SADDLEBAG DISPATCHES
W. MICHAEL FARMER
FINDING FORTUNE A SHORT STORY
T
here was a time when volunteers took their turn to help slow the rush of migrants with no papers from the south across the U.S. border. Now those days are gone. John Fortune is a guardian of the gateway to paradise, an angel with a flaming sword at the entrance to Eden. He sits on a campstool in the shadow of a camouflaged sunshade. A big Bailey panama pulled toward his brows shadows his bronze face from the unblinking sun blazing in the distant, gray haze. A beetle races from a rock’s shade toward the cover of another. Too slow, it’s covered with a splat of tobacco juice. Nothing passes this point unchallenged, nothing. There is no breeze, no sound. Every living thing has gone to cover from the brutal, fiery sun. The edge of the Promised Land wavers in mirage distorted images of light green mesquite, patches of rusty red and light brown sands, scattered pieces of black basalt, desiccated prickly pear, and creosote bushes barely more than dry twigs with roots. The heat surrounding Fortune makes him drowsy. His consciousness drifts, and he gently nods into the large military surplus binoculars mounted on a sturdy tripod before him. Jerking awake, he snaps his head erect and stares into the eyepieces. Mesquite limbs quiver at the edge of a distant arroyo. A roadrunner? Javelinas? Illegals? His jaw muscles ripple at the thought of illegals. They leave trash all over his fields, steal anything they can get their hands on from his yard or barn or sometimes even his house, and cut through his fences to let his animals scatter all over Arizona. He lifts his radio
to call for a pick-up bus but takes his finger off the transmit button. If it’s just an animal, and he calls in a false alarm, he’ll be teased unmercifully. Better to check first. Vibrating in a low hum, the radio comes to life. Without taking his eyes from the mesquite, he answers holding the receiver’s blazing frame just off his ear. “Station twenty-one, Fortune.” “Radio check. How’s your water?” “Still have two full canteens.” “Copy. Any business?” “Negative.” “Roger that.” The radio jabbers a moment in static before he clicks off. Silence returns. Reviving from the flood of nicotine filled juice falling from a clear blue sky, the beetle staggers to its feet. It’s hit again. Sliding a canteen strap over his shoulder, checking the cartridges in a Colt Python, and pulling the Bailey lower over his eyes, Fortune steps into the bright glare. He picks his way past the prickly pear and cactus and avoids loud, crunchy patches of gravel. At the edge of the wash, his rough, gnarled hand glides over the holstered Colt’s grip, and his thumb flips off the hammer loop. He looks through a crack in the green wall of mesquite along the top edge of the arroyo and sees nothing. Squeezing past the mesquite’s thorns, he eases down a steep sandy bank. The arroyo, ten or twelve feet deep, curves out of sight in the direction he saw the mesquite shake. He carefully walks along the bottom of the arroyo,
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