day. The driver was wearing a spiffy green uniform. He carried a .38 in a gleaming holster.
We settled into our plush tan seats and prepared for the one-hour journey to Las Cruces and the border. In the bus around us were well-dressed travelers, the men in light summer suits and dark glasses, some of the women even in silk dresses. These people were Aztlan’s elite. Apparently the common folk go to Las Cruces in something other than Super Express buses, if they go at all.
Across the aisle from me sat a man in a magnificent suit, perhaps even a Savile Row creation. Beside him, his wife was wearing a designer dress of light blue silk. I tried to engage them in conversation, but they turned to each other and began to speak animatedly together.
The bus was soon on its way up the long, straight road to Las Cruces. There were trucks on the highway, many of them filled with farm produce. Sometimes we saw cars too, mostly the Toyota and Nissan limousines that are the modern hallmark of the Japanese businessman. A Chevy Consensus or two passed, and the usual sparse collection of prewar jalopies.
We were about twenty miles from Las Cruces, just south of the town of La Mesa, when the bus slowed and turned off the interstate. “La Mesa,” the driver called, and a couple of passengers began to take their baggage down from the overhead racks. All along the roadside into town, there were makeshift dwellings. Derelict GM buses with Sun City Area Transit (SCAT) markings had been made over into shelters. There were tents and even geodesic domes. I saw some blond children toddling about, and an Anglo woman working on a truck. Anglos in Aztlan? Jim and I agreed at once: we would interrupt our trip in La Mesa. We’d take potluck on the final miles into Las Cruces and just hope the nervous Senior Espinoza wasn’t having us followed.
We got out at the brand-new La Mesa bus station and began walking back along the highway. A clump of Japanese in white coveralls came out of a restaurant and watched us for a time. “
“Yes?”
“Ah. A moment, please.”
We stopped.
“You are—tourists?”
“We’re writers. Doing research for a book about America.”
“Ah!” Bright smiles. “You write about us?” Even brighter smiles.
“What do you do?”
The smiles become fixed. “We agricultural specialists.”
“Helping out with the soya plantations, eh?”
“That’s right. This is soya country!”
They let us walk on. When we passed the outskirts of La Mesa, it became obvious that there were no soya plantations in this area.
You could see all the way to the Portrillos across the desert. “They were uranium workers,” Jim said quietly.
“You’re sure?”
“Those pouches at their waists—you saw them?”
“Yeah.”
“They contained face masks. I’ve seen people wearing them at Los Alamos. And those blue plastic strips on their collars. If they get a dose, those strips turn red.”
I looked back into the quiet town. The bus was long gone, and there wasn’t a car in the street. In the distance, a motor rumbled.
Cicadas screamed in the trees.
We caused an even greater stir in the tent community than we had among the Japanese. People began shouting, then running, and in a few minutes at least seventy or eighty had gathered along the roadside. A young woman came forward. She had an enormous .357 Magnum strapped to her belt. She was perhaps twenty-five, tall and sleek, her face weathered, her hands red from hard work.
One hand rested firmly on the pistol.
“May we help you?” she asked. Her accent was familiar, the broad twang of West Texas.
Jim spoke, his eyes on the gun. “We’re writing a book about postwar America. We’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”
“Where you from?” a man asked from the crowd.
“Dallas. And we’re on our way to California.”
Surprisingly, this revelation caused general laughter. “You got entry permits?”
Jim frowned. “We’re writers. Surely they’ll let us in.”
“Hey,” the man shouted, “y’all hear that? All we gotta do is go up to the Yuma P.O.E. and say we’re writers. We’re in!”
This was not a friendly crowd. But I felt sure they had a story.
“Could we buy some supper?” I asked.
The girl with the Magnum nodded. “You got pesos ‘A’?”
“Five. Will that do it?”
“Ought to, if you like rice. That’s what we got. Rice and soybean soup.”
The group began to disperse back into the camp. The girl, our guard, stayed close. Her hand remained firmly planted on the pistol. She had a soft, open face, but the way she held her lips told me that she could be dangerous. The gun was serious.
Up close, the camp was a hodgepodge. There were L.L. Bean tents arranged with old cars to make shelters, the buses we had seen from the highway, trailers, and even a few portable buildings.
Why, in a nation of empty housing developments and abandoned apartment buildings, anybody would be living like this was beyond me.
“You don’t have homes?”
“No, we don’t have homes.”
“Go to Dallas. You can take over a couple of neighborhoods.”
She snorted, tossed her head. “We’re on the wanted list in Texas. Don’t you ever go to the post office?”
“A lot of wanted posters at the post office. I never saw one with your face on it.”
“It’s there.”
I was afraid to ask why. Jim sat in the dust, very quiet, his eyes sharp. He did not speak.
“We’re robbers,” the girl said. “Espinoza let us stay here when we got chased out of Texas by the highway patrol.”
“Robbers?”
“We live by our wits,” an older woman said. “You’ve heard of the Destructuralist Movement?”
I had indeed. They believed that there should be no social structure beyond the extended family. Even tribes were too much for them. “Destructuralists tried to burn the Dallas Civic Center.”
“That was us,” the girl said simply.
No wonder they had left Texas. “People were outraged.”
“People are addicted to social structure. Warday has given us a historic opportunity to break the boundaries of social control. To be free.”
“We can’t rebuild the economy without social structure,” Jim said.
The faces around him went hard. I wondered if we might not be arguing for our lives here. I hoped that he realized it. “We don’t need the damn economy,” a man said, his voice full of bitter sarcasm. “The economy’s worse than an addiction, it’s a curse!”
“People are dying because the economy’s in such a mess,” I said. “At the rate of two hundred and fifty thousand a month, to be exact. That’s about eight thousand a day. Nearly a hundred just since we started this conversation.”
“You’re real smart,” the girl said.
“I’m a human being. I love other human beings.”
“People are dying because nature is rebalancing the earth’s ecology.”
“They’re dying because of Warday.”
