El Paso, Day 3

I gave up on sleep at about 7:30 AM, having been awake since 4:00 unable to shake my anxiety about another day of trial and failure.

The hotel told me the night before that I couldn't extend my stay, so I lay there trying to figure out where I could go next and how - and not least what the hell I would talk about with Danny at breakfast, alone. I painstakingly devised excuse after excuse to bail, but always came around to the conclusion that he was acting with generosity and kindness, neither of which I could afford to abuse.

So at 8:15 we loaded into his old dually.

"What kind of breakfast you like, Brandon Lee? Mexican or IHOP?"

"Dude, what? Let's get Mexican."

We pulled into a tiny storefront parking lot and by the time that I had climbed out of the cab, Danny was already inside and sitting down, speaking rapidfire Spanish with the cook. Patience is not his strong suit.

"This place is the real deal, Brandon Lee. You can see them cook."

"Yeah man, I love when people work with their hands. Food is..."

The rapidfire Spanish began again, and I focused on not getting chilaquiles in my beard.

After breakfast we drove in seemingly-aimless circles through the sprawl of El Paso, passing the bike shop at one point. Danny never revealed where we were going or why, and I didn't ask because I couldn't imagine what difference it would make.

We paused at a bank, a house hidden down a tiny alley pockmarked with potholes like lunar craters, an empty storefront, and finally a grocery store where Danny bought donuts for the shop and a single slice of cheesecake.

"We're dropping this off for a girl I know who cleans houses over here. She's a great girl. I saw her cleaning windows and kept waving to her until she spoke to me."

"You really have community around here, yeah?"

A sly smile, maybe Danny's first of the day.

"Sometimes she gives me some."

Back at the shop, I began stripping the Shadow down. The goal was to test the fuel pump's flow rate. By shorting the fuel pump leads with a piece of wire one can force the pump to run at full bore, as it would under hard acceleration.

Collecting the output in a cup, one can then multiply the liquid oz by 12 to determine whether the pump is within spec; that is, whether it is able to pull from the tank and pump to the carburetors with enough volume to cover the entire RPM range.

This simple test told us what a few hours of speculation had not: that the fuel pump was well-able to feed the carbs. We needed to see a result of at least 24 - we got almost 48.

Sean, who had spent his evening researching the procedure, looked at me with his sad eyes and held out his hand - a handshake this time, not a fist-bump. He looked like I felt.

"We tried, man."

"Dude, Doug the Thug knows people downtown. Let me see if he can score you a cheap place."

Danny has been deeply disturbed throughout at the money that I've been dropping on hotel rooms. He's offered his trailer so many times that I feel bad to keep refusing.

"It doesn't have running water, but it has a mattress and a TV.

"But shit man, if you don't want it, maybe Druggie Doug will know somewhere you can go.

He's got a place right downtown. Maybe he can put you up. Doug the Thug man - crazy motherfucker. Don't take any fucking drugs from him."

I was afraid that I wouldn't have the option to refuse more hospitality.

Danny asked to take the Shadow around the block. Part of him wanted to believe that it was okay.

"It ready to ride, Brandon Lee? All hooked up after testing the pump?"

It was, but as soon as Danny started it a stream of gasoline began pouring out of the carb area.

"What the fuck did you do, Brandon Lee?"

"Nothing. Sean must have over-tightened the hose clamps and busted the old rubber."

"Sean, you fucked up boy! That's why I call you Sean Pain - cause you're a pain!"

Danny still test rode it, literally streaming gas, around the block.

"Fuck. Can't get above 60, now. What you think, Brandon Lee?"

"I think we should call it and move on with our fucking lives, Danny."

Danny walked away, shaking his head.

"Brandon! Don't just stand there! Open the fucking gate for Doug, man!"

Doug the Thug turned out to be a New York Jew, a tall 60 year-old string bean with rounded hippie-era sunglasses and a sterling Star Of David hanging by a chain in a tangle of chest hair.

On the way to lunch, across the mound of debris that filled the dually's bench seat, Doug explained to me that he moved to El Paso after a bad motorcycle accident left him with broken bones and a collapsed lung. He was unable to run his company and moved down here for the cheap housing; he loathes El Paso with seething disappointment.

"I hate this place, man, but my girl's here. We have the third-highest rate of drunk driving deaths in the US. And the local government is proud that alcohol sales are up. What the fuck is that, man? People are dying."

"Would you guys shut the fuck up?" Danny cupped a hand across his phone, which he is constantly on, and turned to hiss at us over his shoulder. "You sound like a bunch of fucking chattering schoolgirls."

I've started to get used to Danny's silences, but I can't decide whether they're comfortable or not. He will ignore everything that I say for ten minutes only to suddenly ask about my job, my life, how I like the food, how is Atlanta.

He is thinking of things to say.

At lunch Sean told his second story in two days about beating someone with hand tools.

The first happened a few years before, when his next door neighbors came home from Vegas early. They had asked Sean to keep an eye on their house, and he was working on his car when he saw two darkly-dressed figures slip inside the front door. Not expecting the couple back for several days, Sean took the initiative and entered the house behind the intruders.

He broke his neighbor's ribs with a wrench.

"All they had to do was wave and say they were home early and I would have known. Shit, I was just trying to help. That's what you get for asking a white boy to watch your property."

"So would you guys say that the border situation is getting...worse, year-over-year?"

Doug the Thug looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Yes. But what the crisis is depends on your viewpoint."

Danny was born in the US and hates 'migrants.' That he is clearly of Mexican descent does not factor in; or if it does, it only stokes his anger.

"I pay my taxes, fuck those people. I'm not trying to be heartless, but I worked for what I have."

Meanwhile Doug runs a nonprofit to provide assistance to asylum-seekers and ease their journey through the legal system.

"This family is staying at my property now. This girl is young and pretty, and smart. She and her father had to leave because she caught the eye of a cartel member. He wanted to 'date' her; once he was done she would have been sold into sexual slavery, or maybe just killed. So her father left his business and his wife and their other children to bring her here.

"They're asylum-seekers, but they'll probably be sent back at some point. He gave up everything - his whole life - just to save his daughter, and we're going to send them back."

"What about Atlanta?" asked Danny after a pause. "Lots of Blacks?"

The second time that Sean beat someone with hand tools was when he was driving a rig through Southside Chicago. Some 'car culture' aficionados had blocked off an intersection to do donuts.

"I dropped into gear, slammed on the horn, and drove right through. People were diving out of the way.

"When I got to my drop-off some guys came up to me and started yelling about it. One of them started to reach in his pocket, like for a gun, so I clocked him with my breaker bar in the shoulder and snapped his arm. 'That's a warning shot - next time I go for the head!'

"I'm a friendly guy, but when I fight I want it to be one and done."

Danny dropped Druggie Doug and I off downtown, near a cafe that Doug owns. It's been shut down for months due to what he thinks was intentional clogging of the shared sewer system between his space and that of his neighbor.

"They found fucking shoes, hats, rolled up paper - someone flushed that shit intentionally."

Doug helped me walk my gear and luggage to the new hotel, both of us leaning into an insane headwind that was coursing between the modestly-tall buildings of downtown El Paso. The air was fouled with desert debris, and the other pedestrians had their eyes screwed nearly shut against the dust.

"People like Danny, man," Doug the Thug yelled, his voice whipped by the wind, "they just have their minds made up. But we have to try, man; we have to help when we can.

"I know this girl, she runs a shelter out of her home and she just finds people who need help and takes them in, man. We all worry about her but she's so brave, so passionate. She just does it."

Doug's bike is with Danny to have the tank shipped off for a custom paint job: letters down each side, reading 'Siempre Luchando.' Always Fighting.

"We have to be able to trust one another, man."