(inspired by a Reedsy writing prompt on the subject of what makes us human; see 1800+ Creative Writing Prompts To Inspire You Right Now)

Markwayne marched across the dusty yard, rifle secured, properly kitted out, uniform a bit sweat-streaked but nowhere near disgusting. Yet. He felt cheerful, light-hearted even. The day was hazy-bright, the sun glinting off the gravel. It was already a scorcher. But he was fine, he had the Ray-Bans, bottled water in his kit, radio contact wherever he went. Lots of bros had his back, he knew.

Man, he loved his job.

He had just kind of lucked into it. Not much going on in his life –  Stacey had dumped him for that woke college geek – never saw THAT coming – so he had been at loose ends, drinking  a lot and snorting once in a while, feeling a little more antsy every day and Pop came home and told him to get off his ass and take a ride into town and sign up with ICE. Seemed they were looking for guys and they weren’t too fussy about background checks and all that.

Which, Christ knows, mattered to him, what with the DUI and that assault thing. Not much of an assault, really. But it was just the kind of thing that if it showed up on a background check could fuck a guy up. Damn geek. Had to go call the cops. And then the look on Stacey’s face. Like he was something horked up by the devil and left to rot on the side of the road.

Anyway, that was over now. He was way past Stacey. Totally over her. She and Mr. Geek could make geek babies year after year into eternity, for all he cared. They’d be ugly useless little runts anyway. Nothing like the babies he and Stacey would have had. Nothing at all.

So here he was on his first assignment, post training. The training had been pretty quick, kind of laid-back, and he had met a shit-load of great guys, a few of whom had been assigned out here with him to this brand-new, speedily-constructed detention centre on the border between Montana and the Canadian province of Alberta.

Their job was to make sure no Canadian border-jumpers or other illegal aliens used the road, a five and a half-mile ribbon of gravel on the Montana side that ran parallel to the border itself. The Canadians, stupid assholes, didn’t seem to have got the memo – they were still strolling and driving back and forth every day as if the White House hadn’t issued any order whatsoever.

That’s why there were a few of them caged up in the building behind him. They weren’t much trouble – they spent a lot of time yelling out the windows or across the yard to their friends on the other side of the border. When they weren’t asking to see the superintendent about their confiscated cell phones. Or to complain they couldn’t watch Blue Jays baseball. Markwayne was astounded to hear that Toronto (where?) had a baseball team.

One of the ranchers inside the centre had come across on his horse, for God’s sake, and now he wouldn’t stop bitching about where his damn horse had got to. Markwayne was pretty sure the horse had been swatted on the arse and had wandered back across the border. He kind of wished they had kept it, though. He’d never ridden a horse before – one of the local Montanans could probably have shown him how.

Not that the locals were all that friendly. You couldn’t really tell them apart from the Canadians – they sounded the same, they looked the same. They were probably all related, he thought. Inbreeding, or something. Out here in the middle of nowhere. What else would a guy do?

News had come down the wire that the Oval Office was getting behind the construction of a nice big wall here, to keep the illegals out. In fact, it was getting priority consideration and a lot of Truth Social attention. Sounded like contracts would be distributed in no time at all among the friends of the Administration. Markwayne was looking forward to the construction blitz – some spice added to the daily meat and potatoes. It would be fun to watch the Canadians politely eat their shirts.

One afternoon, a skinny slight grey-haired man had been driven through Doug McKenna’s grazing land, on Doug McKenna’s tractor, by Doug McKenna, to stand at the border and stare.

“I just had to see it for myself,” the Prime Minister said to the CBC newswoman who jumped off the back of the tractor. The detained, watching through their cell windows, cheered and waved and sang ‘Oh, Canada’ and yelled ‘OK. Blue Jays. Let’s. Play. Ball.’  The PM laughed and slapped his knees. Then he hopped back on the tractor and got driven away. He made sure the detainees’ Employment Insurance claims and agricultural grants got special consideration.

Buses started pouring in from Calgary, Alberta, a somewhat-MAGA-influenced city not far from the majestic Rockies. People, entire families, in fact, would climb down from the bus and line up along the border, while someone – a tour guide, Markwayne supposed, pointed out the offending road and the barren, boring detention centre that had been built in response to the Albertans’ refusal to stop using the road to visit their family and friends on the other side of the border. Parking started to become an issue for the guided tours when heavy equipment arrived on site to begin construction of a road on the Canadian side of the border. Truth Social trumpeted loudly about a Bigger, more Beautiful Wall, but no equipment approached from the south.

Detention Centre guards on their breaks often wandered over to chat with the cheerful, curious tourists. They’d swap cigarettes with them just for something to do. They’d talk about the progress of the Canadian road and speculate on its utility and the changes it would inevitably bring to the neighbourhood. A tour bus driver was heard to remark that a road should go somewhere. A grizzled ICE supervisor nodded and flicked his butt into an old hub-cap full of gravel. It was rumoured that he had connections in the White House. Almost immediately word came down the wire, repeated on Truth Social at 3 a.m. the next morning, that proposals were being submitted for the construction of a new four-lane border crossing. The slight, skinny PM in Ottawa was said to have enjoyed that story immensely.

Eventually, the Canadian side of the border was overrun with shovels and graders and dump trucks and the Calgary tour buses didn’t bother, any longer, to make the awkward trip to the border through Rancher McKenna’s grazing land.  Markwayne missed their visits, missed the easy cheerful chats and smooth Canadian tobacco. But by then, he was on a first name basis with the wives and sons and daughters and grandchildren of the detained men. So he continued to hang out at the border on his smoke breaks to chat with whoever happened to be there looking for a glimpse of their dear old darlin’, or their greatly-missed grandpa.

One girl stood out. She was usually alone, but Markwayne noticed that when others were present, they spoke to her gently. When she came, she strode across McKenna’s land with her head tucked into her chest, long limbs loose, her hair streaming. Sometimes her hair glowed, he noticed. Sometimes it hung lank and her eyes were distant or sad.

One day on break as he drew the last lungful off a Marlboro, flicked it away and turned to walk back to the centre, she spoke to him.

“You got my friend in there,” she said. He had to strain to hear her. He knew she was talking to him – no one else was nearby – but she looked beyond him, over his shoulder.

“What’s your friend’s name?” he asked, although he knew what it was. As he knew who she was. Her friend was a slow good-natured lad who had been known to call greetings to her from both his window and from the exercise yard. His voice never failed to make her smile, Markwayne had noticed. He wondered if they had been getting it on before his stupidity had landed him inside. Strange though she was, she sure wasn’t hard to look at.

“Bobby McKenna. That’s his name. His daddy owns this.” She nodded slightly to the left and the right. “I got a question for you, mister.”

“And I got a question for you, Carla. That’s your name, right?”

“That’s my name,” she replied. “What’s your question?” Her glance grazed him but didn’t settle. “Some boys ask me if I like to do sex. Don’t ask me that. I only do that with Bobby. He’s my husband.”

“You and Bobby are married? He never said anything about that.”

“Did I say we’re married? I said he’s my husband. Everybody here knows he’s my husband.”

“OK.” Markwayne said. “You said you have a question for me. Go ahead. Ask.”

“Yes. Thank you, mister. What I want to know is why is Bobby in that place?” she indicated the detention centre with a lift of her shoulder. “What’s he done, that he can’t come home?”

“Well, everybody’s in there for the same reason – they all broke the law.”

“What law? All they done was walk or drive on that there road, like they done every day of their life.”

“It’s a new law, I guess. And people kept on using the road even when they knew they shouldn’t. So they ended up in detention.” She looked directly into his face now, a question in her eyes.

“Who made that law? It’s dumb.”

“My boss did – and he’s the most important man in the world, I’d say. So how can it be dumb?” He grinned at her disgusted expression.

“I don’t know the answer to that, mister. What I need to know is how long does Bobby have to stay in there? I want that boy home to help me with this baby,” she said, pointing at her abdomen, “because you know babies don’t stop for nothin’, and they don’t slow down. That’s what Bobby’s Mom says, anyways.”

Markwayne had never once wondered how long anyone’s incarceration would be. That kind of thing was above his pay grade. Literally. He shrugged and turned to walk away from Carla. She grabbed his sleeve.

“All you got to do is unlock a door or maybe two of them.” she said quietly. “Middle of the night? Guards got to sleep sometimes.”

Markwayne shrugged her off and trudged away.

“Markwayne?” she called after him softly. “Can you be human for once?”

His name from her mouth – it stopped him in his tracks. He turned around.

“Just be human. That’s all. It ain’t that hard.” She stared at him, unblinking.

“What?” he said. “Just let them all go? And then what? At the very least I lose my job.”

“It’s a shitty job anyways, don’t you think?” Carla asked.

“I think it’s kind of cool,” he replied.

“Well, it’s not, you know. How can puttin’ nice people in jail be cool? Not just that, either. How is it cool to keep a young daddy away from the woman who’s carryin’ his baby? And my auntie Mags could kick the bucket without ever seein’ her dear old darlin man again!  I think he’s a little creepy, Markwayne, but she seems to like him a lot.”

“Jesus Christ, enough already! I get your point! I’ll think about it.” Markwayne said.

“You’ll think about it?”

“I’ll think about it. Can I go now?”

“You can go now,” she replied, giggling softly. She turned and began her slow glide through the McKenna lands back to the shelter of Bobby’s home.

As he crossed the detention facility yard and made his way into the building, Markwayne found himself grinning. Opening doors around here wasn’t all that complicated, he thought. Anybody with a couple of keys could open all of them in no time flat.  Anybody with a heart.

He wondered if he’d qualify for political asylum in Canada.

The End