T. Boyle - Drop City

For the past two days all he could talk about was the border, the border this and the border that, and how he ought to sneak across in the trunk of the Studebaker or find someplace out in the middle of nowhere where he could just step from one country to the other as easily as moving from the front of the bus to the back. Star had tried to talk him out of it, because if they opened the trunk-and why wouldn't they? — they'd nail him on the spot, but there were thirty people on the bus, not to mention two dogs and a cat, and the chances of their checking on everybody were slim. Especially in the middle of the night.

“You don't need Ronnie,” she said. “Just sit tight, that's all. Everything's going to be fine,” she said, and then she said it again, as if the words could make it so.

“All right,” Norm was saying, and his voice was up to its usual volume now, somewhere between a shout and a roar, “all right, everybody just listen. The border's two miles ahead, and we are just going to breeze right on through it, no hassles, no worries. You know what we are? All of us? We're a rock band.”

Weird George let out a groan.

“No, we are. And we've got big dates in Fairbanks and Anchorage, and where else? I don't know, Sitka. You people with guitars get 'em out, and a little strumming or even a group sing here would be nice, you know what I mean? Know what I'm saying?”

It was two-thirty in the morning. They were at the Canadian border. Nobody felt like singing.

“All right. Just let me do the talking. And you chicks-come on, you chicks, you Drop City Miracles-try to look sexy, right? You're the backup singers.”

That got a laugh, and you could feel the tension lift. People started chattering, the guy-_cat__-everybody called Deuce pulled out his harmonica and started a slow blues, and pretty soon Geoffrey joined him on guitar and two of the back-of-the-bus girls, Erika and Dunphy, let loose with a few random verses of “Love in Vain.” Norm took his hunched shoulders back up to the front of the bus, where Premstar was perched on the driver's seat like a present he'd forgotten to unwrap. Marco gave Star a look, and then followed him. “Norm,” he was saying, “listen, Norm-I need to talk to you a second.” She slid down from the bunk, afraid suddenly, and went after him.

Then the door of the bus wheezed open and the three of them-Norm, Marco and Star-were standing by the roadside with Ronnie and Mendocino Bill while the Studebaker idled behind its headlights in a pall of exhaust. A light rain spat down out of the sky and made the pavement glisten. Someone had broken a bottle here, and Star had to be careful where she put her feet. “So what do you want to do, then,” Norm said, “walk across? That wouldn't draw any attention or anything, would it?”

“If they catch me I go to jail.”

“Relax, man, nobody's going to catch you. It's Canada, that's all. Bunch of hicks, right, Pan? Am I right? Star?”

The Studebaker's headlights threw a cold lunar glare on Marco's face. He ducked his head as if the Mounties were already on him, snapping whips. “What about Pan's car? The trunk, I mean?”

Norm shook his head very slowly. His eyes jumped behind the lenses of his patched-up glasses. “We used to sneak into the drive-in like that. I think we got two cats and a chick in there one night, and then I couldn't get the trunk open.” He laughed. “That was pretty wild. That was one wild night, let me tell you.”

Ronnie said, “I don't think so. If they like open the trunk, then I'm the one in deep shit, right? I'm a smuggler, right?”

Nobody said anything. Star took hold of Marco's arm. “Come on,” she said. “Let's get back on the bus. Let's get it over with.”

“Plus, I've got all my dope back there-_our__ dope. Inside the spare tire. And that would be a major fuckup. I mean, if they found that.”

Lester's Lincoln pulled up then, and a moment later Dale Murray ratcheted in on his bike. Suddenly there was a whole lot of engine noise. And fumes. Lester rolled down the window. “So what now?” he said. “We go across, or what?”

“Fuck, I'm freezing,” Dale Murray said. He was wet through, his hair painted to both sides of his face. “We got to stop and camp or something or I think I'm going to fucking die.”

“We go across separately,” Norm said, “because we don't want to give them a whole hippie freak show all at once. Ronnie, you're first. Then you, Lester. And, Dale, you go through anytime you want, just make like you don't know us-nobody knows anybody, dig? — and when we're on the other side we'll see if maybe we can't get the bike aboard the bus somehow. How does that sound? Is it a plan?”

Star was the only one who said anything, and she could barely hear herself over the ratcheting of the bike. “Yeah,” she said. “It's a plan.”

Up ahead, the night bloomed with artificial light, trucks braking amidst the fading ghosts of cars, the Peace Arch aglow like an alien spaceship set down in a field of darkened wheat. There were gray metal booths bright with windows, figures in some kind of uniform moving like skaters across the shimmer of pavement. Ronnie's car swung out ahead of the bus, out in the left lane, and everybody pressed their faces to the windows. They watched as the Studebaker's taillights flashed red in a shroud of smoldering exhaust and a figure emerged from the near booth. The rain had quickened, beating with real authority now at the roof of the bus and driving pewter spikes into the roadway and the soft shrouded chassis of the cars. The figure leaned into Ronnie's window-fifteen seconds, that was all it took-then straightened up and waved him on. Star watched the Studebaker ease forward and fold itself back into the night.

Norm had pulled in behind a truck and the truck was taking its time. Nobody could see what the delay was because the back end of the truck was blocking their view, but the guitars kept strumming and half a dozen people were singing Beatles songs now-first “Rocky Raccoon,” and then “Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey,” the choice of which would have struck Star as nothing short of hilarious if it weren't for Marco. Poor Marco. He was huddled against the window in the seat beside her, sunk into the upturned collar of his denim jacket. His hair was like tarnished gold, like winter-killed weeds in a vacant lot. His eyes were drawn down to nothing. “I'm doing this for you,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

Then it was Lester's car, pulling up into the space vacated by Ronnie's. The same figure emerged from the booth, only the figure was wearing a rain slicker now and it-he-produced a flashlight and shined it in Lester's face. In the next moment, the truck was creeping forward, its blinkers flashing, and Norm was moving up to the booth even as the man with the flashlight waved Lester into the farthest lane over-the lane reserved for searches and seizures-and Lester, Franklin and Sky Dog all climbed out of the car and into the rain.

But before anybody could even think to worry about that, the bus lurched to a stop, the door folded back with a wheeze and a man in a yellow rain slicker came up the steps. “Greetings,” Norm shouted. “It's a bear out there, huh?”

The man nodded and said something in a low voice to Norm and Premstar. From where she was sitting, Star could see him only as a dull yellow glow, like something growing in the dirt of a cellar. Behind her, all the way in the back, people were singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

“American,” Norm said, and then Premstar, her voice floating back to Star like a fluff of dander on a sterile breeze, pulled her chin down and concurred: “American,” she said.

The man in the slicker said something else, and Star couldn't catch it.