Truckin’ for Jesus, to Texas and beyond

I'm in Mexico, and my brother lives in Texas. Michael is a truck driver and has invited me to travel with him. I get the hot bus up the Gulf Coast. The coastline is lush, the sea inviting.

Early morning, the border involves delays, humiliations and checking of papers; I’m the only non-Mexican. Into Texas we are stopped and searched five times, there are sniffer dogs..

At the bus station, I sit in the hot breeze. A red truck without a trailer stops. Michael jumps down, thin, pale, hair turned grey.

He says he wants to get home now that he is in Texas, so we drive until dark where he parks at a garden centre, no room for a truck outside his home. Waiting, is a woman in a car. I am introduced to Sue’s mother. She asks about Mexico. Do I mind living in such primitive conditions? Are there toilets are there showers? She asks me how I like Texas so far.

So far it’s been a vast roadway and, signs for Jesus, supermarkets and fast food, lighting up the night sky. Now I’ve just met Michael’s mother-in-law, I’m not having a great introduction to the US

She drives us to Michael and Sue’s house and I meet my niece and nephew and Sue.

Michael is happy to spend a few hours with his family. I have a bath, washing away 24 hours of travel dirt. We walk back to the truck at three in the morning. We agree not to talk about religion or politics.

Fox News. He listens, now with his head phones.. He seems to equate his politics with his religion. But he can’t vote and doesn’t pay taxes, he is illegal.

The truck is stuffed with books. Michael reads a lot; the subject matter is all either right-wing or religious. He reads the bible every day.

Somewhere on a beautiful autumn day at an Amish country truck stop we go for a walk. And another driver asks to join us. The apocalypse, he says, will come soon and all the signs are there in the bible. He numbers them on his fingers. Michael is trapped: I smile to myself and look away at the fields of ripe corn.

For three weeks we zigzag across North America, sleeping in the truck, collecting trailers from abattoirs and backing up into loading bays, silhouettes in Arctic clothing offload in the frozen mist. Nobody speaks.

Michael smokes cigarillos and drinks gallons of coffee. He’s a non-citizen working in plain sight. Those men on Fox would throw him out if they knew.

One evening we stop at sunset at the desert: he loves the desert, it smells clean.

I decide to leave Texas before Halloween. The clap-board houses look very pretty, with pumpkins on the door steps, but Sue tells me the children don’t do trick or treat now. Parents worry about strangers; razorblades in apples, LSD in lemonade.