I'm going to step back away from Taos and New Mexico this entry in order to go even farther away -- back in time to the 1960's and in distance to far, far South Texas.
My grandfather, Dickie Malone, was frequently called the unofficial mayor of Riviera, Texas. It was an unofficial designation because Riviera wasn't an incorporated township. It was a place on the map and a postal designation. It was a place where legend has it that Poncho Villa was reputed to have robbed a bank. It is today, much as it was in my grandfather's day, a rural farm and ranch town near Baffin Bay on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Every morning people came to the coffee shop in Riviera to catch up on the local goings-on and to take care of business. When they had problems, they knew that Dickie, the unofficial mayor, was one of the people who could help them with a solution. He solved problems just like you might expect from a mayor. He knew everybody, just like a mayor. He loved to help people, just like a mayor.
Dickie's roots ran deep in this far-away place. His father had come here with the railroad in the 1920's. As young boy growing up in the newly created Kleberg County, Dickie became best friends with the new sheriff's son. Their lifelong friendship was akin to brotherhood. After the county's first sheriff died, his son took over as sheriff. I remember at Dickie's funeral, his old friend, the sheriff wept as he eulogized my grandfather.
Years later, in the opening dialog of Oscar Winning Best Picture "No Country for Old Men" Tommy Lee Jones' character narrates a story about that old sheriff -- Jim Scarborough. Small world.
So, here's the turn of the card: Dickie was no saint. Not by a long stretch. He was really an outsider, or, some would say, an outlaw. He had spent a year or two of hard time in Huntsville, Texas as a young man. He wasn't afraid to bend the rules. At the same memorial service where the county sheriff spoke were dozens of people who spent their lives on the outside looking in. Some of them I knew had been in trouble with the law. Oddly, they wept the loudest and longest that day.
Riviera, Texas is at the northern edge of a wide expanse of hundreds of square miles running across South Texas known as the Wild Horse Desert. It is an unforgiving expanse of mesquite brush and prickly pear cactus. It is home of the King Ranch, the Armstrong Ranch, and the Kenedy Ranch, each in excess of 100,000 acres. It is where Vice President Dick Cheney shot his friend on a hunting trip in February 2006 (See, e.g., CNN's report on the affair.
The Wild Horse Desert is reputed to be the final resting place of untold numbers of those who tried unsuccessfully to cross it on foot. Out in the barren wasteland of scrub are rattlesnakes, roving packs of javelinas (also the mascot of Texas A&M Kingsville, feral hogs, and other predators. Unless you happen upon a water source intended for cattle, there are no creeks or streams running across this land. Only those prepared to cross hell itself would ever attempt this trip on foot.
But walk across it is just what thousands of illegals do each year as they have been doing for many years. And by the time they reach the northern edge of this forbidding expanse, they are frequently starving, severely dehydrated, exhausted, and, often, near death. They have transported and smuggled themselves at great personal risk. If they make it out of the Wild Horse Desert, they have crossed a major hurdle, but they have not found what they are seeking.
In my grandfather's time, ranchers and farmers throughout the Riviera area would find these illegal aliens on their land. In those days, there was only one thing to do: go into town to the coffee shop and talk to Dickie Malone. Without a doubt, talk to Dickie. He was the problem solver of the day. No one trusted the United States Government for anything. You certainly wouldn't invite them onto your property. It was a bad idea.
Dickie would do what was right and no questions had to be asked or answered.
At some point in his life, Dickie had taught himself Spanish. He would talk to the newcomers and find out their story. He knew the real from the phony. Often, it was just a meal, a shower and an overnight place to stay they needed. Many times it was clothes to replace those torn by the thorns and cactus on their passage north. Other times it was a temporary job. Sometimes it was finding a lost family member.
I'm not trying to glorify what Dickie did. It was probably illegal then, and it is definitely illegal now. And illegal is illegal -- against the law, forbidden at the risk of your freedom.
But I still can't help but wonder. Why did he do it? He did help those most desperately in need when no one else would. What else can you say about someone who fed, clothed, housed, and found jobs for people he had never met and would likely never meet more than once in his life?
If Dickie were alive today, he would no doubt be on some type of government "list" or he would be in federal prison. The application of conspiracy laws as they are today would require no intent to commit a crime. Dickie would be committing a felony simply by stepping forward and extending his hand to help another human being at what might be their most desperate hour.
In our time, the reality of illegal immigration is that it continues unabated. It remains one of the most hotly emotional issues of our time. But to men like Dickey who stood on the front lines of the human drama that is illegal immigration, numbers didn't mean much.
He once told me that there would never be a way to stop the tide of humanity that risked life and limb to get work in the U.S. If he were alive today, Dickie might have noticed fewer people some months and more in others, but they would have remained the same, each person taken on his own merits, each case different from all the others. If Dickie were alive today, he would have found other ways to do what needed to be done. Quieter and less public ways, but still he would have helped.
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