DBC Pierre - Vernon God Little

Cut to daylight. Crime tape flaps wearily across the Johnson road, around where my journey began last night. Lally enters the frame, walking towards the camera. His arm is in a sling. 'I was lucky to escape the scene. With a broken collarbone, and serious cuts and bruises, I can only be thankful I was here to witness a crime that dispels all doubt as to the cause of recent events in Martirio.' The stringy man from the morgue hovers over a corpse wrapped in plastic. Troopers haul it behind Lally to a waiting van. 'Barry Enoch Gurie was not so lucky. His body fell less than a hundred yards from the practice range of Martirio's elite new SWAT team – a team he was to have joined only hours after he was brutally gunned down with his own weapon.'

A picture appears of Barry as a cadet, shiny-eyed, hoping blindly into the future behind the camera lens. Lally returns with a deeper scowl. 'I was an unfortunate witness to the shots, shots that cut short the life of a man who overcame childhood autism to become a glowing star in law management, an officer described by colleagues and townsfolk alike as a true human being. As federal forces descend upon the stricken district, attention now turns to the whereabouts of confirmed killer Vernon Gregory Little…'

My school picture appears, followed by footage of me leaving the courthouse with Pam. Then a stranger in thick glasses comes on, wearing overalls and rubber gloves. 'The forensic environment is near perfect,' he says. 'We've already identified the tread of a sports shoe – an unusual kind of shoe for these parts – and there's evidence of tracks being covered up around the body's resting-place.'

Lally returns. 'The task of securing the state's borders and highways will continue long into the night – authorities warn the suspect may be armed, and should not be approached…'

I slap a stone eye around the terminal. The janitor sweeps halfheartedly in front of the restrooms. Behind a counter, a ticket clerk taps listlessly at his keyboard. I take a measured walk between them to the doors, then aim for the dark of the road and run, fly back to the highway.

I cross the highway at the darkest point, and pound along its shadow side, invisible, just two clear veins throbbing slime and lightning. Up ahead a road sign points to Mexico. Traffic trickles past it. I don't even know how far I have to go, I just run till I'm dead, then limp till I can run again. It's after midnight when the sparks die under my feet. I slow to a shuffle, and strangle a hiss in my throat. Waves loom at my back, crested waves which instead of foam spill flies, flies I have to kill, thoughts of defeat in a grubby swarm. Jesus comes with them, waving, but he's engulfed, drowning, gulping flies that join with the night to claim all his colors, return him to black. I stop, the way a rock stops that never moved. My head hangs buzzing in the dark, and when I raise it up, after a century's pause, I see a glow up ahead. I stumble forward, and see the glow become a glare, a kind of high-beam extravaganza in the middle of nowhere.

' International Bridge – Puente Internacional,' says a sign. ' Mexico .'

From here the border looks like Steven Spielberg built it, a blast of arctic light framed in darkness. I pull on my jacket, though it ain't cold at all, and attempt to slick back my hair. I stride the last few hundred yards of home.

Lines of trucks stretch into the dark on the other side of the bridge, cars heavy with people pass through the middle. There's plenty of traffic on foot, even now, and no sign of a roadblock, except for the regular border checkpoints. I step onto the bridge knowing I step into my dream, pinning its fucken hem with my foot, for me to climb aboard. The redemption, the souvenirs, the lazy panties in fragrant sunshine.

You can already tell one thing: the clean concrete highway ends at the borderline, it's a different country after that. Tall, small people flow around me like tumbling store-displays, chubby types in denim carve between them, with all the confidence of home. Mexicans. The faces seem cautious, like you might interrupt a promise made to them. The hem of their dream hangs over this bridge too, that's why. You can taste it. I pass by an ole man wearing Ray-Bans, a Baywatch cap, a Wowboys jacket, fluorescent green Nikes, and carrying a Nintendo box tied with South Park bedsheets. Makes me stand out like a fucken shaved wiener, even aside from being six inches taller than everybody.

Checkpoint buildings sprawl on the Mexican side, officials in uniform stop cars and search them. I stand up my jacket collar, and try to lose myself in the flow of people. I nearly make it too, until I hear this voice.

' Joven ,' calls a Mexican officer. I start to scuttle. ' Joven – Mister !' I look around. He holds up the flat of his hand.

The border officer takes his time strutting over from the checkpoint. His skin is darker than a lot of folks down here, and strings of gray-black hair are greased onto his mostly bald head, like with axle grease or something. Kind of a gross little dude, actually.

'Passport please,' he says. He looks pretty serious about things, and on top of everything he now has these gold teeth. Black eyes scald me.

'Uh – passport?'

'Yes, passport please.'

'Uh – I'm American .'

'Driver license?'

'Well – no, I'm an American , visiting your beautiful country and all…'

He stares at me. He's going to default to some nasty official type of shit, I can smell it coming.

'Follow me,' he says, and marches me back to the main building.

Inside smells of shoe polish. It's a kind of Jurassic Park for office supplies, with all these ole desks, and Chinese-restaurant kind of chairs, lit by lonely-looking supermarket lighting. A fan clicks in one corner. The effect is something between a courthouse and one of those public-health waiting rooms you see on TV, specially for the number of ole Mexican ladies in here. Don't fucken tell anyone I said that, though. I'm not crazy about the effect of it. The official ushers me to a desk, and sits behind it, all straight-backed, like he's the president of South America or something, like the borderline is the crack of his fucken ass.

'You have identification?' he asks.

'Uh – not really.'

He creaks back into his chair, spreading his hands wide, like he's about to point out the most obvious fact in the fucken universe. 'You can't enter Mexico without identification.' He tightens his mouth across, for the Most Obvious Fact effect.

Some lies form an orderly line at the back of my throat. I decide to go for tried and tested horseshit, which, if you're me, is the Dumb Kid routine. I cook up some family, fast. 'I have to meet my parents, see? They came down earlier, but I had to stay back and come down later, and now they're over there waiting, like, they're probably worried and all.'

'You parents on vacation?'

'Uh, yeah, we're going on vacation, you know.'

'Where you parents?'

'They're already in Mexico, waiting for me.'

'Where?'

Fuck. It's fatal when you get a guy like this, take note. How it works is that he'll narrow my bullshit down, make it slither to the spout end of the funnel of truth. See how the lie can start out all vague, like, 'Yeah, they're in the northern hemisphere,' or something? Well now he'll narrow it down, and narrow it down, until you end up having to give a goddam room number. Where the fuck are my parents?

'Uh – Tijuana,' I say, nodding.

'Ti -juana ?' He shakes his head. 'This the wrong way for Tijuana – is the other side of Mexico.'

'No, well that's right, but they came the other way, see, and I was over here, so I have to go across and meet them. You know?'