“Man, I coulda crapped through a keyhole when you was givin a bribe to that Mexican cop,” Shelby said as they inched through the city traffic. “My shit was syrup and I ain’t scared to say it. I don’t wanna go to stony lonesome, not down in this fuckin country.”
“Wha’s that, Buey?”
“Jail, man! The fuckin calaboose. A Mexican jail where they wake you up with cattle prods in your ass. And a course, they don’t have no trouble findin your asshole ’cause some four-hundred-pound Indian convict from Sonora jist turned you into his pillow-bitin squaw. That’s stony lonesome around these parts, dude!”
“I tol’ you, ’mano, don’ worry,” Abel said. “That customs man, he jus’ turn us back eef he don’ take the mordida. But he like the money. They all like the mordida. They don’ get paid nada.”
But the ox wasn’t reassured, Abel could see that. The hulking trucker was sweating. Beads dripped off his whiskers, and he was starting to smell, and not just from work sweat. Like in those drainpipes when Abel used to cross the frontier between Tijuana and San Diego at night, hoping that if anyone discovered him it would be la migra, the Border Patrol, and not Mexican bandits. The other pollos who crossed with him, they would smell like this while they waited in those drainpipes by the Canyon of the Dead.
“We going to be out een two, three hour, Buey,” Abel said. “You don’ got to worry.”
It was the multitudes that Shelby didn’t like. People walking, sitting, standing, driving. Shelby didn’t like crowds. He never went to Jack Murphy Stadium even though he was a fan of both the Padres and Chargers. He watched his sports on TV to avoid the mobs. And these people, many were so small, so dark, so leathery: Indians, without a drop of European blood in them. Like burros, he thought, little Mexican burros, exceptionally strong for their size.
As a child, Shelby had seen lots of these little Indian migrants working in the lettuce fields near Stockton. And after getting the job at Green Earth he was often astonished at how they could muscle big drums onto the trucks, drums that he wouldn’t move without a hand dolly, and he was twice the size of any of them.
This Tijuana peasant class, these leathery little Indians, made him very nervous and he couldn’t explain it. Maybe it was those black eyes, fathoms deep, no way to read them. He might be indifferent to them when they were on his side of the border, but now, on their side he was unnerved and didn’t know why.
“How many people live in this miserable fuckin town, Flaco?” asked Shelby, turning his cap around backwards to signify he wasn’t really scared, not really.
Abel shrugged and said, “They say one, maybe two millions. They don’ count when three, four families stay een one house. The peoples, they scared of taxes, see? They don’ talk to the tax man. I theenk maybe two millions.”
“Where we going anyhow?”
“Colonia Libertad,” Abel said. “Soltero, he bought hees mamá a nice house there. Few minute away. Best house. Nice garage for cars, but no cars. When trucks come from the north they go to that garage. He pay cash. I know heem good.”
By then, the van was moving along a more scenic highway, Paseo de los Héroes, where modern nightclubs and discos reassured Shelby.
“This is more like it,” he said, looking around.
“Thees where reech peoples come,” Abel said. “Dance. Dreenk. Very ’spensive.”
Suddenly Shelby found himself gawking at a sixty-foot statue of an American president, right in the center of the roadway.
“Whoa!” he said. “That’s Abraham Lincoln!”
“Uh huh,” Abel said. “We crazy een Tijuana. We make statue of man who was president right after gringos steal our country.” He giggled and said, “We crazy peoples!”
“That must be the biggest fuckin Lincoln outside a Mount Rushmore!” Shelby said.
They passed the huge concrete catch basin for the dry Tijuana River; then Shelby saw some of the many maquiladora factories: Kodak, Panasonic, Sony, G.E., and others.
Abel had told him that the maquiladoras were the hope of Mexican politicians now that the North American Free Trade Agreement was a strong possibility. But Abel, like most of the poor people of Mexico, wasn’t looking for salvation from anything negotiated by the U.S. If the gringos wanted it, it must be bad for Mexico, was how the poor reasoned it out, no matter what their politicians said. Still, the maquiladora program could provide jobs in the short term. Jobs in the short term could buy them time. They were nothing if not patient.
Pointing to the modern factories, Abel said, “Maquiladora breeng money, they say. They say we make new Hong Kong right here een Tijuana.” Then he looked at the ox and said, “But I don’ theenk so, Buey.”
Abel’s relaxed attitude was calming Shelby. “I think we oughtta hold out fer more,” he said. “Sixty-dollar shoes oughtta bring us ten bucks a pair, even down here.”
But Abel shook his head and said, “Three dollar, Buey. He pay three dollar, no more.”
“How do ya know?”
“I know,” Abel said, showing his large white teeth in a grin. “I know.”
“Wait a minute,” Shelby said. “Jist a minute here! You sure we happened to be in the right part a the warehouse where these shoes was?”
Abel laughed and said, “Buey, joo no got, how you say? Eemagine?”
“Imagination, asshole.”
“See, I know many Mexican truck driver. Thees guy I know, he go to North Island all the time. He tell me what he see. I phone my friend een Tijuana. He say, okay, navy boot. Weeth steel toe. Good boot. Three dollar a pair. Cash. Many as we get!”
“You little whorehouse louse! You planned it!”
“Everybody steal from navy, Buey. Maybe after boss sell company, you, me, we find good truck job. Work hard, haul down to Tijuana. But we go back north weeth our truck. No problem at San Ysidro gate weeth empty truck. Today, no. Goddamn poison drum.”
“Wonder if the boss’ll fire us for letting his rig get ripped off? Not that it matters since we’re gettin canned anyways.”
“Ain’t our fault. Somebody stole truck when we eat lunch.”
“Since you thought a everything, how’d the dirty rotten thief steal our locked truck?”
“They break een, hot-wire.”
“So you’re gonna bust out the window when we ditch the truck?”
“Uh huh.”
“And I’m gonna pop the ignition and wire it to make it look kosher?”
“You been to jail for steal car, Buey. You do job,” Abel giggled. “Got to look good for when insurance company take truck back to boss.”
“You’re a ballsy little dude!” Shelby said. “I gotta give ya that. Hunnerd thirty pounds soakin wet, but all balls.”
“I know my country,” Abel said. “We got to sell, ’meno. Everything sell een Tijuana. Nobody worry about bees-ness license, no nothing. Nobody geev welfare check down here, Buey. You don’ work, you don’ sell, you don’ survive.”
“Yeah, these Mexicans got a lot to learn about handouts,” Shelby said. “There’s more moochers on one corner a downtown San Diego than in this whole town, I bet.”
Colonia Libertad, one of Tijuana’s numerous colonias or neighborhoods, was one of the poorest. Some streets were badly paved with asphalt, some were crudely cobbled, some were just hardpan that turned into slick water troughs when it rained. Shelby started worrying about their axle.
“Man, they got potholes that could swallow up Roseanne Barr,” he said. “And why’re these streets flooded? Water must be scarce this time a year, right?”