Road Trip, Odyssey, Quest
Las Cruces to Tucumcari, Redux
Every time I cross into New Mexico I think of that my winter camping in the desert - all the things I’d forgotten, all the details I still had to learn: the way night falls early and all at once, sudden and absolute; the way the sun, more intense this close to the equator, saturates you completely, soaks you in sunlight, slows your mind and your movements, knocks you into a stupor by noon. And every time I cross into New Mexico, I am stunned by the otherworldly beauty of the land on which this country is built, and the nearly incomprehensible damage that we who occupy it have done.
I hadn’t been on the road more than a few months when I began to understand that the story I was chasing - the thread I was starting to pull to see if the whole thing would unravel, the story I could sense from the outset was there - wasn’t the story I’d expected to find.
I’d just crossed into New Mexico on what I realized both was and was not the same road I'd driven nearly 30 years before, through what was and was not the same country, same world.
I crossed that state line today, this time heading west on I-10. The west Texas wind is always high, always tugs at the Tramp Scamp, sturdy as she is (and yes, I’ve finally got her back - more on that soon). I slow to account for the cracked and broken blacktop, climbing toward the junction of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. The scrub on the shoulder turns to ocotillo and mesquite; blue mountains appear in the distance, the rocks turn from dun to red.
The summer of 1995, I sat on the burning metal of my orange hand-me-down Toyota’s hood, tracing my path, making my way, discovering whatever I could. I thought I was heading off to see America; I thought there was an America for me to see, a country that corresponded, more or less, to the Rand-McNally Road Atlas, threaded through with the complicated vein structure of blue and red roads.
Of course, what you don’t know when you set out on a journey - road trip, odyssey, quest - is that there is no one America, no single north or south, no Midwest or Heartland or East Coast or Wild West, no Viva Las Vegas or Route 66, no real Jersey Shore or California Dream. Though there are places that go by those names, points that fix their coordinates on a map, the places themselves are pure myth; they are the substance of the dreams with which they are imbued, no more real than the iconography of which they consist. They are as phantasmal as the “idea” of America people say they still love.
I keep coming face to face with the iconographic fantasy of which American mythology, and American identity, are made: Norman Rockwell and the Marlboro Man, freedom and familial bliss. That mythic, Hollywood-ready America was created, packaged, and sold not to bring about equality, but to ensure it would never be achieved.
Not only is this not the country I thought I’d find when I set out a lifetime ago, it is not the country I drove through last summer, or the winter before, or the previous spring. Every time I cross a state line, every time the Scamp hits a rut in the road, every glance I exchange with the driver of another pickup as I pass it or another one passes me, I am reminded that this was never the country it said it was, nor is it now the one it claims to be.
The sun was high when I pulled into Las Cruces this afternoon. The last time I drove through here, a friend asked me, “How do you keep winding up in Las Cruces?” I didn’t know then and I don’t know now; but I want to spend a minute here with you.
The piece below, which was written and posted not quite a year ago, begins here, in Las Cruces.
But where does it end?
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
-Jack Kerouac
Fragments from the Border, Part 1
Las Cruces to Tucumcari
March 2024
Las Cruces
Last night James and I were studying our menus at what's got to be the only bad Mexican restaurant this close to the border. We were seated between what we'd decided was a convention of 42-year-old white men who play pickleball and have children between the ages of 6 and 10, affably barking nonsense words like pivot and upskill and drill down on that later, and a floor-to-ceiling iron cage containing at least three African parrots large enough to eat my dog.
I said, "They've got fried ice cream."
James said, "Of course they do."
"This is like that 80s Mexican restaurant in the burbs," I say. "What was that place called?"
"Chi-Chi's," he says.
"Right," I say. "White waiters in sombreros and fried ice cream."
"Why did the Uber driver tell me we had to come here?" James asked.
"Because you're white," I said. "Driver thought, Oh, white tourist, he should go to the Mexican restaurant with no Mexican food."
"To be fair," James said, "this salsa is killing me."
"The salsa isn't even hot," I said. "The salsa isn't even salsa, James."
James blotted his brow and looked around. "How do you keep winding up in Las Cruces?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "It's magnetic."
"It isn't," he said irritably.
"No," I agreed, "but you know." I shrugged. "You land where you land."
I watched the affable barking salesmen and tried to think—how many times had I been through in the last year or two? It's not like Las Cruces is central; I go through Kansas all the damn time because it's between the west and the midwest and everything east of that, and it's on the way south from everything north and north from everything south, but really, how come I keep landing in Las Cruces?
Once it was wind. I-10 was shut down all the way past El Paso. That was the Valentine's Day Zeke and I spent basking in a sunbeam on a hotel room bed, reading a book and listening to the windows rattle in the howling wind.
Once I had to get Zeke to the vet, and Las Cruces was the closest town from where I was boondocking on Bureau of Land Management land.
Once I drove in from Truth or Consequences to go to the gym and got in a fight with some punkass little boy who was vaping in the weight room and hurled a mouthful of names at me when I asked him to stop while a roomful of musclebound lunkheads looked on as if nothing would be more fun than watching a frat boy wrestle a tatted-up elf.
And this time, James and the band had a few free days before the next show, and we finally got to hike White Sands.
You know. You land where you land.
White Sands
We were heading north on Highway 70, James riding shotgun with his dusty Chuck Taylors on the dash, Zeke curled up on the console. The day was clear enough that the clouds looked fake, the rough-edged mountains hologram-sharp against a sky so blue it looked like a Magritte. We were ready to hike in the heat: we had two kinds of trail mix we'd forget to eat, sunscreen we wouldn't put on, hats we'd decide not to wear because they made our heads hot, and we'd just refilled our water bottles at the ranger station after hiking up to Dripping Springs because there's not a single place to stop for water or gas between Las Cruces and White Sands.
I slowed the truck to pass through the border checkpoint ahead.
"What are they checking for?" James asked.
"People," I said, idling behind two semis ahead of us in line.
We watched the border guard wave the first semi through, then the second; we pulled up and he waved us through as well.
Though I spent much of last winter near the U.S.-Mexico border and passed through a checkpoint twice most days, I never got used to the guard dogs—pacing, sniffing the dirt, straining at their leads.
And the eyes of the young border guards—almost all men, and so young—caught at my heart like a fishhook, every time.
Nogales
I camped most of last winter not too far north of Nogales. The nearest city on the U.S. side was Tucson, an hour and some to the west. You could either take I-10 or cut over the mountains; I usually went the mountain route. Beautiful, winding, and remote, cell service was gone as soon as the road dog-legged at Sonoita, approached the foothills, and began to climb the sloped side of the range. The road snaked and bent, switchbacks clinging to the cliffs; I'd shift into second and touch the brake as the truck began to gather speed, making my way down the narrow two-lane on trips into town.
In the wide-open desert flats, you know a border checkpoint is coming because you can see it—cones route traffic down to a single lane and move it toward a white flat-roofed structure, temporary-looking, like lots of structures in the desert are, and there'll be a row of white SUVs marked BORDER PATROL in green. In the mountains, I knew a checkpoint was ahead because Zeke would lift her nose and start to growl. Her hackles would go up as we approached, slowing to 40, then 25, then 15. Guard dogs surged toward the truck as we bumbled over the rumble strips and came to a stop.
I rolled down the window, put my sunglasses on my head.
Where are you headed?
Tucson.
What are you doing in Tucson?
Visiting my father.
Where's your father live?
Tucson.
Where are you staying?
I'd nod back the way I came. Sonoita.
They'd squint at me. What are you doing in Sonoita?
Hiking.
Oh yeah?
Yeah. You need to see my ID?
No. They'd smile like that was a crazy idea. Mind if I look in the truck bed?
Go nuts.
What's that?
I don't mind at all.
After a week or two, they got used to me. I never got used to them.
I’d pull out of the checkpoint: 15, 25, 40, 55.
The road climbed and climbed and curved sharply at the crest. The descent, all switchbacks, snaked down the western side.
One night, as I came around a tight curve, I squinted in what I thought was the glare of the setting sun, hit my brakes, pulled down the visor, and slowed in time to see what it actually was: the glint of metal, a door torn off. There was a flipped car in the narrow ditch between the mountain and the road, tucked almost neatly into a bed of cacti and serrated scrub. The dull sooty underside of the car looked strangely like the belly of a tipped bug. Smoke was coming from the car, I couldn’t tell exactly where.
There’s a jog in my memory here; the time signature changes, it’s always happening in the present tense.
I’ve pulled over, jumped out of the truck, and am running down the road.
There is a little girl, 18 months, maybe two years, in a red and green plaid shirt, too warm for the heat, sleepy and sun-drunk, in a young man's arms. Her father, maybe. He must have been the driver. He's too young, he's barefoot, there are lacerations on his legs. I am calling to him to please move away from the ditch, asking him absurdly where are his shoes.
Another young man is there, his sedan parked at a dangerous angle, nearly touching the guard rail, the driver's side door still open. He turns to me and says, I think the baby's ok.
He’s agitated, talking. He says, I saw it, I saw them go off the road, I was so scared, I just ran. I say whatever I say, trying to reassure him, watching for the border guards. He says it again, I saw them flip, I just ran, I say again, You did great, that was great, the baby is fine, she's fine, they're fine. He says, I know, she seems fine, he's all cut up, but I think she's fine.
A woman in an Escalade pulls up, wants to know if anyone has flares.
Why are the boy’s legs cut? Where are his shoes? Does anyone have flip-flops? Does anyone have water? I have water. I run back to the truck, get the water, look for flip-flops, look for a hat. The baby's had too much sun. I have no flip-flops. I can't find a hat. I grab a bandanna instead and run back down the road.
The baby squints, puts her small fists in her eyes. The boy who is maybe her father paces on the blacktop, barefoot, legs bleeding, yelling into borrowed phone, Tell them later, not now, NOT RIGHT NOW—
The man in the car behind me pulls up, runs toward us, asks, Spanish or English? I'm confused, and realize that some if not most of the chaotic conversation so far has taken place in Spanish but I don't know how much or which part.
(Diles más tarde, ahora no, NO AHORA—)
Has anyone called 911?
I hold a bottle of water out to the boy on the phone. He lets me tie the bandanna loosely around the baby's forehead and hold the bottle of water to her mouth. She looks at me earnestly, the way babies do, and puts both hands on the bottle while she drinks.
The boy with the baby is babbling about the things he needs to get out of the car. The undercarriage of the car is still smoking. The kid who saw the car flip tries to steer the boy with the baby away from the car in the ditch, saying Hey, man, don't worry about what's in there now, that's just material stuff—
How long will EMS take? Will they come up from Tucson, or will the rural volunteer pickup truck show up?
(Oye, hombre, no te preocupes por lo que hay ahí ahora, son sólo cosas materiales—)
We're stalling. We're all stalling. No one knows whether the car has plates. No one knows whether the boy has papers for the baby or himself. No one wants the boy or the baby to be here when the first border patrol SUV shows.
I still don't remember how much of the conversation took place in Spanish, how much in English. I still don't know whose baby that was. I don’t know why the boy had no shoes.
This close to the border, nothing is clear.
Late that night, lying in the Scamp, listening to the coyotes laugh, I realized that I could have used Zeke's green-and-blue hoodie—just washed, tiny, very soft on the inside. It was in the truck. It would have fit the baby. It would have kept the sun out of her eyes.
Tucumcari
There is the desert that appears on postcards and calendars, often in photographs that capture its moments of bloom; there is the salable kitsch of the Southwest, the Kokopelli throw pillows and faux adobe urns and ropes of dried Hatch peppers; there is the economic engine of expendable cash flowing into the upscale towns of the border states that serves both to create jobs and ratchet up rents and other costs of living well above what many of the people who work those jobs can afford on what they make working those selfsame jobs, creating both "opportunity" and a functionally indentured labor class that cannot afford to live in the towns it serves; and then there is the other desert.
The desert is as much an idea as a place, as much a primal force as it is a thing. It exerts some kind of pull, drawing you toward it, then drawing you deeper; it pulls you down a dry creekbed, you follow it up and over a sharp-toothed ledge, you skid down the side of it, rock and sand crumbling under your boots, hand catching at dry grass and scrub. You go to the desert, often, with the intention of writing about it, but as soon as you're there, it snatches the words from your mouth; a wind comes, or no wind comes, and you're rendered wordless, without a thing to say, because what can you say, and to whom—look around you—would it be said?
As some others have said, you break my heart open again and again, this is what I come here for Marya. That boys bare feet, the border patrol’s swaggering crude attitude, a bottle of water clasped by tiny hands, and the desert so vast that it swallows your words.
You bring me there with you.
Oh gawd, you keep nailing it. Over and over again. Breaks my heart.
I wish I could be out there again, but no.