The new guy poured Karo tinged with black over my head and it dripped into my beard. It stuck there. Crude oil. At the pipeline construction site across Highway 67 five others from camp wore gas masks and held banners. It took DPS less than three minutes to show. The sheriff showed in ten followed by the Border Patrol and a Texas Ranger. They read our FB posts.
Richard Mark Glover
We pulled off the stunt, then the new guy bellows, “See, no arrests.” He’d assured us it was a non-arrestable event. We let him orchestrate it. Now, I studied his face and tried not to use his high-amped confidence against him. We’re all brothers and sisters here united in the fight against corporate greed.
The post-protest crowd laughed, smiled easily, the drum beating in victory while a group of cops led by a thin deputy with Sheriff written across his T-shirt walked toward us. They stopped in front of Pete Hefflin.
Pete has been with Two Rivers Camp since it opened in late December. He was an elder of the Society of Native Nations, the Big Bend Defense Coalition’s partner at camp. Steely-eyed, sure, tough, with a menacing scar etched on his neck. He was in charge of camp security and had sent at least seven packing for various infractions including smoking weed at our drug-free, alcohol-free camp.
He led sunrise ceremonies and sang. His guttural hoops sparked the little bit of Quachita in me. Many of the men in camp looked up to him as a leader. I was one of them. He and I agreed: whoever died first, the other would sing at the funeral.
The questioning went on. Too long. Something was wrong. Then the deputies handcuffed Pete Hefflin.
Four women from camp, trained in these situations, swarmed Pete and the arrest party. “What’s the charge? Why’s he being arrested?” They demanded. The camp cook yelled, “Come on. Get outta here. Lets go!” One of the women turned to the cook and shot him the bird.
We piled in the van and headed to the checkpoint following the paddy-wagon. The sheriff suspected an out-of-state warrant and would finger-print Pete Hefflin there. The checkpoint had not been good to us. The dog always seemed to smell something. The week before a Border Patrolman told me, as he rifled through my Toyota, that the dogs were trained to “sniff out illegal drugs and odors from human beings.” Check the latter.
The driver shouted, “Anybody else got a warrant?” We stopped at 169, a mile before the check point and eight of us got out and into the res-truck. We headed back to camp, while the van and the rent-a-car with the new guy and the cook drove on.
I checked the gauge – less than an eighth. I let out seven in the middle of nowhere, U-turned back to Marfa, and gasoline. Luck through the checkpoint, then the new guy and the cook stood waving beside the rent-a-car on the side of the road. I picked them up and we all went to re-fuel.
Clouds streaked the sky. Black Karo hardened in my beard. I pumped gas, that which we are against. I want it in the tank—fast. Dave, the former mayor of Marfa slows, rolls down his window, gestures. I shout out, “Don’t ask!” Then: “Performance Art – Highway 67.”
We made it back to camp. Sullen. Unsure. The cook says he wants to talk and sequestered me to the side. “Those women are spies, infiltrators!”
I listened.
“It’s me or them,” he said.
I didn’t want to lose him. He’s the cook and I like him, but this time he’s wrong.
“Any word from Marfa?” I asked nobody in particular.
Then the news.
Pete Hefflin is not Pete Hefflin. He is Pablo Gutierrez. A rap sheet a mile long—but as Pete Hefflin, clean in Texas for the last 12 years.
I believe in redemption. I believe in Pete Hefflin. Pablo Who?
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