Between the spare and barren peaks of the San Bernardino mountains, on a road where the desert towns of Coachella, Indio and Palm Springs flash by in a glare of billboards advertising casinos and burgers, Tate Morgan drove. Past towns built upon petroglyphs of snakes and maps of stars, gardens you might find baskets and sandals and etchings of the night sky buried beneath a watered lawn. And perhaps too the very bones of those astronomers and weavers, a race consigned to picture books and plaques in national parks.

[private]“Blythe,” he said to the empty passenger seat, shaking his head.

Then he slammed the dashboard so hard he split the plastic casing.

He drove on with his knuckles scuffed and the blood pounding through his hand, dragging the U-Haul trailer all the way to the very line between California and Arizona, his new Border Agent station.
For the first week he practically ignored the other agents, considered them rookies, young and stupid. Aged thirty-five, he was a veteran. For the last three years he rode the fence at Tijuana, patrolling the beach on an ATV. Black goggles and flak jackets. Agents in teams of four like mechanised horsemen of the apocalypse churning up sand or watching with binoculars the bikinied senoritas across the Mexican border. Countries divided by a mesh fence where families came for Sunday picnics and husbands talked with wives and kids through chain link.

Then two months ago, after his ex-wife got about twice as much as he thought she would in their divorce settlement, there was an incident, ‘excessive force’.

And this was before the gambling, the online blackjack sessions, new credit cards maxed in a single evening.

From a two-bed condo in San Diego to a row of one-storey houses trailing into the desert. Mesh fences sectioning the grassless yards.

His second night in Blythe he picked up a local girl. Raylene was inked on her sternum. “I’m guessing that’s not your husband’s name,” Tate joked, sliding on to the next bar stool.

The third time he slept with her, realising she was getting attached, he had the notion it would be a more honest transaction if he picked up prostitutes.

For those first and only two weeks Tate worked nights alone, played blackjack till midday, then slept till his next shift.

Above his desk at the station hung a map of the border from Calexico to Nogales and running north all the way to Phoenix. Grids dividing desert, scrub, rivers and creeks, trails littered with trash from the footfall of nation crossers.

Tate scanned the vectors to find his patrol route. “Son of a bitch.” He had been assigned to one of the new recruits.

He went into the locker room, buttoned up his shirt, adjusted his holster and checked his spare magazine. Then he took his flak jacket from the hook and fastened it over his chest.

“Yo, Tate,” hollered supervisor Martinez. “I’m gonna be pissed if you’re late to meet my new blood.”
“I’m already there.” Tate shut his locker and walked to the training room where six new agents fresh from the academy stood to attention. Martinez read out and matched their names with the more experienced agents, Tate included, paired with a skinny kid he hoped would be assigned to another officer.

“Agent Huffman, pleased to meet you.”

Tate shook his hand and they walked from the air-conditioned station into the smouldering dusk. Temperature just below a hundred. A redness in the west, bats flickering over agents loading rifles onto gun racks, kicking tires and checking radios.

Huffman was frantically padding down his shirt and thrusting his hands into empty pockets.

“You got a problem?”

“Lost my pen.”

“Your pen.”

“Must be in the office.”

“Here.” Tate tossed over his. It was the kind of pen you get free at off-track betting windows. Huffman dropped it on the tarmac. He scrabbled under the fender and came up red and flustered with it in his hand.

“Got it.”

Tate opened the door. “Listen, Huffman. It’s not your fault. But I ain’t in the mood for babysitting. So just do what I say, and keep your shit together. Cause no one’s gonna wipe your ass but you.”
Tate had the Explorer parked facing Mexico. Not that you could see where one country ended and another began. He and Huffman sat either side of the mounted radio unit, a roll of toilet paper speared on the emergency brake lever. Separating the front and back seats was a black mesh divider sealing off the holding pen. Attached to this was a shotgun rack.

Huffman turned his hat in his hands and fingered the brim as he scanned the starlit desert. He sat forward in his seat and eyed every plant and shrub. “This a quiet night?”

Tate twirled a .40 calibre round along his knuckles. “You complaining?”

“Just wondering if we’re going to see some action.”

Tate took his feet down from the dashboard. He had driven off the Interstate and bumped along the dirt road and barely said a word. Now he unfastened the magazine from the Glock and clipped back the round. “What do you want to know?”

“Sir?”

“Tate. When it’s you, me and the stars, plain Tate.”

“Yes, Sir. I mean Tate.”

“We’re not even two hours into the shift. Only got dark an hour ago.”

“So it’ll be busy later?”

“Some nights you’d think it was a crowd coming home from a football game.”

Huffman took the binoculars from the dashboard and scanned the vista of stars and sand.
“Must be extra time.”

Tate almost laughed. “So, why do want to be a Border Agent?”

“Wanted to for a while now.”

“Since when?”

“Since I worked a summer on my uncle’s ranch in Cochise County. His place was overrun with Mexicans. We’d ride out every morning to fix fences they cut in the night. The horses and cattle would go running out after the Mexicans came in.”

“So what’d you do if you come across Sancho with a pair of bolt cutters?”

“We carried rifles. My uncle had a twelve gauge. That scared ‘em pretty good till Border Patrol got there.”

Tate looked at Huffman then checked his watch before asking, “You hate Mexicans?”
“Nope. I just love America.”

Tate had the key in the ignition. He paused. “Aint that the problem?” Then he fired up the Explorer and reached into the glove box and handed Huffman the flashlight. “See that?” Tate pointed through the windshield at a strip of smoothed sand running along the edge of the road.

“I see it.”

“That’s the drag. We got all this technology. Satellites. GPS. Night vision goggles and sensors hidden in the cactus. But nothing better than sign-cutting. Truck comes out around dusk, trailing five tires on a length of chain. We got our drag. And all you have to do is keep the beam on that patch of dirt and holler when you get a print.”

“That’s it?”

“Till we get something.”

Tate pulled away. Bugs and cactus in the headlights, moths swirling like shreds of paper.
Within five minutes Huffman shouted, “Yo. Footprints.” He aimed the beam at a scribble of marks spoiling the smoothed sand and opened the door.

“You need to take a whizz?” asked Tate.

“Checking the drag.”

Tate laughed. “If you catch who made those prints you better have two pairs of cuffs.”

“What?”

“Pair for the hind legs, and a pair for the front.”

Huffman looked again and this time saw paw prints, drops of blood and feathers. “Damn coyote.”
Tate drove on while Huffman swept the beam back and forth across the drag. He stared beyond the sand, the glare of the headlights. He stared beyond wheeling stars, the swirling universe, and saw his ex-wife as naked as she was the very first time he saw her so.

Tate got home as the sun rose. He pulled open the torn screen door, switched on the a/c and smelt rotting garbage. From the refrigerator he took a carton of cranberry juice and gulped and only breathed again when the carton was empty.

Then he checked his mail. Banks and credit card companies asking for their cash back. Threats of the repo man knocking down his door. And a letter from his ex-wife. Tate sliced it open with a knife and sat down before reading the single sheet of paper which warned that the next letter he received might cost him money as it would be via her lawyer.

Tate drank, slept, woke and showered, rode his motorbike to the station, changed into his uniform and carried into the car park his hat and a pump action shotgun. Huffman carried two gallon water bottles and opened up the Explorer and set them in the cooler along with two chicken burritos wrapped in foil.

“Daytime shift a whole lot different from nights?”

“About fifty degrees different.”

That first night they had arrested 17 illegals. 15 Mexicans and two OTMs. The Other Than Mexicans were a pair of Nicaraguans with nothing in their pockets but a scrap of paper with the scrawled address of an auto repair shop in Michigan.

Walking from the locker room Huffman had said, “These guys are gonna keep coming at us till they find a hole.”

Tate thought about the ease these men seemed to leave one life to start another, no more baggage than a handwritten note.
Then he ordered Huffman to fill the five-gallon jerrycan with water.
“We already got two gallons each.”

“It’s not for us.”

Huffman went back into the station. Tate set the shotgun on the rack. Before he lifted the hood to check the oil his phone buzzed. He flipped it open. It was a California number. Perhaps it was one of his old friends? More likely it was that son of bitch lawyer threatening to bring him up before the judge unless his ex saw some money in her account.

“We good to go?” asked Huffman, slotting the five-gallon can into the top box.
“We’re ready to go,” replied Tate, snapping shut his phone. “Put it that way.”
They drove directly to the drag.

“Another hot one.” Huffman pointed out the temperature gauge hitting a hundred. “Damn, and not even eight o’clock.”

Around mid-morning Tate told Huffman to pull over. He jumped from the cab to inspect barely discernible right angles marked in the dirt. Both men squatted on their haunches.

“I don’t see shit.”

“Foamers.”

“Foamers?”

“Guys tie squares of polystyrene to their shoes. All that’s left are these little corner dents. Better get on the radio.”

Huffman informed agents patrolling the next drag north. Within minutes they had found the tracks.
“Agent Huffman, Patrol Echo 4.”

“Huffman, go ahead.

“These guys are long gone. Bug tracks over their prints, and the Interstate only a couple miles. Next time.”

“Hell,” said Huffman. “Like they just stepped off that foam and vanished.”

They crawled the drag for another hour, focusing on a few square yards beneath the expanse of sky. Even through sunglasses and a tinted windshield their eyes hurt from squinting at the glare. And if it were not for his cup of coffee, Tate might have slept bolt upright in his seat.
“She used to keep me up all night,” he suddenly blurted to Huffman.

“What?”

Then Tate quietened, not wanting to cheapen the memories of his ex with bragging.
After the shift Tate treated Huffman to a burger and fries at a diner because he was afraid of going back to his shack of a home.

“Hey, thanks Tate.”

“First and last time. Make the most it.”

Huffman asked him about getting demoted. “If you feel like telling me.”

Tate finished his burger and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “The day after seeing my ex in court I had a twelve-hour shift watching Imperial Beach.”

“I guess watching the waves wouldn’t be so bad if you hadn’t just got divorced.”

“Till I get some joker on a surfboard, riding a wave over from Mexico.”

“Broad daylight?”

“Broad daylight. These round-ups are easy. You know they’re not armed because they’re wearing swim shorts. And nothing but open beach for five miles. We come flying down the dunes, and I’m glad to get some action after stewing about how she can walk away from a marriage like that. Full throttle I’m first into the surf. Then this guy’s board shoots out and cracks me on the kneecap. About drops me. I see him running so I go after him. And I’m pissed. I tackle him in the waves and he comes up spitting seawater in my face. That’s it. I crack him across the nose then grab him by the hair and put him under. Luckily the other guys pull me off him, probably save him from drowning.”
“Kind of thing gets put on you tube and causes riots.”

“Turns out the surfer’s some American college student on his spring break. His dad knows a congressman. The next thing I know I’m shipped off to the edge of the Sonora Desert counting rattlesnakes.” Tate shook his head. “Sometimes I don’t know how we do it.”

“Do what?”

“Enforce a law that’s got more holes in it than a hunk of Swiss cheese.”

“No papers, no entry.”

“No housemaids or fruit pickers. Someone to stand in a refrigerated warehouse and gut fish all day.”
Huffman crunched on his last fry.

Tate drank the rest of his coffee. “Though I guess it’s better not to think about things too much.”
The next morning Tate was called to see supervisor Martinez. When Martinez swivelled around in his chair Tate saw he had a mottled and decayed arrowhead in his hand. He rubbed his thumb across the blunted point. He studied it closely like he might read where it had once flown.

“This is a small town, Morgan.”

As soon as he heard that, Tate had no need to hear any more.

“And the law is on the side of the repo man, Border Agent or not.”

When Tate got home from work he opened the cupboard and took out a can of coffee. He flicked the water on, then off. Then he put the coffee back in the cupboard, gulped down a cold beer and took his Glock from the holster and tucked it into his waistband. He filled his pocket with a handful of rounds that were loose in the bottom of his gun box then went into the garage and kicked his bike from the stand and fired it up. He thudded under the highway bridge and flushed swallows from their nests. He rode past irrigated fields, crops grown on veins of the Colorado River. He dropped down the gears and swung into a dirt road that turned into a creek bed. When he got to a refrigerator dotted with bullet holes he pulled up and killed the engine.

After he stuck the target of a cartoon hoodlum to the door he walked back across the creek and pulled the Glock from his waistband and emptied the magazine into the face. Squeezing off the noise. Once reloaded, he emptied the gun into the heart. All the shots passed through the paper and through the refrigerator before pounding into the bank. A torn hole in the chest. He carried on pulling the trigger even when the gun was spent and somehow the metallic click of the empty mechanism rang louder than the caps exploding in the chamber.

And now the sun was in the creek.
And he was sweating.
By the time Tate had gotten home his wife’s lawyer had left a voicemail on his answering machine. And a hand-delivered letter from the credit card company lay on the doormat.

He neither listened to the message nor read the letter. He was due at work in under an hour. Due to catch men coming over the border to make money to send home to their wives.

Twenty minutes before his shift, a mile from the station, Tate swung his truck off the highway and took a rough farm track, zigzagging boulders and trenches. Then he pulled from the track and drove desert, steering between saguaro and ironwood, careful not to get a puncture on the sharper stones heated by a sun that somehow became a foreign sun this close to the line. And he carried on driving cross-country until hitting a little-used sealed road that headed south and only intersected with I-8 at the border.

Then he parked on the sand, close enough to the road so that he could ride his motorbike off the truck bed without leaving a tire track, and hauled himself out and stripped off his uniform and pulled on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt.

Then he hefted his bike upright, kicked out the stand and wiped his brow. Nothing but heat shimmer, telegraph poles and sagging wire all the way to Mexico.

Before Tate pulled on his helmet and revved up his bike and launched himself across the border he screwed up his uniform and slung it as far as he could into the glaring desert.[/private]

Nicholas Hogg won the inaugural New Writing Ventures prize for fiction. His novel, Show Me the Sky – “An assured and gripping début,” BBC Radio 3 – is published by Canongate. www.nicholashogg.com.

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