MAUD NEWTON lives in Brooklyn, NY, and is at work on a novel. Her writing has appeared in storySouth, Eyeshot, Outsider Ink, MiamiStories and Ducts, and is forthcoming in Pindeldyboz. Soon you will be able to visit her online at www.maudnewton.com.

                                                            border patrol


At 17, Shemish Punch drove away from his mother’s house, as she was hanging laundry in the yard, and never returned. He drove three Wiccan high priestesses back into the fold of the Catholic Church. He drove a needle into his vein, once, and that was enough for him. Now 33, he is driven to drink, often, by his wife, Nell, who has frizzed black hair, wears orange lipstick, and taunts him ceaselessly about his “witch girls.”

Shemish has planned to move, sans Nell, from his suburban nightmare of a house in Plano, Texas, to join the U.S. Border Patrol in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Nell plans to keep the new baby that grows inside her and swells her tiny breasts into real ones. The Border Patrol plans on Shemish starting in one month’s time.

Shemish finds Nell’s plans and his are two separate things. He has already found a small apartment near Elephant Butte Lake, a body of water just north of the Mexican border. Tanned, chesty tourist girls find the lake temperate year-round, and sail on trim, white sailboats. On a past vacation, Nell found the artificial lake decadent because of the water shortage on the Mexico side.

Shemish, awaiting his departure date, finds he feels only joy at the prospect of being alone, or maybe with a tourist girl, on the right side of Elephant Butte Dam.

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© 2002 Maud Newton