Jess Ligas

I overhear frantic screams nearby as my bike and I roll towards the El Salvador border, but I can’t tell from where. The friction point of my clutch pulls me forward easily. It’s hard to orient myself in my helmet in this heat. I feel dizzy. My mouth is dry from dehydration. I always forget to drink much of anything during border crossings. The sun here bares its teeth with a ferocity I’m not accustomed to, and I feel beads of sweat tickle their way down my spine. I glance to my right where I find a few tiendas offering photocopies at different rates and a couple of chickens pecking away at the dirt. Maybe I’m hearing things I think to myself. 

Turning my head to the left, feeling the base of my neck pivot naturally on its axis it becomes obvious I’m not going crazy. I’ve found the source of comotion.  My eyes are greeted by the barrels of two guns staring at me from a distance and they’re getting closer. Two migracion officers’ with knees bent, striding in my direction tactically aiming me down. They’re screaming… at me, and I know they aren’t trying to exchange Quetzales for USD.

Like a dog rolls on its back to show submission I throw up my hands instinctively, causing my bike to stall and lurch forward making me lose my footing. They scream louder. I’m just barely able to balance myself, now fearing they’d taken my mis-shift as an attempt at flight. All I can think to say is a feeble high pitched, “ok ok ok ok!” as they bear down on me.

The first officer cautiously approaches, the crunch of his boots over dry earth sounds like well packed snow. He places his gun to my chest where I can feel my heart pounding against it like a doctor’s stethoscope. I begin to shake like I’d just worked out intensely. 

The second officer flanks me, then strolls to my starboard side as he pulls my keys from the ignition. “Pasaporte y matriculación!” he barks. I lower my hands to my crotch where I start unbuttoning my pants. The officers squint in unison in my direction and I feel the pistol indent into my skin a little bit more. Wearing my shirt this far unbuttoned seems ridiculous now. “¡Cuidado, gringo!” Clearly wondering what I was up to, they tried to reassume my compliant state, pushing my hands to my handle bars. 

Surely they couldn’t have thought I was going to offer my body to them, and they must take me for an idiot if they figured I would put up some kind of a fight. Who did I look like anyway? I quickly, in the calmest voice I could muster, relayed to them that I keep my important papers down there, motioning with my eyes. They acquiesce. I reach my hand into my pants making oddly sexual eye contact the entire way, eventually unveiling a sweaty leather pouch. I quickly shuffle through some paperwork and hand them my documentation. Like arguing with an imbecile there’s no debating with a gun.

They yanked me from my saddle and put me in handcuffs. They pull me in the direction of an Orwellian looking building in the distance. Dust in the air I expect a tumbleweed to roll past us, but this isnt a film. As I’m being led away the officer grunts in my ear in a slurred accented spanish, “You just helped an illegal immigrant cross our border. Now, you’re in trouble.”

* * *

My eyes sift through an array of drug options displayed before me on a duct taped piece of cardboard: Gorilla Glue, OG Kush, Girl Scout Cookies. Who knew the cartel could be so hip? Every strain of weed that you could imagine and it’s goofy name to boot. As my eyes wander down the menu my choices are all written crudely in thick sharpie letters, and different classes of drugs begin to reveal themselves. Apparently the need for cute names isn’t very necessary with certain categories of substances —- crack, for instance was simply crack. 

This type of smoke shop, a variety that travelers refer to as “candy stores”, looks like a seventeen year old stoner’s wet dream. Everything in the room is obscured due to the poor arrangement of lighting. The only decent source coming from the LED lights placed anywhere and everywhere constantly changing colors from fuchsia to turquoise to a deep foreboding red. Bongs and pipes, grinders and vaporizers donned every shelf. There’s Bob Marley posters strewn on the wall and a fan on high pointed in a direction that didn’t make any sense. A faint smell of marijuana having been smoked recently lingers in the air. As I look behind the counter at the chap fronting the business it doesn’t seem too far-fetched an idea as he couldn’t have been much older than seventeen himself. 

The TV in the corner is blasting an old Wiz Khalifa classic, On My Level. A song I’ve heard a million times being from Pittsburgh, PA. The young worker busts out a restrained dance kind of like whisper singing a song in a library. He looks us up and down with sleepy stoned eyes waiting for our decision. I point to the insane buffet at our disposal and glance at my new found acquaintance, Lennert, who I met the day before, standing beside me, “see” I say to him through a smirk and a laugh as someone had once done for me, “I told you”. To which he replied in jest, “Yeah, but they still don’t have any Ketamine.”

We met in San Cristobal, Mexico, less than 12 hours before this. A city I called home for just over a month. A place as rich and interesting in culture as it was cheap in booze and accomodation. The cheaper the places, the stranger the creatures. Especially for other travelers, but strange in an endearing way. Like how my friends are all assholes… Differently, and that’s why I love them.

Lennert had strolled through the doors one evening as I was on my way out. His pants were at least six sizes too big, ankle fabric dragging over his hiking shoes, and the belt he had on seemed like he had to have poked a few extra holes in it in order to keep the ensemble functioning. The jacket he had on was synthetic suede with tufts of hair at the collar and wrists like animals lunging out sporadically. He had tight curls bouncing atop his head and his eyes smiled before his lips. Built like a baby doe but carrying himself like an elegant ghost, he floats over the pavement. I give him a smile and a light punch on the shoulder as we pass each other for the first time.

* * *

I wake up disoriented, staring at the roof of an unfamiliar vehicle. I prop myself on my shoulder and look above my head at the retrofitted air conditioner in the center console of the van I slept in last night. The air is dry because of it —– my nose stuffy. It smelled like clothes that are damp for too long. Taking a sip of water I see mine and Lennert’s things propped against the side wall. It all comes back to me: the rain soaked drive, darkness before finding camp, Lennert’s motorcycle donning a sign reading, “made by me,” a commentary on ownership. While finding a place to stay, an old couple took pity on our wet state and offered us a free place to sleep, which happened to be an old van in their front yard.

We met back up —- Lennert and I, in Antigua, Guatemala two months after meeting in Mexico. He, as promised, bought his first motorcycle. He went from Mexico to Guatemala having paid off the cartel to cross. It’s humbling to be with someone who travels in this way. Sure, you have blokes like me who wear the nameplate “motorcycle traveler”, but I just look and sometimes feel like some kind of salesman wearing it. People like him are a different breed. If I’m a Pomeranian, he’s a German Shepherd. He moves and makes decisions based on hedonism absent of fear. Back in Belgium he’s an abstract artist, and like abstract art I don’t try so hard to decipher his thought process, but only seek to enjoy the feeling that he gives me as a friend.

I look around the immediate surroundings of the defunct van we had called a bedroom last night. No Len anywhere. I get up and pull on a shirt, but before I’m out the side door he shows up smiling, ready to pack the bikes. Today we’d be crossing into El Salvador, and I wasn’t sure how to feel. New countries, though separated by a short distance, offer you vastly different things. Almost like a dentist’s office and a chinese restaurant next to each other in a strip mall — same exact sign font yet entirely different entities. 

Borders are typically stressful, and we had one tiny issue which pecked at me something awful: Lennert had no paperwork for his motorcycle. Naturally, this presented a problem, but when you’re in the clutches of Latin America it’s easy to assume that you’re able to sneak through red tape or pay your way through just about anything. It feels like this is almost an expected way to conduct yourself. The sun was out and the heat hung in the moist air like curtains. I was sweating well before we were moving. We packed and said farewell. 

* * *

I’m smoking a cigarette directly across the road from the El Salvadoran customs office when I finally see Lennert emerge. He looks stiff like someone had nailed a board to his flank. His suede jacket bouncing in his arms he crosses the road waddling as I put out the cigarette between my feet. When he’s within earshot he fires at me quickly, “Are they still watching?” 

I lean like the hand a metronome to get a better look around him. I scan the door. Indeed, there were four or five officers glaring in our direction. 

“Umm yeah, man…They’re watching,” I reply with nervous laughter

“Fuck.” Is his response “They told me I gotta go back to Guatemala.”

Silence.

“So you’re heading north then I take it,” I question him a bit deflated.

“No, man, you know I think I’m just going to try and cross,” he says kicking some dirt at his feet, “You know, just drive past, like without stopping. I can maybe wait for you somewhere down the road I think.”

I give him the look of a concerned mother, but relent and proceed with a sweaty slap pound anyway.

“You’re fucking crazy, brother,” I say laughing as I turn around to strap some peanut butter and bread back onto my bike. To each his own I think mindlessly as I prepare myself for what’s to come. I stop and look up for a second. A thought passes through me as I’m smashing the bread with straps against my backpack… Wait wait wait… Hold on… Maybe, just maybe I should be the first to cross.

I squint my eyes, grab my chin, and spin around, but it’s too late. He is a man of action. The last I see of Lennert is his sign bouncing hecticly on the back of his bike as he blitzes past a line of officers before hanging a right down a dirt road. I feel the weight, a tangible thing in my situation, of our choices that we make, our naivety, and how something as simple as the order of doing something can change the outcome drastically. This I knew as well would be the end of the line for us. I swing my leg onto my bike and start the engine. I can see El Salvador from where I sit, but for some reason it feels far away.

* * *

They lead me into what I thought would be an interrogation room, but to my dismay is only a kitchenette complete with a coffee maker and a microwave. I was surprised it didn’t have laminated posters of people climbing mountains with cliche inspirational quotes plastered on them.They sit me in a chair like I wasn’t able to do it myself. The officers begin to move about the room like dogs trying to find a comfortable resting position. A hush falls over the room once the animals are content. It’s cold here, but I’m dripping sweat. There’s a puddle of it already beginning to collect on the linoleum floor at my feet.

The main officer gives me a look of minimization and begins to speak, “We’re going to take your motorcycle,” Immediately my stomach twists in a knot thinking about how far I came and how far I still had to go, and I start to tear up. I wish in a scenario like this I could be full of male bravado, but trouble is the great reducer of ego, and I only felt like a child being reprimanded by tyrannical parents.

Helplessly I listened on. “Then, probably jail,” He continues as he paces with his hands behind his back as if he’s idolized too many movie villains. I cant help but remember the murder per capita is one of the highest in all of the Americas in El Salvador because of the feud between the new government and the MS13 gang. If I went to jail I surely picked the worst place and time to go. I’d be surrounded by stone cold killers. This sends a chill down my spine. I feel disassociated from reality.

 “and eventually… Deportation.” He adjusts his knees, really sinking into his posture. He cracks a smile as he crosses his arms before me. I can hear his foot tapping out an odd rhythm in the unfilled silence. I let my head hand in despair, in total disbelief.

“Unless…” I look up with my head hanging over my knees. The light behind him silhouetting his facial features, “you pay us or tell us where you were going.”

 It was one thing to be extorted, but the amount they were asking was just disrespectful. I didn’t have that kind of money so this wasn’t a possibility. And my motorcycle? I don’t have many possessions, and my bike was the only constant in my life. That wouldn’t be an option either. And to give away Lennert? I’m not a snitch, even the consideration felt utterly slimy. There wasn’t a chance I would do that either. My moral alarm was pounding in my ears.

I decided on playing dumb, which sitting where I was wasn’t hard. After about an hour of the same conversation I realized I needed to stop stalling. They were getting frustrated with me and began to raise their voices and speak their minds inches from my face. I really didn’t feel like losing my freedom. Finally, in a moment of tension, I remember my ace in the hole… I have rights, right? And I had done everything legally. What was going on here didnt feel right.

“Can I have a phone,” I ask speaking towards the floor. “I want to call the US embassy,” I say defeatedly in broken spanish.

With those choice words they physically back off of me. The weight in the room shifts and I can feel I’ve scratched at something. The main officer eyes me for a cold few seconds before calling to his minions. Gathering just outside the door they discuss in hushed voices things I hope were in my favor. They were annoyed with me clearly, but I could only pray that they were done with me as well.

They break the huddle from outside the room. When they enter they all seem more human. The first officer strolls towards me with keys in his hand. He avoids eye contact and undoes my cuffs. I rub my wrists and look at the red marks leftover from them. The next officer sifts through my documentation in his grip and hands me back everything he took. I look down in disbelief like I had run into an old friend I thought was gone forever. 

“Go,” He says, nodding towards the door.

Before they took their next inhale I was up and out the door. I suppose a fight with the US government over something I really couldn’t be blamed for isn’t something they wanted to deal with. My dehydration had faded into an odd euphoria. Stumbling down the front steps towards my motorcycle I feel high. I’m not even angry I have to repack my bags. I roll a cigarette and light up, maybe I actually deserve this one. I’m humming Operator by Jim Croce as the sweat cools my skin in the breeze. As I strap the contents of my life onto my bike I think about something a friend once told me, “Hay sustos que dan gustos” There are fears that give pleasure.

* * *

 I take a step back to admire my work. Nothing’s loose. I take one last look at the building sitting stoically in the afternoon heat and I line up to my bike like some sort of martial artist. I step with my left foot and kick the right through the small space left for me in the saddle. It’s boiling outside. Maybe it’s freezing. Was that hail? Sometimes I’m lucky to even have a perfect day for riding. I turn the key. My right front blinker has been out for months — a battle scar from a short she endured in her ignition wiring somewhere in Utah, and later saved by rocket scientists (but that’s a different story). My front end holds a continuous wink to oncoming traffic.

I squeeze the clutch and the front break reigning in my steed. Put the kickstand up, flip the kill switch, and hit the starter. The motor wont turn over. Fuck… I wipe sweat or rain or dust from my brow. God damn it the choke! I poke around with my left hand like I’m putting gum underneath a restaurant table. I find it at last and pull it all the way out. She comes to life on the next crank. Step the choke down, and do it once more.

As the engine warms I think I can hear an oddity in the cylinder head, but I know my neuroticism is persistent. Like all things there’s probably nothing to worry about. It’s no different than the sound I thought I heard in Tennessee or the sound I swore was there in Mexico. I tell myself that It’s a simple air cooled motor. It’s just noisy.

I fit the gear into place with a clunk noticing the distinct black scuff on my left boot. I release the clutch as you would a loved one dangling from a cliff. As I roll the throttle we begin to move. Not in a traditionally comfortable kind of way, but in a way me and Zopilote (my moto) have each acquiesced to do, a silent agreement that a bit of comfort sacrificed is well worth its weight in adventure. Just as the machine is imprinted by the human, the human is imprinted on by the machine. In character and in pain in the neck and back. It instills in me once again as I turn down some dirt road in some distant land just how alone I am (sort of), and just how much moving along can really move you too.

I roll down the road as fast as my bike will let me. Not very fast. Picking my way across the earth at 35-40 mph. The land an endless unspooling of ribbon. A forced therapy session. I cry. I mean a lot. More than I wish to admit being so far on this journey, but I laugh. I laugh a lot as well. I deal with things. I fold the laundry in my head that I used to let crumple up in the corner of my mind. I yell and smile with snot and a toothy grin. Here I am. Really doing it. Stumbling forward no matter what is around the corner. What a feeling to be doing exactly what you said you’d wanted to do.