Tales of the Southwest: An American Refugee on the Road to Patagonia

A view near Patagonia, Arizona...Santa Cruz County...right on the border with Mexico

 By Grant McGee
  It was about a week ago, the 16 year anniversary of the attack on our homeland that we call "Nine-Eleven."
  I don't like to call it that.
  It deserves pause, more than a snappy moniker the popular media slapped on it like "Nine-Eleven."     I call it "The September 11th Attacks."
  I was editor at the weekly paper in Tombstone, Arizona at the time.
  That morning before work I had been out walking the dogs when I came back in to the house to the news that a plane had slammed into the World Trade Center.  Then minutes later the second plane hit.
  I can remember walking through the day at the office like I was plodding through waist deep molasses:  Someone had attacked our homeland, like the country singer Toby Keith described it, "A sucker punch."  No one expected anyone to use loaded American passenger jets as missiles.
  No, the world did not stop, the world kept going and the days passed.
  That night I went home and found some black fabric.  I made it into an armband and wore it to work.  I wore that for a couple of weeks.
  No one told me to.
  In my book of life it was to be done:  Our homeland had been attacked and I was expressing my feelings in reaction to that.
  I went over to one of the many souvenir shops that are in Tombstone and bought an American flag.     I pulled it off its little stick and hung it from the visor on the passenger side of my car.  Our homeland had been attacked and I was expressing my feelings.
  It would be days later that the media mavens and pundits of morning network television would say that such displays of the flag were improper.
  "I don't give a shit," I said to the teevee screen.  I talk to the teevee, a habit I come by honestly... picked it up from The Old Man.  Anyway, I went on talking to the teevee about the flag, "It's my flag, I'll display it the way I want to.  I'm an Eagle Scout, I know the rules."
  The OK Corral/Wyatt Earp/Doc Holliday aficionados started putting up artwork, that classic scene from the movie "Tombstone" where The Earps and Doc Holliday were walking down the street headed for the OK Corral...behind them an American flag, a bald eagle and the smoldering twin towers with the caption "Tell them we're comin', and tell them we're bringing hell with us."  The prints sold like hotcakes, I was told.
  And the world went on.
  Weeks passed.  Months.
  One January day I was taking stacks of papers to all the stores around Tombstone where they were sold.
  On the west side of Tombstone I dropped a bundle off at a convenience store then stepped outside and paused to take in a deep breath of the cool air and feel the sunshine.
  "So you live around here?" It was a woman's voice coming from the side.
  I turned and there was a young woman, maybe 30 years old, sitting on a bench in front of the store having a soda.
  "I work here in Tombstone but I live in Bisbee," I said.  I sat down on the bench across from her on the other side of the door.
  "Yeah, I saw Bisbee, it has possibilities," she said.
  "Possibilities?  You going to start a business?"
  "I'm thinking about moving out here," she said.
  "'Out here'?" I asked.  "Where you from, Tucson?"
  "No," she said.  "New York City."
  "Wow, that would be a radical change."
  "Yeah," she said, taking a sip from her bottle and looking out over the Cochise County desertscape.
  "Whaddya want to move way out here for?"
  She turned and looked me in the eye, she furrowed her brow and scrunched her face like she didn't understand.
  "September 11th," she said.
  It took a few moments for what she was saying to sink in.
  "Ohhh," I said.
  She had another sip from her bottle and looked back out over the land.
  "I breathed that dust from the collapse of the towers," she said.  "I was that close."
  I wasn't going to touch her nerves by prodding her about her running from New York.
  "That's still a big move," I said.
  "I don't want to hang around and see if they do it again," she said.
  "So what do you do?"
  "I'm a teacher.  I can find a job just about anywhere."
  I stood up.
  "Well," I said, "If I had my druthers I'd live in Patagonia."
  "I've heard of that," she said.
  "It's about 30 or 40 miles off that way," I said, pointing southwestward.  "Small town, remote."
  I stuck my hand out, she reached and we shook hands.
  "Good fortune to you in your search," I said.
  She smiled.
  I pondered that American refugee sitting on the front porch of a store in Tombstone.
  I thought about her getting the hell out of New York after our homeland was attacked there.
  I wondered if I would do the same thing.
  Who was I to judge?
  I wasn't walking in her shoes.

                                                           -30-