The Line - Bruce Springsteen

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

Went to work for the INS on the line

With the California border patrol

Bobby Ramirez was a ten-year veteran

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 mountains

Pay all they got to the smugglers rings

We send them home, and they come right back again

Carl, hunger is a powerful thing.»

Well, I was good at doing what I was told

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

And try to keep them from crossing the line

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?»

There’s a bar in Tijuana

Where me and Bobby drink alongside

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

And I knew what I would do

She said she had some family in Madera county

If she, her child and younger brother could just get through

At night, they come across the levee

In the searchlight’s dusty glow

We’d rush them in our Broncos

Force them back down into the river below

She climbed into my truck

She leaned toward me and we kissed

As we drove, her brother’s shirt slipped open

And I saw the tape across his chest

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

My gun resting beneath my hand

We stood there staring at each other

As off through the arroyo she ran

Bobby Ramirez, he never said nothing

Six months later, I left the line

I drifted to the central valley

And took what work that I could find

At night I searched the local bars

And the migrant towns

Looking for my Louisa

With the black hair falling down