The bus lurched forward, then back as the temperamental rocket engines sputtered and misfired. Alan pumped the gas pedal, but the thrusters complained even more.
“What a time for a breakdown,” said Alan. “I knew I should have joined the Auto Club before we left.”
We could barely see the road ten feet in front of us, as a great curtain of sand wrapped around us like we were a giant burrito.
Marge’s screen lit up. “You’d better pull over until this thing passes.”
And that’s exactly what we did.
The sandstorm didn’t let up, rocking us from side to side, like a Tonka toy in a wind tunnel. There was nothing to do but heed the fury of the storm, and pray it would be over soon.
Fifteen minutes past . . .
then twenty . . .
then thirty.
My throat was so dry I could hardly swallow. Mounds of sand crept up the windows on one side of the bus, like snow drifts pressing against the walls of a mountain cabin. “I hope you brought a shovel,” I shouted to Alan above the a howling wind.
Finally, after more than an hour, the sandstorm died down. We could see the sky above, and the long road ahead—only, where was Las Vegas? We were now surrounded by a flat, lifeless desert, not a tree or shrub as far as the eye could see. It was as if the mountains, the snakes, and the Vegas casinos had all fallen into quicksand.
Alan turned the starter key to get the bus going, but the powerful rockets wouldn’t so much as cough. “The sand must have gotten in the propulsion system,” said Alan. “Are we still on course, Marge?”
“My positioning software says, yes,” she answered.
“Are we in New Mexico yet?”
“It looks like it.”
“Whereabouts?”
“I’m not really sure. Only Breadcrust would know.”
Breadcrust! The reality show guru, famous for subjecting his TV guinea pigs to unspeakable brutality, had created an impossible situation for us, all for the pleasure of his viewing audience.
“We’re not anywhere near Roswell, are we?” I asked Marge. “You know, the land of UFO sightings and alien abductions?”
Marge hesitated. “I’m afraid that data has been erased from my memory for national security reasons.”
“Not surprising,” said Alan. “Ever since that space alien scandal in the 1950s, the government has denied that space ships ever landed here.”
“So, now what?” I said.
“Let’s have a look outside,” said Alan.
We pushed open the door and stepped out onto the parched desert floor. It was hot as blazes. Deep cracks in the clay surface ran in all directions, like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
There was no sign of life, save a lone vulture circling above us.
“Another hungry buzzard ready to devour us,” said Alan, of the winged scavenger, “only this one’s not a news chopper.”
“So long as it’s not a UFO,” I said. “This place creeps me out.”
Alan examined the defunct rocket engines. He poked around, but accomplished little more than making a lot of noise. Then he popped open the hood at the front of the bus, then just stood there, facing the engine with a blank stare. Some genius. Alan was great at creating electronic miracles, but didn’t know a spark plug from a radiator cap.
I brought out a folding chair from the bus, and sat down in the shade of the beached, yellow whale. With no way to call for help, it looked like we would be there for a while. The show certainly wasn’t going to rescue us, either. Our audience was having too good of a time watching us suffer—just like that pesky vulture.
Suddenly, I heard a voice:
“Buenos dias!”
I jumped to my feat. A man, literally appearing out of nowhere, stood twenty feet in front of me! (Now, I knew I was in Roswell!)
Alan came over and stood beside me. “What the hell is this?” he said, at the sight of our unexpected guest.
The stranger’s face and hands were scorched, like he had been wandering in the desert for days. The sweat of his journey soaked his white shirt. He set down the plastic water bottle in his hand to wipe his brow.
“Buenos dias,” the man repeated, his foreign accent unmistakable.
Then, an even more astonishing thing happened. Out from behind him stepped a woman, balancing an infant child on her hip!
“Dear God,” I said softly.
Alan called out to the couple. “Hello! Do you speak English?”
“Si,” the man replied. “You have any food you can a-spare a hungry family, señior?”
“We do.” said Alan. “Come closer, and we’ll see what we can get for you.” The man whispered something to the woman, then cautiously approached the bus alone.
“Ya know,” said Alan, “if you’re looking for agricultural work, you might think of heading west to California. I think it’s strawberry season there, now.”
As the man moved closer, his attention turned to the rocket engines. “This is a-not a Border Patrol vehicle. Yes?”
“Don’t worry,” said Alan. “We’re not with U.S. Immigration.”
The man turned toward the woman. “It’s okay, honey,” he shouted, suddenly losing his thick accent. “They’re not the feds!” Then he turned back to the rockets. “Man, these are some awesome firecrackers.”
I suppose I should have feared the mystery man, but his actions were way too amusing. Still, Alan and I used caution as we crept toward him.
“Sorry about this,” the man said to Alan. “Dude, you should see the look on your face.”
Alan was peeved. “What’s this all about?” he said. “Who are you, and why the phony accent?”
“You’d be surprised how much sympathy we get talking that way.” He held out his hand. “Name’s Luis, sir.” His fellow travelers joined him at his side. “And this is my wife and daughter.”
Alan hesitantly shook the man’s hand. “My name’s Alan, and this is Amy. I can’t say I’m pleased to meet you, though.”
“Well, you should,” said Luis.
“Why do you say that?”
The man and his wife looked at each other and chuckled. “Because I can fix your machine.”
“You can?” I said, with great joy, tempered with suspicion.
Luis shook his head. “Man, you guys kill me. You think we’re all just a bunch of ignorant day-laborers. It so happens I majored in Space Aeronautics at an American university.”
“And I suppose your wife is an astrophysicist,” mused Alan.
“Don’t be absurd! She barely made it through Quantum Physics.”
“And the baby?”
“Harvard Law . . . just kidding. But she is fielding offers from three different preschools.”
“Then, what are you doing out here?”
“Ah, man! A clerical screw-up with Immigration got us deported. We’ve been trying for years to get back in. Not much need for aerospace engineers where we come from, and starting a Space Program isn’t a big priority with them.”
Luis opened a small door below the rocket engines. Inside were a jumble of hoses and pipes. He turned a valve and sniffed. “Thought so.”
“What is it?” asked Alan.
“Typical tourists. You’re out of gas.”
“But the tank was full when we left.”
“It’s empty now, pal.”
Luis unscrewed a small cap and pulled out a dipstick. “Looks like you’ve got plenty of unleaded, though. I can get the engine up front running with no problem. Should get you to wherever you’re going. Just, no more rocketing around the desert for you.”
“That’s a relief,” I said.
“I gotta ask,” said Luis. “I know why I’m out here, but what are you two doing in the middle of the desert, in a bus from a NASA salvage yard?”
“I’m running for President of the United States,” said Alan, proudly, “and this is my campaign bus.”
Luis picked up his water jug, grabbed his wife’s hand, and started to walk away.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“Back to the border,” said Luis. “I’ve changed my mind about living in this country. You people are crazy.”
Alan laid his hand on Luis’s shoulder. “Only some of us,” said Alan.
The baby had been fidgeting throughout this whole conversation, and her mother was starting to lose her grip.
“I remember hearing some mention of food earlier,” I said to the young woman. “Let’s see what we’ve got inside for you and the baby, while the men try to fix this bucket.”
I escorted the mother and child into the bus and checked the fridge. “We’ve got ham and cheese,” I said, “and Cheerios for the baby. All babies like Cheerios.”
The mother sat her child at the kitchen table. “Any peanut butter?” she asked.
“Uh . . . sorry, someone must have eaten it all.”
A bowl of Alan’s organically-grown fruit sat on the kitchen counter. “May I?” asked the woman, pointing to an orange.
“Be my guest,” I said.
I set the adorable baby on a stack of books, and scattered a handful of Cheerios across the table. “There,” I said, “now you can reach the table and play with your cereal.”
Then I pulled a chair out for the young woman. “I didn’t catch your name,” I said.
“Morena,” she said, taking her seat. “And this is Olivia.”
With introductions out of the way, Morena and I shared a pleasant time chatting about ordinary things: the weather, motherhood, things like that, every topic except what her family was doing there. I felt that a little girl-talk was something she needed more.
As we gabbed on, I noticed Morena’s hands shaking as she peeled her orange. Then she suddenly burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did I say something wrong?”
With her head down, Morena reached across the table and took hold of my hand. “It’s horrible to be hated,” she said, sobbing. “The insults, the name-calling, the stares that say ‘go back where you came from.’”
“Is it that bad?”
She looked up and wiped the dampness from her face. “You can’t carry groceries home without being harassed. People sometimes spit on you when you pass them on the sidewalk. Yes, it’s that bad, especially for the children, who can’t possibly grasp the situation they’re in.”
“And to think,” I said, “there are powerful men who could put a stop to that kind of thing.”
“The men!” Morena’s despair abruptly turned to rage. “What do they know about the misery women have to go through? Our dreams are simple: a roof, a hot meal, a bed for our children. Who’s legal, who’s not; who stays, who goes; those are matters for fat politicians with tiny brains and big offices. They pass judgment on people they have no intention of helping—unless it’s an election year. It’s hurtful to be thought of as something less than human. But it’s the helplessness that hurts the most—the feeling that you’ve been cast adrift in a leaky boat, and there’s no one to rescue you.”
She wiped the last tear from her face. “But I don’t feel so lost around you. You’re kind, and I thank you for that.”
I was getting a little misty myself by that time. “I wish it didn’t have to be that way.”
“The world is full of wishes, Amy,” said Morena. “Luis wishes for a good job. He wishes for a better life for his family. I, too, have a wish, but mine is more powerful than his, more wonderful than any he could imagine.”
“What’s that?”
“That there be more Amys in the world.”
My heart melted. Never in my life had I heard stories of such atrocious treatment by human beings. I wanted to tell her that it’ll be okay, but that was a promise I couldn’t guarantee. The best I could offer her was a hug, and another cup of Cheerios for Olivia.
The baby was soon back on her mother’s hip, as we went outside to check on the boys.
Luis wiped his greasy hands on a rag, as Alan closed the engine hood.
“I can’t thank you enough, Luis,” said Alan, “but I can give you a lift to wherever you need to go.”
“Are you going anywhere near Houston?” asked Luis. “I hear the Space Center is looking for engineers to work on the shuttles.”
“I think you’re a little late for that,” I said. “The Shuttle Program has been scrubbed. All the planes are in museums now.”
Luis hung his head. “Which way did you say was California?”
“None of that, now,” said Alan. “We’ll get you to someone who can help get your papers in order. I’d hate to have you tackle that border wall again. I hear that thing’s a bitch to get over.”
“There you go again,” said Luis. “It takes more than a little metal and concrete to destroy a man’s dream.”
“Then, how did you get over the wall?”
“A ladder.”
“Oh.”
Down the road behind us came the distant sound of a police siren. “Uh, oh!” I said. I turned to Luis. “I think you had better—”
But Luis and his family were gone, vanishing as mysteriously as they had appeared.
Roswell! Did I just have a close encounter with a space alien? Was Luis’s knowledge of rockets just a coincidence? Or, were they just a typical family of border-crossing immigrants? I guess aliens come in all forms.
The wailing siren stopped as a vehicle pulled up next to the bus. What we assumed was a Border Patrol car, wasn’t a car at all. It was Chester’s custom coach!
“Didn’t handle that too well, did you?” said Chester stepping off his bus.
“What do you know about it?” said Alan.
Chester pointed to the video cameras along the roof of our bus. “Saw the whole thing.”
“Oh, yeah. Forgot.”
“I ran into a group of illegals myself,” said Chester. “The authorities had rounded up more than their trucks could carry, so I offered to help out.”
I leaned in through the doorway of Chester’s bus. Hand-cuffed and silent, sat a small group of frightened immigrants. A face leaned in from the back and looked at me. It was a pretty, brown-haired girl about the same age as me.
Peter sat quietly in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield.
“And what do you have to say about all this?” I asked him.
Peter didn’t move a muscle, not even to look at me.
Chester studied Alan’s bus and rubbed his chin. “I could send you a tow truck from Bravo,” he said, “but that would be aiding and abetting the enemy, wouldn’t it?”
Chester planted his large self in his seat and started his bus up. “Too bad that rocket stunt of yours backfired,” he said. “It was very inventive. Still, it does my heart good to see another one of your grand ideas fail”
Then Chester roared off, leaving us to inhale his dust.
Climbing aboard our own bus, I buckled myself in as Alan started the engine—the one that came standard with the bus.
Marge chimed on. “You gonna take that from Chester?” she said.
Alan slowly closed the door. “To fight another day, Marge. To fight another day.”