Read Imperial for Free Online Page B

checkpoint. What happened next was not surprising at all. A man in Border Patrol green came aboard, with a pistol in his belt, and sunglasses perched upon his cap like fabled Argus’s extra eyes. He commanded all passengers to ready their identification. The old lady across the aisle got out her green card. (Her generation used to call a green card “mica,” because it came inside a shiny envelope like a sheet of that mineral.) The Mexican businessman beside me showed his visa, looking sad. Argus examined my passport with a quick, coldly searching look. (Aside from the driver and Argus, I was often the only Caucasian on that bus.) Now another Argus invited himself to this feast of identification and recognition.—Are you a United States citizen? I heard him say, and silence answered him.—The two Arguses took away a slender boy in a blue cap. His head hung low as he trudged forward between our seats. It was very hot outside, and flies came through the open door. The passengers craned their heads to watch him being led away. A moment later, the first Argus returned, and crooked his finger at someone behind me, as if he were slowly squeezing the trigger of a pistol. Another young man came sadly forward. Neither of them came back. The bus driver slammed the door closed, and off we went, north toward Indio. For a time the bus was silent, and then someone laughed too loudly.
    That was why some solos, tough, brave, or merely stupid, chose to walk. Their ears burning in the sun, they found a place to hide until nightfall, then pushed on. When their water ran out, they sucked on the vague green sweetness of an unripe cotton ball. One cannot eat it, for even in its immature state the inside is full of white fibers. That is why younger is better. Younger is juicier. At least it gives one a little energy. But between the purple-hearted alfalfa fields along the border and the citrus orchards near Coachella one finds many utterly sun-exposed places—no fields or orchards, just green brush already going orange-brown in the heat. Yes, one can follow the East Highline or the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but now we know that that may not pan out. And the New River, well, that’s hell. It might be wiser just to trudge the unremarked dust. But then, at a hundred fifteen degrees Fahrenheit, sucking on a cotton ball will carry a fugitive only so far. From Calexico north through El Centro and then Imperial to Brawley is not so bad, or might not be if the Border Patrol refrained from preying upon that route (here we might quote Officer Dan Murray again: If we see someone with mud on their shoes, we just say, c’mon, get in the car!), but then, as the Salton Sea begins to widen and devour the horizon, it comes time to choose: east side or west side. Either way one finds only nothingness tan and flat between sea and mountains, just going on and on, salt-baked sand and stinking dead birds, multicolored railroad cars speeding like cloud-blocks in a windy sky. Yes, the bodies walk by night, but from Calexico to Indio is nearly ninety miles if one stays on the road. 4 A well-trained soldier can walk this distance in a night and day; most people cannot. The sun will find them. It toasts the haystacks as brown as nuts. One solo whom I met in Mexicali told me how he had lain in a cave of honey-colored hay bales near the All-American Canal all day, then trudged the thirty miles from Calexico up to Niland between dusk and dawn. (Carlos had taken two days and nights to make the same trip, but Carlos was out of shape. Moreover, this other solo had crossed in the autumn, when the nights were longer and cooler.) Having the knowledge or good fortune to avoid the aerial gunnery range to the east, he followed the Ho Chi Minh Trail all the way up until it intersected Highway 111, then swung around Calipatria and headed through a long dry patch on the Slab City side. He was arrested in Niland in the middle of the following morning when, stained with dust and sweat, he