Badges

wrote a phone number down and gave it to Jeff. “Call me and we’ll set it up. We can go to either side of the border.”

    “Okay, great, I’ll give ya a call. And sorry about the picture thing, just didn’t know.”

    “No problem.”

    Agent Barry Riggo watched as Jeff walked out of the door and turned to head toward the American side. As soon as Jeff was out of earshot, the entire place broke out in laughter.

    “It never gets old taking the piss out of a baby Yank with the whole queen thing,” the supervisor said between fits of laughter.

    “Kinda felt sorry for him. He was so worried he had offended everyone here,” Barry said.

    “I’d love to hear him tell the story to his mates over there,” the supervisor said, laughing once more. “Get back to your post, Barry.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    Jeff arrived back at the American station, turned over the report to the duty supervisor, and then went in search of the lead agent. When he found him, he wasn’t happy.

    “Agent Weber, may I have a word with you now?” asked Jeff, red-faced.

    “Sure, let’s take a walk over there, since traffic is light at the moment.” When they got to a bench, Don asked, “What’s on your mind?”

    “What’s on my mind is the fact that neither you nor anyone else in the station told me about the custom that we observe upon entering the Canadian facility! I was embarrassed in front of all the men over there!”

    “Custom? What custom would that be?” Weber asked with a straight face.

    “The custom whereby we have to bow to the picture of the queen on the wall, that’s what custom. I didn’t know about it and almost caused an international incident.”

    “Seems like we’d better take this up with the supervisor,” Weber said as he took Jeff by the arm and steered him inside.

    “Sir, it seems that old Jeff here didn’t bow to the queen over there until informed to do so.”

    “Is that right? And did you then bow, Jeff?”

    “Yes, sir, once I knew about it.”

    “Didn’t it seem a bit strange that you, an American Border Patrol agent, would be bowing to a fucking picture of some foreign-born queen whose country we fought to get rid of over two hundred years ago? That comes close to swearing allegiance to a foreign power!” the supervisor responded.

    “You mean I should have refused?”

    “Considering that only brand-new, still-wet-behind-the-ears junior Border Patrol agents fall for that shit, yeah, you should have told them to go fuck themselves!”

    The entire station broke out laughing at Jeff’s expense. Jeff caught on quickly; he had been made to look like an ass in front of his Canadian counterparts.

    “So all of you knew that this would happen then, is that correct?” Jeff asked.

    “Yep, you could say that,” Weber responded.

    “Well, go fuck yourselves!” Jeff said. He spun on his heel and left with a bright red face. He took a walk along the side of advancing traffic to give himself a chance to cool off and get himself under control. What a jackass he had been! Bowing to some fucking picture on a wall! Of a queen, no less!

    Inside the station, the men were still laughing.

    “That never gets old, I swear!” one of the agents said.

    “Well, I think young Jeff is rather pissed off at us for the moment,” speculated the supervisor.

    “He’ll cool off; he’s just embarrassed on two sides of the border!” Weber said.

    The day couldn’t end fast enough as far as Jeff was concerned. He was overly thorough with every car he stopped the rest of his shift, and no one got to cross the border without being one hundred percent checked out.

    When he got home, he took off his green uniform and hung it up, grabbed a beer, and sat down in his living room in his underwear to take a long drink from the bottle. He ran the entire incident through his mind over and over, until finally, he began to laugh. The more he thought about it, the harder he laughed, and he realized that he had just gone through a typical initiation into a new organization with new duties. He was no longer mad about the prank.

    Then his mind shifted to Barry. Now the Canadian’s parting words about getting a beer made sense to him: “Yeah, as long as you’re not mad as hell with me.” Well, Jeff was sure that Barry, being the junior agent he was, couldn’t have warned him. But somehow, Jeff thought that Barry might go for more than just a beer, and he could take his sweet revenge on at least one of