Subterranean Homeland Blues

His given name was Juan but as long as he’d been in the country, everyone had called him Johnny. He’d been in the country his whole life.

Johnny worked in the dim light of the basement, grinding down powders and mixing up the medicine, the air thick with dust and smoke. The smell of chemicals hung heavy, like a fog that wouldn’t leave. He never looked up. The only thing he knew was what he had to do next, always next, never stopping to think about the consequences. The government wasn’t something that touched him down here in the dampness of the cellar. But his mind, his mind was always churning on it — the lies they told, the way they had a hand in everything, even the air. They’d be there sooner or later, picking through the wreckage of a world that didn’t seem to care about what happened to people like him.

Outside, the streets were grey, the kind of grey that made you wonder if the world had ever really been in colour. He stood there, watching cars pass, wondering how it was that a man could be both so alive and so lost. Then the trench coat came, the man with the badge, his face as pale as a ghost’s. He stood like an omen, tapping his foot on the concrete, chest heavy with a cough he couldn’t shake. Something about the way the badge caught the light told Johnny that this was a man who had once believed in something. Now, he just wanted to pay his bills, get through the day without breaking down. Maybe he’d forgotten what it was like to be whole. Maybe he’d never known.

“You’re gonna have to hide, kid,” the voice said, breaking into Johnny’s thoughts. The words were simple but pregnant with meaning. It didn’t matter what Johnny had done or where he’d been. There was something deeper, something that had made him a target long before he’d even begun to understand. God knows what or when, but whatever it was, he was doing it again.

Johnny walked fast, cutting through alleyways, his mind racing. He passed the man in the coon-skin cap standing by the iron fence, asking for money he didn’t have. Eleven dollars. Johnny only had ten.

Maggie came on like a storm, her footsteps light but her eyes full of shadows. Her face was streaked with soot, the kind of dirt you get when running from things you can’t outrun. The heat, they said, it burned up everything in its path — plants in the garden, people in the streets. Maggie had heard the ICE men cometh, making moves, tapping the phones, rooting out the innocent. “They’ll be here by Independence Day,” she said, her words a rasp against the still air.

Johnny didn’t ask questions. Maggie knew too much. She always had a way of seeing things, a way of understanding things before they happened. But it was too late for that now. She told him to watch himself, to keep his back to the wall, to watch the men in plainclothes, the ones who carried a fire hose and never blinked.

“No necesitas un meteorólogo para saber hacia dónde sopla el viento,” she said. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

It didn’t matter anymore. Johnny wasn’t looking for answers, just a way to keep going, keep moving, even when there was no clear direction. The city had a rhythm, a pulse, and it was always changing. People came and went, lives made and unmade. Some got sick and some got well. Some tried to make a living, to sell, to buy, but it was always hard to tell if it was going to work, if anything was ever going to work. Try hard, get barred, write braille, get jailed, jump bail, join the Army if you fail. Look out, kid. De una forma u otra, you’re going to get hit. ICE ICE, baby.

Johnny tried. He really did. He tried to make something of it all, but there were always barriers, walls that kept him from reaching out. He found himself caught in a game he didn’t understand in a world of losers, cheaters, six-time users, where the stakes were higher than he could ever repay. And when it came time to get out, when it came time to run, the answer was always the same: Stay away from the theatres, avoid the crowds, don’t get involved in things you can’t control. See that girl by the whirlpool looking for a new fool? Don’t wear sandals, do avoid the scandals.

He’d been told to keep warm, to learn how to dance, to buy gifts and please people who didn’t care. Twenty years of schooling, and they put him on the day shift. But the work didn’t matter. The money didn’t matter. Better jump down a manhole, light yourself a candle.

The truth was, they kept it all hidden from you. They kept it locked up in places you couldn’t find, places you didn’t even know existed. So Johnny kept his head down, chewed gum so as not to be a bum and kept walking the streets. He tried to stay out of trouble, tried to keep his nose clean, but it was only a matter of time before the Trump drones worked ’cause the ICE Vólk were the Vandals.