The Devils Highway - Luis Alberto Urrea [14]
“Ten, base, ten. I’m twentied at the Pinacate Lava Flow. I’M GONNA GIVE YOU EVERY INCH OF MY LOVE! Over.”
One nonstandard lifesaver fits into the space between the base radio and the passenger seat. A roll of toilet paper. It beats a handful of cactus.
You grab a coffee at Circle K, microwave a burrito, then cross I-8 on the old bridge and head south on 25E. To the west, 29E parallels you. It is the actual terminus of the Devil’s Highway. The twin E’s take you to the Mexican border, crossing miles of a sere and mysterious bombing range. Your ironist’s eye loves to pick out crazy things. Right near the Devil’s Highway itself is a mutated saguaro that rises ten feet into the sky. Its main body is thick, and the top is a scarred, messed-up ball of tissue. It looks for all the world like an arm raising a fist. And wouldn’t you know it, the “ears,” or branches, that stick out form an index finger and a little finger. The Devil’s Highway throws up a heavy metal devil sign to announce itself. The only thing missing is Ozzy Osbourne.
The aforementioned Army tanks molder in the eastern end of the basin. When no one is around (and no one is ever around) you can shoot at them for fun. On the west end, under Raven’s Butte, there’s an abandoned squadron of jet fighters. Rounds penetrate their skin easily. (You can’t hardly even chip the paint off the tanks, though.) Sometimes, jet jockeys target the Border Patrol trucks and dog them from on high, vectoring in on their white roofs. Many of the Wellton guys enjoy flipping them the bird out the window, or even jumping from the truck in the middle of the faux strafing run and raising the finger at the startled pilots.
Marine patrols training on the dirt roads interdict the sign-cutters. It’s pure bullshit—pulling an agent over at gunpoint and demanding papers. This is supposed to be America. And how dumb do the jarheads have to be to pull over a federal agent, in uniform, in a clearly marked patrol car?
The sign announcing the advent of the Devil’s Highway has been liberally punctuated by .50 caliber machine gun rounds. Those bored jarheads again. If you’re out early, you’ll see snakes on the road, soaking up some heat. Sidewinders are fun to harass—you can pull up next to them and pour water on their heads. They have fits, but don’t know who to bite. It’s a riot.
There are other games the Border Patrol guys play. Sometimes they toss a recently shot rattlesnake, dead but still writhing and rattling, into the cage with the captured wets. Ha ha—that’s a funny sight, watching them go apeshit in the back of the truck. And they get it, right? Old José has a good sense of humor about it. He pissed his pants and screamed at first, but then he laughed and called the agent “Pinche Migra!” and swear to God, he peeled that snake right there and ate it!
An agent out of Wellton once pulled a classic practical joke on his load of clients out near 25E. One of his boys had been taking potshots in the desert, and he’d plugged a jackrabbit. “Hey,” the agent told him, “I’ve got an idea.” He took the big jack and tucked it into some bushes near the road.
Later in the day, he had some Mexicans in the back, and he was tooling along, taking them back to the station holding pens.
Suddenly, he stopped the car and said, “Muchachos, un conejo!” A rabbit!
They crowded the front of the cage and said, “Donde?