A journey along the border, with words and illustrations by Bob Kerr.
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The Sunset Limited leaves Union Station New Orleans on time at nine in the morning. We make our way through shunting yards full of freight wagons, past parking lots and warehouses catching the early morning sun. Slowly the train rises above the factories and the freeway off-ramps, gaining height to cross the Mississippi River on the Huey P Long Bridge. Huey Long, the populist governor of Louisiana, was a man in a hurry: “I’m for the poor man – all poor men, black and white, they all gotta have a chance. They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their children.” Long was assassinated in the Louisiana State House in 1935, the year the bridge was completed.
There is a gentle descent back to swamp level on the west side of the river. We are travelling one year before the US presidential election. Biden time. We will spend two nights on the train and cross five states: Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Louisiana is green. Green trees shade the down-at-heel wooden houses and trailer parks that back onto the track. There are green rice fields. The train crosses lakes and bayous lined with green moss-covered oaks and cypress trees.
I’ve brought along my sketch book. The second floor observation car with its big windows provides a splendid place to record the journey. I like drawing on trains. The movement often adds unintended improvements to the drawing and you have to be slap-dash and draw fast because there is a constant stream of new landscapes moving past: a machine shop in the sugarcane fields outside New Iberia; an empty parking lot in Beaumont.
In the next seat sits Ben. He is travelling with his son and wife to a conference on domestic violence in Los Angeles.
“I’m Menominee,” says Ben, “our people are from Wisconsin.”
“How do you say hello in Menominee?” I ask.
Ben writes in the back page of the sketch book, pōsō. “That’s hello and also see you later.”
During the night the train crosses much of Texas. In the early morning I pull back the curtain and watch the sun rise. The green of Louisiana has been replaced by the browns and golds of the desert. In a startling moment the land falls away as the train crosses the Pecos River viaduct.
“This is José, your dining car attendant,” says the intercom. “Passengers in car number two should come to the dining car for breakfast.” That’s us. We make our way through to the dining car where José sits us with Ted and Larisa from Washington, Ted is a lawyer. As a young man he worked for Eisenhower. Larissa is grey haired and elegant and getting a little forgetful, “But it’s hard for her to get lost on a train,” says Ted. “Train travel means we can still holiday together.”
Ted shows us a photograph of his granddaughter. She is carrying a mean-looking military rifle, dressed in full army kit ringing a polished brass bell.
“You ring that bell when you graduate from the Westpoint Military Academy,” says Ted. He is enormously proud of his granddaughter.
“I’m a Republican,” says Ted, “and I think that Donald Trump is the most despicable person on Earth.”
The train is now following the border with Mexico. The border across which Trump had insisted, “They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They are rapists. We need to build a wall.” His solution is that he will build that wall. “Nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I’ll make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
At lunch there is a fresh rose in a vase in the middle of the table. José seats us with Rubén. Rubén works for Facebook in San Antonio. He is an ethics adviser. He is taking the train to a conference on ethics in San Francisco. He is concerned about the increasing attacks on undocumented immigrants.
“My mum arrived here in the 1960s without documents,” he says. “It’s madness, undocumented workers contribute $97bn in federal, state and local taxes.” He has all the figures in his head. “Their removal would wreck local economies. It will push nearly 10 million US citizens into economic hardship.”
José brings lunch to our table. A grilled cheese sandwich for me, the savoury chilli for Hazel and crisp chicken Caesar salad for Rubén.
“Who is going to pick this lettuce when all the undocumented farm workers have been rounded up?” asks Rubén. “Unemployment is only around 4%.”
The afternoon and the Chihuahuan Desert slide by, becoming tangled with images of the wild west that arrived on the TV in our living room via reruns of Bonanza and The High Chaparral and the country and western songs played on late night request sessions. In the late afternoon we come into El Paso. I know about El Paso. Marty Robbins sang about it in a chirpy little ditty celebrating American gun violence.
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl
Nighttime would find me in Rosa’s cantina
Music would play and Felina would whirl
But Felina makes the mistake of talking to a handsome young stranger and it doesn’t end well.
My challenge was answered in less than a heartbeat
The handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor
The rail tracks are now feet away from the border. Through the fence you can see the Rio Grande. It is not very grand. You could wade across and only get your ankles wet.
The train lives up to its name with a spectacular sunset as we pass through Deming. We arrive at Union Station in Los Angeles at 5.30 in the morning. On the platform I see Ben.
“Pōsō,” I say.
“See you later,” he replies.
Denny’s restaurant is just opening, we are the first customers for breakfast. Out in the carpark the homeless are stirring. A homeless man shambles into the restaurant and comes up to our table and asks for money. The waitress asks him to leave. He ignores her. A security guard arrives. She takes her taser out of its holster and points it at the homeless man. He knows just how far to push; he heads back out to the parking lot. The waitress brings our coffee, pancakes with maple syrup and eggs on toast.
“Sorry about that,” she says.
