In 1995, immigration reform was not a big part of the national discourse in the USA. However, it was very much a part of the ongoing conversation between Bruce and his fans–it was, in fact, one of the central themes of his new album, The Ghost of Tom Joad.
Several songs on that album touched on the plight and circumstances of immigrants, whether from Southeast Asia (“Galveston Bay“) or Latin America (“Sinaloa Cowboys,” “Balboa Park“). But nowhere was the issue explored with more sensitivity and empathy than the engrossingly cinematic tale of “The Line.”
Many of the songs on The Ghost of Tom Joad play more like a story set to music than an actual song. “The Line,” however, strikes the right balance, creating a short film in our mind’s eye without ever straying from the form of a delicate song.
(Let’s take a moment, though, and acknowledge that Bob Dylan probably deserves co-songwriting credit–the melody clearly is lifted from Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero,” but this is neither the first nor last time that Bruce pays homage to one of his influences in this way.)
“The Line” showcases Bruce at the height of his songwriting powers, returning to familiar territory (the story of Carl and Bobby plays out much like the tale of Joe and Frankie in “Highway Patrolman”) but with greater craft, trusting the reader to supply detail when imagination is a sharper lens than vocabulary. Even the title is a brilliant metaphor, representing at once the literal border between nations, the cultural barrier that divides their citizens, and the internal line we draw for ourselves to declare the boundaries of our own values and actions.
Let’s take a listen–carefully.
That’s an entire movie in under five minutes.
Let’s explore how Bruce tackles the impact of American immigration policy from different perspectives without ever losing the narrative thread. The first two verses of “The Line” introduce our two main characters, Carl (the narrator, an INS Border Patrol agent) and Bobby (his partner). Notice how easily and quickly Bruce fleshes them out: Carl is ex-military and a widower, trying to adjust to civilian life, a new job, and dealing with loss. The job is a just a job–something to occupy himself with, but not his focus:
I got my discharge from Fort Irwin, took a place on the San Diego county line
Felt funny being a civilian again… it’d been some time
My wife had died a year ago, I was still trying to find my way back whole
I went to work for the INS on the line with the California Border Patrol
…while Bobby is a veteran of the line with a more personal stake. His family hails from Gunajuato (as central Mexico as you can get), so he understands full well what’s at stake for the immigrants who flee north, risking danger and death, sacrificing everything they’d ever built for every hope they ever dreamt:
Bobby Ramirez was a ten-year veteran, and we became friends
His family was from Guanajuato, so the job it was different for him
He said, “They risk death in the deserts and the mountains, pay all they got to the smugglers rings
We send ’em home, they come right back again. Carl, hunger is a powerful thing”
Bobby understands that he and Carl are engaged in an endless cycle–that hunger (both literal and metaphorical) will drive the people they send back to attempt the crossing again. Bobby becomes a friend and mentor to Carl, and the pair do their job with dignity and diligence:
Well I was good at doing what I was told, I kept my uniform pressed and clean
At night I chased their shadows through the arroyos and ravines
Drug runners, farmers with their families, young women with little children by their sides
Come night we’d wait out in the canyons, try to keep ’em from crossing the line
We’re two minutes in, and we now know our main characters and have a vividly drawn stage.
Enter the femme fatale:
Well the first time that I saw her she was in the holding pen
Our eyes met and she looked away then she looked back again
Her hair was black as coal, her eyes reminded me of what I’d lost
She had a young child crying in her arms, I asked, “Señora, is there anything I can do?”
A young Mexican woman named Louisa (we’ll learn her name in the next verse) resembles Carl’s late wife, and Carl is immediately captivated. They meet for the first time in the holding pen, which means that Louisa and her young child are about to be returned to Mexico. And that’s where Carl and Louisa meet again:
There’s a bar in Tijuana where me and Bobby drink with the same people we’d sent back the day before
We met there, she said her name was Louisa, she was from Sonora and had just come north
We danced and I held her in my arms, I knew what I would do
She said she had some family in Madera county, if she her child and her younger brother could just get through
Let’s just take a moment and marvel at that last verse, at Bruce’s observant eye and keen sense of empathy that brings us intimately into the world of the border, where illegal immigrants risk everything for a better life, the INS agents honor their duty, and after quitting time they all mingle together in a little bar south of the border.
Note as well how Bruce never tells us how Carl falls for Louisa, what Louisa asks Carl to do, what Carl decides and why, what is about to play out. There’s no need–we already know; Bruce tells us just enough for our imaginations to supply the rest.
We come now to the climax of our story. The night starts like any other…
At night they come across the levee in the searchlight’s dusty glow
We’d rush ’em in our Broncos, force ’em back down into the river below
…but then Louisa arrives with her brother, and Carl realizes he has a problem:
She climbed into my truck, she leaned towards me and we kissed
As we drove her brother’s shirt slipped open and I saw the tape across his chest
Louisa’s brother is a drug runner, and Carl–already legally compromised–now faces an even greater ethical dilemma. And this is where the songwriter pulls back the lens, depriving us of Carl’s inner dialogue and debate. We don’t know what’s passing through his mind, because Carl has even more immediate concerns:
We were just about on the highway when Bobby’s jeep come up in the dust on my right
I pulled over and let my engine run and stepped out into his lights
I felt myself moving, felt my gun resting ‘neath my hand
We stood there staring at each other as off through the arroyo she ran
This is one of the most powerful scenes in Bruce’s catalog–two partners at odds, each following their moral compass, and now placed in direct opposition as a result. Carl has an almost out-of-body experience, aware of his hand reaching for his gun without him consciously directing it.
Louisa (and presumably her brother) take off, never to be seen again. Neither Carl nor Bobby act, neither willing to further compromise themselves or the other. We never learn how long they stand there, or how the stand-off ends. But we know they never spoke of it again–to each other or to anyone.
Carl leaves the INS–whether from shame, moral compromise, ethical protest, or performance issues, we never find out. But we do learn–without Bruce ever directly saying so–that Carl is forever haunted by the events of that night, drifting from town to town, job to job, always searching for Louisa.
Bobby Ramirez he never said nothing, six months later I left the line
I drifted to the central valley and took what work yeah I could find
At night I searched the local bars and the migrant towns
Looking for my Louisa with the black hair falling down
Was Louisa playing Carl? Perhaps–after all, “hunger is a powerful thing.” But he can’t be sure, and as Bruce wrote years earlier in another song, “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.”
Bruce performed “The Line” nightly throughout the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, as well as a half-dozen times on the Devils and Dust Tour–always acoustic, never electric, and only in intimate settings where the audience can be drawn into the world of the border and gain a greater understanding of its inhabitants.
The Line
Recorded: March-August 1995
Released: The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)
First performed: November 21, 1995 (New Brunswick, NJ)
Last performed: August 13, 2005 (Vancouver, Canada)
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