TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: BLACKHAWKS ON THE BORDER

by Grant McGee

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

It was 2 am and the noise woke me up.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

I sat up in bed.  I blinked my eyes in the dark.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

Then it faded.

Flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok-flok.

I hadn’t heard helicopters in the night since I lived in Phoenix.  This one sounded different.  It sounded more serious than the cop ‘copters that buzzed the night sky in the Valley of the Sun.  Yeah, that was it, those ‘copters flew over with a “BUZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz.”

Here I was in Bisbee, Arizona, less than 5 miles from the Mexican border and there was a helicopter in the night.  Border Patrol?  Army?  Cobra?  Apache?  Blackhawk helicopter.  I didn’t know, I went back to sleep.

The answer came in the big city newspaper the next morning.  “Texas Air National Guard to Train With Border Patrol” read the headline.  A Texas Air National Guard unit had come all the way from The Lone Star State to work with the Border Patrol at intercepting illegals crossing into the U.S. just over the hill from Bisbee.

I was sitting in the office.  I put the paper down and imagined this.  Here you are, coming from a village somewhere in the Mexican interior and you’re crossing into the U.S. and suddenly there’s this angry machine with a searchlight zooming in on your ass like a chicken on a June bug.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

There you are on the ground and there’s this big booming voice from the sky, possibly in Spanish but more than likely in English, “STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE” or something like that.  Then the Border Patrol swarms around you, packs you up with some more of your fellow countrymen and drops you at the border sending you back south.

At the end of the day I pulled up to the post office in downtown Bisbee to check my P.O. box.  I got out of my car and heard a shrill voice.

“SIGN THE PETITION, STOP THE INHUMANE PURSUIT OF ILLEGALS BY TEXAS HELICOPTERS,” yelled a gray-haired woman.

It was Anna Fish, Bisbee’s community activist.  I had heard of her but never seen her in action.  I walked up to her.

She had a name tag:  “ANNA GHOTI, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST.”

“Are you going to sign the petition?” she spoke directly to me, shoving a paper on a clipboard to me.

“I thought you were someone else,” I said.

“Who did you think I was?” She was direct, probably a Yankee or a former Federal employee.

“I thought you were Anna Fish.”

“I am Anna ‘Fish.’  That’s how I spell my last name.”

“It looks like it would be pronounced ‘goatee’ to me,” I said.

“You take the ‘f’ sound from ‘enough,’ the ‘I’ from the ‘o’ in ‘women’ and the ‘sh’ from the ‘ti’ in ‘action.’”

“Why not simply spell it ‘F-I-S-H’?”

“Why should I?”

Bisbee was full of characters like this.  Chips on their shoulder about something.

“Well look who it is, our friendly neighborhood liberal community activist, Anna Fish,” a man had walked up and stood in front of Anna with his hands on his hips.

“Bart Jackson,” said Anna, “resident conservative asshole.”

“Oh Anna,” said Bart, “now I didn’t call you the resident flaky liberal hippie bitch.”

“You’re a fish out of water here, Bart,” she said, “Why don’t you move to Sierra Vista where you belong.”

I should pause here and describe these two towns to you.  Bisbee is the county seat of Cochise County, Arizona.  That’s about the only industry it has.  It used to be a copper mining town until the copper company shut down mining operations in 1975.  Then a bunch of people from the west coast heard that houses could be had real cheap in the wake of the mine closing and Bisbee became a magnet for old hippies, artists and the like.  Along with county employees.

Sierra Vista is the home to a very active U.S. Army post, Fort Huachuca.  It’s a hustling, bustling little burg of 30,000 and a typical American town.

“You have a problem with helicopters chasing the dusty-butts back across the border Anna?” barked Bart. 

Bart was a tall fellow, probably six-foot-some-odd-inches with a big handlebar mustache.  He was bent over and practically nose-to-nose with Anna, all four-foot-eight-or-so inches tall.  She didn’t back down.

I hadn’t moved, I was transfixed by this encounter.

“I suppose you aren’t going to sign my petition are you, Bart,” said Anna.

“It’s people like you who are tearing down this country like screw worms in the hull of a ship, one day we’re going to sink because of people like you,” said Bart.

“That’s a shipworm, brother,” I said.

“Who the hell are you?” barked Bart.

“Grant McGee,” I stuck out my hand and smiled.  Bart’s hands stayed on his hips.  We were now staring eye-to-eye.

“Are you going to sign her God-damned petition?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” I said.  “I’m thinking about it.”

“You’re a pussy if you do,” said Bart.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know about that.  Who’d you vote for in the last election?”

“Bush,” he said.  “I suppose you voted for Clinton.”

“Naw,” I said, “I voted for Perot.  They call it the executive branch I wondered what would happen if you let an executive run it.”

“Oh my God,” said Anna.

“So you don’t mind illegals coming into the country,” said Bart.

“We wouldn’t have a problem if business owners would stop hiring them,” I said.

“THEY DON’T WORK, THEY LIVE ON FOOD STAMPS AND WELFARE AND FREE MEDICAL CARE.”

“I don’t believe that, that’s a bunch of talk radio bullshit,” I said.  “I lived near an undocumented family in Phoenix.  The dad held down two jobs to take care of his family.”

“And you didn’t turn them in?”

“Bad Karma,” I said.

“Karma, sheesh.  I suppose you don’t even go to church,” said Bart.

I laughed.

“What does church have to do with this conversation?” I asked.  “But since you brought up church so do you suppose Jesus would support the Texas Air National Guard chasing down illegal border crossers?”

“Wh….,” Bart started to speak but I interrupted him.

“No, no, wait” I said opening my eyes wide and holding my hands up, “Of course not, there weren’t any helicopters back then.  Wait!  Wait!  Jesus and the disciples on horseback.  I can see JC now, yelling as he’s coming out of the ranch house, ‘Matthew!  Mark!  Luke!  John!  Saddle up, we’re gonna go round us up some dusty-butts.’”

“THAT’S BLASPHEMOUS!” Bart pointed his finger at my nose.

“Says who, brother?”

“I ain’t your brother.”

“We’re all brothers and sisters trying to make our way in this world, Bart.”

“Another f*#kin’ Bisbee hippie,” barked Bart as he wheeled around and left Anna and I alone in front of the Post Office.

I watched him walk away.  He stuck his hand behind his head and flipped us the bird.

“So,” said Anna turning and shoving her clipboard toward me again, “You’ll sign the petition?”

“No,” I said.

“What?  After all that?”

“Anna, seriously, where do we live?  We live in the world’s last superpower.  The military/industrial complex is all around us.  Border actions are perfectly normal and expected.  Do you really think anything’s going to change with your petition?”

“Didn’t you hear the helicopters?  In the middle of the night?  And those poor illegals, all of a sudden their night is lit up with this MACHINE hovering over them.”

“They made a choice, Anna.  They’ll make it across the border or not.  That’s life, it’s a crap shoot.  The helicopter pilots need the practice, the smugglers will keep doing what they’re doing and the undocumenteds will keep crossing the border.”

“You’re a middle-of-the-roader,” said Anna.  “And you know what happens to someone standing in the middle of the road, THEY GET RUN OVER.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said.

Anna and I were done

“SIGN THE PETITION, STOP THE INHUMANE PURSUIT OF ILLEGALS BY TEXAS HELICOPTERS,” Anna yelled.

I went in the Post Office, got my mail and went home.

FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK-FLOK.

That night the copter woke me up again.  I listened for a bit.  It faded in and out and was gone.

The copters worked the area for about a week and then they were gone the day the newspaper article said they’d be gone.

But I heard Anna never gave up in trying to do SOMETHING about the helicopters. 

Through the local grapevine I heard she somehow managed to get through to the post commander at Fort Huachuca at 3 am one morning to complain about the choppers.

Two days later a company of soldiers, dozens of men, had their morning formation run right through the heart of Bisbee’s downtown at 6 in the morning, tromping, doing their call-and-respond thing.  They had been bussed up from Fort Huachuca.

That was the first time the Army had done such a thing as far as anyone could remember.

TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP-TROMP.

I saw Anna Ghoti only one other time.  It was two days after the September 11^th attacks.  She was in front of the main Post Office again holding up a sign that read, “MEETING TONIGHT 6PM AT THE OLD CHURCH ON WARREN ROAD ON WHY THE U.S. DESERVED TO BE ATTACKED.”

                                                                                -30-