Threat Along The Border

The border crossing office is small. A pale yellow light illuminates the bare walls, casting a muddy yellow sheen as if viewed through a cataract lens. There are several rows of empty chairs. An officer - ‘Erickson’ it reads on his badge - leans behind a long counter as we enter. “I need to see your ID’s?” he says, motioning us forward, his face a gravestone.


We shuffle up slowly like the dead, cold stiff hands gingerly reaching for our wallets. Erickson flips three licenses to another officer in front of a computer screen. “Take a seat.” I sit next to Cal who pulls his hood over his head, rocks back and forth in time and hums Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. I draw a smoke of my own. “Not in here,” Erickson says, his voice boss, law.


We wait. JT stands by the front door, looking out into the night. “We’d like to get going,” he says into the black glass. “Looks like there might be a turn for the worst coming soon.” It has started to snow again. The north wind howls; a low snow-fog swirls along the plowed drifts that bank the roadside and it dances back across the highway like some spirited dervish.


Erickson leans over the officer on the computer and points to the screen.
“Which one of you is Cal Embrie?”
Cal stops humming.
“Is there a problem?”
Erickson blinks his index finger twice.
“We’d like to speak with you sir?”


Cal looks to JT standing at the window.
“Go on,” JT says without turning, watching the officer’s distorted reflection in the glass.
“Just tell the truth.”
Wharton, the officer on the computer leads Cal into an adjoining office. Erickson leans against the doorway, arms folded against his chest, his eyes shifting to JT. I can hear murmuring inside the room but the conversation isn’t clear.


A few minutes later, Cal emerges; his face reveals nothing.
“It was bullshit,” he mumbles. “Some dropped misdemeanor bullshit.” Wharton and Erickson return to the computer.
“John Baryado Truino?” Erickson says.
“Have a word with you, sir?”


JT turns from the window.
“Of course,” he says.
This time, Erickson leads JT into the adjoining room and closes the door.
The building shakes as the wind picks up.
“Young fella’ there may have been right,” Wharton says absently, staring at the computer. “Looks like maybe bad weather approaching.”


Ten minutes later, the door opens.
“You can go,” Erickson says, his voice flat. ”You all best get going.”
“Your ID’s fellas,” Wharton says, glancing at Erickson.
JT eases to the front door and disappears without looking back. The wind shakes the building again; Erickson rubs his neck, unable to shake an image: his wife and daughter waiting at home.


“What’d the guy want JT?” Cal says, squirming into the back seat.
The car cuts sharply out of the parking lot.
“He’s a family man.”
“Who… Erickson?”
“Mmmm… pretty wife and a little one. We had a nice talk about them.”


The highway tunnels before me, my headlights tracing the obscured center white line, the wind now whipping and rocking the car like a heavy cradle.
“So what did he want,” I ask.
“He suggested I had something hidden in the trunk.”
“There’s nothing hidden in the trunk?” I say, glancing at him.
“Mmmm…” JT says, “he was trying to be a pretend cop… brought up some old possession charges of mine… he wanted to play, I think.”
He turns in the dark, his teeth flashing.


“I told him to check the trunk if he wanted but suggested he first check his computer.”
“For what?”
“I gave him a name… a link… and a code and he did…reluctantly. The computer brought up another flag… a DEA flag… a deal… all that secretive government stuff.”
JT pauses, his eyes shone blood moons.
“You should have seen his face.”


“I told him we’d keep it between us - Baryado, my family name down in Juarez and who my father is. He backed off then but I didn’t. I reminded him about a recent killing down there, the beheading of a cop making accusations.”
“I don’t understand?” Cal says, rocking back and forth like a dark gnome.
“Truino’s not your real name?”
JT turns in his seat and looked at us, his face a black hole.


“I told him exactly how it would play,”
“I told him about what was in the trunk. I hoped he’d play some but he didn’t want to. Pity.”
Cal stopped rocking; the air felt colder.
“Don’t you fellas want to know… what’s in the trunk?”

To Love Somebody

John tells me to do it before it’s too late but I already know. I’m such a chicken-shit when it comes to these things; maybe it’s because I’m such a lousy dancer, stepping all over everyone and myself. I can’t fast dance; I hate jiggling around like good dancers do so I try to imagine something fun like being mowed down by a machine gun, riddled full of bullets all jerky like, but the last girl I danced with two-fisted my shoulders and told me to loosen up. When that last song comes on - it’s always To Love Somebody – you see all the losers scrambling around like hyenas looking for some poor girl - any girl - to maul. Somehow I’ll find myself standing next to her… the one I saw from the beginning that stood with her friends and slowly shook her head to every invite. In a quiet voice, I’ll ask if she wants to dance and she’ll look up and surprise me by saying okay and my mind will reel when we touch.

50/50

The 440 is my race and I could own it outright if I were going up against the snails in my weight bracket like Donnie Tilsbury or Sid ‘Legs’ Wenton or even Sal Swann who runs like a fast four year old girl but fucking Coach Walters decided to put Dave McDonald in the race and the only other event I’m in and it’s going to be iffy. I’m running as a Junior but McDonald’s an Intermediate – shit, he’s a Senior as far as I’m concerned - he’s got a full beard for Christ’s sake. Coach Walters can’t run anything except his mouth and he dribbled some bullshit about not enough runners in Junior to be competitive so he stuck McDonald who’s a good ten pounds heavier in there. I might have a chance in the 440 but I swear I’ll be toast when that 880 comes around. We’re running at the high school arena with that rickety circular track… God, I can feel it now, the boards shuddering under my feet, the jeering crowd right on top of us, my legs like rubber bands after the first curve and my lungs collapsing and bailing as McDonald makes his move to the inside like a gazelle and then disappearing around the final turn… man that guy can fly. There’s an outside chance Walters will let me bump down to Primary, get up against some first year doe-eyed farm boy challenger trying to make a mark and allow me a chance to deal out an old McDonald on his sorry ass.

Rubber Soul

Sometimes, right in the middle of class, a light will go on and I’ll come up with a perfect name for my band. Like during Science yesterday while old Pickell was flying all over the chalkboard like a maniac drawing up charts with colored chalk, this popped into my head: Orange Appeel. I love names like that, like the Beatles Rubber Soul or Strawberry Alarm Clock, Electric Prunes, Iron Butterfly, Moby Grape. Ha, we’ll wear orange - that’s the appeal man! - like orange colored socks or ties though truthfully I don’t like oranges much since they give me canker sores and taste kind of sour and ties make my neck itch. Maybe I can find an orange guitar, yeah, an orange Rickenbacker like the guy in the Byrds only his is yellow but that’s cool and I bet if I let him in the band, my friend John who’s a good artist will draw up some posters in that crazy Fillmore-type lettering style I saw in Rolling Stone. I’m almost as excited as Mr. Pickell up there, randomly scribbling zippy arrows and complex formulas like C5H8 with different color chalk; I have to give him credit though for loving something with such passion, even if it is just science.

Wellington Crescent

Sometimes when it’s real rainy, the stairs get slippery and my books slide around like madmen so I hold tighter going to my locker just in case that asshole Soldersen is waiting by a classroom, gnawing about nothing with some dick friends, ever-ready to knock my books flying all down the hall with that quick sucker punch from behind. He’ll have some witty quip he’s probably worked on all night like, hey goof… which twin are ya, number 1 or number do-do? to which he’d snicker like he’d just dropped a big one. Ha! I’d laugh and scramble for my books, relieved I wasn’t walking with my brother, who would have painted the lockers with old Soldersen or tried to anyway… Soldersen’s a big guy but Gram would have gone for it… I bet he would have.
Sometimes I see Joanne French hanging around the office bulletin board with some other Wellington Crescent girls, not reading messages or nothing, just posing there so natural like, as if they’re storefront models on display for the rest of us to admire as we float by, their wide fixed eyes transmitting, ”yeah look, but don’t even think about touching” even though I bet that’s what they’re thinking in their stupid heads. They are kind of cool though I’ll admit…pretty types with perfect angles and poise and judicial daddies and shade tree homes, holding their books preciously against their tight bodies as if they’re into academics or something. They’re all cheerleader types… except that short dark haired girl with the Cher bangs and almond eyes; I don’t know her name but I saw her look at me once, not in a weird sort of way either but like she could almost talk to me if she chose to slip away from the others who only want the perfect square jaw dopes like Soldersen who I bet wouldn’t know what to do with a girl anyway, given half a chance.