La Quinta Parking Lot, Caldwell, Idaho

On the cover of this black notebook are the words Bad Ideas embossed in gold script. Ideas, even bad, can maybe be mitigated by intention. 

And there are many good intentions here.

A hot breeze unsettles the folding tent that protects me from an unblinking sun in this barren stripmall bordering a La Quinta parking lot in Caldwell, Idaho. 

Speaking of protection, there are three security guards sitting in folding chairs because…why not? Are they here to protect the Mexicans from other Mexicans? The Mexicans from white folks? All of us from ICE? I’m not confident that they can protect any of us from anything because they’re all a broken kind of middle-aged and wearing either knee braces or pneumatic orthopedic boots—or in one case, both. 

If shit goes down, I’m pretty sure the Mexicans are gonna have to protect them.

No outhouses or porta potties. I had to pee in the bathroom of a bail bonds office done up with pink curtains. The local credit union brought a miniature bouncy house that blows a storm of crumpled dollar bills while the DJ blasts autotuned Mexican pop. It’s that kind of pachanga.

Botas, baseball caps, belt buckles, false eyelashes, and thick-ass jeans in the 90-degree heat. The tacos are good, but just as I start to think that something’s missing, a man complains to his friend, “¿Cómo qué no hay salsa?” 

Never in the long, noble history of Latino parking-lot festivals has a man had more reason to voice his righteous indignance. Indeed, how the fuck could there be no salsa?

The chief security guard, the one with the sidearm and home-printed business cards at the ready, buys one of my books and asks me to sign it. Thank you for keeping us safe today! I write next to an impromptu doodle of a hummingbird, and he limps away to the bouncing accompaniment of amplified accordions.

I scan the small encampment of folding tents and wonder, Why do so many of us wear black? What are we mourning?

Alfredo, the Marine recruiter two tents to my left, wears camo pants, and a black shirt that says pain is weakness leaving the body, like what you’d see on a shirt that your J.V. football coach would make you wear to the Homecoming pep rally. Alfredo surprises me because he actually bought both of my books and shared with me how the Marines saved his life and how as a child he had to interpret for his family who came here as refugees from cartel violence and how a local dairy farmer let him live on his farm when his parents moved away so that he wouldn’t have to change schools. I’ll end up giving him back his money for one of my books. Alfredo stands tall next to his Marine recruiter’s pull-up bar. 

Alfredo is way cooler than me.

And oh no why is this adorable little boy peering over my folding table asking me if he can have a book? I tell him that I love that he loves books, but that my stories aren’t appropriate for little kids and can he tell his dad that I said so. The little boy dutifully crosses the parking lot to where his father waits. After a moment, the father smiles at me and gives me a thumbs up. I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that his son won’t leave with a book that would cause his father to either have an aneurysm or hunt me down for corrupting children.

Every song blasting over the PA has the words:

corazón

alma

ojos morenos

destino

lástima

dolor

mi vida

morenita

ausencia

por tu culpa

jovencita

Chihuahua…

or maybe Sinaloa.

Fucking ay, did we make the polka ours o qué?

And this parking lot is getting hotter and hotter, and my books have stopped selling, and the sandy, high-desert wind is making my zarape table cover flap around, but it’s all good because they’re firing up the grill again and the fried corn tortillas smell riquísimas. All this is the most beautiful and real kind of sketch and, with quiet resignation, I have to admit that I am hands-down the bougiest person in this parking lot in Caldwell.

Idaho.

And—fuck yeah!—I outlast the Caldwell Chamber of Commerce because they’re folding up their table cover and fleeing to the comfort of their air-conditioned cars. 

Maybe I’m not so bougie after all.

Now a trio of twenty-somethings in black t-shirts and purple sequin pants—purple!—who call themselves Nueva Generación have launched into their set. The kid rocking the curly alpaca hairdo is a beast on the six-string bass. Alpaca-boy and two guitarists dance around the parking lot, taking full advantage of their flawless wireless system. 

If American cowboys sing about their pick-up trucks, Mexican cowboys sing about women. No, they sing about that one woman. 

By the end of the trio’s third consecutive song about unrequited love, a pang of shallow longing darkens my mood, and I wonder if maybe I’m wearing black because I have never owned a pair of purple sequin pants.

Mine is the last tent standing on the edge of sunset by the time the young folklórico dancers arrange themselves on the cracked blacktop. I smile and struggle with a deep envy when four boys dressed in midnight black charro regalia begin their rendition of “Los Machetes.” I myself danced as an excitable boy, and my instructors, in their common-sense wisdom, never let me near the swords, and when the white kids at my elementary school found out that I did ballet folklórico, I quit. 

I can barely pay attention to the mayoral candidate who’s buying my book and reciting his credentials to me because the steel machetes with their orange Home Depot handles ring out across the parking lot. 

Can any of the guests staying at La Quinta hear them? Does it matter?

There is no sugar cane to cut down here, but there is also no denying that something sweet was harvested, in this parking lot, in Caldwell, Idaho.