TONK

The last time I was suspended without pay, it was because I got plastered in Tijuana, which is not why I got in trouble because everyone goes to TJ to get shitfaced, but apparently, I puked- no, not puked, scream puked, the entire length of the bar at the finest of cantinas, La Incognita Tijuana where I had been tomiendo tequila todo el dia. And, as such, I knew that to be my indisputable cue to get my culo out of Mexico, but when I reached for my wallet to settle what surely was a sizable tab, it was gone. I was so borracho I let myself get pick-pocketed. As you can surmise, that’s when la policia showed up, and I was off to the juzgado. Now, when you fuck up in Mexico, no abogado is coming to your rescue, and the one phone call you’re going to make is for the wire transfer to pay los oficiales who will just as soon explode a can of soda up your nose. But I’m not just any American gringo. I’m a United States Border Patrol Agent, call sign Victor 297.

That’s not the story I’m here to tell, but you seem curious enough, and since you probably don’t know squat about the actual border - la linea real- I will finish so you have some context about this place. So, the Mexicans have a unique opportunity. They can now negotiate for my return. With the United States government. In other words, they can name their price, but Gracias a dio that my station chief was fluent in Mexican-style deal-making, being himself un Mexicano, so what happened, which I’m not supposed to know, is that guns and a beat-up Bronco went south and I went north. I spent a week on the beach, and Washington never knew una pinche cosa. Not a fuckin’ thing. But this time, it’s different. This time, Washington is calling, but I don’t really care about that. It’s the papers. They say I’m racist, that the Border Patrol is racist, and it’s complete bullshit.

Before I tell you why Ignacio Mendes, father of five from La Ciudad Juarez, is dead, and I’m the one who killed him- but it was his own fault- I want you to know something. I'm Mexican. Yup. Full guacamole. Surprised? A Mexican in the Border Patrol? No, I’m kidding, of course. Es un jiste. But guess what? The Border Patrol is seventy-five percent Mexican. From the Chief Patrol Agent in Washington right on down to the rank and file. You didn’t know that? You thought we were a bunch of gringos? Nope, the Border Patrol is and always has been a Mexican outfit, and we all habla. But not you. You haven’t understood a single pinche palabra, but you’re not going to learn Spanish, are you? Because in America, we speak English, the language of freedom. So why the chinga is everything in Spanish? Why not Italian? Or Polack? Hebrew, Dutch, Irish, Chinese? How come, in this supposed Great Melting Pot, where everyone came from somewhere else, nobody speaks their mother tongue? And we need to press one for English? You want to know why? I’ll tell you. Because of tonks, that’s why.

Tonk. That’s Border Patrol slang for illegals. Pollos, wetbacks. I shouldn’t tell you this, but tonk is the sound a baton makes when it bounces off las cabezas. Oh please, don’t give me that police brutality crap. Let me explain una pinche cosa o dos to you. We ain’t the police. Somos La Migra. Inmigracion. That doesn’t mean much to you, but it strikes terror in the corazones of illegal aliens.When the night swallows the day, and the ocean swallows the sun, this border literally hemorrhages bodies. I make more arrests in an hour than the LAPD does in a month. I carry a .357 Magnum, hollow points and one set of handcuffs, and in three years, I’ve never used either. Why? Because I don’t have to. When I jump out from the chaparral, and yell “La Migra! Manos Aribba!” groups will stop dead in their tracks. Not because we are respected, but because we are feared.

This is a forsaken landscape, fraught with treachery, and possessed by the infernal stench of smoldering tires that wafts over from the hillsides on the Tijuana outskirts like a silent Mexican assault, where it befriends the desert perfumes of wild anise, Mexican oregano, and sage. When the brine of the ocean air drifts inland, the weight of its dew shellacks your uniform in this miasma. The skeletons of abandoned smuggling wrecks -the ones with the cajones to cut a hole in the fence with a blowtorch and drive a car through it- that have come to rest where they pitched headlong down the side of a canyon litter the land like headstones in a cemetery of rusting dreams. This is where dreams come to die. En los canons de suertos muertos. The canyons of dead dreams.

There were three of us and six of them. They had been standing, waist-deep, in the pond going on six hours, and nothing pisses off a Border Patrol agent more than Mexicans standing in their own shit. You heard me. Imperial Beach, where I’m stationed, is literally floating on the atomic taco diarrhea that Mexico dumps into the Tijuana River. In other words, they send us both their shit and the asses it came out of, and on some nights, when the moonlight hits just right, it all glows a nuclear green. Which is why we won’t go in it, and Mexicans will. They will stand, waist-deep, in their own shit water for days while we wait it out on the banks of the river, or, in this case, of the IB pond, until they surrender.

Listen, we’re not the ones screaming in WalMart to speak English in America. We all habla, but don’t tell me these people, of whatever ethnicity, are here to live la suena Americana, because they ain’t. They are here to live off the American Dream. They are defrauding America out of trillions because neither they nor the people who hire them pay a red cent in taxes. Why hire an American when you can hire a tonk, and skate out of Medicare, and Social Security, and unemployment obligations, not to mention any headaches from OSHA or workman’s compensation claims, or discrimination, or harassment, or unionization? Hiring Mexican grants total freedom from all labor laws because they will never complain, because they can’t complain. Meanwhile, they drive on roads they don’t pay for, and live in safe structures guaranteed by code enforcement cops whose salaries they don’t pay, and drink clean water, breathe clean air, eat inspected food, have utilities like plumbing and electricity; in other words, they don’t pay for the things that make America, America, and not a shithole like Mexico. But what I really can’t understand is they have the same constitutional rights as we do. I just don’t get it, and this is why I had to turn in my gun and badge. Because of some pinche pollo who denied the direct orders of the United States government that his family is suing. You see what I’m saying? America has changed. It is not the one I grew up in.

Everyone has rights now. Not the right to smoke in a bar, but the right to be free from smoke in a bar. When I grew up, the obstetrician who delivered me probably had a PallMall dangling off his lip. Ok, I exaggerate, but the Seventies, man, shit was different. Freedom meant something different than today. It meant freedom to do stupid shit, not be protected from it. Hell, if you got the Clap, you were proud because you lived in a country where you could ball enough people to actually get the Clap. Now, you can sue because your coffee was too hot. And win. Tonks get free lawyers and the right to that due process crap, but not if we can fuckin’ help it. They haven’t put cameras in canyons yet.

Listen, we’re not sadistic. Well, not all of us, but we don’t pull hair matted with blood out of our batons at the end of shift anymore. We’re not even supposed to say tonk anymore. They even banned freeway chases because it was our fault that a vanload of tonks careened into the playground of an elementary school during noon recess. Yeah, I’m talking dead kids and dead aliens splattered everywhere. It was really bad, so they even banned foot chases. It took about cinco minutos for the news to reach Mexico, and now we stand and watch as hundreds march straight up the center lane of I-5. On crutches, in wheelchairs, one-eye, one-leg, it’s that kind of parade. But guess what? Not on my watch. Not while I still have my pride.

Jesus, do I sound angry? Well, maybe I am, but you wanna know something? You wanna what’s really bothering me??

I don’t speak Italian.