Chapter 4

Table of Contents

 The Gadsden Purchase has been a place of untamed lawlessness ever since it was first penciled in on a map.  Its 29,760 square miles may technically be part of the contiguous United States, but outside of isolated pockets of civilization imposed by brute force upon the anarchy of the desert, its borders are more flexible than Poland, expanding and contracting like the ribs on a cactus do between rain and drought. Recognized internationally as a US possession, it will at times pass back into Mexican sovereignty by temporary superior force of arms.

     The Gadsden Purchase has always and forever will be no man's land, a DMZ buffer zone, an American Gaza.  It always and forever will be a haven and a refuge for what is labeled criminal activity by some, business as usual by others.  Cochise and other marauding Apaches hid within its vastness, taking shelter in the Chiricahua Mountains that were left with his face permanently imprinted upon them, a phenomenon that can be observed from Interstate 10 by the casual motorist. Within this fortress the Apaches called themselves something like the people.  George Crook and his white tribe of "we the people," called them invaders and thieves, the same thing Cochise called the whites, the concept of outlaw only being a matter of perspective.

     What Crook called contraband was taken as legitimate spoils of war by the Apaches, no different then when Drake took his captured Spanish doubloons as booty.  Point being, the Gadsden Purchase has always, and forever will be, a conduit for contraband.  The Apaches raided Mexico and brought back unsanctioned cattle, horses, and humans.  The Mexican raiders of modern times bring across unsanctioned medicine, guns, and humans.  Technology and tastes in consumer goods has changed and moved on.  Taste in human flesh has not.

     Since the arrival of civilization to these shores, there has existed the fantastic, decidedly storybook notion that the region called the Gadsden Purchase can be easily conquered.  Looking at its smooth flatness on paper, unencumbered by major mountain ranges and piped through with lengthy blue watercourses, early exporters of civilization thought it would be a simple proposition to build a railroad there.  Modern exporters of civilization, looking at its tempting paper flatness, believe that it will be a simple proposition to corral it like an unruly beast by building a wall across it.

     The problem is that when standing on the ground, the Gadsden Purchase looks a lot different than it does resting benignly on a paper map.  There are no insurmountable mountains, true, but there are insurmountable expanses of sand that strangle lifelines for a railroad crew or a wall building crew.  Furthermore, when standing on the ground, the long blue watercourses that look so refreshing on paper turn out to be trickling muddy ruts that only truly flow in flood.

     What cartographers don't understand, sitting in their sterile, scrubbed map rooms poring over paper abstractions, is that the inhabitants of the Gadsden Purchase are digging creatures.  Desert creatures are digging creatures as a matter of survival.  They dig deep to escape the relentless rays of the sun and they will dig deep to escape whatever wall will attempt to domesticate them.

     This was the great unplacated void that Michael Gasden and Tony Vargas crossed on their way to Tucson, Arizona, one of the tenuous footholds of civilization in the Gadsden Purchase.  The freeway there was a straight line across waterless waste.  There was nothing significant in its path to impede its pure geometry.

     The metropolis of Tucson, home to about a million people shipwrecked on an island in a sea of sand, had been created as a temporary expedient by raping and plundering a river, the Santa Cruz.  Like most of the other elements resisting human  occupation of the Gadsden Purchase, the river has gone into hiding, but it pokes its soggy head out of sprinklers and swimming pools here and there.  Proof of its legendary existence can be seen in the green of golf courses and landscaped lawns.  The river has temporarily gone underground, but it will be back.  The desert reaches a critical mass of humanity, after which it will shake people off like fleas leaping from a burning dog.   The river cannot be indefinitely suppressed.  As such, Tucson is a besieged fortress.  Sooner or later the desert will overwhelm its walls.  The desert wins wherever it goes.  Ask the Sahara.

     Tony insisted on driving because he said they would get there faster.  Tony was one of those fellows always in a hurry to get places, for no apparent reason, but once there he could barely be coaxed into getting started on whatever business he had come for.  Tony brought along the knee scooter he used to navigate the concrete corridors in between towering pallets of merchandise at Costco.  To Michael the device looked painfully uncomfortable, but Tony claimed that the sample ladies took pity upon him because of it, and would let him come back multiple times.

     "You never told me what your fiancée's name was," Tony said as they cruised into the outstretched fingers of the Tucson suburbs, desperately digging into the desert for a grip.

     Michael sighed inwardly.  "Lisa," he said.

      Tony waited for details, but when none were forthcoming he felt satisfied that his point was proven.  "Most guys I know got a girl, they talk to her all the time.  I don't see you talking to her at all."

     "I talk to her," Mike said.  "I talk to her at night, sometimes...she's busy."

     "I guess so.  Because those community ac..., what'd you call them, activators?"

     "Activists."

     "Yeah those activators, they got a full schedule."

     They passed the Santa Cruz River, but it was a dry ditch, without enough water for algae to make a living.

   "I thought you said you said you didn't like rivers," Mike said, pointing out the window to divert the subject, just as others had diverted this pathetically empty river.

     "Oh that's not a river, it's a rut.  There hasn't been any water in there for years.  Let me ask you something, kid.  Now don't take offense."

     Even at his inexperienced age, Mike knew that when someone tells you not to take offense, you better brace yourself  to be outraged. “What?"

     "I don't know how to say this.  First of all, I got nothing against any kind of people as long as they ain't bothering me.  But you didn't...you didn't...you know, turn, while you was over there, did you?"

     "Turn into what?"  Mike was confused.

     Tony grimaced.  He bared his spotless white teeth that he claimed were kept immaculate by a good, cheap dentist across the border.  "You know, turn like..." he made a motion with his wrist.

     "Ha Ha.  You mean, did I go gay?  No. "

     Instead of being assuaged, Tony looked even more worried.  If it wasn't homosexuality making Mike behave this way, then what other loathsome disease could it be?

     "You know," Tony continued, "because it's a proven fact that people over there," he gave a dismissive sweep toward California, a gesture that was something like waving off the evil eye, "get sick with that and they can't help it.  A real good, highly respective preacher I know said there's something bubbling up from the San Andreas fault.  Every few years the fault moves and, not to get too scientific, basically the gay germs come trickling out.  He said we gotta pray for these people, because they got this homosexuality virus inside of them and it lingers there sometimes for years without them knowing it.  Then one day they wake up and – boom!”  He slapped his hands together, making the truck weave slightly on the road.  “That guy who was just their fishing buddy yesterday, all of a sudden wants to bend them over.  That's what could be bothering you, and you don't even know it yet.  I've seen how you, you know, spend two hours fixing your hair and plucking your eyebrows and then you don't even talk to your girl.  Most guys away from their women like you would be calling home every hour to make sure some other vato ain’t banging her.  Stupid, yes, but that's what dudes do.  But if you're infected with the gayness and you don't know it then..."

     "I'm not gay," said Mike with what he hoped was finality.

     "It's okay," said Tony.  "If you don't feel comfortable now, we can talk about it later."

     "No need," said Mike.

     They went to a Costco that was right off the Interstate 10.  Tony took a good ten minutes to assemble his scooter. Mike, naturally, had to push the shopping cart, because there was no way Tony could do it riding his scooter on one knee.

 As they ambled along, Mike thought Tony’s ridiculous scooter reminded him of a Facebook video he had seen of a dog riding a skateboard.

     “Riding on one knee like that looks hella uncomfortable.  Why don’t you just get a full scooter?”

     “Are you making fun of me?  Because then the sample viejas just think you’re a lazy fuck."

     As Michael did the shopping, Tony got busy with the sample tour.  He eagerly made the rounds of the chicken egg rolls, microwave burritos, and pizza bites.  He used his charming, gleaming smile to flirt with the grilled cheese sandwich lady so she would give him a bigger slice.  Tony basically disappeared until he calculated that Mike had already done the heavy lifting, but still got back early enough to make suggestions about extra items to throw into the cart.  Mike wound up buying a lot of stuff they really didn’t need, due to the hypnotizing allure of brilliant product placement, in conjunction with Tony’s incessant begging.

     Along with basic survival necessities, they carted away a barrel of Kirkland brand Tequila big enough to intoxicate a blue whale, an enormous latticed cherry pie, a container of mixed nuts that could sustain a flock of parrots for several months, an oversized bottle of Vitamin C tablets with pills so big they could not only choke a horse but probably a bull elephant, several boxes of orange and black Halloween lights, a crate of Otter Pops, a vinyl disc of Bruce Springstein’s greatest hits, and the three volume set of Shelby Foote’s History of The Civil War.  All of this cargo was skillfully wedged into the pickup beneath an old black plastic tarp Tony pulled from the motel shed, which had eyelets he looped a cable through then padlocked to the truck bed.

     It was about 4 PM when the loading was finished, after which Tony suggested they go to a “gentleman’s” restaurant over in Marana called Striggy’s. “They got cute chicks there,” he said, as a selling point.  “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”

     “We still have a lot of work to do,” Mike reminded him, as if the idea of work had any effect on Tony's plans.

     “What are you going to do today?  It’s almost dark.  Come on. I swear I didn’t forget my wallet.”

     The two settled in at Striggys.  In short order, a perky blonde wearing tight white shorts and a revealing orange wife beater decorated by a nocturnal avian predator with drooping, drugged eyelids, came over to take their order.  Her body said 30, but her plump, rosy cheeks aged her somewhere closer to 13.  This was due to the side effects of livestock hormones on America's youth.

     “What’s your name, honey?” asked Tony, not taking his eyes or his searchlight smile from her.  “Are you new here?”

     “Suzy,” she said, giving a little curtsy.

     “Bring me a big Budweiser off the tap.”  He looked over at Mike, who was busy scrutinizing the menu and awkwardly avoiding eye contact with the pretty girl. “What are you going to have?  Why are you looking at the menu?  Just tell the young lady what you want to drink.”

     “I’ll have an appletini,” said Mike.

     “A what?”

     Mike pointed nervously toward the colorful drink selections, and shrugged.  “I don’t really like beer,” he said.

     Tony had approximately the same outraged expression as Pope Paul III when Copernicus told him the earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa.  “Okay, you don’t like beer, I get it, but an appletini?  A fucking appletini?  Get something that will grow a little hair on your balls.  How about a shot of tequila, or even a Jack and Coke if you really need something sweet.  But a goddam appletini?”

     “How about just a glass of Zinfandel?” Mike said stubbornly.  “I’m driving.”

     Tony rolled his eyes.  Suzy gave a little giggle then winked at Mike, who lowered his eyes demurely and went pink.  The rosy-cheeked waitress went off to get the drinks.

     “Why you looking at the floor?” Tony asked him.

     “What?”

     “Why do you keep looking at the goddam floor, at your fucking shoes?  That girl liked you, I could tell.  You could bang her easy.  At least smile at her, for Christ’s sakes. You got a nice smile, why don’t you use it to get laid?”

     “I’m engaged,” Mike said.

     “Like hell you are.  This so-called fiancé of yours is like the Loch Ness monster.  There’s no documented evidence.  Man if I had your looks and your money, the chicks I’d be banging.  I’m an ugly broke beaner, and I still get laid more than you.  You know why?  Attitude.”

     “How do you know I don’t get laid?”

     “I can tell.  Your sperm is backed up to your eyeballs.  You don’t know how to act around a pretty girl because your brain is short circuited with your own jizz.”

     The drinks came in. Mike soon learned that the sure fire way to keep Tony from talking to him was to surround him with beautiful women.  One by one all the Striggy's girls in the restaurant, apparently all old friends, came to sit on Tony's lap. One girl slapped him, but still sat on his lap and took a selfie.  Later, two Striggy's girls bitch slapped each other. Mike noticed one girl had a little tear in her eye, causing Tony to console her softly, paternally.  Feeling awkward, Mike decided to go outside and call his Dad.

     “I’m going outside,” Mike announced, but no one cared.

     “I’m just calling to see how it went up in San Jose,” Michael told his Father, who seemed to be a little tired and distracted.

     “Where are you at?  It sounds noisy there,” Mikey’s Dad said in grouchy Dad dialect.

     “I’m in Tucson, Dad.”

     “Tucson, what the hell are you doing in Tucson?”

     “My caretaker at the motel wanted to come here and pick up supplies at Costco.”

     “But why Tucson?  Aren’t you only about 30 miles from Yuma?”

     Michael sighed.  No matter how much money you had in the bank, talking to old people always turned into a beat down about how you spend your own cash. “It’s a long story, Dad.”

     “Who is this caretaker?  I didn’t even know you had a caretaker.”

     “I didn’t either.  I guess he came with the place.  He was just there when I showed up.”

     “What the hell are you talking about, he was just there?”

     “He stays in one of the rooms.”

     “Sounds like a squatter, to me.  Can’t you just run him off?  Call the cops.  It’s your motel.”

     “Well Dad, it’s not that easy.”  Mike was beginning to think he should just hang up and go watch Tony flirt with the Striggy's payroll instead.  “He was Josef’s employee, and he’s been there for years.  I don’t have any customers yet anyway where I need his room. I don’t pay him, and he seems to be an okay guy.”

     “Well, be careful.”  When your parents are hundreds of miles away, the best they can do to help is say “be careful,” like a prayer to ward off evil.  It makes them feel less powerless, but has the reverse effect on the caution level of the progeny, who will deliberately do risky things afterward simply to defy them.

     “So how did it go in San Jose?” Mike asked with a cringe.  His Father had driven 500 miles from San Diego to Mike’s rental property in San Jose, to do some painting and change out a toilet or two.  Mike told his Dad he would hire somebody, but his father insisted.  Mike was afraid to admit he knew why.

     There was an uncomfortable silence on the other end.

     “Are you still there, Dad?”

     “Yeah.  To be quite honest, son, I don’t like what I saw there.”

     “What happened?  Was the place that much of a wreck? "

     “No, it has nothing to do with that.  It has to do with the tenant living in your granny flat."

     Michael looked upward.  The steel-gray desert clouds were edged in orange bunting by the setting sun, but Mike missed their beauty, being distracted by the sermon about to be delivered him on the subject of the occupant of said granny flat.

     “Come on, Dad, we’ve been through this.”

     “Well, what do you want?  I don’t like the fact that there are men going to and from her place at all hours.”

     “Dad, she’s a community activist.  She organizes big rallies and events from home.  The job description calls for late hours.”

     “But why is there a man going up her stairs at 2 AM in the morning?  That’s activism all right, but it seems to me it’s more biological than ideological. "

     “That’s because you come from Texas, where the only activism is Vacation Bible School.   You were up spying on her at two o’clock in the morning.  I don’t believe it.”

     “I wasn’t spying.  When I’m away from home I can’t sleep.”

     “You were probably getting drunk.”

     Michael’s Dad chuckled.  “Well, you know I like to tip a couple when the temperance committee is not around to monitor my activities.”

     “You like to get rip roaring salty.”

     “There was nobody there to get salty with.”

    “Except Lisa.”

     “Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything to her." There was a profound pause.  "Are you sure you really want to marry this girl?”

     Michael sunk his teeth softly into his upper lip.  “We have this conversation over and over again, and nothing has changed.”

     “Okay,  so when’s the wedding date?  When I married your mother, I was so overwhelmed by what I thought was love that I wanted to nail down the date as soon as possible.  I don’t see you doing that.”

     “Geez, you’re starting to sound like my father."

     “Really?  Wise man.  I would like to meet him. "

     “Hey, can we change the subject?  Check this out.  After I put up my sign that said Gasden Motel, several people told me that I misspelled it, that it should be G-A-D-S-D-E-N, as in the Gadsden Purchase, where my motel is apparently located.  Isn’t that sort of a weird coincidence, that our last name is almost the same as the name of this place?”

     Another uncomfortable silence ensued,  as if the signal had been swallowed up by the great electromagnetic void between Tucson and San Diego.  “That is a weird coincidence,” Mike’s Father finally said.

     “Is something wrong?”

     “No, not really, it’s just that there’s a little story I probably should have told you a long time ago, but really didn’t see the need.  It isn't that important, but now that you brought up the subject I might as well tell you, just as a matter of interesting trivia."

     “Is this ‘the talk' Dad?  You’re a little late.”

     “Ha ha, no.  But you may like to know that our family is more closely connected to the Gadsden Purchase than you think. James Gadsden of SouthChadlinaa was deputized by the Fillmore administration to buy from Mexico that overgrown sandbox you now call home.  I know this because your grandfather wrote his Master’s thesis on Gadsden's deeds and assumed I shared his enthusiasm."

     "Anyway, at that time, the Southern states wanted to open up a rail line to the Pacific Coast, basically to bypass Yankee ports up North. What the historians won’t tell you is that this James Gadsden who was in charge of the deal, had an illegitimate half-brother in South Carolina who went west around that same time to try and make his fortune in the gold rush.  The brother's name was Jacob and he was reputed to be half black, the son of a housekeeper slave mother who had been freed by the family, more to avoid scandal than out of any lofty abolitionist notions.  The mother went North, but the son stayed in Charleston, working at the docks, until he got the notion to head West.  Before he did, James Gadsden paid him to change his name, in order to avoid any embarrassment for his cousin Isaac Edward Holmes, a lawyer in San Francisco at the time.  Jacob obeyed, because he needed a grub stake to get him started.  But as a kind of fuck you he only dropped the first ‘d’ from his last name, creating our current spelling.  And that’s how we became Gasden."

      Mike stood looking out over the darkening Striggy's parking lot with his mouth agape.  “You mean…”

     “Yep, that’s right son.  We’re black.  How do you like them apples?”

     In an appletini, Mike was thinking.  He suddenly felt very thirsty and needed one now, and quick.  It was one thing to magnanimously declare your love and devotion to people of color and quite another to find out you are one.  So Mike said goodbye to his Father and went back into the restaurant to drown his confusion in liquor. Suddenly black lives matter felt closer to home. Did this revelation about his African roots really upset him, or was the knowledge about men visiting Lisa at 2 AM bothering him more?

     Lisa’s a nerdy little Asian girl, he tried to tell himself, who was probably helping this unidentified male with his homework.  In a college town, 2 AM is not an unusual time to be doing homework.

     The booth where Tony had been holding court was empty, except for a half eaten pile of chicken wings and half a pint of beer still foamy on top.  Suzy came by and took Mike's appletini order while asking where Tony had gone.  Mike tried to be friendlier this time, cracking an unpracticed smile that looked more like a scowl and caused the waitress to scamper off quickly.  Mike wondered how some people could turn on their smiles on demand and seem absolutely sincere.  Since he rarely smiled he had never mastered the art.

     An appletini or two later Tony had still not returned.  Mike sat staring at Lisa’s contact picture on his cell phone, a picture of the pink Japanese Koakkuma bear.  Koreans like Lisa supposedly had a deep seated historical hatred for the Japanese, but they couldn’t get enough of their cute and fuzzy pulp culture.  His thumb hovered above the bear’s pink pitchfork, reluctant to dial because their last date had not ended well.  Perhaps throwing himself upon that pink pitchfork would skewer him to Lisa forever, with bad consequences he was beginning to understand, but he didn't want to admit because he couldn't stand thinking about all the meddling bastards who told him so shaking their heads smugly.  Finally,  Mike's eyeballs began to burn from the effects of staring at that plushy pink pile of shit, so he ordered another appletini, told Suzy to hold their table, then went out to the parking lot.

     Buzzing with bravado from the appletini, he at last dialed Lisa and waited as the phone rang straight into voice mail.  Mike took the phone from his ear and looked at the contact photo, as if the fuzzy pink bear could answer to her whereabouts.  Damn he hated that fucking bear.  Feeling spurned, he gleefully replaced Lisa’s cutesy contact photo with Cthulu, complete with dangling face tentacles and ugly webbed bat wings.  A cute waitress coming in for her shift saw Mike peering at his phone screen with an evil expression and wriggled past him cautiously. Fuck it!  He was going to go back inside and try to ask Suzy for a date, just out of spite.  But first he thought he should figure out where the hell Tony was.

       It now occurred to him to take a protective look over toward his truck, parked where he could barely see its front end peeking around the corner.  Detecting something odd, Mike took a few steps to his right to get a better view, which revealed to him that the pickup was bouncing up and down.  Several disturbing options for the source of this movement occurred to him, but none of them were correct.  Was someone stealing his rims?  Were wild creatures trying to break into the passenger side, where he had left an open bag of Spicy Cheetos?

     Mike took a few careful strides across the lot toward his bouncing truck.  As he neared the pickup he tiptoed around to the unseen passenger side.  There was nothing there, yet the truck continued to wobble back and forth on its springs, as if of its own volition. Mike saw strange, wavelike undulations in the black tarp. Perhaps there was a herd, or pack, or whatever the hell you labeled an assemblage of marauding raccoons, feasting in there on the Captain Crunch and Pop Tarts.

     Mike peeled back the unsecured tarp cover while wondering who had unfastened it?

     “What?” Tony asked, popping his big head up like an inquisitive gopher.

     Tony and the Striggy's girl that had slapped him earlier were wedged tightly between the Kirkland bottled water and the Kirkland toilet paper.  Both were naked.

     Tony pulled the tarp down again.  “Be done in a minute,” he said.

     I really didn’t need to see that, Mike thought.  Feeling worse than ever, he went back inside to have another appletini.


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Image of:  The Gadsden Purchase historical marker; located at a restop for Interstate 10, just north of Casa Grande, Arizona.  By Solarpex, Wikimedia.org

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