ghost story

It came up plump and soft as some small dust devil on a dirt track -- not threatening, not stinging, just soft and present as I drove to the convenience store yesterday to pick up cigarettes and cooking oil. Idly, I turned on the radio for the four- or five-minute drive and there was this male voice that seemed capable of rousing up some sleeping piece of my underbelly's underbelly. It wasn't raucous and it sought no group-hug agreement. It was just a piece of me that slept mostly and now, with the voice coming out of the radio, woke and stretched and purred and drew me to it. It walked daintily outside my more usual demarcations, tiptoeing as cats seem to do ... outside the lines ... and it made me happy.

I only got bits and pieces of the tale -- the drive was short -- but today I will try to nail down the whole segment -- call up public radio stations to get the whole picture -- the picture of what was clearly a ghost story. A quiet story. I want to listen to the entire willy-willy, the complete dust devil that folded me in and took me beyond the lines. I do not look forward to the research, but I'll make the effort: It's not often that something can take me beyond my blithely-overlooked lines and make me purr and make me happy.

Roughly, in the tattered four or five minutes ... a male voice, perhaps in its 30's or 40's recounted the tale of an immigration service to which he belonged. The mission seemed to be to corner and turn back immigrants trying to enter the United States from Mexico. The arena for the endeavor was so black at night that the car you got out of might be invisible after four or five steps away from it. Not even the Indians, who had peopled the area for hundreds of years, went to this dark, dark place.

And then there were bits and pieces about the immigration agent who had died previously showing up to turn back groups attempting to get to the United States. One group stood stock still and wept at the sight of him. One group was told where to find water. And one group declined, at a line-up, to identify the prime suspect in a smuggling operation until shown a picture of the dead agent. And in the end, the smuggler who had led to the immigration officer's demise fell from a cliff and died at the behest of the would-be wraith.

Bits and snippets and snippets and bits in the four or five minutes of my travels. It purred in my mind. It roused my credulity. It sought no argumentation or agreement. It crossed the lines and expected no crowd-sourcing on the far side. Is it true? Is it false? These seemed somehow minor matters. It was crossing the line and rising up and stretching and purring and ... the world is a wide, wide place.

I will see what I can find out.

PS. Here is the segment that appeared on the radio.