Sad truth was, the old man wasn’t his problem. Jimmie was simply a journalist on the trail of a story. Once the migrants set foot on the other side of the Even Greater Wall, he would watch as they stumbled off into the desert. He’d take a drink of water from his canteen. Slip back into the tunnel. Repeat the trek a few more times-as many times as it took to get the story. As many times as it took to get inside the heads of the men and women desperate enough to make the dangerous journey. All any of them wanted was a better life. Was that a crime? In the immortal words of Secretary of the Energies Palin, “You betcha.”
Something crunched beneath Jimmie’s forearm. Lots of scorpions and tarantulas down here. Whatever it was, he brushed its crumpled body aside and crawled on. He’d been stung and bitten more times than he could count. His bare arms were as mottled with scabs as a fry cook’s.
What you really had to look out for down here were the bigger pests. Run headfirst into a pack of hungry rats, and say hello to heaven. There was no room to turn around; they’d eat you alive.
Another cough. Even if the old man survived the coming days and nights crossing the no-man’s-land, he wasn’t going to get a job picking fruit. Not in the condition he was in. The last thing anyone hiring migrants wanted to deal with was body disposal. Though they might just let him lie there in the orange grove to fertilize the plants.
Up ahead, he could see a faint sliver of light. The edge of the tarp that covered the opening let a shaft of moonlight through-not much, but just enough. The end was in sight.
Twenty-five minutes later, Jimmie Bernwood was throwing the tarp open and gulping down his first breath of fresh air in hours. Fresh, unpolluted air. It smelled like jobs. Like health care. Like hope.
Thirty-six minutes after that, he was helping the last of the American migrants to their feet in Mexico.
And ten seconds after that, he was staring into a bright light, straight down the barrel of an AR-15.
Chapter Two
Shawshank (Minus the Redemption)
After the Mexican border agents lowered their guns but before they could cuff him, Jimmie pulled out his duct-taped wallet.
“I have rights,” he said, fishing out his press credentials. “Don’t you believe in freedom of the press down here?”
A helicopter buzzed overhead as the agents examined his 2009 Cannes Film Festival press pass.
Jimmie shielded his eyes from their spotlights. “They don’t hand those out to just anyone. You have to be a member of an elite media organization to be on the red carpet at Cannes. That year, I interviewed Harrison Ford and Natalie Portman.”
This piqued the interest of one of the agents. “¿Harrison Ford?”
“Han Solo,” Jimmie said, pointing at the press pass. Although his days on red carpets were long gone, the Mexican border patrol didn’t need to know that.
“Han Solo,” the agent repeated, staring for another moment at the press pass. He shook his head and handed it back to Jimmie. “No eres Han Solo. Te ves como… Chewbacca.”
This got a few chuckles from the other agents. With the crazy beard and unkempt hair, Jimmie had to admit he probably did look a little like a Wookiee. His postbreakup “no-shave November” scruff had eventually given way to a “zero-fucks-given 2017” beard. He was pretty sure it was 2018 now. Like, 90 percent sure.
The agents weren’t really interested in hearing a sob story. They carted Jimmie and the American migrants off to San Miguel-the most lawless prison this side of Guantanamo. No phone call. No text. Not even a tweet. “I want my hundred and forty characters!” Jimmie shouted as they tossed him into the general population.
The Mexican authorities no doubt expected him to be shivved and left to bleed out in the shower. If so, they had no idea just how resourceful Jimmie Bernwood was.
On his first day on the inside, he would seek out the baddest hijo de puta in the yard… and beg him for protection. In exchange, he would use his superior command of the written word to pen love letters to the man’s girlfriend or wife.
Unfortunately, Jimmie quickly learned he wasn’t the only aspiring Nicholas Sparks in San Miguel. The prison love-letter racket was every bit as competitive as New York City publishing. Too many pencil jockeys. Not enough horses. The big difference between New York and San Miguel, however, was that if you scored a cover story for Rolling Stone, your competition wasn’t going to shank you in retaliation.
Anyway, that’s how Jimmie came to be shivved and left to bleed out in the shower.
Chapter Three
Hello, Nurse
Jimmie woke in a hospital bed. An IV drip was feeding into his right arm. Based on the fuzzy feeling in his head, he was being drugged. No casts on his arms or legs, though, so he hadn’t been broken too bad in the prison attack. If this were a movie, Jimmie would rip the needle out and stagger off into the night. Unfortunately, the handcuffs on both his wrists put a damper on any escape plans.
A television mounted on the far wall was tuned to an English-language station-MSNBC, according to the scroller. They cut from a commercial for Trump Cola straight to video of a Trump rally.
A banner across the stage read, “AMERICA IS GREAT AGAIN.” So did most of the red hats in the crowd, Jimmie assumed. The crowd was hanging on Trump’s every word, even though he was probably twenty minutes into his third massive digression of the afternoon. They’d paid two large for these tickets, and by gosh, they were going to enjoy them.
“Prince Charles? That guy’s a boob. Total. Boob. Let me tell you something, folks, all of England’s princes and princesses together don’t add up to one of our princesses at Disney. Not even close. You want to see some real princesses? How about the USA Freedom Girls for America?”
Trump exited to thundering applause as the dance team took the stage to perform their new single. Not their strongest. Jimmie thought about changing the channel, but nobody’d left him the remote.
Trump returned for an encore and launched straight into his List of Enemies (always a crowd pleaser). The audience shouted along with the president: “Hillary! Hollywood! Pelosi! Rowling!”
Trump raised his hand for quiet. As had become the custom, the crowd all raised their hands back at him, also calling for quiet.
“You’ve been great today, West Virginia! This is my favorite of the Virginias. Let me tell you, America is close to being the greatest it’s ever been. It really, truly is, folks. You know this. We have the greatest people, the greatest cities. We have all the greatest freedoms…”
“EXCEPT FREEDOM OF RELIGION!” a lone voice shouted, loud enough to be picked up by MSNBC’s microphones.
Heads swiveled to stare at a woman who had ripped off her Trump shirt to reveal her true colors: Underneath, she was wearing a Bernie shirt-the one with the golden house finch, which was somehow appearing on more and more bootleg merchandise even after being banned on Etsy.
A shocked murmur rumbled through the crowd. A protester? Here?! The protests at Trump’s rallies had dwindled to almost zero once he’d started handing out free bike chains. Now this woman’s sudden appearance created the same reactions a cockroach would. Most people were getting as far away as possible, while a few rushed toward her, eagerly awaiting their chance to stomp on something.