Into the Beautiful North(38)
The driver’s name was Wino. The Camarones crew didn’t speak any version of Spanglish, so they didn’t know how dashing and bad it was to be called Wino. To them, it sounded like “?Ay, no!” which was a cry of dread.
He was an excellent tour guide—they realized to their shock that he loved Tijuana. On the way to Libertad, he veered off the road and drove up the tormented streets of a hillside colonia. “You have to see this,” Wino declared. They pulled into a dirt gulley and beheld a three-story house built in the shape of a nude woman. She was painted in flesh tones, and her nipples were large red ovals. There was a door in her pubis.
“That,” Atómiko announced, “is great art.”
“Oh,” Yolo said, “my God.”
Tacho said, “If she gets pregnant, does she give birth to a garage?”
Atómiko chuckled.
“One point,” he said, “for the maricón.”
Onward! Down the narrow and clogged road that accessed the free road to Ensenada but for them would be passage to the Centro! On to the center of town, past the back end of the Palacio Azteca hotel! A quick detour into the edge of Colonia Cacho, for a restorative stop at taco row! Eighteen-cent carne asada tacos at Tacos El Paisano! A brief gawk at the municipal bullring! And on—down to the traffic circles and pedestrian bridges and Mexican department stores! Conasupo and Pemex on every side! See that statue there of the Aztec king? Holding his sword by his side? He starts out every morning holding it over his head—but he gets tired and the sword droops! Across the boulevard and to the right, up the hill! Onward—Wino and Atómiko singing out the varied delights of Fair Tijuana, the planes coming in above them at Tijuana International Airport, the street dogs, the hot women in their impossible heels, the taxis, the multicolored buses, and into the labyrinth of Libertad.
Onward, to the Crossing!
Colonia Libertad was the notorious launching pad for a million border crossings. The United States had foiled the massive incursions of the 1970s and ’80s with the beefed-up new border fences and stadium lights and plowed-under acres of roadway on the other side, where white Border Patrol trucks cruised like sharks in a lagoon. Dirt streets and alleys piled up and down steep ravines. Houses went right up to the line. You could climb on a chicken coop and look into the windshield of a migra truck. People played soccer. Young men sat on the slopes and watched the fences, waiting for their moment. They were still going across, in spite of the heightened security. Now they weren’t gathered in hundreds but in dozens, and many of them would be caught. They’d be back tomorrow to try it again.
All around, music blared from speakers in shop doorways and on the roofs of cars. Children ran through the scene, impervious to the plots and plans making their way among the groups of adventurers and their shady guides. The fence here was old and battered and patched. Taco carts blew smoke on corners and in empty lots, the fence runners having last meals in Mexico—cheap tripe and chicken tacos. Rabbit tacos were supposedly for sale over by the drugstore where the bottles of water were double the usual price. Coyotes, hanging cigarettes off their lips and demonstrating their tattoos and Slayer baseball caps, liked to quip, “Those rabbit tacos—I saw a guy unloading a truck by the cart, and those rabbits had long tails!” Ha-ha! The walkers got queasy every time!
Christian do-gooders rolled through in vans. Their blond locks and shiny white faces shone in the sun like headlights. Nayeli watched to see if Matt’s face was among them.
Atómiko and Wino negotiated with a vato with a deep slouch and a black porkpie hat. This character wore fingerless gloves and chain-smoked. The three girls would not admit it, but they were afraid of him. Afraid of the entire colonia, and the fence, and the border. Afraid of Tijuana. They hid behind Tacho, who threw out his chest and looked fierce and tried to hide his own fear.
Wino kissed Vampi’s hand and pinched Yolo’s butt and decided not to touch Nayeli. They watched him drive away, honking his horn in that awful shave-and-a-haircut rhythm. Nayeli never imagined she would miss Wino, but there it was.
Suddenly, people were jumping up and yelling and trotting along the fence. Nayeli craned to look. The white roof of a Border Patrol truck showed over the top of the rusted metal wall as it cruised the other side. Boys threw rocks over the fence, and some of the rocks clanged off the sheet metal roof of the truck. It stopped. People cursed and laughed and hurried away. Nayeli saw the top of the agent’s head as he got out.
The coyote sidled up to them.
Nayeli asked, “Is he going to shoot at us?”
The guy flicked his cigarette away.
“Nel,” he said, which was his cholo way of saying no.
The agent vanished behind the top of the fence as he walked around to the near side of the truck. In a moment, Nayeli saw his arm rise. His fist came up and he shot the finger to the Mexicans. They laughed and whistled insults back at him. She watched him walk back around the truck to his door. She caught a quick flash of his face—he was laughing. The truck moved on, kicking up dust that drifted over the fence and settled on their heads.
“That dust,” said the coyote, “is the United States invading Mexico.”
“It’s an act of war,” Atómiko proclaimed.
Far to the east, the hills were still black from the last great California fires.
The coyote said, “There was burned-up Mexicans all over those hills.”