On a drive south, past San Diego and on into Mexico, nothing much happens. The open road chokes with traffic, opens, then chokes again. Soldiers at the gates wave with their free hand. The other cradling a rifle, by a sign insisting that you don’t bring your own guns or ammo. Come on in.
Driving east along the border, only feet to the north, The Wall stretches out beside the car. It feels within reach. Curling up and down and through the dry hills like a rusted snake with no head. With no end.
In The Valle there are signs warning of rattlesnakes everywhere. They’re out this time of year. Beware. Threats abound in a place like this, or so they say. Rattlesnakes also live up north. Thieves, too. But up there fear is denied, pushed down. Down here it seems.
—
In the town of Ensenada fear comes in on ships, docked only for the day. Spruikers man the corners. Kids help out their folks inside the tiendas. Barkeeps gird themselves for battle.
Sitting in an old cantina, ceiling fans spin slowly, as a banda group serenades a crowd across the room. Between songs the music from next door seeps in, driving beats, just like home. It’s for the Americans, doing all the things they don’t allow themselves to do back north. Drink and drink and drink. Chasing fear away.
Chasing one drink after another. But instead of in dark rooms; out in the sun. In the street with long plastic cups. On top of an outdoor bar that looks like a surfboard. By a pool at 9am. At wineries all day long. Until dinner ends with a sunset argument over a Fleetwood Mac cover song, before she clunks down the steps like a Thunderbird one string short, he never looks in fear she’ll fall, and they almost skip out on the bill.
—
But there is no fear like the fear on the border. Half a mile before the gates, locals direct traffic like children. Yelling and pointing. One last dance. This is not a revolution, it’s the everyday and it’s hot and it’s the opposite of a welcome, or even a Goodbye.
It’s a So what?! Even just a What?! A grunt. A groan. A rattle.
Beware. Beware. Beware.
Now the rusted snake looks different again, like the darkened ribs of a corpse not quite picked clean. Stepped over without even noticing. A three dimensional line on a map. Arbitrary and cold as the voice of a border guard. Full of a fear that is returned in equal measure.
No, I don’t cross by land very often. Back to Los Angeles, via San Diego. Just a few bottles. Thank you.
At the airport they often say, Welcome home. Here they never knew you left.
—
At a safari park the next day, outside San Diego, the heat’s now familiar. The hills look identical, too, I swear. Craft beer is advertised relentlessly, yet concealed in the same cups as soda.
Somehow there is a tiger on a hill, hard to spot at first, yet eerily close. Calmly stripping the meat off a bone, and it’s mesmerizing. Before three buzzards standing in the shade, lies a plastic skeleton instead, white as the naked sun. For the purposes of demonstration. A real one would have been more illustrative.
But that would be too much. Too much for the nice folks out here. For the kid who kicks the tour bus seat incessantly. Too much for the family up front who purchased “Priority Boarding”, dad in a goofy Star Wars t-shirt, triple XL, barely able to lift himself into the vehicle. Or the mother calmly breastfeeding, still, as she alights beneath the water misters.
Too much. Too much. Too much.
Too much, I’m afraid.
vivid