Orville took off his headphones and flipped a switch shutting off the electric magnet under the wagon. Fourteen pounds of scrap metal dropped to the ground. He set the brake while Don Pablo jumped down and Dad tied Phone home and Daisy to a hitching post.
What’s up Billy?
Not much Bill, just stretching in the sun and doing my work.
Kind of windy out on that porch ain’t it.
You don’t know the half of it, there’s more wind around here than what you feel blowin right now. What’s up with Don Pablo, he’s quieter than usual.
I think we saw Flo back at a truck stop 30 miles west of here.
You don’t say.
Dad knew Billy when he was a kid growing up in Brooklyn. He first met the kid when he shipped back from Singapore and Billy was hanging around the dock playing three-card Monte. He told Mrs. McCarthy that no good would come of Billy if he continued to hang around the waterfront, and he encouraged her to move west where Billy could grow up in an environment free of gamblers, thieves, and robbers, and where he could learn a useful trade. So, Mrs. McCarthy followed dad’s advice and moved west with Billy and his brother. Billy took to ranch work like a new lottery-winner takes to outbidding everybody on eBay. Every time dad saw Billy he was driving some cow down the road or out of a field. Billy always had a pair of wire cutters dangling from his saddle horn just to help free cows that might get stuck in fences. Dad never could figure out which ranch Billy worked for because he seemed to be driving cows with different brands every time he saw him.
Come the 60’s Billy became a vegetarian and got tangled up with a micro-biotic commune over in Lincoln Co. Then one day he just wandered off from the geodesic dome he was staying in at the commune and we didn’t see him for years. But you know, sometimes the attraction of the familiar is just too powerful, and last year Billy showed up in Mesilla and opened his Ashram, Yoga Retreat, and Gun Cleaning Service. Now days he just sits around in an Ingyar yoga position, listening to Bob Dylan while cleaning other folk’s guns.
So, I take it you three need to rest over for a spell?
Yep, taken' a break from Arizona, Orville’s got some sheriff back there in a snit over that burro you see there, we call him Phone Home.
Well, that’s ok with me, stay as long as you like, but I am warning you, things ain’t so quiet around here.
Some real estate cowboy from Rhode Island by the name of Will Divide moved in a while back and started building retirement adobe homes for folks from back east. That in itself ain’t bad, it’s just that now he wants to build a fourteen foot wall around the town to keep Mexicans from wandering through the neighborhood at night when they cross over.
What happened? Did some old lady from Connecticut get scared one night when she found a Mexican family going through her garbage can looking for something to eat or something?
Bill, people been crossing the border and coming this way for years, you know that, it ain’t nothing new, and having a Mexican family rooting around you trash at night looking for something to eat ain’t new either, its less of a nuisance than having Oscar’s dogs knock your can over and strewing last week’s lasagna all down your drive.
Sounds like Mr. Will Divide just sees a chance to make some money by selling a big wall to the town, which in itself ain’t new either; people been trying to get government contracts ever since there was a government. Sometimes I think the only reason there is a government is so that enterprising fellows like Mr. Divide can get their hands on tax payers money.
Yeah, well he's running all over town scaring folks. He says we need a wall to protect ourselves from a terrorist attack which he says is certainly coming. He says that every day more an more Mexicans is becoming Muslim, and that there ain’t nothing worse than a Mexican Muslim. He says they are forming terrorist cells down in Sonora an calling themselves “El Quaeda.” I don’t know much about that, but I do know that he is scaring the heck out of folks and I am seeing more and more business every day here in my gun-cleaning shop, I just wish more folks would sign up for my yoga classes. You know I teach Ingyar yoga Tuesday and Thursday nights, and you could use a good stretch.
Yeah, that may be so, but, listen here. Somebody is always scaring us about something, and somebody is always making money out of it. You remember back in the 50’s, everybody had to have a bomb shelter?
There wasn’t no point in owning one, what sort of world would you come back to if you had to use one? Folks never thought about that.
An if they had they would ‘ve pushed their politicians to stop wasting their money. But they didn’t, and folks like Mr. Divide made a lot of money by selling people holes in the ground lined with concrete. When the Soviet Union went under they looked around for something else to scare up some money. That’s when they starting selling us prisons. And in order to fill the prisons they passed mandatory sentencing laws for a bunch of drug violations. Instead of sending people to rehab, they send folks to prison. If prison could cure people of addiction I wish they would send people to prison for watching too much TV, or for yakking on their cell phones while driving, or using one in a public restroom.
Ain’t nothing worse than hearing the guy in the next stall talking to his girlfriend while dropping a turd.
Yeah well, the concrete and steel lobby was so successful selling us prisons that we now have more’n we need. Texas and several other states got so many prison cells that they rent ‘em out to other states. I hear they got 800 fellows from New York locked up near Abilene. Anyway, you know the funny thing is, Soviet Union is gone, but all them missles and more is still there. Fact is, more countries than you know got nukes these days, but you don't hear anybody making any noise about it.
I guess scaring people about illegal aliens and terrorists is gonna give the concrete and steel folks a regular boon.
You bet’cha, that’s why we been buying stock in concrete and steel companies, and we intend on selling off real soon cause they ain’t gonna build half of the walls people think they are, and we’ll sell the stock while its still going up. Just like we did a few years ago when they started building prisons, and just like we did when they started selling bomb shelters.
Yeah, they make pretty good root cellars. I heard about a guy in Tennessee who turned a big one into a mushroom farm. But what makes you think they aren’t going to build a bunch of walls?
Cause there ain’t gonna be enough money to pay for it.
How come?
Cause they got to pay for that stupid war.
Yeah, that may be, but meanwhile all this talk about illegals and terrorists is taking a heavy toll on the folks around here. People don’t smile as much, or say hello to strangers like they used to. Guys is fraid to wear mustaches, they don’t want to get shot for being an illegal. An you better warn Don Pablo and Orville about their beards, they might just get mistook for being Cowboy Taliban.
That night the helicopter flew low over the ashram and circled back, hovering still for just a moment flipping on its ground light just over Billy’s barn. Phone Home was out in the corral staring up in anticipation.
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