The-Line
Chapter 1, Act:1

Based Loosely upon the lyrics of "The Line" by Bruce Springsteen
I remember seeing her for the first time, eyes pools of blackness 
       reflecting the dry desert’s moon-glow.   She was sprawled on her ass  in the South Texas dust, her hands splayed behind her as a means of  support.   She was trembling.
             I stood above her; oblivious to the distant shouts the echoing of  the small arms fire.  Unable to break away from her gaze, I stood,   helpless, at the mercy of an unarmed woman.  
            After a lifetime of  standing like a statue,  I held out an empty hand,  palm up, offering to  help her up.   She refused, scuttling backwards through the  dust like an angelic crawfish looking desperately shelter from  the owl’s beak.  I noticed a pool of wetness on the ground between  her legs- piss, not blood.
             I reached for her, and a silent whimper escaped her lips. Until  that moment I had never known that arousal could coincide so 
closely with desperation.  Later, I would realize that they are just 
 equal parts of the same cosmic pie.  There is no such power as the 
 desperation of love at first sight.
             The whimper grew, like grass after the rain, into a piercing 
 shriek.   The dark angel found her feet as quickly as her voice, and 
  upon finding them, she fled into the desert night, south, always 
  south.
             Shouts, once distant, were now approaching from the north.   The  gunfire, seldom heard in these parts, was now a thing of the past   
      The silence hung heavy in my ears, as the strange angel’s eyes lay like an anvil upon my heart.
             "Carl!"  Someone yelled from out of the inky darkness. 
             "Carl! You there?"
               For some strange reason I did not want to answer.   It was if   some part of me held on to the notion that if I did not answer my 
comrade in arms, the strange lady that was already haunting me, 
would reappear, and all would be well.
             "Carl, goddamn it, are you alright?" 
              It was Bobby Remierez, my partner, as close a friend as I had aloud myself to have in the years following my wife’s’ death. 
             "I’m over here Bo, put your gun away".   It came out more as a sigh then an answer, but it had the desired effect.   Bobby came 
running, stopping in front of me, his course hands automatically 
roaming over my sweating body in search of bullet wounds. Coming 
up empty handed, he slumped in the dust next to me, panting 
heavily. He was in shape, but the he had more years to contend 
with then most of us in the Texas Border patrol.
             "Carl, you motherfucker, you scared the living shit out me." He  growled, concern now turning to anger, as ice turns to water in the  eye of the sun.
             I had met Bobby two years ago, during my first full year on the  line.   He had seen something in my eyes that reminded him of his own  personal pains, and he had taken me in.   At times I did   not know if I  should call him friend or father.
             "Any casualties tonight?"  I asked, hoping to pull the subject in a  different direction, getting me out of the spotlight of Bobby’s all  consuming concern.
             "Tony Degado took a knife to the shin.  Seems some Chico did  not agree with his idea of impending justice".               
           Carl's voice dripped with sarcasm, but there was no real bitterness.  This was job, and  fruitless as it seemed, it was a job we took pride in doing  well.
           "Anyone else?" I asked, almost afraid that he would mention a small beautiful Mexican princess, shot in the back heading 
cross the Grande.
            "No one else amigo, that is if you don’t count all those poor 
 bastards being herded back across the river right now."   
            The darkness could not hide the sadness in his voice.  Bobby’s family  had come across the line when he was ten, and he had worked his  way up from the fields of California, working menial part-time jobs,  while attending night classes at a local community college.  
            He never  explained how he got into the college and I never asked.   He   received his degree, turning it into a decent job with the border  patrol. The job, we knew all too well, was different for him.
         The sun was coming up over the horizon line by the time we made it  back to our trucks and turned out onto the highway back towards headquarters and finally home.
         I walked into the tiny, humid shack I dared to call my residence, two  hours after sunup.  The air was already dripping with humidity.   It  would be another hot Texas afternoon, which I would gladly sleep through .
         I turned on the window air conditioner, its soft clanging somehow  making the place seem more like home.   I took a Guinness out the  equally loud refrigerator, twisting the top off and taking a long  drought, allowing its cold fire to cool my throat even as it warmed  my belly.
         I took  my uniform off, placing my badge on the dresser  next to my  bed, beside my wallet and keys.   My pistol I cleaned, making sure  there was no dust in its working that might come back to haunt me.   
       After finishing I placed it back in my shoulder holster and hung it on  the closet doorknob. The one room abode was adequately cooled  by time I crawled into  bed.   Sleep was an adversary I would not be  able to fight off this day.  
      Just before oblivion overtook me, a face appeared before my 
eyes.   It seemed like a vision, though I did not believe in such 
things.   It was a face with soft brown skin, shrouded by black 
flowing hair and set off with onyx eyes.   
       It was a face of infinite  beauty and sadness at the same time, and as  I drifted towards sleep I wondered if I would ever see her face in the  moon’s glow, as I had  this morning.  I wondered what I would do if  she did dared to come  across the line again.