the DO NOT CROSS yellow tape stirring in any breeze. In the stillness of their abiding, they resemble the lone dog who sleeps in the afternoon street. Hunching over cigarettes or kicking back their morning beers, they stare carefully at all the traffic going by, when there is any traffic, which is far from always.
Day after day I went there, hoping to invade their thoughts and steal their stories,but most refused to talk to me, eyeing me with a hatred as lushly soft as a smoke tree sweeping its hair against a sand dune. In July their watchfulness might perhaps have been diluted by the presence of all the migrant workers, the men sitting or squatting under trees, drinking out of bottles, the boys in sweaty white T-shirts sleeping in the grass whom I remembered from the previous summer, but it was not summer now. The shadowy men glared at me, their Spanish insults and obscenities also glaring like the glancing glints of sunlight on cars, which in Imperial are themselves as bright as suns; and then they looked away, far away at a long vertebral column of boxcars ghosting across the desert like a procession of hay bales. On the first afternoon one hard man strolled over, making a sexual proposition which involved himself, myself, his wife and the woman who had driven me to the park and who now sat in her car with the windows rolled up. I could see that my sweetheart was anxious, and I felt a trifle anxious about her, but my intention that day was to stay only for a quarter-hour and learn what if anything might be possible here, and since it was daylight and she was in the car, I decided not to worry. The man’s face was as wrinkled as the cracked rows of earth in a sugarbeet field in high summer. Later, when I was photographing another man with the big camera, two others suddenly called that I’d better look out, and I saw him over there importuning her. (She’d rolled the window down; it was getting hot in the car.) The man was willing to tell me all about Mecca, but he required a thousand dollars, because it was “a deep story, the secret kind.” By the end, he’d adjusted his demand to a dollar and twenty-five cents. He was ecstatic when I gave him five. In case I might keep my promise to send a copy of his photograph, he wrote down the number of a P.O. box in Mecca, but on subsequent days and nights, when I was hoping to find him, the other men all insisted that he lived in Palm Desert. I never saw him again.
In fact he’d been worth his five dollars, for when a tall, gentle-looking old cyclist came by to inspect me, the man of the sexual proposition had interpreted for the two of us. The cyclist allowed that he was a coyote. He was willing to tell me “everything,” he said, and smilingly wrote down his address, which turned out to be right across from the railroad tracks. What location could be more strategic? An old lady laughingly told me that right there, where there’d formerly been bushes around the tracks, some clever Mecca boys had made a hole and hidden, waiting for the train to stop. Then they’d blowtorched their way through the train’s underbelly and stolen microwaves, stereos and other appliances. After that, the train company had cut down all the bushes. This old lady had often seen pollos leap off the freight train from Algodones. That was how the tall cyclist had come. Now for a fee he helped others do the same. The old lady said that sometimes the train didn’t slow, and then the bodies had to ride all the way to Palm Springs, which was considerably more dangerous. Whenever that happened, the tall cyclist lost his investment. All this, of course, was hearsay. The cyclist and I agreed that I’d come the following night at eight-o’-clock. But when the taxi pulled up on that dark dirt street at the appointed time, the cyclist refused to show, although the neighbors assured me that he was inside his fence watching me; and so it went the next day and the next night and the following day. The men
Day after day I went there, hoping to invade their thoughts and steal their stories,but most refused to talk to me, eyeing me with a hatred as lushly soft as a smoke tree sweeping its hair against a sand dune. In July their watchfulness might perhaps have been diluted by the presence of all the migrant workers, the men sitting or squatting under trees, drinking out of bottles, the boys in sweaty white T-shirts sleeping in the grass whom I remembered from the previous summer, but it was not summer now. The shadowy men glared at me, their Spanish insults and obscenities also glaring like the glancing glints of sunlight on cars, which in Imperial are themselves as bright as suns; and then they looked away, far away at a long vertebral column of boxcars ghosting across the desert like a procession of hay bales. On the first afternoon one hard man strolled over, making a sexual proposition which involved himself, myself, his wife and the woman who had driven me to the park and who now sat in her car with the windows rolled up. I could see that my sweetheart was anxious, and I felt a trifle anxious about her, but my intention that day was to stay only for a quarter-hour and learn what if anything might be possible here, and since it was daylight and she was in the car, I decided not to worry. The man’s face was as wrinkled as the cracked rows of earth in a sugarbeet field in high summer. Later, when I was photographing another man with the big camera, two others suddenly called that I’d better look out, and I saw him over there importuning her. (She’d rolled the window down; it was getting hot in the car.) The man was willing to tell me all about Mecca, but he required a thousand dollars, because it was “a deep story, the secret kind.” By the end, he’d adjusted his demand to a dollar and twenty-five cents. He was ecstatic when I gave him five. In case I might keep my promise to send a copy of his photograph, he wrote down the number of a P.O. box in Mecca, but on subsequent days and nights, when I was hoping to find him, the other men all insisted that he lived in Palm Desert. I never saw him again.
In fact he’d been worth his five dollars, for when a tall, gentle-looking old cyclist came by to inspect me, the man of the sexual proposition had interpreted for the two of us. The cyclist allowed that he was a coyote. He was willing to tell me “everything,” he said, and smilingly wrote down his address, which turned out to be right across from the railroad tracks. What location could be more strategic? An old lady laughingly told me that right there, where there’d formerly been bushes around the tracks, some clever Mecca boys had made a hole and hidden, waiting for the train to stop. Then they’d blowtorched their way through the train’s underbelly and stolen microwaves, stereos and other appliances. After that, the train company had cut down all the bushes. This old lady had often seen pollos leap off the freight train from Algodones. That was how the tall cyclist had come. Now for a fee he helped others do the same. The old lady said that sometimes the train didn’t slow, and then the bodies had to ride all the way to Palm Springs, which was considerably more dangerous. Whenever that happened, the tall cyclist lost his investment. All this, of course, was hearsay. The cyclist and I agreed that I’d come the following night at eight-o’-clock. But when the taxi pulled up on that dark dirt street at the appointed time, the cyclist refused to show, although the neighbors assured me that he was inside his fence watching me; and so it went the next day and the next night and the following day. The men
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