The KKK took my baby away (Ramones, "Pleasant Dreams)

11:50pm Sunday March 10^th:  El Paso, Texas

When we hit El Paso at 9:20pm, Neil was the only one of us not feeling well.  We left him in the bus and hit a restaurant/bar with huge margarita bowls and live music.  It was the first hot food we’d all had in days, and despite the long hours in the bus, we were in beautifully high spirits.  We found a band doing covers of the Cure and the Doors along with songs in Spanish that a crowd of Mexican women with blonde hair and black stretch pants with heels screamed the lyrics to.  We danced with the band, onstage, and took photos with their singer and had our photos taken by strangers and then sat, sweating and happy, to drink margaritas and eat hot fajitas, tacos, enchiladas, rellenos.  We were floating, taking only a moment to feel bad that Neil was missing out.

“What do you think is wrong with Neil?”

“Not sure,”
 “It’s just that he doesn’t have a girl.”

“I heard him say it’s his stomach”

Michael Warren Grant chimed in, “Should I give him something?  I’ve got herbs to stop him up, if he’s having something like diarrhea, but I also have herbs to get him flowing if he’s stopped up-“

“No, no,” insisted CG, “I don’t think anyone needs to increase the number of times they are pooping.  We’re on the bus all night.  In fact, everyone needs to think about pooping less.  CG is always trying to poop less.  CG is mellllow..” 

We loaded back 12 of us onto the bus and 3 into the Baberaham Lincoln around 11pm.  Neil was still sleeping.  Liesel, Drew, and Ian took the Baberaham.  On board the Busso, we sang Beatles songs while Jonny and Zweng strummed them.  We danced away the ache in our bones and I took a moment to feel lonely for my Paul, to think that he’d love this, to be singing to the moon and the endless pressed dust below it. 

“Border Patrol!” Someone cried, and we crowded to the window in order to view the van with large glittering black letters spelling “Border Patrol” that crawled past in the opposite direction on a dirt road.

With nothing left to do but sleep, we dragged kegs, instruments and a few suitcases forward, clearing the back area for pads and blankets and sleeping bags.  We settled in like sardines, Chris Tolan in the driver’s seat, six horizontally in the back media lounge area, three more on seat cushions and camping mats, and two on the bench seats.

I’ve been sleeping for awhile with JonnyCat’s hand on my forehead and my foot between the buttcheeks of the snoring Michael Warren Grant, and Michael Warren Grants’ legs arching over mine, when Chris announces over the loudspeaker that we are approaching a checkpoint in two miles.  I visualize all of us standing shivering in the dark while policemen tossed aside leopard-print coats, bright pink vests, and ladies’ stockings in order to search the various misshapen bags and instruments beneath.  It generally takes us about two hours to build the stage and ready the bus for public consumption.  It could take them a full day to make real sense of everything.  Nicole and I take a moment to question the boys to make sure no substances are still intact, on board, and then fall asleep again. 

“Border Patrol!”  They announce themselves clearly but kindly, then get on the loudspeaker system and do so again, shining lights towards the back of the bus.  We untangle ourselves from blankets and other selves, poking up heads to smile at them.

“Um, are you all US citizens?”

“Yes,” rings out a chorus of cracked voices.

“Well - I think we’ll need to see some ID.”

We wearily reach or scramble over one another for bags.

“Joelle, they’re here.”

“Someone wake Joelle.”

“I am waking her. Joelle?”

“Is that my wallet, just above your head? Joelle!”

“I don’t know. Can’t you see from there whether it’s yours?”

“No, my contacts aren’t in.  She won’t wake up.”

“Is she ok?” One of the officers ask.  Thankfully, she is, and really fairly sober, even, but Joelle always sleeps like rock.

“She’s just tired.  We’ve been on the road awhile now.  From San –” someone elbows me and I don’t finish the word.  “This is her bag.  And here is her ID!”

“Ok then, well. Just show us her face so we can get a visual match.”

I pull back the blankets and step back just as Joelle barely opens her eyes and they flash the light onto her.  She groans, as they say, “Ok,” and then she falls right back to sleep.

They check the rest of us and leave.

We fall asleep again almost immediately, but then the loudspeaker comes on.  “They took Liesel aside.”

“What?”

“The Baberaham was behind us.  Liesel.  They have her in some kind of holding… not cell, but they are keeping her.  Her passport isn’t up to date.  They’re checking it out.”

Liesel is from Germany.  The Babes (Drew and JohnJohn) picked her up selling jewelry on the streets of Santa Cruz a few months back.  “Get in the Babe, babe!”  She did and never yet had gotten out. 

We try to calculate how long her passport might be out of date.  No one could be sure.  Hillary mentions that she’d be banned for five years from re-entering if she was deported. We wonders aloud whether they even cared about Germans.  We wait.

The second call finally comes from the Baberaham.  They are sending her back to Germany, with an allotted 45 pounds of her things.  She wants us to bring the laptop she’d left on the busso back to her.  We decide that we will pull over at the next rest stop and wait for the Babes.  It is nearly an hour before we find an appropriate stop and we wait another half-hour for the Babes.

“We’ll send Liesel her things.  We’re losing shoot time.”

“She must be afraid.”

“She’s a strong girl.”

“She must want her things.”

“We can’t waste three hours on it.  She knew she was illegal.”

“I wish we’d thought to hide her.”

“She must be devastated.”

She is  - and full of malice for we who have abandoned her.  “If you don’t give me my bags within an hour, I have interesting things to tell these officers.”  German threats to follow, but whether of annoyance or empathy, even the emotional onslaught cannot keep us from sleep.

8:00am Marfa

Woke up in Marfa, on the bus, about 6:45am.  The cold snap of dawn that I so loathe was just beginning to seep into all of our bones. This was actually the first time we’ve slept on a parked bus.  Prior to this, we’d rotated sleeping while someone was driving, but have always had a house to land at every eight hours or so.  The girls have been spoiled with new showers each day, and the tall boys were surprised to discover how short the nap-places seem when you’re trying to sleep there for a night’s worth of time. 

Dave jumped up to rig a GoPro for a time lapse of the sunrise but he was already too late, and the GoPros were all dead.  He woke Chris our equipment manager, who’d driven all night, and floundered under the wrath of his curses while struggling with his freezing hands to test the extra batteries for any bit of charge. 

We are parked across the street from a little local shop.  I’m still unclear what it is that they sell here (camping permits, I think), but there is a nice, blue-tiled room with rustic chairs and benches, a tiny blue-speckled table with red candles, a fireplace, coffee and wifi.

“Jonjon is serenading dogs with his flute,” Ian tells us in passing while on his way to get more coffee. 

We are going over the script for the short we are filming today in Marfa.  We’ve finally told Neil that we lost Liesel.  I expected him to be angry, with us, her, or the world at large, but maybe he was too tired to rile himself up. 

I am not sure whether to be disappointed for our friend or, perversely perhaps, impressed by the fact that all immigrants are being discriminated against equally. 

5:03pm Marfa

            It stands thusly:

At 3pm, the cute little store that we overstayed our welcome in whilst writing, editing, and teeth-brushing welcomed us back after we reassured them that we plan on leaving tonight.  They didn’t even charge us a camper’s rate for having used camper’s amenities. Great!

            At 3:30pm, The cute little store that welcomed us back has asked us to leave because our “friend has been asking all of our customers for marijuana. These are families!”  As we receive this news, we see the “friend” in question walking off with yet another young woman.  “JONNY GET BACK HERE” we cry out.  We get him back, though only after his transaction, and we leave.

            While shooting on location at Padre’s bar in downtown Marfa, the Sheriff shows up threatening to put out a warrant for Neil’s arrest because apparently he has pieces of our tail-light in the trunk of his car, which incriminates Neil in the heinous crime of having backed into a small wheeled cart back at the hostel. 

            Somehow, we end up on good terms with Marfa.  Padre’s serves us beer as we’re filming, offers us their offices to film in, wants us to play tonight.  Instead, we make a beeline for Austin.  We want to wake up at SXSW.