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| A Grocery Store on Mexico 2, Southeast of Juarez, Jan. 1992, mixed media diorama, Lloyd Brown |
I don't know why I so often need to start my writing for the day grounded to where I'm physically at, but I do. Perhaps place is my coffee, my starter for, my transition to, something more.
So here it goes: It's 7:12 a.m., on a brisk Sunday morning in November. The sky behind the juniper blobbed ridge outside my front window is a frosty, pale blue, with a yellow tinge towards the bottom, right above the juniper-splotches. The crooked, knobby arms of an oak shatter the frosted blue like an untended crack in a windshield. It is 33 degrees outside. The heater hums.
Soon I will put hot water on the stove for a cup of Pero, my replacement for coffee. Then, somehow I will have to get myself from here to the other side of the border, over 841 miles away, and to a time over 25 years ago. Such is the work of a writer.
Perhaps what will transport me is the light. Both places have that same unfiltered light that ignites and sculpts ridges and ranges with stunning clarity. The low-angle winter light was even more intense there than here, for the ranges were far less vegetated, and light on stone told most of the story.
On the Mexico side of the river, known there as the Rio Bravo, even the houses were stone--concrete block covered in plaster. I have an image in my head now. It's one of Lloyd's dioramas, A Grocery Store on Mexico 2, Southwest of Juarez, Jan. 1992. I may not be able to take credit for the artistry of the work, but I can take credit for its existence. We were clearly on that drive because of me. I had to share my little slice of Mexico with my brother, as I will do here with you.
The painting is of a line of three connected buildings along a two-lane highway on a bright winter's day. In the left hand corner there is an old rusted, red pick-up from the 50s next to an elm and a telephone pole. To the viewer's right is a small haystack of old bales starting to erode at the edges. Then there is a do-it-yourself combination car port and patio with an elm growing up the center of it. The beams sag with the weight of time and of limbs laid across them for shade. The house itself is white stucco well-aged with a flat roof and the stains of time, all tinged with that stark yellow horizontal light. A homemade ladder, like what you'd see on a pueblo, leans against the house, as does an old screen door. Electrical wires connect to long metal poles attached to the façade. Below them rust stains trail down the stucco. Old faded curtains adorn the two front windows. The place appears to still be inhabited, although once can't be certain. There is no car out front, and the screen door appears to be leaning against the front door, which would make entry difficult. So perhaps, it is abandoned, although probably not for too long.
The building to the right, however, is another matter. It is but a rock shell. The roof is gone, and so is the back wall, and even part of the front. It is made of rough stone.
And then there is a store with a what appears to be red Coca-Cola sign on the white stucco façade and a matching red Coca-Cola machine on the right side of the front door. I don't know if the store is open or not, but there is a mud-covered green Chevy pickup from the late 70s out front with two guys sitting on the raised tailgate. Perhaps, someone ran in for drinks and snacks. Or perhaps the old store is now a residence, and someone left the truck running and ran in for his wallet.
Beyond these three isolated buildings are fallow fields and desert ranges, that though not included in the cropped surface of the painting, I know are sculpted by that same stark light.
This is the Mexico I know and love and spent hours upon hours exploring. To be honest, it's not all that different on the U.S. side, but different enough that I was never satisfied with my knowledge of my world ending at the river. Perhaps, in that regard, I was different than most Anglo-Americans living along the border. They go to Juarez for business, for dinner, to take family members for a night out when they come to town. Many of them even know the language. I didn't. But they did not know the streets and highways the way I did. I knew those country roads almost as well as I know the county roads outside my hometown. They are burned forever into my memory. I know the fields around El Porvenir almost as well as the fields in this valley.
Most of the Mexicans I met along the way didn't understand that. Neither did the U.S. Border Patrol. I always hated being asked upon return, "What were you doing in Mexico?" I don't know why I always felt the need to be honest, but I did. I'd say, "to take photographs". They seldom believed me, and so my car would be searched very thoroughly almost every time. If I had said, "to get drunk and laid," they'd have let me sail through unquestioned, unsearched, for that's what they expected of a single male my age crossing the border. However, the border patrol agents were not the only ones to question my motives.
I remember once I was traveling from Juarez to El Porvenir along Mexico 2, and almost all by itself, among fields was this swimming pool. If I remember right, it was near Guadalupe Bravos. It amazed me to find such a place out in the middle of nowhere, and I have to admit some snobby U.S. attitude in me thought especially in Mexico. The light was right, and it was beautiful, so I stopped. There were some girls in their early teens diving, and I went up to the fence to take some pictures. Just as I was aiming my camera, I heard, "You like girls young? I can get you some." I turned around and saw some guy in his twenties smiling a slimy, knowing smile.
I did, without doubt think the scene, including the girls, was beautiful. And I was, without doubt, yearning. Yet, he had totally gotten the wrong idea. What I was looking for was a connection to my youth, for a way back home to my rural roots. I felt alone, lost. Though in an entirely different country, in a land where I didn't even know the language, somehow those country roads south of the border felt more like home than all of the years I spent living in Dallas. The hay fields there could have been the hay fields out by the lava ridge west of my home town, and that pool, though in a field instead of the town square, called to me like the pool of my youth. I wasn't seeking sex that day. I was seeking something quite the opposite: innocence. At twenty-something, I already felt very old and world-weary.
No one could know that though. Both the Border Patrol and the Mexicans could only assume what they knew well from experience: United States looks south of the border with ill-intentions. No gringo crosses the border seeking for a route, if only psychologically, home. Thus, I was relieved when a friend told me of a route through Sunland Park, New Mexico that avoided the official border crossings altogether, which although illegal, saved me from the shakedowns on my way back to the States. I took it often, an outlaw in deed, but one only seeking peace and wholeness in a foreign land. I'm not sure why I felt I couldn't find it at home, but I didn't. Stubbornness, I guess. Too proud to admit that I needed Dry Creek like air, too proud to admit that I just wasn't built to make it anywhere beyond the fields, juniper and creek bottoms that were woven into the fabric of my soul from an early age.
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