyond caring. It felt good to overdo it. I wasn’t thinking about Pop, which had been dominating my thoughts. I was no longer uncomfortable in Mexicali, joking with the bartender like I was a regular. He acted like he liked us because Bobby was throwing my money around, but that was good enough for me. When he gave us a shot on the house, I teared up.

I stood uneasily and slowly made my way to the bathroom in back. It was my fourth trip, so I was familiar with the route through the dark hallway. I congratulated myself on only bumping into two chairs and the edge of the bar on my not-so-straight way.

Thinking the bathroom was empty, I kicked open the door with too much force and walked in. The cowboy with the red boots was standing over the toilet. He gave me a surly look over his shoulder and went back to his business.

“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed, and waited.

With just a sink and a seatless toilet, the bathroom was surprisingly big. Because of all the space, it was easy for me to stay the maximum distance from Red Boots. I examined the fixtures on the sink and gave him ample personal space. I thought about waiting at the bar, but we were grown-ups and I had to piss.