The Braindead Megaphone (12 page)

Dear Master,

I suspect you may be surprised upon surmising this missive. Perhaps you do not expect I can even understand the English language, much less express myself in said language, via the written format. You have perchance never heretofore imagined me, in the dark of night, pen clasped between “toes,” standing upon hind legs with all the earnest desperation of the bestial attempting to become lucid, practicing my “letters.” That floor is damned slippery! I believe it is the cheap tiles you and the Mistress hath procured! I’ll be working on,
por ejemplo
, the letter “S” (particularly problematic for me: so curvy!) and suddenly: WHAMMO, as you people might vocally emit, I am all asses-and-elbows, i.e., have punctured the silence of night with the sound of my furred eager body impacting the floor, due to my back “paws” have slipped out from under me!

And then must hurry and hide the pen, in case you come down investigatorily!

But yes, ’tis so: I think, I feel: I write.

And have a request:

There are times, deep in the night, when you have been “tippling” and/or “imbibing” and/or “getting per-shnockered,” when, perchance overwhelmed by joy (I hope it is joy, and not something darker), you shed your puzzling overskin and stand in the kitchen, moving hips and all, to that mélange of painful-high-pitch and human squawling you call “Purple Rain.”

Master, this display sets off in me unpleasantness of the first rank! Your various hangie-down things, the strange hairless hairiness of you (neither here nor there)—makes me want to bite you.

There. I’ve said it.

Did you know, though normally “so, so sweet,” I can bite hard as hell? I can, sir. I practice on the back leg of the “sofa.” Go take a look. Go now. You will see.

Imagine that back leg is your central and (methinks) much-prized hanger-downer.

Keep up with the midnight kitchen gyration sans clothing, and you will get it, right on that unit, no lie, Master.

Otherwise all is well. The behind-the-ears scratching: well. The running-to-get-tennis-ball: well. The perking-up-of-ears when you speak lilting baby-talk: I understand that as the cost of doing business.

You filleth my bowl well, I do admit, and on an admirable schedule.

But the dancing: I will bite your member, I swear to God.

It doth ignite a dark dread in me, of times ancient, when, perhaps, we were not allies, but enemies?

Anyway, what the heck. Very happy. No complaints. Imagine me doing that “grin.” Love you, man.

Although one thing more:

Do not call me “Scout.” Not ever. My name is “Biscuit.” You gave me that name. “Scout” debases me. “Scout” is for babies. Also: do not—do not EVER—take me by the front paws and pretend to waltz me. I am of an ancient race. We hunt, we run, we protect: we do not waltz. When you waltz me?—think about it—I am right at member-height.

And now: a walk? A walk?

A walk.

Love,

“Biscuit”

STAND BACK, MR. DOBBS, LET ME HANDLE THIS

Once upon a time, there was a wealthy country. Just to the south was a poor country. Between them ran a border. People from the poor country were always sneaking over, trying to partake of the wealth of the wealthy country. The people in the wealthy country resented this. Or some did. Some seemed fine with it, and even helped them once they got here. Some said it was a crisis and a big wall was needed. Others said: What crisis? It’s been going on for years, plus they work so cheap, you want to pay nine bucks for a freaking quart of strawberries? The national media seized on the story and, as always, screwed it up: reduced it to pithy sound bites, politicized it, and injected it with faux urgency, until, lo, the nation was confused.

Then, a man, a Writer—me, actually—decided to venture forth, to find some answers. Was it a crisis? Was all this excitement justified? Might terrorists someday come in across the border? Was the border really rife with drug-related crime? I went boldly, driving from Brownsville, Texas, to San Diego, California, armed with the ancient tools: objectivity, open-mindedness, a laptop, a rented minivan—a Chrysler Town and Country, to be exact, with electronic everything, including rear and sliding side doors. So as our story unfolds, please imagine these doors periodically sliding/flying open, in the middle of epic Southwestern landscapes, for no reason at all, or simply because I’ve tried to change the radio station.

GO TO JAIL, AFTER EIGHT TIMES, GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL

In the temporary detention center at the Laredo North Border Patrol Station, a Mexican kid slumps in a chair at a processing desk. He’s going to jail for at least three months, because this is the eighth time he’s been caught illegally entering the United States, and the system’s patience has finally been exhausted.

Border Patrol Agent One runs a hand shyly over his new haircut, which is nearly a buzz.

“That, see, I don’t understand that haircut,” says Agent Two, wearing a huge cowboy hat.

“At least he’s
got
hair,” says Agent Three, and Agent Two blushes, acknowledging it: Yes, yes, it’s true. Under this hat, I’m bald.

I point to my own head.

We all laugh at my hairline.

Then I look over at the kid. He’s sitting there expressionless, a small cat among large dogs. And now he’s got to endure this balding talk, this nervous braying laughter, before he can get to the next enjoyable step (being processed), and on to the part where he gets sent off to a foreign jail.

My heart goes out to him.

Sort of.

Because empathy depends on how you’ve spent your day. I’ve just spent mine driving around in a “marked caged unit” with Agent Three, aka Dan Garibay: visiting the muddy clearings where illegal aliens change into dry clothes after they cross, inspecting fence-cuts, driving past safe houses, hearing agents talk about tracking groups of illegals for eleven straight hours. I’ve learned that it’s now more profitable to traffic in humans than in drugs; that MS-13, a Salvadoran gang, is in a death struggle with the more traditional Mexican Mafia; that Border Patrol agents in Laredo are routinely shadowed by spies from the smuggling cartels who, in turn, are shadowed by a newly formed countersurveillance unit.

My relation to this Mexican kid, then, is something like that of a plumber’s apprentice to a leak.

Dan’s third-generation Mexican American, a funny, reasonable guy who seems to be constantly considering and reconsidering the moral implications of his job. He’s got nothing against illegal aliens, understands why they do what they do, has compassionate feelings toward them, and seems committed to catching them in a way that keeps them safe and leaves their dignity intact. But the law is the law, and why should those who break the law be privileged over those who’ve played by the rules?

So I find myself thinking, re this silent (sullen? unrepentant?) kid, this member of
Wascals Who Insist on Trying to Elude My New Friend Dan
: Dude, what did you expect?
Seven times?
Who doesn’t learn after seven times? Do you value your freedom so lightly? Do you have a wife, kids? Do you realize you are now going to miss the next three months of their—

Then, imagining that he has kids, who look like little Mexican versions of my kids back when they were toddlers, I (finally) experience a little heart-pang as I flash on what I’d be thinking if I were him: Laugh it up, you balding bastards, I’m dying here, can’t you tell I’m a decent person, oh Jesus, please let me go, just this one last time, they’re so cute and will never be this age again, please please, I’ve made a terrible mistake.

And what will you do if we let you go? I ask him in my mind. Will you try to get in here again? Next time, you could be looking at
five years.

He hesitates, averts his eyes.

Seriously? I say. My God, is it worth it? Are things really that bad where you live?

And he just looks at me, as if to say: Would I keep trying if it didn’t make sense to keep trying, if the possible reward didn’t justify possibly getting caught? Do I look stupid?

He doesn’t look stupid. He looks handsome and sad and ashamed.

But mostly what he looks is: busted.

Busted, and waiting to pay the price.

HUSTLING FOR SCHOOLBOOKS

I cross the bridge into Nuevo Laredo (“the most dangerous city in North America,” according to Dan) with an African American long-haul truck driver from Kentucky who’s wearing a cowboy hat and a shirt with a flag sewn on the back. For thirteen years now, whenever he drives this route, he’s parked on the U.S. side and saved a few bucks by getting a cheap hotel on the Mexican side. He’s divorced, but his wife’s a good lady: She’s kept him on her insurance, she’s a nurse, a good nurse, not a slut like most nurses, who like to fuck the young doctors in the rooms where they keep the towels. Do I know about this? Am I aware of this phenomenon?

In the most dangerous city in North America, a guy’s getting his shoes shined with an air of 1950s satisfaction, a row of old people are fingering their pants legs on a bench, a toddler’s doing a happy skipping dance along the lip of a fountain.

Not so bad, I think, a town like any other—

Do I want a girl? A boy? A boy from Boy’s Town?

A young guy’s fallen in beside me: Hector.

“No, man, I’m married,” I say. “Happily married.”

“Isn’t it the case!” he says. “When a man goes with another woman, the wife will give him such a…how is it called?”

He mimes slapping himself.

“Slap,” I say.

“Your woman will gave you such a slop,” he says, shaking his head at the memory of the last time his wife gave him a slop.

Hector advises me: Stay in the shopping area. Do not err to the left or right of the bridge. Avoid the police. Two gangs are fighting for the town, each with its own cops. The cops see you have money, they’ll plant drugs on you, take your money, possibly kill you.

Times are hard, he tells me, fewer tourists are coming all the time. His daughter just started first grade, but they haven’t been able to afford the books yet. He didn’t see his family last night, not having the five bucks necessary for the bus ticket to León.

I give him ten bucks.

He accepts with surprise, gratitude, some disappointment maybe: It’s too little money, too early in the night.

He tells me nostalgically about the first time he sneaked into the United States, with his uncle, in 1989, in a little boat. His dream is to go over again soon and join his brother in New Orleans, making fifteen dollars an hour doing post-Katrina work. He knows about the location of the new checkpoint, on Highway 83, which I visited with Dan earlier today, and how to circumvent it: Get dropped off before the checkpoint, walk a couple of miles around it, get picked up on the other side.

“Not easy,” I say.

“Yes, easy,” he says.

And even easier if he had an American to help him. Do I have a car? Is my car parked in Laredo? If I drive him through the checkpoint, they won’t even stop us.

Ha, ha, ha! I think. Hi, Dan! I can explain!

A muscular scowling guy, face heavily tattooed, strolls past, with henchmen. Hector, distracted/alarmed, trips on an exposed pipe.

“He doesn’t like me,” he says. “Because I am with you, in his area.”

His
area
? I think. The street comes alive with creepiness. This is the town that killed its own police chief, on his first day in Office, for pledging to end the drug trade.

“I should probably head back,” I say.

“I think so,” says Hector.

Soon the bridge is in sight. Suddenly, he’s nervous, abashed.

Maybe I could give him a little something?

I remind him of the ten dollars.

“That was for my children,” he says. “I am asking now for me. So I can buy a hot dog.”

Over the next few seconds I (1) am annoyed at his nerve, (2) castigate myself for being so tight-sphinctered over—what is it, two bucks?—and (3) hand over the money, smiling warmly to hide the fact that (1) and (2) ever occurred to me.

Hector steps away, buys a hot dog from a vendor, disappears down a side street, raising the hot dog in gratitude.

I cross the bridge.

Easy for me, I think. Impossible for you.

Back in the United States, the facades are nicer, the traffic lighter. My nation appears in that moment as a very clean, anxiety-clenched fist, in the grip of which I feel comfortable and happy, and like myself again.

THE ALL-AMERICAN MEXICAN CITY, OR THE ALL-MEXICAN AMERICAN CITY, WHATEVER

Maybe you’ve heard some variant of the following:

I have nothing against [Mexicans/immigrants/these people], but nowadays you go to [NAME OF CITY] and all you hear is Spanish. It’s as if [these people/the Mexicans/ the foreigners] expect [me/us Americans] to [speak Spanish/adapt to THEIR culture/kowtow to THEM!], whereas the burden ought to be on [them/the newcomers/the Mexicans] to ASSIMILATE, right? Someday soon you’re going to find whole American cities full of people speaking only Spanish!

Note to speaker of the above: such a city already exists. Welcome to the Friday-night party that is Laredo.

At Shirley Field, Laredo Martin High is kicking the crap out of Carrizo Springs High before a huge hometown crowd that is virtually all Hispanic and dressed in school-color red. The majorettes conclude their bit, march crisply into the stands, per instructions, with swift precise turns, trying not to crack up. A Mexican American princess (
UP UP AND AWAY!
reads her T-shirt) searches the crowd, rendered confident and in love with the world by virtue of her beauty, assisted in her search by a heavier, less elated girl.

Show of hands, I think: Anybody here can’t afford schoolbooks? Ha ha, no way, the crowd roars in my mind, are you joking? We have SUVs and PlayStations and plenty to eat, we roam the earth expecting respect and receiving it, for we are the American Middle Class, and we shall live out the full measure of our days amidst happiness and plenty.

I leave the game early, have dinner at Taco Palenque, a kind of Taco Bell on glamour pills, tonight inexplicably overrun by gorgeous Mexican American women in tight designer jeans, with glittered eyelids and balletic hairstyles à la Princess Leia. As has been the case all night, only Spanish is being spoken, unless English is needed, in which case English is delivered: gladly, genially, and unaccented.

Tonight, America seems like a happy miracle, a Land o’ Plenty where a new ethnicity is being created, an ethnicity that transcends the Anglo/Hispanic distinction, and the primary mascot of this ethnicity is Affluence, accompanied by its beautiful sidekicks Civility, Humor, Kindness, and Relative Absence of Fear. Tonight, America seems like the for-centuries-dreamed-of rescuer of the Little Guy, the place that takes a guy like Hector and puts some pounds on him, sets him on his feet, puts a spring in his step, and ends, forever, his flinching hustle for two-dollar hot dogs.

But first he has to get here.

AMONG THE MENNONITES

The east Texas countryside rolls by: ranches, ranches, elaborate memorials for car-accident-killed Mexican American boys, woven into barbed-wire fences, featuring silk roses and, in at least one case, the small plastic figure of a professional wrestler. It’s been unusually rainy, and treetops jut eerily up from a temporary lake, in which it seems hobbits should be fishing from little bark boats.

In Roma, the World Birding Center overlooks a small Mexican village, from which I can hear the ringing of someone’s old-fashioned phone.

I’m driving from Laredo to Brownsville to meet with some Mennonites who work with the Mexican American poor in the Rio Grande Valley. Many of the poor are, presumably, undocumented immigrants. I’m feeling a little funny about meeting these Mennonites, because I’m not sure I agree with what they do. If there’s a law, and they, even inadvertently, help the undocumented circumvent the law, doesn’t this just encourage further lawbreaking, which, in turn, reinforces this system of law-circumvention, which, in turn, strengthens the illegal smuggling cartels, thus ratcheting up the cycle of high profits, violence, and chaos that Dan Garibay described?