Local television and newspaper reporters and cameramen ready to record every moment of her visit to the border followed in vans with their stations' logos stenciled in bright colors on the sides. A Department of Public Safety cruiser manned by two well-armed state troopers led the way; a local police car with two well-armed cops brought up the rear. Security for the governor's wife and a U.S. congressman. Their DPS driver cocked his head their way.
'You know what they call an American in Nuevo Laredo?' He didn't wait for an answer. 'Victim.'
He laughed. He was Anglo. The congressman responded with a pained expression.
'Border humor. The cartels, they killed over one hundred Americans last year and kidnapped many more who have never been seen again. But the Nuevo Laredo mayor, he says we have only a public relations problem, that with better press, the tourists will return to the border. Of course, Nuevo Laredo is under martial law and the mayor, he sleeps on this side of the river. I think that is what they call, denial.'
The caravan coursed through the maze of narrow one-way streets that was downtown Laredo and then past the bridge leading into Mexico. They turned north and accelerated onto Interstate 35. They drove through the city landscape at seventy miles per hour, only the palm trees distinguishing the journey from that through any other city in Texas, and the governor's wife had journeyed through most the last eight years. They exited the interstate and turned west on Mines Road. They soon reached the outskirts of Laredo, and beyond that, the city became the desert. The land lay vast and empty and flat, brown and parched from the drought, only scrub brush and dirt as far as the eye could see.
Lindsay Bonner had been born in Boston but had grown up in the Hill Country of Texas, a land of streams and rivers and lakes, so contrary to this land. She had been to the border the tourists see, but never to the borderlands. Her husband did not campaign here. He said it was simply a matter of getting the most bang for your campaign buck. There was little bang for a Republican on the border: the people who inhabited this harsh land were Democrats, poor Latinos who did not contribute to political campaigns and who did not vote. So to the politicians in Austin, they did not exist. Perhaps that was why she had jumped at the chance to come south.
She often felt as if she did not exist. And she was a Democrat.
She had never told her husband, of course, and she had never officially registered, but she had always voted straight-ticket Democrat-except she had always voted for her husband. The bonds of matrimony. Or the guilt of a Catholic: to love, honor, and obey, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse. Father O'Rourke had said nothing about a husband converting to Republican. It was worse. She was smiling at the thought of what her husband would say if he ever learned her secret-there would be profanity-when they abruptly veered off the highway and turned south onto a bumpy dirt road that cut through dense brush 'Chaparral,' the congressman said.
— and bounced her about. The DPS cruiser in front kicked up a cloud of dust that enveloped their Suburban. But visible in the distance through the dust was a low shadow that seemed to rise from the desert and extended east and west as far as she could see until it disappeared into the haze. The shadow grew taller and taller as they came closer until it loomed large overhead. But it wasn't a shadow.
'What is that?'
'That, Mrs. Bonner, is the border fence.'
'But it's not a fence. It's a wall.'
'Yes. Some portions along the border are fences, but here it is a wall. Eighteen feet high, constructed of steel with six feet of reinforced concrete below ground-apparently the Department of Homeland Security thinks the Mexicans will be arriving in Abrams tanks.'
'This is what Bush wanted in America? Our own Berlin Wall?'
'Obama voted for the border wall, too, Mrs. Bonner, when he was in the Senate. He was a politician before he became the president.'
They stopped in front of a massive gate guarded by two Border Patrol agents wearing green uniforms and wielding military-style rifles as if guarding the gates to a kingdom. Or a prison. Were they keeping them out or someone else in? Her Texas Ranger bodyguard threw open his door. Dirt blew in with the hot wind; Lindsay averted her face until the Ranger stepped out of the vehicle and slammed the door shut as if he were angry at the Suburban. He pushed his cowboy hat down hard on his head to prevent the wind from taking it north to San Antonio and marched over to the Border Patrol agents. After a brief discussion, the agents opened the gate, reluctantly it seemed. The Ranger returned, removed his hat, and got back in the vehicle, grumbling something about 'Feds.' They drove through the gates, and Lindsay sat up, anticipating what she would see on the other side, which was Nothing.
She saw nothing but more chaparral and dirt. She had expected something, perhaps a panoramic view of the majestic Rio Grande. But the river was nowhere in sight. The wall just cut through the land like a random mountain range.
'So the border wall isn't actually on the border?'
'Oh, no,' the congressman said. 'The border runs right down the middle of the Rio Grande, so the wall, it is off the border. Here, about a mile. Elsewhere, maybe two miles.' He chuckled. 'Over in Eagle Pass, the public golf course runs right along the river. The golfers, they would be hitting their balls and suddenly Mexicans would dart out of the carrizos, the thick reeds by the river, and race across the fairways and into town where they could mix in with the locals. So Homeland Security built the fence on the town side of the golf course, to block the Mexicans' path. But they also blocked the golfers' escape. So now the Mexicans jump out of the carrizos with guns and rob the golfers.'
He now gave out a hearty laugh.
'You cannot make that up,' he said.
'A border wall that's not on the border. That doesn't make any sense.'
'There is little on the border that makes sense, Mrs. Bonner. As you will see, this side of the wall is another world entirely-a world that is not Mexico, but that is also not America.'
'Then what world is it?'
'This, Mrs. Bonner, is the colonias.' He turned to the window and pointed. 'Oh, look-a jackrabbit.' He turned back. 'Ah, we are here.'
The Suburban braked to a stop and stirred up dust that soon dissipated in the wind. The Ranger opened the back door for the governor's wife. Lindsay stepped out and immediately surrendered her hair to the wind. The ninety-degree heat felt like an oven after the air conditioning inside the vehicle. The press crew bailed out of their vans and began unloading their equipment. The troopers and police got out of their cruisers with their large guns strapped to their waists and stretched their large bodies; they must have recruited the biggest men on the force to guard the governor's wife. Congressman Delgado came around and stood next to her. They were both decidedly overdressed, she in a cream-colored linen suit and low heels, he in a tan suit and tie. He inhaled the dry air.
'Ah, spring on the border. It is the same as summer.' He extended a hand as if gesturing at a grand monument. 'Welcome to Colonia Angeles, Mrs. Bonner. The border's version of a gated community.'
They stood at the entrance to this community of angels. But it was not heaven on earth. The dirt road continued on and seemed to disappear into the dust, just a rutted path winding through a vast shantytown of dilapidated structures that in the distance seemed to merge together to form a massive inhabited dump. Half-naked brown children played in the dirt road and down in the river, dull in the hazy sun. Women carried water from the river in buckets and cooked over open fires; smoke rose into the sky in thin spires. An enormous pile of smoldering refuse stood tall near the river; with each gust of wind, paper and plastic items broke free and danced across the dirt as if attempting an escape. Rats rummaged through the refuse. The congressman was right: this was another world. A third world.
'How many people live here?'
'Six thousand. Or perhaps seven.'
The women had stopped their work and the children their play, and they now stared at their visitors, as if frozen by the sight of the black Suburban and the police cars and the cameras. Or frightened. One barefooted little girl in a dirty white dress broke away and ran over to Lindsay. Her hair was stringy and gray with dirt. Her face was gaunt. She had pierced ears and dangling earrings. She carried a naked doll.
'?Que lindo el cabello! '
'She says your hair is pretty,' the congressman said. 'She has probably never before seen red hair.'
Lindsay leaned down to the girl and said, ' Gracias, mi amor. El tuyo tambien es bonito.'
