Warday Read online

  But these facts tell nothing of the feeling of this new El Paso.

  The streets are no more full of cars than Dallas or Austin, perhaps even less so. Yellow schoolbuses have been dragooned for street service. Each bus is apparently a small cooperative venture between its drivers and mechanics. At least, all are decorated differently, painted with flowers and slogans, loudspeakers blaring the music of Radio “A” from their roofs.

  We have been billeted at the Granada Royale on MO, newly named Paseo de la Revolución. The hotel is a delight. Its large rooms surround an atrium garden full of flowers. There is an in-door-outdoor pool. The atmosphere is quiet and unhurried. Most of the other guests are Japanese, some of them obviously long-term residents. It is strange to hear somebody speaking Spanish with a thick Japanese accent. We were served breakfast in our suite and spent the next hour trying to arrange a tour of the city. First we used the old Yellow Pages to call Hertz, Avis, and the local car rental agencies. Hertz, now called Autocars Liberidad, was open.

  They were taking reservations for November. As this was August, we decided to give up on car rental.

  There are no longer conventional taxis in El Paso. By law, they have all become “pesetas,” traveling fixed routes on the smaller thoroughfares, essentially supplementing the buses.

  Our last option was to take a bus tour, but we soon found that both Gray Line and Golden Tours were booked for the day, or claimed to be.

  Perhaps somebody didn’t want us to tour the city.

  We ended up spending the morning in the hotel. I observed the city from the rooftop restaurant, which commands a fine view of the whole area. I saw no planes take off from the airport, which is not far away. Here and there I could see sooty scars on a building, but beyond that there were no obvious signs of the revolution. Senior Espinoza appeared just before noon, his thin body swallowed by a seersucker suit. He was full of brightness and what I can only describe as punch. As soon as we saw him, we requested a tour of El Paso. He said that he would suggest something even better: we should have lunch with him. We could always see the town later, he assured us. He added that he had, by the liberal application of governmental authority, gotten us precious tickets on a “Super Express” bus that left for Las Cruces at three. Tickets on another could not be guaranteed for weeks.

  It was becoming clear that we were not intended to make any detailed reconnaissance of this community. Senior Espinoza was, in effect, throwing us out of his country. Given his position of power, we decided to let him do exactly as he pleased.

  We were left to swallow our questions about such things as the condition of hospitals and prisons, and what was happening to the homes and property of the Anglos.

  The Isabella penthouse restaurant in the Granada is now called Casa del Sol Norte. The food is Tex-Mex, what Senior Espinoza described as “superb Aztlan cuisine.” Actually, his hyperbole was in this case not far from the truth. I used to enjoy Mi Tierra and La Fonda in San Antonio, and Casa Rio on the river. I can also recall going to this restaurant’s namesake, the Casa del Sol in Juarez.

  When I lived in New York, I sought good Mexican food constantly, but what I found only increased my hunger for flavors like these.

  I will repeat the menu in detail. We had cheese enchiladas, cabrito chili, chicken tacos, rice, and refried beans. The tacos were generously garnished with tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, and the seasonings were uniformly excellent. We drank Carta Blanca beer from Mexico. The menu showed that the meal was five pesos “A” to privates, two pesos to comunistas.

  After lunch, we were not too surprised to find we had barely enough time to get to the bus. Senior Espinoza claimed to have forgotten the time and left, pleading an urgent appointment. We soon found out the reason for the abrupt departure. Without the use of a private car, we were going to have to struggle to get to the station on time. Neither of us wanted to find out what would happen if we missed our connection.

  Jim stood beside me outside the hotel as we waited for a bus.

  He was silent and withdrawn. Aztlan had saddened him, because it seemed to him a failure of the racial harmony that had been growing in Texas before the war, and yet another doomed ideological attempt to alter blood and land with words.

  I felt much better about it. There was energy and optimism there, and the powerful spirit of cooperation was something that we would do well to import into the United States. I suspected that Aztlan was going to work, though not in the way foreseen by Senior Espinoza, nor in the way feared by Governor Parker. That bee-hive of little cooperative enterprises was going to grow, spreading its new economic ideas in all directions.

  I also suspected that Senior Espinoza’s caution was not based so much on a desire to hide his problems as it was on a fear that we might be spies for Governor Parker. After all, a letter from Parker preceded us here, probably by just a few hours. Espinoza was terrified of Parker, and probably also of us.

  Before I went to Aztlan, the word cooperative suggested to me rural electric power on the one hand and vast, spiritless Soviet communes on the other. I was not prepared to meet such a strange new economy as the one we found: thousands of tiny co-ops, each dependent solely upon its own success to pay its members, none larger than the smallest economic unit necessary to perform its particular function.

  This means that the motel where we stayed, for example, was run by two separate co-ops, the restaurant workers and the hotel staff. The state does not pay them, nor does it plan for them. They keep their own books and split their profits weekly. If there are no profits, nobody gets paid that week.

  A brightly painted schoolbus jammed with people finally came down Paseo de la Revolución. Radio “A” got louder as the bus got closer. Buses are supposed to stop whenever somebody hails them—there are no fixed stops in El Paso. But this one passed us by. It was full.

  As we watched one jammed bus after another pass us by, we began to get nervous. The big purple Super Express tickets Senior Espinoza had given us were valueless if we couldn’t make it to the bus station.

  Finally a half-full peseta came along. We were almost surprised to see it stop when we hailed it. The fare is ten centavos “A” for holders of yellow co-op cards, which most people wear pinned to their shirts and blouses. These cards identify their bearers as part of Aztlan’s network of cooperatives. Capitalists must pay one peso “A” to ride. We paid our pesos happily.

  I got in the front seat of the massive old Buick station wagon, repainted many times, now the bright red of the flag of Aztlan. In fact, Aztlan’s red flag with the gold radiant sun in the center snapped from both front fenders and the radio antenna. Jim was jammed in the back with three other people, all wearing yellow cards. “Estacion de la autobuses del norte, por favor,” I said. My Spanish is less than minimal.

  As we traveled into the center of town, I collected these impressions of El Paso:

  The cemetery beneath the complex tangle of the Spaghetti Bowl where I-10 intersects the Expressway is in prewar condition.

  Unlike the situation common in Dallas, new graves have not been dug in among the old. But there are many empty buildings, empty houses, and abandoned cars. Just before we turned onto Piedras, we saw along the side of MO the glittering aluminum ruins of a jet, cracked plastic windows in the few bits of intact fuselage, the plane’s markings no longer readable.

  Japanese soldiers passed us in squat Toyota military vehicles. Their light khaki uniforms were spotless, the Rising Sun on their shoulders. As they rode along they shot pictures of the distant Franklin Mountains with Minoltas as small and thin as credit cards.

  Earlier we had noticed a restaurant with the odd name “Gunther’s Lotus Blossom.” A closer look revealed that the sign had once read “Gunther’s Edelweiss.” Before Warday, the U.S. Army used to train soldiers of the German Federal Republic at Fort Bliss, which is just up the road from here. We wondered if Gunther was still around, or if he had left only his name behind.

  Japanese military planes flew
low overhead. They were odd-looking things, with their wings canted forward instead of swept back, so that they appeared to be flying backwards. Instead of a jet’s familiar scream, they made a low drumming noise that seemed almost to thump your chest. I recall the strange cant of the wings from NASA designs for future hypersonic aircraft.

  We had ridden in silence for some time when the driver decided to try striking up a conversation.

  “Hey, gringo,” he said with a big smile. “Let’s talk norte americano! See if I can still do it!”

  His name was Carlos León, and he was from San Antonio. “I’m from there too,” I said. “So is he.” I nodded toward Jim.

  “Hey! Compadres! I grew up there. Left in ’86 to get a job out here. Once the Mexican economy started to recover, there were lots of jobs here again. I was managing a McDonald’s. Kept at it, too, until the meat stopped getting delivered. Then I said the hell with the franchise, sold the equipment, and signed up as a cooperator. They assigned me to pesetas and gave me a permit to buy a station wagon. Our co-op consists of me, my wife the bookkeeper, and my cousin the mechanic.”

  “Where did you live in San Antonio?”

  “West Side! I lived on South Zarzamora. My dad was a garbage man—but not in his own neighborhood! We had to take our garbage to the dump ourselves until the fifties. My mom and dad died in San Antonio.”

  “I lived in Terrell Hills,” I said.

  “Rich, eh?”

  “My dad was an oilman.”

  “Oh boy! You’re poor now, eh? I see you work with your hands!”

  “I’m poor now.”

  From one of the passengers: “Good for you! Join the rest of the world.”

  I laugh. “No more oilmen.”

  “Hey, that’s good. No more oilmen! Just British and Israeli oil import agents, right?”

  I did not mention that Texas oil was flowing again, and that refineries were opening up all over the United States. There was a razor edge of anger among these people. This was their place, their time at last, and these their days of sunshine.

  Walls pockmarked with bullet holes were a common sight as we neared the center of town.

  “Jim and I went to Central,” I said, hoping Carlos might also be an alumnus. This is not as unlikely as it sounds: Central Catholic had a substantial Hispanic population when we attended.

  The sudden silence tells me that my suspicion is correct. Carlos stops the car. “Well, goddamn.”

  “Brother Halaby?”

  “Shit, yeah!”

  “Brother Arana?”

  “The Spider! I haven’t thought about him in years!”

  The Spider taught world history and his real name was Brother Gordon, but his thin, six-foot-four frame gained him the nickname Brother Arana. So total was his identification with us that he was known to get mean when freshmen called him Brother Gordon.

  “I’m Brother Arana,” he would snarl, “and don’t you forget it.”

  Carlos had been five years ahead of us at Central. “You remember Brother DeLoach?” he asked.

  “He was principal our freshman year. He retired.”

  “He taught me a hell of a lot. I was a real bad kid when I went there. Angry, you know? And so damn stupid. I’d been a year at Southton already! They hit me with a razor strap there. I was down for selling grass. Shining shoes and dealing grass to the soldiers on Alamo Plaza, then going to the Alameda to see Cantinflas movies. You know what we got for a joint—we called them Mary Janes—back in the fifties? We got a dollar. But they cost us eighty-five cents apiece. So we were risking years of freedom for fifteen cents! Sure enough, the next thing I knew I was down for a year and my mom and dad were thinking they had raised a rotten kid. When I got out I applied to Central. No way I’m gonna get in, my parents figure. I’m fourteen and already a jailbird. But DeLoach, he lets me in. ‘You stay away from the Mary Janes or I’ll paddle your behind’ he says. ‘You’re a smart kid, that’s your problem. We’ll give you a little something to do with your mind, you’ll stay out of trouble.’”

  “Did it work?”

  “I loved that school! One of these days I’m gonna go back. I’m gonna see—”

  Silence. We are suddenly very still, we alumni. Night has just touched us in the middle of the afternoon.

  The Dream Bandidos

  The Trailways sign had been taken off the wall of the station, and the newsstand carried papers with names like Revolucion and Viva Aztlan! There were also Mexican and Spanish papers, El Diario and La Nota. The Japanese Asahi Shimbun en Espanol was prominently displayed, as was the London Times—in English, of course. I would have bought a copy, but it cost the equivalent of three dollars.

  Jim was delighted to find that the candy counter was well stocked. Last year, M&Ms and Hershey bars reappeared in Dallas, but here in El Paso you can get all manner of colorful locally made confections as well. We stocked up on fresh pralines and other indigenous sweets in the fifteen minutes we had before the bus left.

  It was a brand-new Japanese Hino, very comfortably appointed and efficiently air conditioned. In El Paso in August this is a definite plus. It was about ninety degrees, and would probably be a hundred before the end of the day. The driver was wearing a spiffy green uniform. He carried a .38 in a gleaming holster.

  We settled into our plush tan seats and prepared for the one-hour journey to Las Cruces and the border. In the bus around us were well-dressed travelers, the men in light summer suits and dark glasses, some of the women even in silk dresses. These people were Aztlan’s elite. Apparently the common folk go to Las Cruces in something other than Super Express buses, if they go at all.

  Across the aisle from me sat a man in a magnificent suit, perhaps even a Savile Row creation. Beside him, his wife was wearing a designer dress of light blue silk. I tried to engage them in conversation, but they turned to each other and began to speak animatedly together.

  The bus was soon on its way up the long, straight road to Las Cruces. There were trucks on the highway, many of them filled with farm produce. Sometimes we saw cars too, mostly the Toyota and Nissan limousines that are the modern hallmark of the Japanese businessman. A Chevy Consensus or two passed, and the usual sparse collection of prewar jalopies.

  We were about twenty miles from Las Cruces, just south of the town of La Mesa, when the bus slowed and turned off the interstate. “La Mesa,” the driver called, and a couple of passengers began to take their baggage down from the overhead racks. All along the roadside into town, there were makeshift dwellings. Derelict GM buses with Sun City Area Transit (SCAT) markings had been made over into shelters. There were tents and even geodesic domes. I saw some blond children toddling about, and an Anglo woman working on a truck. Anglos in Aztlan? Jim and I agreed at once: we would interrupt our trip in La Mesa. We’d take potluck on the final miles into Las Cruces and just hope the nervous Senior Espinoza wasn’t having us followed.

  We got out at the brand-new La Mesa bus station and began walking back along the highway. A clump of Japanese in white coveralls came out of a restaurant and watched us for a time. “Momento, por favor,” one of them called at last.

  “Yes?”

  “Ah. A moment, please.”

  We stopped.

  “You are—tourists?”

  “We’re writers. Doing research for a book about America.”

  “Ah!” Bright smiles. “You write about us?” Even brighter smiles.

  “What do you do?”

  The smiles become fixed. “We agricultural specialists.”

  “Helping out with the soya plantations, eh?”

  “That’s right. This is soya country!”

  They let us walk on. When we passed the outskirts of La Mesa, it became obvious that there were no soya plantations in this area.

  You could see all the way to the Portrillos across the desert. “They were uranium workers,” Jim said quietly.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Those pouches at their waists—you saw them?�
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  “Yeah.”

  “They contained face masks. I’ve seen people wearing them at Los Alamos. And those blue plastic strips on their collars. If they get a dose, those strips turn red.”

  I looked back into the quiet town. The bus was long gone, and there wasn’t a car in the street. In the distance, a motor rumbled.

  Cicadas screamed in the trees.

  We caused an even greater stir in the tent community than we had among the Japanese. People began shouting, then running, and in a few minutes at least seventy or eighty had gathered along the roadside. A young woman came forward. She had an enormous .357 Magnum strapped to her belt. She was perhaps twenty-five, tall and sleek, her face weathered, her hands red from hard work.

  One hand rested firmly on the pistol.

  “May we help you?” she asked. Her accent was familiar, the broad twang of West Texas.

  Jim spoke, his eyes on the gun. “We’re writing a book about postwar America. We’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”

  “Where you from?” a man asked from the crowd.

  “Dallas. And we’re on our way to California.”

  Surprisingly, this revelation caused general laughter. “You got entry permits?”

  Jim frowned. “We’re writers. Surely they’ll let us in.”

  “Hey,” the man shouted, “y’all hear that? All we gotta do is go up to the Yuma P.O.E. and say we’re writers. We’re in!”

  This was not a friendly crowd. But I felt sure they had a story.

  “Could we buy some supper?” I asked.

  The girl with the Magnum nodded. “You got pesos ‘A’?”

  “Five. Will that do it?”

  “Ought to, if you like rice. That’s what we got. Rice and soybean soup.”

  The group began to disperse back into the camp. The girl, our guard, stayed close. Her hand remained firmly planted on the pistol. She had a soft, open face, but the way she held her lips told me that she could be dangerous. The gun was serious.