Indigenous Resistance and the Western Socialist Uprising.

by Jeremiah Liebrecht, San Francisco, CA, USA

Little Big One?

Every time I hear what happened referred to as “The Little Big One”, my blood boils. I am a second generation San Franciscan. My grandparents had my mother there in 2007, stuck it out through the War and Second Depression. My parents lived there up until the pretremors, and moved up to the Sacramento Delta to join like minded socialist groups rallying at the Capital. We were always proud of our counter culture roots, when The City all but disappeared, I lost a lot of family and comrades, it was the biggest tragedy to hit the Revolutionary movement experienced since it was founded in 2035. I almost become violent with rage towards my comrades when I hear someone call the Quake that—it sounds like a joke, and it’s not cute.

Shortly after California’s seceded from the Union, my wife, two daughters and I joined my first cousin, Jorge’s family and a group of comrades to head towards Idaho. We were under-armed, and granted passage out of the state under the Objector’s Act. When we got to the Oregon border, we had to surrender all our weapons except a cleaning knife per adult male, and two Benelli R14 hunting rifles, with 12 rounds per gun. If we came across game, we had to be thrifty. We were also ordered to carry a white flag through Medford. We carefully fished along the random lakes and rivers as we headed to the Klamath Falls rendezvous point. Most fresh water fish were contaminated with mercury and had to be tested before consumption. Luckily, Jorge was a naturalist and his knowledge kept our little traveling clan safe. Our organization had made a trade/labor pact with the Indigenous Resistance Movement that had settled the northern Rockies. From, Boise in the west, to Laramie, Wyoming in the east, to Missoula, Montana and, Spokane in the north.

We knew the most fighting was going on along the southwest Colorado border, and Northwest, Spokane area, mostly from White Power groups. The Indigenous Resistance was born of the ancient American Indian Movement. Most of the Western Socialist Uprising, like my family, are mixed Mexican and Gringo, We had a lot of solidarity movements with the I.R.M. throughout the direct actions against the war, and the mass imprisonment of the non conformists.

What happened at the Klamath Falls train station was reminiscent of the European holocaust my Dad would tell me about. A freight train yard crowded with pacifist mixed-race socialists, being herded by U.S. National Guard for the 15 hour train ride to independent Boise. We were nervous boarding the train. I had the girls sit far forward of the freight car, huddled and hidden under a small Kevlar pancho. There had been a shaky cease fire between the U.S. and the I.R.M. for a few years, since the Union had been enveloped with the fighting along California, and Mexico. They had more or less left us to be victimized by the White Power Militias, who attacked the train relentlessly as we crossed state lines.

King of the Californias, Pt V

by Monk, New York City, NY, USA

As its guest book reads like a who's who of global atrocity-makers, disposal of dead bodies has become a premier feature at the Palma de Baía. Oakland's foremost hotel has an experienced staff of morticians, equipped with forensic-baffling equipment that would give the CIA a mile-long erection. That, and the hotel's love affair with municipal law enforcement, makes the three dead women on Cecilio Goncz's living room a nuisance instead of a felony. From the balcony, I watch the men in papery silver jumpsuits strip the corpses naked, and clumsily dump them into transparent bodybags filled with some sort of icy green fluid, vapor rising sickly. They throw the giant bladders onto gurneys, and trundle out of the room with all the gravity of errant bellhops.

Goncz's prisoner slumps over her crucifixion, long passed out from shock. Hands pinned to her thigh, she looks like a supplicant, bowed in prayer; though I can't imagine to what. Her breath is audibly ragged to even my cheap recorder's amplifier, some twenty feet away and separated by a pane of artificial diamond. Mr Goncz hasn't caught on that I recorded his initial encounter with the assassins, and as he is busy making calls from the bedroom, I have no plan on stopping. I see him in the distance, hands flailing wildly, livetattoos above his eyes dancing through a dozen languages, always the same message: Only God Can Judge Me. When he gets like this, his tone takes an undulating quality: loud one word, quiet the next. It's impossible for my little recorder to make any sense of it.

I observed the first such call upon my arrival in NoCal. I waited at Pivens Aerospace Center for five hours, bleary-eyed from intra-orbital flight, assured by Mr Goncz's assistant that a driver would be there for me shortly. When one finally did, it was the assistant himself, in a rental car. I was told in hushed, cautious tones that the driver, Silvio, had been picked up that morning by agents of the Carter Center. By that afternoon, he'd been tried for war crimes in Los Angeles, and by that evening, publicly sentenced at West Hollywood's Sunset Plaza. Shipped off to Angel Island for some time with the Big Chair: fifty years of sensory deprivation compressed into ten minutes, courtesy of a hack directly into the parietal lobe. Survivors tend to wear diapers, and have trouble producing complete sentences. Mr Goncz spent the bulk of that day screaming at the phantoms on the other end of his communicator, at his assistant, and finally at me: the Piece-of-Shit-Reporter-From-Chicago.

Three days later, Goncz's assistant disappeared.

Another cycle was wasted on Goncz's rant, blasted to his peers across the globe in every medium available. He was unsure if Glen had just run off, been killed by one of his long-standing enemies, or defected to Los Angeles in exchange for leniency. Goncz's greatest fear is still the Simone J. Carter Center for Peace and Justice. Based out of the Watts Refuge, its agents span the globe, wrangling expats back to the Republic of Los Angeles, where their trials have a circus atmosphere: defendants paraded about in bright orange jumpsuits, barefoot, shaven, starved, ball-gagged and drugged; the proceedings little more than a high-verbal horsewhipping before the inevitable sentence, always the same: the Big Chair at Angel Island. The prospect of which sends Goncz into nervous fits, making hour-long calls to anonymous power-brokers, demanding midnight assurances that his position is secure, and the vulture-beaked specter of retribution is well at bay. As he has pointed out, his once-vast wealth is heavily invested in the Northern Republic of California's reconstruction. His belief is that he is insulated from his enemies.

That assessment may have undergone a dramatic turn with today's events.

Assurances aside, it seems to me that Cecilio Goncz's life has become defined by a series of concentric circles, himself at the center. As each surrounding ring is worn down, his response becomes more frantic. I'm concerned that this has yet to translate as violence towards me. My host has a long, documented history of ending interviews at knife-point. Since my arrival, two of his closest companions have disappeared, and now, these assassins. By my own reckoning, I'm bad luck, writ large in neon. What Mr Goncz is thinking is beyond me.

But as he comes from the bedroom, pistol in hand, it is of rising priority that I find out.

Meditations of Jimmy Chu, Pt I

by Rabbi Benjamin Newman, the Bronx, NY, USA

Reeking of expensive nameless liquor, hashish, and perfumed boys, the Mayor of New York City stumbled into his dim office just as dawn crept across Manhattan's delicate crystalline skyline. At this hour, his office was lit only by tea candles scattered haphazardly on the desks and ledges. Brushing cocaine from his lapel, he collapsed in front of his statue of the emaciated Buddha and lit a stick of jasmine incense. The statue of Shakyamuni seated in meditation was originally from the Sikri Stupa, bought from the Lahore Museum for a hefty price. Rather than the well-known fat Buddha, this representation was almost skeletal, the Enlightened One's reduced to a frame of bones, skin tautly stretched over it, veins and sinew exposed like a spiderweb. It showed the ascetic extremes the Enlightened One went to before discovering the Middle Path of moderation. As a creature of extremes, Jimmy Chu appreciated the statue, but the suffering prince's trials toward enlightenment taunted him.

"Temptation cannot touch the man who is awake, strong and humble,"he muttered, "who masters himself and minds the law." Chu had long ago decided Self was the problem. 'Eliminate the Self, eliminate the suffering. Eliminate desire, eliminate the Self...' This was one of his favorite mantras. He knelt in front of the statue and repeated the words for his third and last time of the day, until the gong of his interoffice connection sounded, interrupting his reverie. Although he was proud that he was among the few people without a bio-implant, his office was consequently littered with vintage tech.

"What is it, Sophi?" the mayor snarped at his secretary.

Sophi, or Sophisticated Operating Program of Heuristic Intelligence, was a prototype next-generation compiled intelligence he had received as an inaugural gift from Integrated Heuristic Systems, one of his major corporate donors. Their offices spotted downtown NYC, flagship factory and corporate headquarters centered on 9/11/01 St., site of the old World Trade Center. He brought them state money, they brought him fine rewards, including but not limited to Sophi. That's how it worked for Mayor Chu. What was governance without a little pork?

He put out the incense, and gazed toward the screen housing Sophi's child-like icon.

"How easily the wind overturns a frail tree, " Sophi said tonelessly. "Seek happiness in the senses, indulge in food and sleep, and you too will be uprooted. The wind cannot overturn a mountain. Temptation cannot touch the man who is awake, strong and humble, who masters himself and minds the law. If a man's thoughts are muddy, if he is reckless and full of deceit, how can he wear the yellow robe? Only whoever is master of his own nature, bright, clear, and true, can merit to wear the yellow robe." The computer's soprano floated out of the speaker on his desk.

Chu couldn't muster much more than a few faltered curses under his breath. Is she mocking me, or reproving me? he thought. His resentment lingered, in that he realized he'd started quoting her of late upon return from his late night binges.

"Was your evening satisfying?" Sophi asked.

Chu bit his lip. How do you combat that? She's impervious to sarcasm, and I can't just smack her in the mouth. I can have political activists imprisoned without bail or legal representation for days at a stretch and have Union leaders' legs broken. Why can't I just order this stupid machine to shut the fuck up?

"Your heartrate is recognizably spiking," she said. "Perhaps from pharmocological modification you indulged this evening. Equally as likely is personal agitation. Am I bothering you, Mayor Chu?"

'Just tell her to shut up, Jimmy,' he thought. It's easy. 'SHUT UP, YOU STUPID DAMNED TOY! SHUT UP BEFORE I HAVE YOU DECOMPILED!'

"An excellent way to reduce your heartrate is breath control, Mayor. Steady, even breathing. In through your nose, held for a bit in your abdomen, then released through your mouth."

'For the love of God, man, just SAY it! Tell her to shut up! Reduce her to binary numbers! Something!'

Instead, he bowed before the Buddha, repeated his mantra, and very slowly began breathing in through his nose, and out through his mouth.

Blissful

by Nichole Perkins, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Blissful wanted to become invisible. Her parents were fighting, but they were being quiet because she was in the backseat. If they couldn’t see her, they’d talk, and she would know where they were going and why.

They’d been fighting since last week. Usually, after an argument, her mother would stay in the kitchen, cooking and shaking her head until her father came in and stood really close. Then they’d kiss and dinner would be really good that night.

The last few nights, Blissful’s dad only went into the kitchen when her mother wasn’t there, and her mom only cooked stuff her dad didn’t like. Blissful wished they’d tell her what was going on. She was ten years old; she wasn’t a baby any more. She pulled out her tablet and called up the journal. Ma’Marie had told her to write her thoughts down, but to use a password, so no one could take her thoughts from her.

In the passenger seat, her mother ran a hand over her belly, and her father reached out to her.

“Do you need me to pull over,” Ramón asked.

“No,” Sumayyah answered, testing the answer for truth. “No,” she repeated more confidently. She touched his questioning hand, and he linked their fingers. With the contact as a bridge, Ramón gained confidence.

“Sumayyah, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” he began in a tense whisper.

Hearing the hushed tones, Blissful perked up.

“She’s not a baby any more, Ramón.” Blissful sat even straighter, surprised at hearing her mother echo her earlier thoughts. “She needs to know about this.” Sumayyah readjusted her position in the seat. Blissful wondered if her little brother was kicking.

Ramón sighed but didn’t let go of his wife’s hand.

“I know she’s not a baby, but all that stuff happened a lifetime ago…”

“Yes,” she cut through his weak argument. “Her lifetime ago. If Marie hadn’t saved me, none of us would be here. You’ve seen Blissful with Marie. You’ve seen how close they are. I want her to know. ”

Blissful shifted curious eyes between her parents, her stomach rising against a wave of nerves. Was Ma’Marie in trouble? She wanted to move forward but was afraid to bring attention to herself. She looked out of the window as her father turned onto Wilshire. He hadn’t responded to her mother yet, and the waves in Blissful’s belly began to burn. She opened her mouth, maybe to be sick, maybe to ask a question, but her father finally spoke.

“Okay. Okay. I…I didn’t want it in her head. I wanted to keep her safe from all of that.”

Sumayyah turned to him.

“Protecting her doesn’t mean leaving her ignorant.”

He raised their joined hands to his lips.

Blissful had been too busy trying to follow the conversation and failed to notice the museum until the car came to a stop. A line of people covered the block’s length. She’d never seen so many queued up at the museum before. While her father waited for the light to change, Blissful watched a small crowd of men with signs, yelling at the people waiting in line. One sign said, “WOMEN AND HISTORY LIE.”

Her mother turned to her and the smile she gave was sad, like the one she gives when she’s about to give an accountability task. The fiery waves in Blissful’s belly rose again.

“Are you and Daddy through fighting?” she blurted the question, knowing that wasn’t the one she wanted answered.

Sumayyah’s smile relaxed and she shot a quick glance at Ramón, who let his own small smile smooth away some of his worry.

“Yes, BiBi. I think we’re finished.” She turned more fully and her face shifted into serious lines. “I guess you’ve figured out that we’re going to the museum today.” Blissful’s eyes began to eat away at her face, and Sumayyah tried to think of a way to lessen her anxiety. “There’s a new exhibit we think it’s important you see.”

By this time, Ramón had parked the car and was opening Blissful’s door. He walked her around to her mother who’d placed her feet on the ground but had remained seated. Sumayyah took Blissful’s hands and pulled her close.

“Does it have something to do with Ma’Marie?” Blissful asked, keeping her eyes on her mother’s fingers.

Sumayyah lightly shook their hands until Blissful looked up at her.

“Yes and no. In the exhibit, you will see something that Ma’Marie was a part of, something that she saved me from. There might even be a picture or two of her. The pictures… The exhibit will show some of the… the things she doesn’t like to talk about.” Sumayyah glanced up at Ramón who had turned his tight features away and watched teenage boys power by on their bikes.

“Ma’Marie won’t be the only person in the exhibit. There’ll be a lot of other women telling their stories about a part of our history here. I don’t want to tell you too much about it ‘cause you’re a smart girl and can figure out stuff on your own, but some of it will be very sad, and some of it won’t. I do want you to make me a promise, though, okay?”

Blissful nodded her head. Her stomach had calmed down, but it still felt shaky. The museum was going to tell her something bad, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know it.

“I need you to promise that you won’t ask Ma’Marie about any of this stuff until she brings it up, okay?”

Blissful looked up at her dad, and even though his reassuring smile was missing its dimples, she took it as a good sign.

“I promise not to mention anything to Ma’Marie unless she says it first.”

“That’s my girl,” Sumayyah beamed at her daughter. She eased from the car and reached back for Blissful’s hand.

“Come on, Bibi. Let’s go see why Ma’Marie gave you your name.”

Boiler | The 50th Precinct | Kingsbridge, The Bronx

by Monk, New York City, NY, USA

The 50th Precinct rises four stories above bullet-ridden aluminum walls, a soot-stained brick box only two blocks from the new W. 238th Street el station, itself a symbol of Mayor Jimmy Chu's urban renewal plan. Took two days for the train station's support branches to congeal, another three for its pollution-absorbing carapace to harden, then two weeks to install the responsive sub-flooring into the platform, made of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps. The blocks' slip against one another as people walk the platform, generating power through the dynamo principle, converting motion into current, fed directly to the third rail. Mayor Chu's motto is 'New York: Powered by the People.' 238th Street station, a twisting ceramic and chrome thing grown by Brasilian engineers, is a monument to that credo. By contrast, nearby Kennedy High School is 1,534 students over its legal limit, staffed by a skeleton crew of tenured crones and guileless substitutes. Chu closed the Senior Services office on 232nd Street, suspended weekday recycling pickup, stripped the 50th Precinct's staff to its bone marrow, and staged rolling blackouts all summer to plug his hemmoraging budget. That's just in Kingsbridge. Chu's privation of the central and northeast neighborhoods have become legends to scare children at night: abandoned ghost stations on the 4/5/6 line, home to bizarre subterranean monster tribes. Cannibals roaming the abandoned gardens along Pelham Parkway. Packs of mutant dogs on Webster Avenue. Rogue bands of Bangladeshi death-midgets pillaging White Plains Road.

Throughout the Bronx, Mayor Jimmy Chu is burned in effigy.

Detective Tiny Schwarzbaum steps over Mayor Chu's torched likeness and some lightly toasted protest signs, waddling through the 50th Precinct's security checkpoint at Kingsbridge Avenue. No one greets him. He is a breathing version of 238th Street station: segmented tentacles where his arms should be, flat red plates instead of eyes, weird metamaterials woven into the fatty tissues that make up most of his ungainly mass, and the pairing apparatus in his head that painfully emotes omniscient Big Bug's needs. He's a chimera, and not a cheap one. Real cops collect welfare so Tiny Schwarzbaum can wipe his ass with multi-million dollar snake-arms. Another reason he works his beat alone.

50th Precinct's lobby smells of piss, blood, and vomit. Biological decompilers keep the big white room sterile, but the stink predates the floor treatment. Wall straight ahead looks like ink pressed between sheets of glass. Ripple in the surface brings up the Precinct's compiled intelligence, really just an overgrown administrative routine written with generic, inoffensive front end. In this case, an ethnically neutral matron dubbed 'Marge', whose kindly monotone pours over the intercom.

"Detective Schwarzbaum," the lobby drones. "Your shift does not begin for another fourteen hours. Do you need assistance?"

"Left something in my locker," he replies.

"Very well," the compiled intelligence says. "Have a good evening, Detective."

Walls to the left give way to staff facilities. Door to the right is the booking area and holding cells. Off hours, Marge won't let him over there. Too many 'escaped' prisoners. 50th Precinct's staff facilities were offices until fifteen years ago, since converted to a single common space, dotted with modular data cradles where detectives process their case footage, and Marge processes forensic input. Cube-bunks for midnighters to sleep off their shifts. Plastic lockers for a few personal effects. Mixed command center/barracks. Schwarzbaum duckwalks past cot-like data cradles to his locker, where he grabs a heavy lacquered box filled with lead slugs, and swaps it with an equally weighted brown plastic bag. Marge keeps track of locker content by weight, which is the upside to Chu's cutbacks. Modern precincts down in Manhattan can actually smell personal items, and would know the brown bag is filled with half a pound of sprocket: black tar heroin stamped out with synthetic Sonoran desert toad secretion. Opiate and powerful hallucinogenic. Street value of a small house on the Long Island Sound. Schwarzbaum's swag from an earlier shakedown, and the gift his Captain has been expecting.

Because while Tiny Schwarzbaum may be a monster, he knows what loyalty is.

After all, the basement IED that tore him apart could have left him a cripple. It was Captain Ranjitsinhji who made it his personal mission to ensure Schwarzbaum got his due. Was it the sleek cosmetic job that legendary Tom Dunwitty got? Of course not, because Lt. Dunwitty caught an explosive shell to the torso, saving then-Mayor Abdullah, and worked the Financial District. Up in the Bronx, Schwarzbaum was lucky his prostheses weren't powered by rubberbands or wheel-spinning hamsters. But Captain Ranjitsinhji used his connections to get at Lt. Dunwitty, and finessed the public figure into taking pity on poor Tiny Schwarzbaum. Suddenly, the newsfeeds were running stories day and night about the poor cop up in Kingsbridge breathing through a tube after disarming a bomb in the projects. It became an election issue. Mayor Abdullah, who owed his life to a cop, was seen as ungrateful for not approving Schwarzbaum's medical procedures. Jimmy Chu's sloganeering pushed the public over the top. The three-time incumbent lost. Bitterly. And knew exactly who to blame. From the reaches of political oblivion, Abdullah reached out one last time, and sabotaged Tiny's future.

No sleek bionic arms.

No new miraculous, life-like eyes.

Just these horrific flailing things, flat plastic lenses, constant annoyance of Big Bug paired to his frontal lobe, and transfer from Anti-Terror into Vice: the NYPD's graveyard.

In the end, Schwarzbaum knows he got off lucky. The sprocket in his locker is his Captain's painkiller. Only thing that evens him out these days. Mayor Abdullah had a lot of people invested in his incumbency. Powerful people. When the house of cards fell, it mostly landed on Ranjitsinhji. Or more accurately, on his beautiful family.

Who have been missing since Mayor Jimmy Chu's inaugural address.

SOUTH SIDE

by J. Cheek, Austin, TX, USA

The car looked out of place as it rumbled over the freshly paved, jet black surface of Manor Rd. The neatly manicured leaves on the little trees planted on the median stirred as it drove past, as if in revulsion at the small trail of blue smoke wafting sickly out of its tail pipe. All around, everything new and fresh looking, and here, a ‘41 Ford with a maroon paint job and a light blue right quarter panel lurched past, hung over on off-brand gasoline and oil oozing through cracked gaskets.

Marcos sympathized with it as he stood on the bright, clean concrete curb, watching as it drove through the intersection, around a bend, and out of sight. Thank goodness for a little cloud cover this morning, so that he could bear to be outdoors. In his head was a dull pressure and in his muscles, a jittery tiredness. His eyes had bags and his short, black hair was flattened and pushed upward at odd angles all over his head. In his mouth was an odd taste, a combination of morning breath, liquor, and her. Two flights of stairs were a chore, but he kept his head upright as he climbed up them deliberately, fumbling in his pocket for the keys to his condo as he reached the top.

Walking in, he set them on the counter, and crossed the hardwood floor to the fashionable sectional sofa, on which he dropped down unceremoniously, yawning. The clock on the TV told him it was 10:42 on this Sunday morning. He pondered this as his phone buzzed insistently in his hip pocket. According to the caller ID, it was Steve.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end came back far too enthusiastically for Marcos’ current state: “Southsiiiide!”

After a brief grunt, he replied, “What up, pimp?”

“Shit. Just tryin’ to be like you, man, gettin’ down with them freaks.”

“Shut up, puto. Don’t even hate. That’s what I get for goin’ down to SoCo.”

“Man, that shit was fun. I’m not even hatin’. ¿Que te pasó? How was it?”

Marcos wasn’t in a condition to relate everything that had gone on that night. Even if he had been, the exact details were a little bit foggy, due to the liquor and weed. A few details stuck in his mind clearly, however. He traced back the start of their evening to Fusion, a swanky lounge on 7th with glowing blue glass tubes and pricey drinks; the sort of place where one could meet a pretty, blonde personal banker or paralegal, hoping eventually to find someone a little higher up the food chain, but you’d do for now.

Austin had grown rapidly in the last 45 years. The technology industry continued to be good to the city, and brought tens of thousands of new jobs to the area, and people to fill them all. The city had nearly doubled in population since the millennium and there was a lot of money here, much of it in the interest-bearing checking accounts of young professionals such as Marcos and Steve. The University of Texas continued to be a major hub in the city, with a population of roughly 72,000 students. These two facts combined to make an ever-expanding demand for nightlife, and the already large downtown nightclub scene had nearly tripled in size in the last 50 years.

Thus, they had to take a train when they took the 13-block trek down to Florentino’s on South Congress Ave. to meet Steve’s cousin. The bar was dim, and a mix of Tejano, dance, and slow jams boomed roundly out of the jukebox. The crowd was a mixed bag, but the two young men stuck out in their dress shirts and expensive-looking shoes. Truthfully, they may as well have been white people in this crowd, because once you took the bridge over Town Lake, it was like a different city. Austin was always segregated to some degree, but gentrification on the east side, former home of its lower-income (and mostly non-white) citizens had pushed them south. Even Marcos’ luxury condo sat on land that had been check cashers and low rent apartments 20 years ago.

He’d taken a break from the loud, joyful, drunk conversation of Steve’s cousin’s friends to speak to one girl, however, and ten minutes later, found himself dancing to a sad, slow Mexican waltz with her. As the tune faded out in the flaccid jukebox speakers, she whispered something to him, and a nod to Steve was all the notification he gave that they were leaving.

“Oh you know,” he spoke into the phone. “We went back to her place, it was good.”

“Right on. Did you…?”

Indeed he did. Tiny ,one room apartment. Squeaky bed. Roach end of a spliff still burning in the ashtray. Heaven.

A simple “Yup,” was all he related of this to his friend.

“How was she?”

At this point he became slightly more animated, “Man, shit is crazy down there. You wouldn’t believe.”

“Right on, right on. Manchaca mackin’. I see you, pimp.”

In truth, she didn’t live near Manchaca Rd., but this was no time to get caught up in details. The ride home in that world-weary car hadn’t been too pleasant, but it was nice of her to offer, anyway. When he got out, he kissed her and said he would call, but they both knew that was unlikely. She was quite clearly from the south side, and he, equally as clearly, was not.

Steve asked, “What are you doin’ later?”

“Pssssh…sleepin’, fool. I’ll holla.”

“Holla at me then, guey!”

As he flipped the phone closed and set it on the floor, his eyelids were already closing.

Dry River

by zesi, Atlanta, GA, USA

The Rio Grande, the border of Texas and Mexico

The name Trevor Reyes, Border Control glints off his badge in the unbearable sun, unsympathetic to all human life, regardless of lado. His green-blue eyes are the only safe water in sight; he has a Camelback IV keeping him hydrated. Otherwise, he’d be dead and stinking like the viejos he picks up, lucky enough to get through all the border shit, but run dry and ragged like so many of the creeks here. They flooded the Rio with all the water they could find around here; hired a biologist, who, in his supreme rational mind, decided that to make the territory more dangerous and less livable, they needed a river of waste to stay flowing, and the land around to die. It’s only Texas, after all. It’s only Mexico, tambien. Care has been carefully excised from his scientific method, the concerns of human life beyond that of a man beyond humanity. Green should grow in pockets.

Trevor’s badge is what keeps him and the others from being picked up here. Ex-coyotes, gangstas, gangsters, petty thieves, drug runners, and tejanos sin viviendas, como Trevor, whose town has turned into a gashed land, the land cracked deep enough to lose a baby or dog in, hemorrhaging its residents, who would pray at their altars if they still believed in the strength of altars, of gods. “Dios ya se fue,” said Trevor’s mother, and she, too, fue a otro lugar, al norte. At one time when she was little, she’d say, she could cross the border, see her other family, the home language ringing loud in her ears, the home food siting warm in her belly, the home people everywhere, to touch and to watch be. With the coming of la fuerza at the border, their voices became echoes, and with the land dead now, the home language just faintly sounded, and only between her two ears. She sent him a letter, Hijo, she said, I stay in Oklahoma, Hijo, she said, why are you still there?, Hijo, she said, why not move here with me? Hijo, she did not say in ink, but in the faint hum between her ears, don’t you remember me, the music I come from?

Trevor sits, sighs, no dead bodies today, their remains smell likes God’s farts, powerful, lingering. Reconnaissance, maybe they have moved further down the river. This is his favorite, to walk in an abandoned place, the work running in his subconscious, his alert mind contemplating dinner, a new shirt for his date, sex with air conditioning. They can run, but they can’t hide, his commander said and smiled, his gold tooth the same color as his sweating skin. He does not think of his mother here, he does not think of Mexico. He thinks of the border, of himself simultaneously as a cowboy, a vigilante of justice, a gatekeeper. He has never been to Mexico-Mexico, it does not exist at the border’s jointly-controlled no man’s land. He could never go because he could get stuck there, his passport stolen or his body held for ransom. Still, when he was little and the wind was right, the smell of Mexico would go over the river and reach him. But that his been some time now. And even with his mother’s food and her Mexinglish, he knew that there was not the same as here. He has convinced himself of this country being his patria, this Texas, this United States, his for the taking. Like his mother had, like los blancos that had crossed so long ago. While the taste of promised freedom had become bitter, acrid in his mother’s mouth, he ate it all, like a plate of meat and three. Consumed by the hunger, he digested without tasting. Maybe he could marry Brittany, Mexican in that 1/16th of her that is her last name, blonde, perfect, a could-be willing wife, a supplicant to his ambition. Their kids could have his eyes, her skin and pedigree, his smarts. Could live where they want, do what they want, take care of Mommy and Daddy when they get old.


His eyes search for the border language, directional signs, rosaries, shoes, worthless money of their home saying in its silence, come this way, you can get there this way. When he finds it, he pockets it. He searches for the satellite jammers, homemade from computer parts and stolen telecommunication parts, that the smarter ones plant to give themselves some lead time before they meet La Llorona™, the anti-illegal security system. He marks all that he finds on his map, beaming his data back to satellite, the data they’ve been collecting for twenty five years, an ever shifting collection of dots around the Rio’s expanse, moving like the desert this has now become. They joke on both lados and call it the Little Sahara.

He sits down for his lunch, unpacks some shade from his backpack. His alert bracelet sounds. Shit, he mumbles with mustarded bologna crumbs falling out his mouth. Illegals fucking up my lunch.