“Whose truck is this,” the deputy sheriff asked in broken Spanish.

“My friend’s. She give me to see if I want to buy.”

“You need to call your friend and tell her to come here.”

“He has a valid Mexican driver’s license,” I said. “Why can’t he drive with that? I drive in Mexico and Europe with my U.S. License.”

“Not legally,” the deputy sheriff said. “You have to have a passport. The guy driving your truck didn’t have a passport or green card so even though the truck is registered and insured, he can’t drive it.”

“Why are you towing my truck?”

“Because he’s not licensed to drive in the U.S.” Deputy Anderson continued, “If I cite him for not having a license, tell him not to drive the truck, then leave, he could drive after I leave and cause harm. I would be liable.” I didn’t understand why he couldn’t have the tow truck driver off-load my truck right there so I could drive it home, but I was more interested in my friend.

“Can I speak with Marco?” I asked the deputy as I signed my ticket.

“That’s up to you. He left walking down that road.” He turned and pointed behind him.

The tow truck pulled out in one direction and the deputy sheriff the other, leaving me standing alongside the road in the dark. I drove toward Marco’s house and found him waiting for me beside the road. He got in the passenger seat.

“Que paso,” I asked in Spanish. We always spoke in Spanish as my Spanish was still better than Marco’s English, though he was gaining on me.

“They just pulled me over. Por nada – for nothing. I didn’t do anything.” He told me about driving down Iron Springs Road, slowly weaving through the maze of orange and white traffic barrels marking construction. He’d bumped along the dirt road in my 1990 silver Toyota truck, obeying the flaggers as they stopped him to let the big yellow machinery lumber past. Just as he was making his turn, flashing lights reflected off of the rear view mirror into his eyes and he pulled over. 

“I drive the truck all the time, Marco,” I said, “and I’ve never been pulled over.”

“I didn’t do anything! Nada!” Marco repeated. His lips clamped down tight into a thin white line.

“They told me I can write a letter to try to get my truck out sooner than thirty days, but it’s going to cost a lot and we both have to go to court,” I said.

“What does it say on my ticket?” he asked, pulling the pink paper out of his wallet.

I flipped on the overhead light. “Just driving without an authorized license.”

“Why’d they pull me over?” he demanded, his voice raising.

“Marco, they’re cops. They can pull you over for any reason they want. Maybe you didn’t use your...” I didn’t know the Spanish word I needed so mimed flipping on my blinker.

“No. I follow all the rules! I feel so helpless.” He turned from me and looked out the window into the dark night. “In Mexico, I’d be able to argue with the police. I’d know what was legitimate.”

“I know, Marco. I’m sorry.”

I’d learned from my students that the police and sheriff don’t function as immigration officers so Marco was probably safe from being returned to Mexico, but still I hated to see him not have a smoother passage here. He’d been a veterinarian in central Mexico, unable to make a living within their economy. People were so poor that they paid him for his services and medicine with eggs or a sack of beans. His plan now was to save enough money and return to Mexico to buy a few cows and pigs, then raise them for meat. He’d saved about three thousand dollars so far as a carpenter in Prescott. Marco was one of my favorite students and I wanted to see him accomplish his plan and return to the type of work he loved.

***

The next day was Thursday and I hand-delivered a letter requesting a hearing to get my truck out of impound sooner than the required 30y days. When the deputy called, his next available time slot was Sunday. Four more days of impound fees plus I’d have to pay a $150 in cash or cashier’s check for the privilege of a hearing. It felt like a scam and I felt sorry for the immigrants who didn’t know how to work the system or didn’t have the money.

When I showed up at the jail on Sunday, the front door was open but everything else was locked tight. I stood in an empty hallway with two deputy sheriffs who were not the ones who’d given me the ticket. Handing over my pile of cash felt more like a drug deal than a hearing.

“Do you know why he was pulled over?” I asked.

“It says in the report, ‘White light showing from the rear,’” Deputy Joy said. “It could be that there’s a broken taillight or the reverse lights are wired wrong and go on when it’s in drive, or maybe the license plate light is angled wrong.”

“It’s my truck and I’m pretty sure those things aren’t wrong, but I’ll check.” I explained to these deputies, too, that I had let Marco drive the truck for a few days to take it to a mechanic and see if he wanted to buy it.

“There’s a state statute to get unlicensed drivers off the road which was updated in 2005,” Deputy Joy told me. “We find a reason for the stop and then we check their license.” Why hadn’t I ever been pulled over while driving the same truck?

At the courthouse a month later, Marco agreed to pay his $80 fine rather than protest his ticket and have to return again and lose more time from work. So far, it had cost me $468 for the towing, impound, and hearing and I wasn’t interested in tacking on another $155 to pay my ticket. I also wanted to argue my case in front of a judge, so the clerk set another date for my case. I was going to point out to the judge that I’d legally driven in Europe and Mexico with no special license, and thought that we respected other countries’ driver’s licenses as well. I’d explain that Marco was pulled over because the deputy said there was a “white light showing from the rear;” since then I’d checked and there are no broken taillights and the reverse lights don’t go on when the truck is in drive. It could only have been the license plate light which is not broken and came standard with the truck.

Searching for the cause of the problem, I’d gone to an auto parts store and the attendant told me he used to be on the police force and that cops are always happy when they can see the license plate numbers, even when the plate light might be too bright. It was preferable to not being able to see the plate at all. I was sure the research I’d done would sway the judge to my side but in the end, I never got the opportunity to speak with him.

I sat in the courtroom for an hour, listening to other people present their side to the judge and then the police officer presenting his view. When it was my turn, the deputy sheriff didn’t show up for the hearing so the court dropped my ticket. I was left wondering if he’d have shown up if it had been Marco there, and not me.

I called Marco that night after we were both home from work. “I got off,” I said. “El sheriff never showed up so I didn’t have to pay.”

“What did this solve?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t stop driving to work just because they gave me a ticket. There aren’t any buses in this town,” Marco said.

“I know. And it’s too far to ride your bike. You’re stuck.”

“And so are all the other Mexicans around here who work like me framing houses, doing concrete work, sheet-rocking, plastering –”

“And stuccoing, painting, doing roadwork –” I interrupted.

“Landscaping, cleaning –” he continued.

“And ironing at the drycleaners, cooking in restaurants, roofing, babysitting.” We both started laughing as we raced to talk over one another. Then I heard him taking a deep breath to match my own. “It’s complex, Marco.”

“I don’t want to be driving on the road with bad drivers, either,” Marco said, “but if they won’t let me take a test and get a license what can I do? I have to get to work.” There was a long moment of silence on the line. “The same thing happened to Armando but he lost his car because the impound fees were more than his car was worth by the time the 30 days were up, so he just didn’t go get it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I can’t solve it, Marco.” 

I could agree with Deputy Joy when he told me that, “Without some documentation from their home country to prove a foreign license is valid, there is no way to ensure that drivers have had proper training, driver’s education, or gone through the testing process.” However, we are not currently allowing undocumented immigrants to be tested here nor do we have alternative means of transportation for employees to get to work. The leaders of the quad-cities area need to move forward quickly toward providing a viable bus system to its workforce, whether they be documented or not. Without this, an increased enforcement of the state law is ineffective and does not guide us toward safer streets.

NEED SHIRTTAIL