The Illegal Immigrant Song

It is a narrow two-lane road littered with potholes that run in a straight line for about two miles between to massive fruit farms. Squat brown two and three bedroom public housing units run the length of the road. Equally weathered and battered Ford Pick up trucks, all crammed full of landscaping and farm equipment line the curbs or sit derelict in the tiny driveways and front yards. A few early models Chevy Impalas, El Caminos, and Ford Rancheros, all Low Riders in beautiful candy apple colors reside proudly at strategic locations along the road.

A few empty lots have long dirt roads leading out of them deep into the farms; migrant worker interstates as it were. I am beyond “out of my element” in this small strange throwback to a Third World country right in the heart of Northern California.

Despite two years of high school Spanish I still could only use a handful of words and phrases. I occasionally tried to carry on rudimentary conversations with the native Spanish speakers I was friends with, but the most I ever accomplished was confused stares and laughter. A deep shyness made it hard enough for me to speak to my peers in English much less a second language.

But now I was dead in the middle of this microcosm of a Spanish speaking community that wasn’t known for its hospitality towards white boy gringos.

The first thing I noticed as I cruised slowly down the road was that I was also being noticed by some hard-looking eyes from very barren front yards, from the cars idling beside the dirty curbs, and from front windows, some with curtains, others without.

My Trans Am was still an oxidized stock Fire Engine red at that time, but my intention was to have it painted a deep Candy Apple blue with a red and yellow racing stripe, ala Starsky and Hutchish, which I didn’t realize at the time would turn it into a sporty looking Easter egg.

My friend Horacio had agreed to make the introductions at the small Mexican owned, and for the most part Spanish speaking customers only, auto body repair shop in town. I had always heard that it was the best and cheapest place in a fifty-mile radius to get your car painted at if you could successfully get in there and negotiate a deal somehow. Horacio didn’t speak English all that well, but he spoke it way better than I spoke Spanish and he had a cousin that worked there part-time.

I had gone in there a week earlier and tried to set up an appointment myself, but the mean looking Cholo behind the counter had just laughed at my attempts at Spanish until I apologized and left the shop.

I stopped in front of a house that I thought corresponded with the address Horacio had scrawled on the scrap of paper I was holding. A wrecked silver Datsun sat in the front yard half covered by a clear plastic sheet. I parked along the curb in front of the house hoping that Horacio would see me and come outside.

Dirty tan colored baseball sized blobs pockmarked the road. Tomato season had just finished and these were the unlucky carcasses of the tomatoes that had fallen off the trucks that rumbled out of the fields and transported them to canning factories miles north of this little neighborhood. Across the street from an identical looking house, sans the wrecked Datsun, I heard laughter and some Spanish, the only word of which I caught was “wato”, slang for white boy. The gate to the backyard swung open and I pretended to study the scrap of paper not daring to look up. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the midsections of three bodies approaching my car. Two of them were carrying Bud Lights. I chanced a glance and was relieved to see Horacio was one of the three bodies coming towards my car. The other two guys I vaguely recognized from school. After crossing the street Horacio chugged the rest of his Bud Light and handed the empty bottle to his friends. One of them stuck his head in my window and asked,

“You getting this painted at Westies?”

“I hope so,” I answered.

“Good luck man. Bring it around and show us when it’s done.”

Then Horacio and his friends said a few goodbyes in Spanish and he got in my car.

“Vamos,” he said jokingly as we drove down the street to turn around at the end of the cul-de-sac.

I laughed and pushed an Iron Maiden cassette tape into my cheap deck. Communication wasn’t always easy for us, but one of the main reasons we had become friends was due to a shared love of 70’s and 80’s hard rock and Heavy Metal. I had brought “Number of the Beast” that day because I knew it was one of his favorites.

When we talked to each other it had to be very simple indirect. I often felt our friendship was one of the most honest ones I had. I knew for him, especially here in the barrio, I represented the typical spoiled and soft middle-class white kid that strutted around our high school. And I also knew that on occasion he had at the very least stolen car stereos and probably much more most likely with the two guys we had just left. So, this was more than just a small favor he was doing for me. In my mind, he certainly didn’t owe me anything, but I had let him copy my answers during a test in our history class one time and I wondered if he felt sort of obligation towards me because of that.

We didn’t talk much during the short drive to Westies. He seemed very relaxed and this helped to calm my anxiety as well. When I had gone there by myself there had been a very heavy and hostile vibe to the place. The cold indifference and mocking laughter had gotten my anger up, but fortunately an instinctive sense of self-preservation and cowardice overrode my suicidal boil and I walked out of there with only bruised pride.

I told Horacio about the next day at school and he said, “Oh man, very bad. The hefe, you know the boss there, he big time La Eme. You don’t go there by yourself again. I can help.” Then he had offered to go with me again after he talked to his cousin.

At Westies, for West Side Auto Body, Horacio told me to park in front of the big shop windows, “So they see us. And let me go first.” I obeyed and pulled up to an open space right in front of the shop under the small neon sign that said “West Side Auto, est. 1968”.

He went inside and I followed. There was the same indifferent waiting period that I had experienced the week before. We sat on a simple wooden bench. The lobby was as clean as a dentist’s waiting room. A red and white checkerboard tile floor gleamed under several layers of polished wax. But there were no racks of magazines. Instead, an entire wall from ceiling to floor was covered in pictures of brightly painted cars, mostly early model low riders, which I assumed had all been customers of Westies at one time. A long black wooden counter with a glass countertop and more car pictures ran the length of the room. On the counter there was a simple gray cash register and a white door with a tiny window that led to the shop.

Horacio had lined himself with the little window and sat stock till staring at it intently. A few indistinct faces flashed past as we waited.

Horacio was a little shorter than me, but he had the thick stocky body of a Cruiserweight. He had long straight hair, a sort of square face and a hooked nose that reminded me of the Native Americans I had known in Washington State. A small wiry spider-like guy finally came into the waiting room. Horacio motioned for me to stand as he came into the lobby.

He began speaking what sounded like to me very formal sounding Spanish like the kind I had attempted to learn in school. I thought I caught the word “prima” (cousin) a few times as he spoke. The wiry guy didn’t say anything. Instead, his stare bore into us with his fierce dark eyes. After Horacio’s explanation he nodded and went back into the shop.

“Now we get the hefe,” Horacio said softly.

This time we didn’t have to wait long. The spidery dude returned with another guy, but spun off back into the bowels of the shop before entering the lobby. Horacio stood as soon as he saw the form appear in the tiny window and I rose with him.

If Horacio was a Cruiserweight this guy was a light heavyweight, 6’3, 200 pounds at least, muscular. He looked like a dark-skinned European rather than a Mexican. He had boyish features, but very intense eyes. He was dressed in modest business casuals, black slacks and a light blue long sleeved collared shirt that just barely failed to cover his neck tattoos, the first I had ever seen.

Horacio addressed him again in what sounded like ultra-polite Spanish and I stood there dumbly with my head slightly bowed. Then Horacio turned to me and said, “Tell him what you want.”

I turned to the guy hesitantly started to explain to him how I wanted my car painted pointing out a picture with a car that had the dark blue and then the red for the first stripe and the lemon yellow for the second one.

“Your ride that one?” he asked me in accented, but perfectly understandable English.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”

He stuck his head back into the shop and barked something in Spanish. A different guy that looked vaguely like Horacio, though older and rougher came into the lobby. He was holding a clipboard and a pen. Horacio smiled when he saw him and greeted him looking relieved that his cousin was now involved. We went outside and walked around my car. The boss pointed out a few dings and cracks in the fiberglass explaining that those would cost extra in addition to the paint job. I nodded my head hoping that I wouldn’t have to turn him down if the price was too high.

After inspecting my car we went back in the lobby and the boss took the clipboard from Horacio’s cousin to tally everything up. When he finished he handed it to me asking, “This okay with you?” To my relief the total was four-hundred dollars cheaper than I had planned to pay in the first place. I told him that was a very fair price. He seemed pleased with my answer and told me to bring my car in on Friday. He said they would need it for a week.

My dad followed me over there on Friday night in his Ford Bronco and I handed the keys over to Horacio’s cousin. He said in broken English to pick it up next Friday afternoon. “Fifty-fifty chance it’ll be in Tijuana by Sunday and you’ll never see it again,” my dad said as we drove off.

But on Friday I returned with Horacio and it was parked out front in all its glory. The boss was waiting in the lobby with a big smile on his face. “You like?” he asked as we walked in. I started to reach for my wallet, but Horacio motioned for me to wait.

“You guys want a beer?” the boss asked.

I didn’t normally drink very much and especially when I was driving, but I felt like I would definitely offend him if I refused. He took us in back through the shop to his office handed us both Bud Lights. It was sparsely decorated, but extremely large because on a red platform like they used to have in car dealerships sat a beautiful multi-colored ’67 Impala with murals designs as elaborate as the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.

“First one I ever do,” the boss said gesturing towards it proudly with his beer. I tried to say “It’s fantastic!” in Spanish, but it came out badly and Horacio and the boss just laughed. We finished our beers not saying too much and then he led us back out to the lobby. He pointed out a few things on the receipt that added an extra forty dollars to the total which I kindly agreed to pay. Then he took us outside where Horacio’s cousin was just finishing applying what looked like rubbing compound to the hood. He spent a few minutes explaining about how to wash it and protect the paint before shaking my hand firmly and going back into his office.

Horacio talked for a little bit with his cousin in Spanish and then said he had to get home. I said goodbye and left the parking lot by myself.

On my way home I stopped off at a friend’s house who was a real gearhead. He and his dad came out to admire my car. As I was telling them about where I got it painted at my friend’s dad who was a retired sheriff in town whistled and said, “Lucky you didn’t get your throat cut for your troubles. The owner you met runs La Eme in these parts. He did fifteen years for murder. Runs chop shops and deals heroin.” I didn’t know how to respond, but at that moment I understood Horacio’s formality and the risk he had taken for me in the name of friendship.