The Yearning Feed

BANTER IS ALL WE EVER NEEDED ( 2 )

______________________ BANT ER IS ALL WE EVER NEEDED (2) The following was often heard while driving in a Chevy minivan cramped with 11 brown bodies headed for Mexicali’s Caliente to place bets on the horse races, most times when those involved should have been in school: “Hey, turn up the volume on the air conditioner already, dude, it’s beginning to smell like carne asada in this ride it’s-so-damn-hot-inhere -sonofabitch-it’s-so-hot-chingado.” ______________________ 10 ______________________ The evening you and I heard the Border Patrol found the bodies of a young man and woman lying down locked in an eternal embrace near an ocotillo plant they used for shelter during a blistering August day in a remote corner of the Imperial Valley desert, no water, shoes chewed up by the journey north, clothes tattered, we sat in silence at our dinner table and questioned everything we had already thanked our god for. ______________________ 11 ______________________ When the “powers that be” decided to change the Imperial Valley’s area code from (619) to (760), the person most affected was Hector. (619) was tattooed on his neck in beautiful and prominent Old English one intoxicated evening as he promised to “smoke any fool” who claimed anything but these three fateful numbers. In an instant, Hector’s tattoo became a target on his neck for those who also had tattoos, freshly inked tattoos, sometimes on those who vaguely resembled his friends. ______________________ 12 ...