Tijuana Straits (23 page)

Armando might have pitied them, but somehow their vulnerability invited only his contempt, that and a certain satisfaction that in spite of everything that had befallen him, or perhaps because of it, he and his compadres could sit by, nonchalant, drinking beers among the strippers till the time had come for them head out to Las Playas and their chosen route of passage, where they would cross at their leisure.

A dozen street thugs were gathered at the tunnel entrance, not far from an overpass, the cars on Mex One rumbling by in the night. Money exchanged hands. Armando carried a .45 automatic in his jacket, a switchblade in his sock. His binoculars he left at the battery
plant, for he reckoned them as excess baggage, that when next he met with his Madonna it would be face-to-face. Chico was armed much like Armando. Nacho went with the strength of three, brass knuckles and a straight razor in the pocket of his coat, together with such accoutrements as have already been noted dangling from their various chains. The street thugs gazed upon him with wonder and there was no trouble at the door. A kid with a mouthful of silver teeth took their money and saw them in, smiling only at what they had brought to light their way.

Once inside, the tunnel went on for longer than Armando would have guessed, every inch filled with reek and sweat, the ghosts of those who had died here breathing down their necks, the single pin light they carried too weak to do more than light the air around it. As a consequence of which they went like blind men, stumbling over rails and each other and other things—rolling unnamed and unseen beneath their feet, the occasional scratching of some rodent or whir of insect mixing with the sound of their own labored breathing until the scent of wet marsh and the sea beyond it told them they were nearing an end.

Armando drew his pistol, stumbled over some final impediment fixed in earth the consistency of stone, the great hulk of Nacho slamming into him from behind, knocking him through a tangle of hanging vines that hid the tunnel entrance on the U.S. side. He tasted America before he actually set foot in it, crawling on all fours through some kind of bog, spitting sand and grit, a great swarm of mosquitoes buzzing in his ears, descending, ravenous, upon his balding head.

Chico’s cousin was there to meet them as promised. He led them quickly into the trees and from there they made their way eastward among canopied trails, among willows and arundo cane double overhead, bowed to hide the stars. They crossed the river in a narrow place among reeds, on a pair of planks kept hidden in the grass
and mud, and when they had made use of this makeshift bridge they pulled it in upon the side to which they had crossed and buried the pieces much as they had found them.

In a short time Garage Door Tijuana loomed before them, a wall without end. The cousin produced a door, as if by magic. A narrow chasm yawned before them, a passage run between walls of wood and tin or built up out of old tires stacked twelve feet high and past the backsides of trailers packed like sardines, opening at last into a wonderland of house cars and televisions where men sat smoking in plastic lawn chairs, drinking from bottles and strumming guitars. There were children at play. Women cooked food on great sheets of steel over open fires.

Armando wiped the last of the mud and grit from his face and looked around him. People were smiling. There was laughter and song. One might almost say that a festive air obtained. Garage Door Tijuana, Armando concluded, was like a day in the park. And why not? The people of Garage Door Tijuana were living large in the USA, in Southern California, for Christ’s sake, in happy ignorance of what had only now entered among them.

A
BLANKET
of fog lay upon the valley floor, too dense to see more than ten feet in any direction save up, where the fog was shallow enough for the admittance of starlight, where planets shone like gems though a vast and diaphanous vale. As far as Deek Waltzer knew, and he had traveled to a good number of places, the phenomenon was peculiar to the Tijuana River Valley and reminded him of his days driving for the Blue Line, if for no other reason than that it was a good night for running illegals.

There was a six-pack on the seat next to him and the great halo of his headlights traveling with him as though he’d been called to heaven as opposed to inching along the Dairy Mart Road on his way out to the Fahey worm farm, thinking about the Blue Line and those early days in the valley. Funny how often he recalled them now, as if they were some golden age, as opposed to the last days, which was pretty much how they had seemed to him at the time—recently
divorced, house gone, job gone. Fifty years old and every expectation confounded. No money. No hopes. No plans. But he’d gotten a rush out of those runs to the border, thinking then there was really nothing left to lose and he supposed now the happier for it. Later would come the valley itself, Jack and the horses, the modest job and the trailer among the Oaxacans who had taught him something about life in the moment, which was, as near as he could tell, pretty much how one ought to live it—a far cry from the philosophy that had driven him in his previous life, selling real estate in the heart of Orange County, juggling mortgages on three properties, balancing his portfolio and looking toward retirement . . . storing up treasures where moth and rust corrupt, just like the good book said.

He laughed out loud and cracked another beer. He thought about the rodeo slated for the coming weekend. He enjoyed the hell out of those rodeos. He enjoyed the Mexican rodeos with their emphasis on roping and riding, the judging based purely on artistry and skill, different from the American rodeos with their bull riding and bucking broncos, their ticking clocks that were the final arbiters in all events.

He also enjoyed the horse races, and there was a man bringing in some Andalusians fresh from Spain that he was eager to see. But what he enjoyed most was simply the spirit of the Oaxacan people. They would turn out early in their Sunday best, betting money on the horse races till all the horses had been run, by which time they would be drunk enough to take off their shoes and run against each other, pounding down the Mexican quarter-mile track in their bare feet, middle-aged men who’d not run more than a block since childhood. They would bet on those races too. And when they were too drunk and tired to run they would draw a circle in the sand and box one another bare-handed till every cent they’d busted their asses to earn for the past month was gone like snow in the spring. And there would be beer and barbecue and tacos cooked from
scratch and Deek would don his dress boots, his white Stetson, and strut around like he owned the place, possibly even getting laid in the bargain, though that happened less frequently these days than he would have liked or at least less frequently than he seemed to remember it happening when he was a younger man—fifty, say, driving for the Blue Line, running the Oaxacans from the border to San Diego and parts north.

He turned off the Dairy Mart Road and onto one of the unnamed dirt trails that would take him to the Fahey worm farm. He was not sure what all of this was about, or why it was him doing it instead of Jack, who was Fahey’s friend, inasmuch as Fahey could be said to have friends.

The former surfer and convicted felon had come around one evening past to say he would be going across the border for an afternoon and wondered if one of them would mind looking in on a guest who was staying at his place. Deek had taken it as a given that the job would fall to his partner, but then Jack’s horse had come up lame riding trail in the valley and Jack had taken it to a vet, asking Deek to look in on Fahey’s visitor.

“For Christ’s sake,” Deek had said.

“Oh, go on and do it,” Jack told him. “I’ll buy you a six-pack.”

“One today and one tomorrow.”

“Deal.”

So here he was, a day’s work behind him, the fog coming in early, halfway through the first of Jack’s six-packs as the lights of Fahey’s farm came into view. He drove up before a locked gate and tooted his horn.

To his surprise, a woman came out of the trailer. Also to his surprise, he saw that she was a Mexican. He noticed this as she passed within the lights of his truck, the dogs at her heels. She came up to
the gate. There were keys in her hand. She wore a flannel shirt, several sizes too large, and sweatpants that were of roughly the same proportions.

“You must be one of the cowboys,” she said.

Deek saw that in spite of the clothes, which rendered her appearance somewhat clownish, she was both young and attractive and this surprised him even further but he allowed that such was the case; that he was, indeed, one of the cowboys.

“I thought that he would have been back by now,” she told him. “I don’t suppose you’d have a cell phone.”

Deek just looked at her. “You know something,” he said. “I had one of those damn things. But I lost it.”

They sat in Fahey’s trailer. She sipped tea. Deek drank another beer, looked at the photographs on the walls. He was not altogether sure how long this “looking in” on someone was supposed to take. “So I guess these are him,” he said. He waved at the pictures.

“Some of them.” She pointed to her favorite, Fahey at the base of the big blue wall, his hair in the wind.

“My partner, Jack . . . he says he used to watch him surf, back in the day, says they called him the Gull. But I guess you knew that.”

Magdalena shook her head. “I’ve only known him for a few days,” she told him.

“You don’t say?”

But the woman only smiled. She was well spoken and clearly educated and he could not for the life of him imagine what it was that she was doing here. He noted the little cuts beginning to heal across one side of her face, the remnants of a bruise around one eye, remembered Fahey asking about the medication and the bad water. There was a story in all of this, he concluded, in the wounds on her face, in the clothes that were obviously Fahey’s, in her saying that
she had not known him for long . . . and just maybe, he thought, maybe one day he’d hear more about it from Jack Nance because he doubted he would hear much more of it tonight from this woman seated across from him in Fahey’s trailer.

“What do you suppose happened?” Magdalena asked. “To him, I mean.” She waved toward the pictures.