People make borders, and laws about illegally crossing them. In the Gutter, those who enforce the laws may be worse than those who break them.
Hero Worship by Hector Acosta
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“Fuck Superman.”
“Why?”
Ray
took a sip of his beer, adjusted himself atop the hood of the border patrol
cruiser he was sitting on, and stared out into the distance, toward the fence
rooted into the ground a hundred feet or so away. The rusted, pocked with holes
barrier stretched out across the flat, Texas landscape, reminding Ray of a
trail of stitches on a dying man. The fence was the only thing to be seen for
miles, and it should have been an imposing, beautiful thing to behold. Instead,
looking at it left Ray with an empty feeling in his gut, like when he got home
after his day of work and found nothing on the table but a can of old tuna and
some warm milk.
“Guy
sure as hell wasn’t born here,” he said. “Came from that planet—”
The
car lurched forward, interrupting Ray and sending one of his unopened cans
rolling down the dust covered hood. A low moan stemmed from the back of the
cruiser, like air being let out of a tire, and it was followed by a persistent
banging noise which rocked the car once more.
“Christ!”
Ray muttered, grabbing the beer just before it tumbled to the ground.
“You
want me to go check on him?” Billy asked. Already his cousin was moving toward
the edge of the hood, one of his fat legs touching the ground. The silver gun
sticking out of his waist glowed in the moonlight.
Ray
waved him back and patted the top of the cruiser. “Stay. Anyways, what was I
saying?”
“Superman,”
Billy reminded him.
A
snap of Ray’s fingers. “Yeah. Leaves his birthplace ’cause he knows it’s going
to shit, and ends up here. Fuck, you might as well have called him Super
Beaner.”
“You
know he ain’t real right, Ray?”
Lord,
could Billy be dense sometimes. “I know he ain’t real, Billy.” Finishing his
beer, he tossed the can out in front of him, where it landed among the other
empties the two men had been consuming ever since they’d parked on the edge of
the Texas border a couple of hours ago. “Point is, they’ll try to get to your
kids early if you’re not careful.”
“They?”
Chewing
on his lower lip, Ray tried to elaborate. It wasn’t easy, as he’d been building
that word up over the years. It started with the wetbacks, who swarmed into his
country like flies at a barbecue and robbed his father of his factory job. Over
the years, Ray had made further deposits into its definition, so that it also
included the Negroes taking over his neighborhood and blasting that ghetto
music and the fat, stingy Italian he had to work for. The word had gotten so
big even his own race wasn’t exempt—like that bitch of a cashier at the H-E-B
who wouldn’t take his checks no more on account they bounced a time or two.
“You know,” he finally said, “they.”
“Oh,
okay.”
“Damn
it Billy, do I have to explain everything to you?”
“Fuck
you, I got it.” Billy said, his words tinged with the same hurt Ray heard
whenever he mocked Billy about his weight. Or pimples. Or how it took him ’til
his thirties to get his first lay.
“What
I mean then?” Ray asked, taking the Beretta out of its holster real casual
like.
Billy
kept his eyes on the gun, sweat sliding down his forehead. “Superman is a comic
book and kids read comic books and if Superman is illegal like you say and if
kids read Superman, they’ll think it’s okay to be illegal.” He rushed through the
last part as if afraid that Ray would pull the trigger before the final word
came tumbling out of his lips.
“Shit
boy, I’m impressed. That sounded almost sensical.”
Billy
relaxed and grinned, “That means we’re the Kryptonite then, huh, Ray?”
“The
what?”
“That
green rock that Superman is afraid of. Only thing that can beat ’im .”
“Sure,
Billy.” Ray slid off the car’s hood. “I’m getting a beer.”
“Get
me one.”
Flipping
his cousin off, Ray walked over to the car’s trunk. He stood there in silence
for a second, then popped the car’s trunk open.
The
guy inside stirred and tried to squirrel his way out of the trunk. Ray poked
him in the chest with the gun and pushed him back down. “Now, now, we’ve been
over this, you and I. You cause no trouble for us, and you might still see the
sun, you hear?”
Bound
and naked except for a pair of soiled tighty whities, the man just stared up at
him. Ray figured the guy had a right to be pissed. Hell, he’d be too if he was
in his position, hogtied and dumped in the back of his own car.
“Don’t
be lookin’ at me like that,” Ray said, pulling out two Buds from the inside.
“You’re supposed to be our first line of defense against them spics, and
instead you sit around and let them get in.” He tsked and closed the trunk.
“Still
think we should kill him?” Billy said, catching the beer Ray threw at him.
“Maybe.”
And
why not. They were already in heaps of trouble if they got caught. Ray was
pretty sure kidnapping and impersonating a border patrol agent wouldn’t be looked
to kindly by the libtard courts. He didn’t care, because he knew the public
would be on his side. Ray stared out at the fence and waited, knowing that
sooner or later he would spot movement, or the dim hint of a flashlight. That’s
when he and Billy would go and do what the border patrol wouldn’t do.
’Til
then…well, he could continue to educate his cousin.
“Now Captain America, that’s a real superhero.”
