Giant Country: Essays on Texas

Giant Country

" Giant Country co-author Betsy Berry here's the Rio Grande, darling," saidJamie as they crossed over from Eagle Pass. Below them the river sort of crawled its way toward the Gulf. "It don't look so grand here, does it, it don't look like it could hardly make it all the way to the ocean, does it, it looks like it might just curl up and die. It don't look a bit like it does in those mountains outside Pilar where it comes crashing out of that ravine and makes that turn towards Taos," said Harry. "Is this gonna be one of those trips where you mix redneck vernacular with the occasional poetic phrase, striving for the sublime?" asked Jamie. "Cause if it is, I wanna be forewarned." "Nope, I was just remarking," Harry said. 59 Giant Country 60 They had no interest in Mexico, not this trip. You had to get a little further into the country if you were seriously thinking about a real experience in Mexico. This was just the border, and all they were after, the reason they'd detoured down this way from their true destination farther to the north, was to get some drugs. Well, not drugs exactly but damned close. What they were looking for was some Percodan, and in Piedras Negras, they'd been told, you could buy it over the counter. At the seventeenth jarmacia in the first two blocks, Jamie told Harry to pull over. ''This looks like a good one." While Harry sat outside humming off-key an old Marty Robbins tune ("I caught a good one/ It looked like it could run"), Jamie slipped inside to deal with the druggist. She was gone quite a while, and Harry could see her hands gesticulating above the boxes of feminine hygiene products that almost blocked the big plate glass window of the jarmacia, but when she came out she wasn't carrying a package. The pharmacist had played dumb, he hadn't given in to Jamie's fast, idiomatic Spanish, and he didn't know nada about any over-thecounter Percodan. "50 much for the information source in Austin. So much for the Percodan." "Right, but what bothers me is that guy over there. See him? The one in the baggy suit with some kind of half-assed badge on his chest? He's making me nervous." The man Harry was sure was some sort of policeman continued to speak into a pay-phone receiver, glancing their way from time to time. Harry gunned the engine and drove a couple of blocks more away from the bridge, pulling up at the curb of a little green-and-red family restaurant where they ate the Number 7 Cabrito Plate and the Number 9 Enchilada Plate and washed them down with a couple of Carta B1ancas apiece. At the bridge going back into the states, the border guard in a brown uniform asked them what their business was in Mexico. "Cabrito," Harry said. "We just crossed over to eat some good goat." Giant Country "Do you have anything to declare?" "Yes, it was excellent. No, I mean nothing," kicking himself for not having thought to buy some little bauble. A bottle of tequila, a sombrero, anything. "We're on our way to California. From Texas." "Your occupations, please, senor," said the guard levelly. He must have personally taken the call from the cop in town, Harry reckoned. "We're teachers. We're working on a book. That's why we're going to LA, Los Angeles. To do research." Harry trailed off. The guard was unimpressed. "Pull over to Bay 4 ahead," he told them. "Calm down," Harry said to Jamie. "You calm down," she hissed back. 'That bastard's going to search the car." Two hours later they finally got the car loaded again. The guards had gone through eveIYthing, opening bags, riffling through clothes, unscrewing bottles and sniffing Jamie's cosmetics, combing the carpet with a flashlight. Finally the customs officials were forced to let them go. Harry was relieved. He knewJamie had a few reefers on her person, but they only searched the car. As they drove away, he asked, "So where's the reefers?" "Here they are, baby," pulling five joints from out of her bra. Harry always called them reefers and she called them joints. Generational deal. Harry was from the Reefer...