The 3 acres surrounding my childhood home seemed as expansive as the entire Sonoran desert to my 8-year-old brain. I could barely see my house from the little patch of mesquite trees in the southeast corner of our property. It was only about four or five malnourished trees, but I pretended it was this vast enchanted forest, or, after secretly watching Rambo at a friend’s house, a war-torn Vietnamese jungle.

I grew up learning to coexist safely and respectfully with snakes, scorpions, tarantulas and coyotes, but was taught to fear the “creatures” lurking on the other side of the fence.

Sierra Vista, Arizona, the place I was born and raised in, is a medium-sized town less than 20 miles north of the Mexican border. The town revolves around the Fort Huachuca military base, and most of my friends, or the ones that didn’t move away at least, had parents who worked at the base. Despite the spaghetti western architecture and fashionability of cowboy hats, there were no daily shootouts or gunslinging bandits. It was a dreadfully boring place to grow up and I spent most of my teens at the mall working through a mild “goth phase” (in Sierra Vista, a boy was considered goth if his hair grew past his earlobes and listened to Alice Cooper). I’ve only recently come to understand just how weird and fascinating this region is, with its ghost towns, petroglyphs, and a long history of extraterrestrial encounters.

One of Sierra Vista’s more notable residents is Glenn Spencer, founder of the American Border Patrol. Not to be confused with the federal law enforcement agency, ABP is an NGO vigilante border militia comprised of folks who decided to take border security into their own hands. Spencer outfitted his ranch south of Sierra Vista with a customized system of surveillance cameras and sensors which he actually patented and gave to the US government for free.

My father, a police officer, was on a first name basis with Glenn. They were both jealous of each other. My dad was jealous of Spencer’s money, and Spencer secretly wished he could be a cop. I remember visiting Spencer’s property one weekend back in 7th grade. My father, off-duty at the time, wanted to consult Spencer about installing a security system of his own on our property.

Years earlier, I fondly remember coming home to a lumpy mass of Sunday funnies and scotch tape sitting squat on the kitchen counter. It was a pair of binoculars, the perfect gift for my wide-eyed 8-year-old self. They felt sleek and heavy, almost dangerous in my hands. My parents took turns hiding in the backyard while I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and then scanned the horizon with my powerful binoculars trying to make out their form behind some creosote shrub, or patch of tall grass. I really felt like a frontiersman, staring out into fertile unknown lands. Each day for the next month and a half I would sit out back and stare at things through the binoculars; bees pollinating a mesquite flower, a roadrunner kicking up dust as it scurried, a coyote sniffing at a hissing rattlesnake.

My father often joined me, and once when we were passing the binoculars back and forth, I saw a man limping towards us in the distance. He yanked the binoculars from my eyes, the nylon strap burning across my neck, and stood up to see for himself. His gaze locked for a moment, and then he rushed me inside locked all the doors. Later that night he told me that man was very dangerous, an invader from another country, but that I shouldn’t worry, because daddy called Border Patrol, and he was probably on his way back to his country by now.

Later that night he told me that man was very dangerous, an invader from another country, but that I shouldn’t worry because he was probably back in his country now, because daddy called Border Patrol.

Soon after that, my father bought a rottweiler and started building a fence around our property. He said the fence was to keep the dog in, but I know now that’s not the case. Soon the fence grew too high to gaze over with binoculars and I started staring aimlessly at the sky, before retiring them to some forgotten cabinet. I helped my dad put up barbed wire and bury a ground sensor. Gradually I grew to share in his obsession. Building the fence felt like an extension of the thrill I found at the bottom of my binoculars’ eye cups. It was all about relating to the great unknown, the mysterious “other” lurking beyond the fence.

Learning to hate

In 8th grade I got sent home for calling my friend Xavier (name changed for confidentiality) “spi*c” and pouring water down his back in the middle of the cafeteria. There was a rumor going around school that Xavier’s mother was undocumented and even some of my father’s friends had been talking about it when they came for dinner over the weekend. They were in the den, drinking beer and watching football or something when one of my dad’s friends pulled me aside. Now this guy, let’s call him “Roy,” was about 6'1" and 250 lbs. of muscle, had tons of tattoos, one of which on his upper shoulder showed a naked lady bending over the hood of a shiny camaro, which my father made him cover up whenever he came over but which I saw one time when he showed up in a tank top. Anyways, Roy was like the coolest guy in the world as far as my mid-pubescent brain was concerned. He moved to Arizona from Michigan a few years ago, hoping to become a Border Patrol agent but ended up turning 40 before his application could be processed. Too old for BP, he got a job as a mechanic and volunteered with the American Border Patrol on the weekends, working alongside Glenn Spencer.

He put his hand on my shoulder and asked me what I knew about this kid Xavier. I told him I didn’t really care one way or the other, which wasn’t true. We’d been pretty close friends since 3rd grade, but I knew the recent rumors about his mother’s legal status might mean I’d no longer be allowed to hang out with him. Roy asked me if I knew that his parents were drug runners. He was making it up of course, but of course I bought it. I said, “I just thought they were undocumented.”

“You mean illegal,” said Roy.

Roy, the other guys, and even my dad started tossing slurs back and forth, speculating about Xavier’s relationship to the cartel, and saying way worse things than I would end up saying to the kid. I chuckled along and when my father left to go to the bathroom, Roy handed me a beer.

“Give him hell, kid,” he said.

I met up with my other friend Louis. We split the beer, and pretended to be drunk while shooting rocks at cacti with his slingshot. I tried to convince him that Xavier was bad news, and I guess he wasn’t nearly as impressionable as me because we got in a huge argument and I ended up walking home early.

When the principal called home my mother rushed over to pick me up and scolded me all the way home, but when I arrived home and told my father what had happened, he immediately drove me straight back to school. I sat outside the office as my father had a screaming match with the principal. My father ended up getting Xavier’s mother deported, and his father was arrested for aiding and abetting. I’m not actually sure what happened to Xavier. I’ve only recently tried getting in touch with him and to no avail.

My parents’ marriage never really recovered after this. It only took a month of near-constant screaming, mom repeatedly calling dad “a monster,” and dad calling her weak, accusing her audibly of wanting to “fuck Mexicans,” before my parents got a divorce. My mother didn’t stand a chance in court, my father’s connections in law enforcement gave him incredible leeway. He filed a restraining order against her and was pretty effective at brainwashing me into thinking she was somehow corrupted, even dangerous. I didn’t see her again until this past year, and now talk at least once a week on the phone.