Deportee

Yesterday I met a young man who'd been kicked out of the U.S.

I knew immediately he had not grown up in Kino. It was the way he was dressed, the way he walked with kind of a swagger, his dark skin that was more African American dark than Mexican Indian dark. He spoke with much more assuredness than most Kino-ites. He was cheeky. And he spoke perfect English, almost no accent.

I meet a lot of people here who speak pretty good English because they lived in the U.S. for a number of years. I figured they must've been in the States illegally and gotten deported but I never pried. This guy, I asked, "did you get kicked out?" He said yeah. I asked if he could go back and he said no, not ever, because he'd been in some trouble. I stopped my interrogation there.

This is no place for a young man like him. He's a city boy. I asked if he was bored. "I'm so bored I want to kill myself," then he laughed and said not really.

The only other customer was a just-married couple who had him move a table and chairs down to the beach. They'd sent him on two runs to the store for more beer. They were shitfaced. He was getting good exercise running up and down that sandy dune to wait on them. He commented on my bike. I said someone had given it to me. "With the ET basket?" It took a second for me to make the connection. The basket did look like it could carry a small extra-terrestrial.

Of course I had a book with me. When I went to leave he asked if I had any books I could loan him. I asked what he liked to read. "Paul Coelho." I just happen to have a book by that author so I'll take it over to the restaurant in the next day or two.

After that I stopped in to see a friend. I said, "go meet this guy. I don't know if you two will hit it off but he needs some people to hang out with."

He's obviously no angel but my heart goes out to this young man separated from his family, from his friends, from his previous life so different than this. Other people in this same situation have done well here but I'm worried about him. If I wasn't such a chicken, I'd smuggle him back home.