Warday

So we have no real way of knowing what to expect of the 1990 immigration controls. We’ve heard hard rumors of meticulous police searches and detention pens and people-smuggling out of Kingman, Arizona. Passing through there, as a matter of fact, we saw the largest hobo camp we’ve encountered so far. It made the little encampment outside of La Mesa seem positively orderly. It was a vast jumble of tents, abandoned vehicles of all types, and human beings. Its residents, the people on the train were saying, were all California rejectees. If so, the border controls must be brutal.

I know a few things about L.A. First, with nearly nine million residents, it is by far the most populous city in the United States.

Despite the general population decline, it has grown by nearly a million since 1987. It is more than four times the size of the second largest city, San Francisco, and larger than New York was before the war.

The conductor comes through, calling, “Needles, next stop Needles.” There is stirring in the car. Needles is one of the infamous California ports of entry. To get into the state, you’ve got to show twenty gold dollars or an equivalent amount in goods or paper currency, and a valid entry permit. The only way to get such a permit is to have business in the state or a job waiting for you there.

Wedo not have any permits. And between us we have eight hundred paper dollars, the equivalent of only eight gold.

None of our fellow passengers have talked about entry, but we sense that we are not alone. There are all kinds of stories about getting into California; few of them involve the possession of papers and astronomical sums of money.

“Needles,” the conductor shouts. “Everybody stay in the train, stay in the train!”

We slow to a crawl and draw up to the platform. I’m shocked.

There are soldiers armed with submachine guns every fifteen feet.

Behind them are huge signs:

ILLEGAL ALIENS LIABLE TO BE SHOT.

STAY IN THE TRAIN.

An amplified voice can be heard: “Do not leave the train. Have your entry permits ready. Do not leave the train.”

Wedecide to obey. Around us a few people are pulling the precious green forms out of purses and wallets. But most are sitting passively, waiting. This is only the first step in their journey. They have timed their arrival carefully. There isn’t an outgoing train for another six hours. For that much time they will be in the holding pen. They have staked their lives and their money on the possibility that they will be able to escape and somehow cross mountains and desert to the Los Angeles basin, there to disappear into the golden horde.

California State Police officers in white crash helmets, face masks, black leather boots, and khaki uniforms come across the platform in formation. They carry pistols in holsters. At a barked order, half of them draw their weapons. The other half have clipboards. These are some of California’s notorious Processing Officers. When they catch people trying to escape the holding pens, they mark them with indelible green dye.

Suddenly a man in full radiation gear comes into the car from the side opposite the platform. He is carrying a small black device with a digital readout. It has a long, thin probe attached. He waves it back and forth as he moves down the aisle, touching some of the passengers with it, inserting it down the collars of others. He squirts a bright red aerosol on the back of one man’s hand, and tells him that he’s got to go take a detox shower and get an issue of paper clothing before he can even get port-of-entry processing.

Jim and I are examined without comment. Apparently this device only measures present radiation. My high lifedose is still my own business, unless I try to enter a hospital without a health card.

At the far end of the car he blows a whistle. Immediately, Processing Officers appear at both doors. Behind the man at the front is one of the clipboard carriers. “California registered citizens,” he shouts, “show your colors.” Four people pull out red plastic cards.

Captain Clipboard runs them through a device like a credit-card verifier and reads something in the screen of a portable computer.

One after another, the citizens are given the precious right to stay on the train.

One man is not as lucky as the others. “You aren’t computing,”

Captain Clipboard says affably. “You’ll have to step over to the customs shack for manual verification.”

“What’s the problem, officer?”

“You don’t come up on the computer. Maybe your card’s defective. Go over to customs—it’s the yellow door.”

Uncertain, nervous, the young man rises from his seat. He goes to the rear of the car. As he is leaving, Captain Clipboard calls out,

“Arrest him, he’s a jumper.”

The young man leaps down and dashes across the platform, heading for the chainlink fence that separates it from the parking lot. A voice calls in a blaring monotone, “Stop, or we’ll have to shoot.” Then, more gently: “Come on, kid, take it easy.”