Vernon God Little

From here the border looks like Steven Spielberg built it, a blast of arctic light framed in darkness. I pull on my jacket, though it ain't cold at all, and attempt to slick back my hair. I stride the last few hundred yards of home.

Lines of trucks stretch into the dark on the other side of the bridge, cars heavy with people pass through the middle. There's plenty of traffic on foot, even now, and no sign of a roadblock, except for the regular border checkpoints. I step onto the bridge knowing I step into my dream, pinning its fucken hem with my foot, for me to climb aboard. The redemption, the souvenirs, the lazy panties in fragrant sunshine.

You can already tell one thing: the clean concrete highway ends at the borderline, it's a different country after that. Tall, small people flow around me like tumbling store-displays, chubby types in denim carve between them, with all the confidence of home. Mexicans. The faces seem cautious, like you might interrupt a promise made to them. The hem of their dream hangs over this bridge too, that's why. You can taste it. I pass by an ole man wearing Ray-Bans, a Baywatch cap, a Wowboys jacket, fluorescent green Nikes, and carrying a Nintendo box tied with South Park bedsheets. Makes me stand out like a fucken shaved wiener, even aside from being six inches taller than everybody.

Checkpoint buildings sprawl on the Mexican side, officials in uniform stop cars and search them. I stand up my jacket collar, and try to lose myself in the flow of people. I nearly make it too, until I hear this voice.

'Joven,' calls a Mexican officer. I start to scuttle. '

Joven – Mister!' I look around. He holds up the flat of his hand.

sixteen

The border officer takes his time strutting over from the checkpoint. His skin is darker than a lot of folks down here, and strings of gray-black hair are greased onto his mostly bald head, like with axle grease or something. Kind of a gross little dude, actually.

'Passport please,' he says. He looks pretty serious about things, and on top of everything he now has these gold teeth. Black eyes scald me.

'Uh – passport?'

'Yes, passport please.'

'Uh – I'm American.'

'Driver license?'

'Well – no, I'm an American, visiting your beautiful country and all…'

He stares at me. He's going to default to some nasty official type of shit, I can smell it coming.

'Follow me,' he says, and marches me back to the main building.

Inside smells of shoe polish. It's a kind of Jurassic Park for office supplies, with all these ole desks, and Chinese-restaurant kind of chairs, lit by lonely-looking supermarket lighting. A fan clicks in one corner. The effect is something between a courthouse and one of those public-health waiting rooms you see on TV, specially for the number of ole Mexican ladies in here. Don't fucken tell anyone I said that, though. I'm not crazy about the effect of it. The official ushers me to a desk, and sits behind it, all straight-backed, like he's the president of South America or something, like the borderline is the crack of his fucken ass.

'You have identification?' he asks.

'Uh – not really.'

He creaks back into his chair, spreading his hands wide, like he's about to point out the most obvious fact in the fucken universe. 'You can't enter Mexico without identification.' He tightens his mouth across, for the Most Obvious Fact effect.

Some lies form an orderly line at the back of my throat. I decide to go for tried and tested horseshit, which, if you're me, is the Dumb Kid routine. I cook up some family, fast. 'I have to meet my parents, see? They came down earlier, but I had to stay back and come down later, and now they're over there waiting, like, they're probably worried and all.'

'You parents on vacation?'

'Uh, yeah, we're going on vacation, you know.'

'Where you parents?'

'They're already in Mexico, waiting for me.'

'Where?'

Fuck. It's fatal when you get a guy like this, take note. How it works is that he'll narrow my bullshit down, make it slither to the spout end of the funnel of truth. See how the lie can start out all vague, like, 'Yeah, they're in the northern hemisphere,' or something? Well now he'll narrow it down, and narrow it down, until you end up having to give a goddam room number. Where the fuck are my parents?

'Uh – Tijuana,' I say, nodding.

'Ti-juana?' He shakes his head. 'This the wrong way for Tijuana – is the other side of Mexico.'

'No, well that's right, but they came the other way, see, and I was over here, so I have to go across and meet them. You know?'

He sits with his face pointed down, but his eyes pointed up, the way folks do when they don't buy your story. 'Where in Tijuana?'

'Uh – at the hotel.'

'What hotel?'

'The, uh – heck, I have it written somewhere…' I fumble with my pack.

'You don't enter Mexico today,' says the official. 'Better call you parents, and they come for you.'