There came a sound of something bumping, just as I'd shut the door. In the dimly lit foyer, I checked an impulse to call out, the better to listen, now to sounds only of city traffic, my breath, the ringing keys. Going along the hall out of the living room, a sweet fragrance was on the air, sandalwood or some such, and grew the more pungent the further I ventured toward the bedroom. At the door, I came up short on sight of something incongruous; our storm candles out on the dresser burning, two tall red tapers that had never been lit before.But what of the unmade bed, the jumble of sheets, the spread trailing to the floor? I heard the flush of the half-bath toilet to the right, and as I came along the bed nearer to the door, it opened. It was not my wife.
"Well, old son!" said a neighbor from the same building, a big, friendly, one might say 'fatherly' sort of fellow, Daniel McKee, a man some 20 years my senior, and an often visitor to our apartment with his wife. He'd moved around me, nearly knocking me to the wall, till stopping there before door to the hall, he threw both his hands open wide. "Say!" he said, "Thought you were gone to do some work on the new house." That big smile of his, now grown ridiculous, if not outright noxious by its look, tugged at the corners of his silvered mustache. "What's up, my man--forget something?" He'd reached to clap a hand to my shoulder, which instead slammed into his as I pushed past into the hall. "Camille!" I called. "What are these stinking candles burning in here for? What is all this? Where the goddam hell are you?"
"They nice though, eh?" said McKee. "She was just showing me, you know, uh the . . . smell--or like, the difference be--"
A sound of bare metal hangers jangling had interrupted him. Coming back into the room, I stopped before the big mirror on the dresser at my left. There I stared across at the closet. I looked at McKee and watched his tongue pass quickly over that bushy mustache. It was like I'd pass out if I didn't move. Three steps is what it took; I jerked open the door, and there, in her panties, stood my wife, bra dangling from her fingers in the hand that sought with a thin forearm to cover her breasts. I needed only reach for that thin, white wrist before she was off around me, and gone out the bedroom door.
And what was this I was hearing? "Hey! I know how this looks--I know, but it's really not . . . what . . ." He stared open-mouthed, his eyes going to what had come to my hand off the top shelf of the closet. I'd been keeping that bad medicine up there ever since Camille had complained about my having it under my side of the bed, where it had lain ever since the night two years previous when we had awakened to find a prowler in the apartment. That time all I had close to hand was a pillow. Next time, this time, it would be different. His arm shot out toward me "Hey, wait a minute!" It came down to the base of my ever so neighborly neighbor's neck. And, as I jerked the blade back out of him, I thrust it immediately forward, that trusty old tomahawk of mine taking aim for another shot to his horrified face, and he stood there, reaching for his neck, turning to the mirror to assess the damage.
His blood splashed to the dresser, dousing the flame on one of the candles, the hand that held him leaning there; the hand now closing to a fist as he reared up almost laughing to say, "You dumb chump! Just how long you been kidding yourself about me sticking some real meat to your skanky little wife?" He was doing his level best to raise that big, bloody fist when the sharp, shining steel came to split his forehead, neatly parting his hair, kind of like in that old daguerreotype portrait of my great uncle Noble, I absurdly thought to myself with a humor, hard and black as obsidian I never thought to be in me--yes, good ol' Uncle Noble the barber and hair tonic salesman who always wore his 1890's style 'do' parted in the middle like this, but not exactly, being a fair sight more debonair.
Leaving that blade embedded where I'd put it, I took him by the arms and turned him back to the mirror. "There you go," I said. "If you'd like a closer trim around the ears, or maybe a little more clipped off the front, just say so, my *friend*." The blunt butt of the axe smashed the mirrored glass as he crashed forward to it.
In the living room, I found Camille standing, all dressed up now in her black bra and lacy red pants. She stumbled back in horror of my blood-spattered face and shirt. "Did you . . . Jesus!" She shot a glance toward the bedroom, before she slowly started to move toward it, strangling on a cry of "Danny!"
I was at the kitchen sink when I heard Camille's scream. I tore off my shirt, splashed some water in my face and grabbed a dish towel. When I came into the bedroom, I found her leaning over a real mess collapsed between the dresser and the foot of the bed. And there she sat, her long brown hair cascading to conceal her face as she trembled looking down over her dearly departed.
"Christ!" she hissed, ripping the bloody dish towel off her head, which I'd given her for a mourning veil. She grabbed at my jean leg as I was about to set foot on the back of him, en route to the closet. And it's a good thing she did that; I do have her to thank, or I'd have needed to find a clean pair of boots to go with the fresh shirt I was after.
Vaulting behind her over the bed, I went and got the shirt I wanted and started to put it on. She sat there watching as I pressed every button into place before she said, "Aren't you going to kill me too?"
"Nah," I said, shoving the shirt-tails in.
"So then, what's going to happen to me?"
I'd already bounced back over the bed and come to the door, when I stopped to consider it.
"Well, what?" she shrilly demanded.
I laughed. "What's going to happen to YOU?" I really had to chuckle. "Baby," I said, "I really don't know, but I believe you'll manage." Then a certain clarity came to me and I said, "Give me fifteen minutes to get to the first ATM before you call the cops, and I'll leave half the dough in my business account to you. Or take your chances, try to get it all for yourself, and then see how I'm apt to like that."
"Wait!" I turned and came back into her view. "Don't you know I have to call them now? They'll bust me for harboring a goddam murderer. You know that!" Now, that was true, it would make her complicit in my escape.
"Do what you have to do, baby. Me, I'll try to leave you something." There was nothing more to say. I got out of there.
--
TWO BEERS
At the drive-up ATM for my bank, those few seconds it took for that upper withdrawal limit of a thousand bucks to feed out to my hand seemed to go on forever. When it came, I shoved it into my shirt pocket, and grabbing the card and receipt, I put my Ford F-150 into gear. But all the while I was accusing myself for such a prime fool, leaving that remaining $11,500 or so to Camille. Taking the turn out into the street then, I came screeching to a halt, and backing up, I wheeled around behind the thought that since the ATM machine hadn't busted me, neither should the non-automated teller inside the bank, if I hurried up about it.
Inside, there were three people ahead of me in line and the whole time I waited, the thought assailed me that if I took out too much, it could draw attention that a lesser withdrawal would not. It came to mind that in the end, when my darling doll had insisted on calling the cops immediately, I wound up saying that I would leave so much as I could, and not the half I'd first mentioned. I already had a thousand, plus the five hundred previously in my wallet, so if I took out an additional five grand that would allow me enough to trade in the truck for some other wheels, and still leave her around half.
It was a pretty brunette behind the counter asking, "May I help you this morning, sir"
"Right," I said, noticing how she was being a little flirty with her eyes, as they flitted from mine down over my chest and these, my biceps exposed by the short-sleeved shirt, so recently jerked from the closet. I made my voice firm to say, "I'm going to withdraw ten thousand from my checking account." I handed her my check card.
"Some big doings, eh?" I managed a silent smile and a nod. "It'll be just a minute," she said. But it turned out to be more like four or five. All that time I was thinking what a schmuck I was for not leaving that slut flat, cleaning out all but exactly two bits, just to let her know what she was worth, but it probably would take at least two bucks to avoid the complication of closing the account. Shoot! she'd be getting the dream house in Baxter Springs--what else could she want, other than some more dirty escapades in the dark while I was out there busting my butt for hers? To hell with her! Let her spend the rest of her life and eternity too, having a guy with a hatchet in his head for her lover.
When the money was fully counted out, I picked it up, thanked the pretty teller and said, "You know you're a regular baby doll, don't you?" She just stared at me perfectly flummoxed for a moment before she said, "Oh, just don't start on me now, Mr. McClelland, after I just got engaged, and all." Damn, if she wasn't still flirting.
As I fired up the truck, mad as it seems, her last words were still ringing a bell in my ears; her reply to my comment that "Some guys get all the luck." It was a puzzle, or a riddle that went with a wink, and like, "Well, maybe not ALL of it."
I traded down in order keep as much cash in reserve as possible, opting for a little Chevy S-10 Blazer with 4WD and low range, something small and compact that could get me back into the country just about anywhere. That put me down $1,500 bucks. Not too bad. I had ten days to drive on the dealer plates before having to get it registered. And that could be worked out somehow or other, I hoped. Somebody would surely know something I didn't about a thing like that, and that's what decided me about heading down to Stone County on the Arkansas border. Down there, I had some not so distant hill country cousins who I felt pretty sure would be happy to help me out on a thing like that, so long as I had the cash to make it worth their while, which of course, I did.
I drove down out of Joplin on Missouri 43, toward the little hamlet of Hornet along the old Cherokee trail; this would get me to Seneca on the Missouri/Oklahoma line, and to that Indian casino down there, where a man might be able to get lost in a crowd, or even into some action that could serve get him further lost from the noisy, slot machine like turnings of his own mind.
Once I'd got parked somewhere in the middle of the huge casino lot, I made my way inside, and upstairs to the bar. I took two beers with me over to a table situated a rail where you can look down over all the action on the main floor. Around the curve from where I sat, and some forty or fifty feet away were the poker tables with their games of Texas Hold 'Em. The light in this area is subdued and the foot traffic is moderate to light making it a good place to sit down and even unwind for those to which such a thing is possible. I hadn't been sitting there long before I came to the realization that now, for me, such a thing was not. No, not without a lot more beer than I already had in me.
For the first time in my life, I began to know what it is to see the prospect for all the rest of that life as one of dread, difference, distance and separation. And I was finding it astonishing, even so much that I was actually able to have a rueful chuckle at myself over it, so bitter as it was, like the taste of the beer in my throat. I was outside the law now, and as a fugitive from it, I began to assess all the more the value of striking out to the southeast to Stone county, so notorious as it had always been as a haven, or roost (more like) for others of my kind.
My kind. Hm! But only the day before, I could not have said that. Yesterday, my kind had been entirely undefined, and it could have been anything I wanted it to be. Now, it was but one thing: Outlaw. Renegade. Mankiller. The hell of it is that as I let my mind go back over the event that had put me here, even as I allowed the image of Daniel's expression, looking up cross-eyed to see that mortal addition that had just been made to his brow, facing that fully again, I realized that for his sake, I felt no remorse. It was only for my own sake that my conscience now assailed me, to see the end to which I'd brought my own life. And I saw that now, I was altogether so dead and murdered as Daniel. The recrimination was all in the sense that I'd brought that axe down on my own head, to sever myself forever from life as I'd formerly known it, and from mankind as I'd never known "him" and now never would. In his last moments of life, maybe Daniel realized something similar about what his actions had brought him--or maybe he went to his death actually supposing that he'd done nothing to deserve it.
I had to laugh nearly aloud to think of that. Nothing to deserve it? Is my pride and honor as a man "nothing"? My marriage, was that worthy to be despoiled, ruined? It would seem that my actions, now carved into his tombstone are here to speak otherwise. In Sicily and in Arabia, all throughout the Levant, these things are expected of a man, that he should revenge himself upon being made cuckold. In those cultures there is no way around it, if a man is to preserve his honor in sight of his fellow men, and the women most especially. But here, in the West, the culture and the law demand a restraint, or if not that, then at least so severe a punishment that such manner of passion killings are kept to a dull roar. Maybe it's not good that the Sicilians and the Arabs do not demand that restraint. Maybe it cheapens their esteem of human life. Be that as it may, it could never be said of them that they are out of touch with their instincts.
Nor could that be said of me. The call of the wild had howled outrageously to me and I came as bidden.
--
TWO PIECES OF BLUEBERRY PIE
I picked up my second bottle of beer, tipped it up to drain the last of it, and when I set it down, it was to the sight of a gaunt, unshaven face under a black western hat; the man under it, having a seat opposite me at my table. He was leaned over and talking in a quiet tone even before I'd had a chance to draw the breath to blow him away:
"Looking for a piece?" He raised a brow as his finger traced a line around the contour of a black mustache, leading down toward his goatee.
"Well . . ." I said, "I don't know. Piece of what?"
That set him back on his chair to entertain himself with a grin, but he was soon closing in again to say, "How 'bout a Army issue 9 millimeter Beretta, fresh outta Eye-Raq?"
"Hm." I had to say, while I thought on that, and while he was saying, "You can bump fire that 15 round magazine like it was a regular damn AK-47 or a Uzi." He took a grandiose hit off his smoke. "You might as well call it a automatic, and to hell with that 'semi' crap."
"Yeah, if you don't mind over two pounds of steel hanging in your belt, dragging your pants down."
Shaking his head he was smiling. "Got the shoulder holster to go with it."
"It's the M9?"
"Guess you know your stuff, eh?"
"From what I hear, there's some soldiers over there got complaints about how that slide can get blown off that piece, right into a man's chest. It's broken quite a few ribs, as I hear it. Course, on the other hand, I heard that was on account of how the Army bought the wrong ammunition for it."
"Full metal jacket is what you want, and that's what I got to go with it, four boxes."
I stood up from the table. "Where you got it?"
"Out to my car," he said, snatching his beer from the table.
"Alright," I said. "Let's have a look."
I wasn't too sure about the wisdom of this, to have that heat in my possession in case I was pulled over by the cops for some routine stop, but considering I managed to knock a hundred fifty bucks off his price of $450.00, it just sort of turned out to be an offer I couldn't refuse. And as I drove south along Route 43 out of Seneca, I finally found a spot off the highway at a deserted picnic ground near Tiff City where I could get crawled up under the car to stash the whole works up in there on top of the spare tire.
Some forty miles further along, on East State Highway 76, I pulled over at the Longview Cafe, just a little south out of Rocky Comfort, for dinner. Over the car radio, I'd heard the report about what a particularly heinous crime it was that I'd done, and all that but they were still out there looking for the silver-gray Ford F-150 that I'd last been seen driving. So, I figured taking time for a bite to eat, wouldn't kill me. Mainly, I wanted to get off the road and lay low, as they say, till long about sundown.
The people at the cafe were very nice and personable, and by the time I left, around nightfall, I had a gut so full of steak, blueberry pie and ice-cream, it's a wonder I didn't have to shift to low range and 4WD just to get the added load going up out of there and on the road again.
--
TWO BLUE EYES
The whole way along Route 86, heading S.E. out of Rocky Comfort, through Exeter and Cassville was a drive in the dark and into many more kinds of night than I can rightly name. It was like running down the street with your ass exposed in a hospital gown, the way it felt having that dealer plate back there on my bumper. I'd been kidding myself to think I'd feel a lot less conspicuous out on the road after sundown, because if anything, that plate was all the more obvious in the glare of headlights than it ever had been in light of the sun.
As the road started heading more directly south in the area of Roaring River and getting on down toward Eagle Rock, though traffic was quite a bit less, the pressure on my nerves was not. Hell of it was that these kin of mine down there were all but strangers to me, people on my old man's side of the family, that had always been held by my big town bred mother in none but the coldest of scorn. All I knew of them was from but the fuzziest of memories, vaguely recorded by the mind of a child six years old. Names of my uncles and aunts and at most, five of my cousins, these I had to my recall, but as to where their farms up there in the hills out of Blue Eye might be, I just had no idea at all.
And how would they take me, knowing so well as I what my mother's attitude toward them had always been? Would they hold my half-ass community college educated, Yankee way of talking and pronouncing things against me? About half of them were living on the Arkansas side of the border, the others just north of it on the Missouri side; for all the difference it makes to those people: it's the town of Blue Eye both sides of a Mason-Dixon Line, that neither side recognizes as anything more than a damned Yankee imposition.
Passing through the Table Rock Lake recreation area, though I was greatly tempted to pull into one of the many campgrounds, the hell of that was how they always want to write down your license number when you pay your fee. And the same thing goes for any tourist cabin or motel room you might want to take for the night. All these things, as they occurred to me one after the other were making me know how completely alone a mankiller like me was fated from now on to be.
The further I drove, as the road began its due eastward course along the borderland, the more tired and sleepy I felt. I just wanted to get turned off the highway somewhere, get the top screwed off that jug of cheap burgundy I'd bought before leaving Seneca, and get unconscious. As I kept my eyes with their sagging lids at least somewhat jacked up and painfully peeled for some lucky looking logging spur turning off into the woods, I kept getting jarred back a little closer to wakefulness by the bumpety-bump of a road-killed armadillo or possum going under the wheels. And I could thank God for that, anyway, if all the carnage on the blacktop was saving me from being crumpled up-side a tree or crunched under the bumper of an on-coming semi.
That lucky spur I'd been looking for finally came up about 15 miles west of Blue Eye. It was off a gravel road that intersected the highway, a letter designated county route heading south into the jungle of giant ragweed, sycamore, sumac, oak and hickory, ever winding along a ridge above a couple of watered hollers either side, and still the more southward it ran, toward the state line past not a single lighted domicile. And this was good. After about two miles, there it was, that spur, two rough ruts turning down into the holler, east of the ridge. With the 4WD locked in and the low-range tranny in gear, down we went, my little Blazer and me, groaning and grumbling all the way, but getting there, when she bottomed out on a bit of a flat that was a bank above a nice little gurgling creek.
Grabbing my jug out of the back seat, I left the headlamps on with the motor idling to get out and have a look around. There was no sign of recent tire tracks, nothing that wasn't degraded since the last good rain. The land had been logged to leave so far as I could see no tree bigger than about 12 inches by cross-section, providing me a fairly decent view of the sky. I reached in, turned off the engine and lights, put the jug up on the roof, and taking off my boots, climbed up over the hood in my stocking feet to get up there myself, so as to join the merry company of E. & J. Gallo and Sons, and their sweet siren sister's call to a grape draped oblivion.
The air was cool, mid sixties, and the stars were out. No moon was up to dim the view, and it was dark. With my boots propped against the rear strut of the luggage rack, I lay my head back, hugged the open jug to my gut, and settled back, looking up. For the first time that day, I wasn't thinking. I was listening to the cicadas and the frogs and the crickets; I was breathing and drinking. I had red wine spilling down over my cheeks and ears. My brain was so quiet, it was like somebody had sunk a hatchet right smack dab into very frontal lobe of it, just to leave it there, sticking up as a monument to my peace of mind.
--
TWO RIDERS
In Blue Eye next morning, after a little asking around, it wasn't long before I had found my way on out to Long Creek and the 40 acre farm of my cousins Virgil and Zelphia, their 17 year old daughter Lurleen, all McClellands like me. The open arms with which they received me was the last thing I'd expected and the first such treatment I ever had, my whole life. I'd never seen anything like it, how good those folks were to me up there. And having to leave after just a few days with them was the toughest thing I ever had to do.
First of all, they weren't going to let me go--or didn't want to, even though like I kept telling them, it was bound to mean big trouble for them. Still, they just wouldn't listen, making it all the harder on me to do the right thing, as I had to do for their own good. Finally, I did take them up on the one thing they absolutely insisted I HAD to do, which was to trade them my Blazer for a fairly well dented and slightly smoky, sky blue Ford Fiesta that their pretty little Lurleen had been driving back and forth to school.
Now this way, as everybody was agreed, it was going to work out just fine, seeing as how Virgil had the way to sell the Blazer to some boys he knew of up at Reed's Spring, and just move that little honey on out and up the way. As for the Fiesta, officially speaking, I was only borrowing that, and would be driving it under Virgil's registration--except, just between them and me, it was my car. So this was really way too good of them, and risky on top of it. And I told them I would only do it on condition they say I stole it, when the Law came nosing around. "Nope," said Virgil sitting there drawing on his pipe, rocking in that beautiful bentwood chair he'd built himself. "The whole idea is that they are not to know about that car, so as to be lookin' for it with you in it."
"Well, that is true," said I, looking down into the golden bright swirl of homemade muscadine wine in my glass. "But what I mean is if I get busted in the car. Then I tell them I stole it."
"No," said Virgil raising his bill cap back a bit. "That's when you tell the truth and say we lent it to you, right on back of the lie that we'll tell 'em too, as to how we hadn't heard a thing about you putting your tomahawk into the head of 'at damn chicken stealin' backdoor man up there in Joplin, when you come through here."
"And," said pretty little Lurleen, "we say to the Law, this is the very first we done heard about it, on account of how Daddy's always fiddling with that solar system of his, and don't hardly get ta hear nothin' around here 'cept the wind off a butterfly wing."
"Mebbe you'd hear that," said Zelphia pulling a knitting needle from under a silver streak of otherwise raven black hair. "Or maybe you wouldn't, depending on what's for supper and the wind from your Pappy's pants."
There was a lot of truth in that. And I can verify it, about their solar system I mean. It had been down the past few days, what with Virgil having decided to beef it up by adding some new panels, or for sure they would have heard all about what I did on television or the radio. They would have heard that name "Jordan McClelland" and they would have sat up straight, looking back and forth to each other asking, "You don't suppose that could be OUR Jord McClelland's boy, that he had by that snooty school teacher up Joplin way?"
I just don't know how somebody such as me, so little deserving of any luck at all just manages to get it, somehow. It puzzles me, and so it did as I was driving south out of Blue Eye across the Arkansas line the night I left, heading on down toward Berryville. My but I hated to leave, because you just never saw such a beautiful place in your life as that little herb farm they have up there. It's all they grow, gardens full of herbs. Herbs for the god sakes. But you listen to that Virgil talking about it and you just sit there in wonder how what you might call a "simply country man" could have so much knowledge about things natural and green and of full flowers in his head. Second day there he took me for a drive--and . . . why! There wasn't a weed or tree or shrub growing by side of the road he couldn't name, and I'm saying by the almighty, sure as you're born, Latin botanical name of the thing.
It was after dark, about 7:30 when I pulled in off Route 21 at Berryville and stopped there at a roadhouse for some supper; a hamburger, fries, blueberry pie and coffee. And, just as I was getting up to leave, a thirties looking bearded fellow in an odd looking black shirt with a sort of Nehru type collar on it came up to my table, dark blue canvas satchel in his hand to ask if maybe I was heading out by Highway 62 toward Eureka Springs. And, as he didn't look to me like some dangerous kind of axe murderer or anything, I said to him, "Could be that I am. Why do you ask?"
He told me there was a music festival going on up at Eureka, and he wanted to be there for that. He also mentioned how he'd hitched a ride to here with a country doctor out of Ava, which is a little while southeast of Springfield. Well, despite how I was feeling about leaving my people up there in Blue Eye, and pretty much wanting to be alone, and not getting all cheered up by company, to ruin my blues, even so there was something kind of almost--well, you could say 'darkly luminous' about the eyes and face of the man that for some reason had me up to my feet to say, "All right. Sure. You got your ride."
My concern about not wanting to be bugged by a lot of cheery conversation turned out to be all but needless. I suppose we'd been driving some fifteen minutes before the silence surrounding that man had got to the point of resounding with an ear-splitting roar, or damned near. Finally, when I couldn't take it anymore, I turned to him and said, "Don't talk much, do you?" I thought I saw him smile. And then he kind of cleared his throat before he laughed just a little. "No," he said, and after clearing his pipes again, "I guess that's what comes of being a monk in a Trappist Monastery. As you may have heard, we don't . . ."
I had to interrupt. "Well, you don't hardly talk at all, is what I hear!"
"That's about right," he said. "But if there's anything you'd like to talk about. Please do. As you can see, I'm on vacation, from the silence." I could hardly believe it. I thought, well look what we got here, a monk and a murderer, cozy as two goddam bugs in a rug. I could hardly keep my eyes on the road for my interest in looking at somebody like this. "Well," I said, "I've never been much of a one for religion, myself, even though my mother did her best to get me all baptized and confirmed and going to the highest class Episcopal churches in town, and all."
"Bless her heart," he said.
"Yeah, well, I guess." Not that i really meant it. "It was more of a status thing with her, than anything about--what, 'piety' or whatever?"
"Many are the paths," he said. And then he started whistling something way under his breath. So I shut up and sort of eased off on the gas a bit the better to hear it. He noticed. "Sorry." He chuckled. "Talking is verboten at the Abbey but whistling for some esoteric reason, they let us get away with. Maybe it's the "patterned evasion" you hear the sociologists talking about." He really got a kick out of that thought, and chuckled for a good spell.
"Whatever it is, I thought it sounded kind of nice." I asked if it was something in particular. "The Lacrimosa," he said, "from Mozart's D minor Requiem Mass."
I tried to remember about that, from a music course I took in community college. "That's . . .well, now that . . ." He waited, watching my face, seeing it come to me, and then seeing me, as I lied. "I forget."
"It's a Mass for the Dead," said he, still looking at me, or more like studying on me; I shrugged something like an assenting nod and pushed the pedal toward the floor.
--
TWO WHISTLES
"Episcopal churches, did you say?" Damn near caused me an accident to hear that after ten minutes and at least that many miles gone down the road since the last word breathed between the two of us. He had turned in his seat to look directly at me. "Sorry, if I startled you."
"Aw, nothing to it." I took a cigarette to my lips giving a push to the lighter in the dash. "I'm just a little edgy tonight. Say!" I took the cigarette out of my mouth. "If this bothers you . . ."
"Not at all." He was reaching for his jacket pocket. "Think I'll have one, myself."
"Well, that's fine." I pointed. "Just reach for the lighter, there." He had set me to thinking, so I just started to do it out loud. "Yeah, and you know there was this one church she took us to, and it was old as hell, you know, or--sorry . . . I mean, very old." I saw the glowing lighter come out and pass toward his face.
He took his fire from the glowing coil. "Don't worry. Speak as you would to anyone else." He returned the dying tungsten ember to its place saying, "Old as heaven, old as hell, they both came into being around the same time, give or take an aeon or two of those kind of days."
"Well, I really ought to know better. But just as I say, it was really old! And after the kind of churches we had been going to, it seemed kind of crumby to me, so old as it was, over a hundred years or so, oldest in town they said, of any old kind of church."
"Well, that is impressive!"
"So my Ma thought; really the cat's pajamas in her book. A lot of society people going there. And it was real "high church" as they say, if you know what that means."
"Of course."
"Highest in town, about as Catholic as you can get without saying the Hail Mary, and eating fish on Friday." I opened the wind-wing a little and adjusted it to a low whistle. "It was the first time I ever saw such a great big cross in a church, let alone one with Jesus hanging, right up there on it."
"How big?"
"Life size!" I heard another whistle zeroing in on the wind to join mine, somewhat higher in pitch so that it made a kind of eerie harmony. "But it wasn't up there over the altar. They had it closer to the pews, mounted on a wall that came down from the ceiling to sort of close off the main part of the church from the--inner sanctum?
"It came down from the nave to close off the chapel from the sacristy."
"Yeah. Sure. And I mean to tell you, that thing up there had me scared to death, just to look at it!"
"Well, to a child, I suppose it might . . ."
"Yeah." I had to choke off a laugh. "Kind of funny, sort of thing a kid might think, sitting right under a thing like that." I put my cigarette to the open gap in the wind-wing, sending sparks and ash into the night. I felt the eyes of the monk searching me.
"I wonder," he said.
"Well, me too! I wondered a lot. Or maybe I worried, looking up at that, about what this whole religion thing was about. Thing is, it was all carved out of some real dark kind of wood--and life-like? I mean, you could make out every thorn in that crown, and the blood drops coming down. I hated to look up at that thing, but I kept doing it anyway. And then I would hate it even more, each time I looked." Beams from an approaching car lit the monk's face, and exposed a look of pain. "Sorry," I said. "It's sacrilegious as hell. I knew it at the time."
"Not at all, no. It's an innocent reaction."
"Wish I'd known that then, because . . . well, it's awful hard to put in grown-up words the kind of thing that strikes you when you're a kid."
"Try. See if you can." He leaned forward to stub out his cigarette in the tray. "I'd be most grateful if you could."
"Well . . ." I had to think, but not all that much. "I just couldn't figure it, is all. I mean, the sort of thing that would be in a grown-up's head that would cause them to put something like that up there, to look at."
"To worship."
"Right. Especially that. It made no sense to me, why they would want to worship something so awful, I mean a man being executed and all."
"Yes. I understand."
"I mean it damned well made me afraid to think that grown-ups would find something like that--uhm, you know . . . uh . . ."
"Really cool to have around?"
"Ye . . . ah--well, yes!" I found myself amazed. "I wonder why I'm thinking about that now? Never talked about it before."
"Maybe you never picked up a hitch-hiking monk before."
"Heh! You got that right."
"So, how did these early impressions affect the way you felt about religion?"
"Same way, I guess. Or, maybe it had more of an effect on the way I felt about people, or about 'man' as you might say."
"And how would that be?"
"Guess I'd tend to think, you know, what the hell is the matter with us, that we would be so bloody. I guess that's it. Yeah, it's like you could almost smell it dripping down off that cross."
"Crucifix."
"Okay. Right. And ya know? I could almost smell it in there. Or, I could smell it. And I would think, Man! what a bunch of bloody people. Is this the way I'll be when I grow up?"
"And was it?"
--
TWO RIVERS
The longer I hesitated in giving an answer to that, the more affirmative my silence became. "Maybe you'd like to talk about it," said the monk. "You would have my complete confidence."
Jesus Christ! I could hardly believe this. And I'm sure the look on my face, judging by the look on his was telling him just that, because then he said, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to pry."
"You wouldn't happen to be some kind of mind-reader, would you?" I really wanted to know. But he only laughed. And then he said, "In my racket, it's called 'discerning the spirits'. It's something the brothers have learned to practice to keep the peace around the monastery."
"But I thought you weren't supposed to be yakking it up together and like that."
"You'd be surprised how much yakking can get done by no more than a look of the eye, a sidelong glance between one brother and the next at the expense of another; a gesture, a grumble, an accidentally on purpose nudge of the elbow."
"How bout that. Okay, and then what?"
"Then the discerning of the spirits business gets done. The brother who feels himself aggrieved by any such pettiness or hostility goes to the Abbot and sets up a time for the showdown."
"No!"
"Oh, you bet, though it might be more properly called a 'sit-down'."
"And so then you can have a regular knock-down drag-out gab fest!"
"So long as it's all done under the discerning eye and spiritual direction of the Abbot. Then and only then. Yes."
"Well, I'd say that's pretty damn cool." I liked that, and then I thought to ask, "Tell me. Is the Abbot a priest?"
"Oh yes. So are others among the brothers, though not all."
"And you?"
"I was a parish priest in St. Paul for ten years, before it finally became clear that this was my vocation, and not that."
"Well, if you don't mind my asking, Father, it couldn't of just been a case of getting yer holy ass in a jam or anything, was it?"
"Hm!" he said. "I wonder who's sitting there discerning the spirits now?"
"No kidding?" I said. "Well, I'll tellya what. Anything you might want to say to me will be held in none but the strictest confidence." I hate to tell you but that really cracked him up. He really had himself a good old laugh over it. And what it did was, it caused me to like him, and worse than that, it made me trust him--honor amongst thieves in the night, you might say.
"Yep, well to tell the honest to God, truth, Father--or may I call you "Dad"?
"Knock yourself out," said the Monk.
"Okay, truth be told, I really blew it this time."
"Did you, now."
"Oh, Daddy. I do mean to tell you."
"Go on, then son. You don't mind if I call you "son," do you?"
"Oh no. No, I hope you do, because I got to tell you true. I done killed a man for doing what ought not be done to another man's wife." The silence following was as the wake of a shock wave from some sonic boom. It had to be filled, and so I said, "I caught em right in the act."
"Right in the old flagrante delicto, as they say," was his comment on the subject. I had to take me another hard, long look at this guy, and though it was only in the last flash of headlights going past, just then I could almost swear I saw the flicker of something trying hard not to turn to a smile.
"Well, Jesus!" I damn near shouted. "Is that all you got to say?"
"Son," he said, "Just how much credit do you think you deserve for such a sin?"
"My God!" I said.
"Well, how about an Academy Award for Best Sin of the Year? Or maybe you think you should rate your hand-prints in concrete out in front of Grauman's Chinese, a big gold star with your name engraved in the Sinner's Walk of Fame. How would that do you?"
"You sho'ly blowin' my mind, Dad."
"That's good."
I had to think, but there wouldn't be much time, what with the lights of that vacation paradise, Eureka Springs showing on the rise. Even so, I seemed to be getting a glimpse, most rare, never before dreamed of a kind of holy knock-down punch from this monk that was causing me to see stars; blue stars blowing up big somewhere down in the black sky of my benighted soul.
"Somehow, I don't know the words for it, and I'm not sure how, but I think I'm kind of seeing what you're getting at."
"I'm glad of that." His hand had come to my shoulder, and he said, "I'm Brother Ignatius. Who in the world are you? And where in the world are you going?"
"Whew!" is all I could say, right off, until--"Well, I'm named after a river in old Israel."
"Jordan!"
"That's right. And as for now, I'm thinking of heading on down to cross another one called the Rio Grande."
It was quiet for a while. It was a comfortable silence, and almost what you'd be moved to call a cozy one but for the sense that it was at the same time a perceptive one.
"Don't you think that if you turned yourself in, you might get a fair shake?"
"That would be about the last thing I'd think."
"But, a man who kills in a heat of passion? There tends to be a certain sympathy for that."
"It's a big chance to take, gambling on a thing like that."
"Maybe not so big as the one you're taking now."
"What? Telling you about it?"
"No. Your confession is between no one but you, God and me. And I am pledged to that by vows. Best I can do is try to convince you to turn yourself in, and to have a little faith in the mercy of God, the sympathy of your fellow man."
"And what if I have no faith in either?"
"Then all any man of God can do is pray for you, that somehow you will find it, and with that, the strength to do the right thing."
"Well Father, I gotta tellya. In my book I did that when I bought me a gun and decided right then that from now on, life is going to be fast and short. From here on out, I'm one bastard who is going to be living like Hell."
"You have a gun with you here?"
"Got it hid."
"But what will you do with it?'
"Try to keep myself free, but if not, then the last bullet will be for me."
"Short of that you mean to rob and kill to keep yourself 'free' as you suppose?"
"I have no plans one way or the other on it. All I know is I won't let them get me."
"But innocent people? Police that are just doing their duty?"
The lights of the town, the motels and shops were all around, and we'd come to a stop at the first traffic light. "So Father! Where would you like me to drop you?" He was silently wringing his hands, before abruptly, he moved to have a look around. Then he pointed diagonally across the street. "That motel, over there will be fine."
"Cool," I said, looking to change lanes as the light went green.
"I'd like you to check in there with me, spend the night. I'll pay the bill."
"Oh, I don't know about that. I'd kind of like . . ."
"You've got a lot of driving between here and Mexico, my friend. I'll get us a couple of six packs, or whatever variety of wine you might like. How 'bout it, Jordan?"
"Man! You sho'ly know how to drive a hard bargain there Brother Ignatius."
"You haven't even see the beginning of it." I must have looked kind of worried about that because he laughed.
"Okay," I said. "Just for tonight. So long as there's two beds."
"What else?"
--
TWO ROADS
That monk was standing in front of the mirror at the dresser pouring his fourth glass of red wine, while I was sitting near the table before the window in one of the tan cushioned Naugahyde chairs. I was on my fifth can of Coors, pleasantly buzzed and thinking my companion's choice of wine was a pretty good match for those drapes drawn closed behind me, a real deep scarlet, same as the twin bedspreads. I watched him walk between them to sit down on the other side of the central lamp table. After a long look at the color in his glass, he set it on that table, looked at me and said, "As I see it, my friend, you've come to a crossroads right here, at this place, tonight."
"Yeah?" I sat up, then leaned forward, elbows on my knees, beer in both hands.
"There's two roads running before you from here."
And I said, "One runs round midnight, the other just 'fore day."
"What's that?"
"Just a old song."
"It's more than that, my brother. It's the truth of what you've got ahead of you; either midnight or morning. And it's that one running into the dark you want to choose."
"But I never been to Mexico. I'd like to see it. I'm free to do that now. Nothing holding me down. I can go and do whatever in the world I like."
"Jordan? You didn't bring that gun in here with you, did you?"
"Nah, I got that out in the car."
"Why don't you give it to me, and then I can--"
"Shoot! I got three hundred and fifty bucks in that piece."
"Then I could take it to a gun shop and sell it for you."
"Don't know why I'd want you to do that. Anyway, there's no papers for it."
He took his glass from the table. "You don't want to try crossing the border with that in your possession."
I thought on that, and then I said, "No, you're right about that. But it could be some insurance that I will get so far as the border in order to cross it."
"Brother? The border you'll be crossing with that as your visa will be a lot further south than Mexico."
"And a whole lot hotter, eh?"
"Or colder, if it's just the gate to your grave, what you'll be crossing, in any case God decides that even Hell is too good for you."
I crushed the empty beer can in my hand and tossed it toward the waste basket in the corner by the window; got up and headed to the bath area to get another out of the sink. Passing the foot of his bed I said, "Tell me about the other road."
"Ah yes. The one that runs just before day, as you say."
"Well, something like that," I said. He watched me taking a beer from the ice in the sink. "Close enough," I added, popping the top, and he was still looking at me when I lowered the can after my first long swig.
"That road is the one I'm on," he said.
"Then that would be a road blocked to me, but good."
As I was sitting back down he said, "Without a big change of heart it would be, you bet."
I had to laugh. "Whaddaya mean, Father? If I was to like, convert or something, and repent; all that sort of rot, and face the music with the law, I could like, become a monk like you?"
"You could, if it were discerned that your repentance was *not* a lot of rot, and your heart was open . . ." He was savoring what he had called the "bouquet" over his glass. "If your heart was a door open to that road . . ." he sipped, ". . . that runs . . . " he licked his lips. ". . . just fore day."
"Heh," I said. "Yeah, but what that song's really about is trains."
"Then it's still about roads, steel ones, that's the only difference."
And then I got to mumbling:
"There's two trains runnin',
But ain't none goin' my way,
One runs round midnight,
The other just fore day,
The other just fore day."
--
TWO HOMBRES
In the night, about fifty miles south of Corpus Christi, out there in the middle of all that relentless infinite flatness of the south Texas coastal plain, I came to know the force of a desolation that can blow a hole right through a man big as a shotgun blast. Take that little runt of a ride of mine getting socked in the wake of a passing diesel, that's how it would come on, that continually recurring realization of my situation; how I'd be left shaken and swaying in the wash of it, with a wind whistling around the corners if my backbone, way down deep behind the pit of my gut. Alone, lost, cut-off, exactly like it felt when she came out of that closet and pulled her arm away from my empty hand.
With the coming of dawn there were silhouettes all around by the tens of thousands; they were hands waving me "Good-bye", the spiny pads of the Cholla cactus, endless stands of them growing rife in every direction, and I thought of my pal the monk that morning waving me goodbye with my gun hanging heavy in his duffel bag. Now he had something of mine, and I had something of his, that silly St. Christopher medal that now dangled before me from the rear-view mirror--for all the good it was like to do. And I didn't know how much of a sucker I was for having made a trade like that, or how hard I should be kicking myself over it, but at least now I wouldn't have to carry the extra load around, in the sense I'd done some real harm to that man, that he should feel like it would be his fault anybody I might have shot or killed with that still in my possession.
As the outskirts of Laredo were coming on the rise, I figured ah, what the hell! If it should really look like I needed one, then if there's one thing this world's full of, it's guns.
It's quite a town, Laredo, getting way down there toward the one lone point of the Texas Star where the US dips deepest into Old Mexico. I parked the car on the Zocalo, the main central plaza and walked over to the street that heads on over that bridge of the Rio Grande to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. You rarely see anything so impressively intimidating as the huge half wheel-like edifice of the US Customs emplacement there and I didn't stand there looking at that for long before I'd turned around to head back toward the plaza.
There was a drug store with a soda fountain and lunch counter on the corner just up from where I'd parked the car. Sitting down in there next some grizzled old buzzard in a well sweated felt Stetson. I ordered some coffee. Since the old bird kept peering up from his cup to give me the look-over, I decided, what the hell. "Quite a town you got here," I ventured.
"Hell if it is," he said with a grimace hardening the wrinkles around his mouth, as he looked at me. "You're about twenty years too late to be saying that."
"Sorry to hear it."
"It's a sorry state, what it is, since they came in here and bulldozed half the town to build that goddam drug interdiction complex down there."
"Yeah, I saw that."
He set down his cup, wiped his mouth and said, "The sidewalks over there on San Dario used to be paved with tile, pretty as you please, all blue and white, real Mexican-like. And the people had their little taquerias, cantinas, tiendas de ropas, both sides, all along there most the way down to the Rio. Every damn day over there was like a fiesta. And they just ruined it."
"The hell," I said.
"Yup," he said. "Now you gotta go over to Nuevo to get any kind of real idea of what this town was always like."
"They pretty much left it alone over there?"
"Mostly, they did. Mexicans ain't got the money to be building nothing like that damned doorway to Leavenworth or Alcatraz we got down there now."
"Well, 'spect I ought to plan on getting on over that bridge to see what the Streets of Laredo is supposed to be, then."
"Be careful goin' over there, youngster."
"Oh?"
"It's changed there too, only not in ways you're like to see just right out in broad daylight." I was thinking on that when the waitress set down my cup. I thanked her and then the old man said, "You apt to see that young cowboy all wrapped in white linen--"
"Uh-huh?"
"Wrapped up in white linen and cold as the clay."
--
THREE SHOTS
One thing was certain, no way would I be driving that little Ford Fiesta over the bridge to the Mexican fiesta going on, the other side. Pulling out from my parking space into the south-bound traffic, I let my mind work on it; what to do with this car, how to be rid of it. I hadn't driven but seven blocks before I saw how I was coming to an end of that street at the Rio, and to a large area of parking lots bordering on it. The light had gone red at that last turn, so I had me a look around, and what to my wondering eyes do I behold but another bridge! There it was, just one block to the left, and up river just some four or five blocks from that huge main international crossing I saw before. But this bridge, aside from a steam of cars, had all kinds of pedestrians going across, too. Things were starting to look up!
After getting parked in the main lot and paying the fee, standing there looking back up the way I'd come, some vague strains of Mariachi music came wafting to my ears from what looked like a little cantina just about halfway up that same street I'd driven down. I had some serious thinking and deciding to do, and that looked like it could be just the place to do it. As I walked in, I saw right away how just maybe I couldn't have found a better spot. There wasn't but two gents in the place aside from the bartender. I strode across under a ceiling high enough to have afforded a whole other storey, and of course those two at the bar turned for a look as the cleats on my boots came clicking over the black and white mosaic of tile. I exchanged a nod with the man closest to my right and remained standing, one foot to the rail while I ordered a tall glass of 7-Up and three shots of tequila. That got a slight rise out of the drunk around the bend of the bar, if only about half a lift to an eyebrow. I tossed my head back around toward the room and said, "I'll be at that table over there, If you'll bring it over."
A tray came out from under the bar, and he said, "You got it."
"Say," I said, "I like that hat."
The drunk reared back a bit as he raised a finger to tip up the brim. "That's a genuine Panama from Ecuador," he said. The bartender had just poured the first shot of tequila. I lifted it in honor of that, drank off half, and just before turning to head on over to my table, I told him: "I mean to find me one just like it."
"Well, I'll be damned," he said.
"Yes-siree!" I said, and sat myself down at my own table. And when they saw there'd be nothing more forthcoming out of me, they turned back to whatever it was that had been keeping them happy or making them blue. Me, I sure liked the sound of that music coming from the big colorful old jukebox off my right shoulder over by the windows. After the bartender had come with the rest of my drinks and I'd paid him, I just kept sitting there and listening to the song that was playing, on account of how I was liking it so much, even so mournful as it was. I didn't care, it had started to suit my mood just fine.
It was going to be a big move getting over that river, but I would have to know a few things about it first, and if there was to be any questions for me to be asking, they would have to be thought out real good, and not be put to the wrong people. As the bartender had brought me a full quart of 7-Up and a glass, I poured a little splash of that and up-ended one of the shots into it. I raised the glass, looked into it, turned it to watch the light play through, brought it to my lips and thought of Camille as the strength of the mix burned down my throat.
The singer lamenting his sad plaint from the jukebox was enough to jerk the tears from your eyes--but not mine, and I really had to wonder why--all things considered. I mean, I had to shake my head just to think of it, because I really had loved that woman! I poured down another sweet, sharp lemony draft, took my cigarette from the tray, and as I did I had to ask myself what if I hadn't done it? What if I'd been sitting here same as now, after finding them like that, because I'd just decided to leave her, how would I be feeling about it then? I drank down the rest, and as I was setting down the glass to pour another, I realized I'd be thinking about her with him.
I blew out a long stream of smoke, watched it go up toward that way high ceiling and wondered if maybe I'd cheated myself out of such a sad misery as that, of feeling all replaced and rejected. As the music had turned happy, I laughed with it, quietly of course; it was nobody's business but mine; I laughed to realize, much as I hated to think of it, that I had done the right thing? My eyes were widening in wonder to think of what I'd become.
There was one shot left. I picked it up and threw it back; shivers ran down my spine as I raised my hand to shout, "Two more, if you will, my good man!"
He turned, grabbed the tequila, but just stood there and said, "I can bring the bottle."
"Ah!" I said. "No, just the two will do me." He was already on his way, and after he'd filled two, he put it over the third and said, "Got one more here."
"Good," I said. "One more will do 'er."
When he saw me reaching for my wallet he turned away saying, "Pay when you leave."
"Now there's what I call some good Texas manners!" I said. And the two boys at the bar turned to show their appreciation of that fact. I looked at that and I thought, right here's my chance. I raised one of my new shots and said, "Here's to ya, boys!" And after they'd reciprocated the toast, I raised my voice just loud enough to be heard. "Say! What sort of rigmarole a fellow have to go through to get on over the Rio to Old Mexico?"
"Why!" said the gent in the Panama hat, "Ain't nothin'. You just walk over the bridge, pay the toll, and that's all it is."
"No!" I said. "You mean a man can just walk into Mexico no questions asked?"
"Depends on how far into Mexico," the other fellow with no hat said that, come around on his stool. "Twenty kilometers in they got their *Migracion*, and you don't get past that without a tourist permit."
Bartender said, "You got your birth certificate with you?"
"Birth Certificate? With me?" I laughed. "That's a new one."
First fellow said, "You got to have that along with a driver's license or some other picture I.D."
Man in the hat said, "And about 300 pesos."
"Whoa," I said.
They looked at each other and laughed, till the bartender said, "That's only about thirty bucks, in American *dinero*."
So I had to ask, "Otherwise, a fellow can just go over there and wander around, go whoring into the country far as twenty miles in her, all free and legal-like as you please?"
"Well, you can," said the man without the hat, "But I wouldn't!" And he laughed. So did they all.
"Guess I catch your drift," I said.
Man in the hat said, "The Mexicans can be real good people, best damn people in the world, but o' course at the same time they can be the worst, if you wanna go to find 'em at their worst.
Bartender lifted a glass from his towel, looked through to the light, "You can spend a real nice evening over there, partner, you stick to the main part of town . . ." he stacked the glass, ". . . have you some damn fine food, see some real pretty senoritas out on the stroll with their mamasitas in the paseo around the Zocalo."
"I thank you," said I, "Yes, I do thank you!" I had just thrown down the second shot, and now, somewhat unsteadily, I stood to raise the last to my fellow hombres. "And here's what says so!"
--
TWO CITY BLOCKS
When I came out on the avenue that leads after only 2 city blocks from where I stood to Mexico, the sidewalk beneath my boots had gone all smooth. I stopped on the ornately figured tiles of white and blue, looked up and around. There, to my right was the Rio and the bridge, and uphill the other way, little shops, "tiendas" both sides of the street. It didn't seem sensible to suppose that a little tequila could have done such magic as this for my view of Laredo, transforming it into the town so sorely lamented by the old man at the soda fountain! But had I only recalled it was not this street he'd been talking about, I would not have been struck so dizzy to dream I had made so grand an escape, to drop thirty years down the rabbit hole; six shots of tequila deep into the heart of Texas.
Feeling high as ever a man could get, I whirled around till nearly I flew off my feet. "Hola!"" said the man with his hand to my shoulder, "You okay, compadre?" I looked and at first all I could see was a mustache fit for the face of a Zapata; brown sparkling eyes and hats; hats piled ten high on the man's head, hats of yellow and hats of white, be-ribboned and plain, hats of straw, hats of felt. "Hats!" I said. "Senor! Are you selling hats?"
"Muchacho!" said he, "Los sombreros se vende, y muy barratos." That, he was, and "very cheap." Taking them down off his head, he waited while I chose one of a natural straw gaucho style, modest of brim with a thin black ribbon for a band. He wanted 35 pesos; I offered 3 bucks; he took that and I donned my hat. Strolling along up the slope of the avenue, "Convent" by name, I made it past a few more doors, till over my shoulder I happened to notice in the alcove of a shop entrance, a man who stood with a display of sunglasses; a shoulder high placard, propped against the building. It struck me with all the force of the Buddha's Pure Light. Sunglasses! The perfect disguise, along with the hat. The tequila was working on me like an elixir squeezed from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
I bought me a pair of wire-rimmed shades for 45 pesos. And now I was feeling so cool that the mountains on a can of Coors would have turned blue by the mere touch of my finger. Coming to the first window dark enough to afford a reflection, I had me a look at me with my hat and sunglasses. What I saw staring back was an apparition (I nearly fainted away) to see my face as it were a flame risen from a pyramid stacked display of fat scarlet candles, all with the emblemata of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This set me to staggering.
I put a hand against the glass to regain my composure. It was impossible; I had to turn away from the sight; me in the glass among candles. I forced myself into motion, but it remained, even as I managed to proceed down the walk. After a moment, a passing glance to another window without candles and visions of Virgins; this Mother of all Horrors for me came to be replaced by the slow realization that I could hardly be told from any Mexican bracero passing me by here on the street, or for that matter, on the bridge! But there I can be, same as these men moving around me, going home after a hard day's work digging onions in the Rio Grande Valley.
The light had gone red on the last corner, and I found myself in company with a small crowd. Sure, I was about the most pale-faced hombre of the bunch, but not so much as all that. I had the right hat.The light changed to green as with the rest I stepped off the curb to cross.
--
TWO PRETTY NIÑOS
The waters swirling beneath the bridge were the most remarkable shade of Kryptonite green that ever your average Wrong Way Corrigan of a Gringo wet-back is uniquely privileged to see, compliments of course, of the many maquiladoras operating along the Rio from here to Matamoros. But feeling so invulnerable as I did, in disguise, I paused halfway across to gaze down through those blue lenses, under shade of that new hat, and after one whiff of what was coming up from the river below--whoa! What a lucky thing, I thought, I'm not the mild-mannered Clark Kent. I'd be out of the Superman business after one pea-green snort of that. It was none but the most striking aroma of cherries, airplane glue and rotten roses--reminded me of the bouquet you can sniff over a California Pinot Noir I once bought for about $3.99.
The wrought iron revolving door of an intimidatingly tall turnstile delivered me into the Ciudad of Nuevo Laredo, Estado de Nuevo Leon, Mexico. Oh, it was something, really something to see how nobody was waiting there to block or detain me, and I could have gone on whirling around for sheerest of glee had my legs not been vibrating, nearly flapping in my pants with anticipation for what lay ahead up that busy, narrow, shop crowded little street.
The first place I could not get past without being blown off the walk with a stick of dynamite was a pretty little fruit drink fountain open to the paseo where I just had to sit down, make my order and survey the sights of that street, while waiting and watching in famished anticipation as the shapely pink-frocked muchacha dropped expressly for me, large chunks of papaya into a stainless shaker with milk and sugar; putting that to be mixed to a foaming froth on a green enamel malted milk machine. I made mental note to ask of Brother Ignatius, should I ever see him again, if it were his opinion that there are malted milk machines in heaven. Dear God, how I have always loved a malted milk machine! If I knew for a fact there were, I would stop all my sinning, surely and turn my life over to Jesus.
When at last the drink had been set down on the counter before me and I had it in hand, as I sat there sipping that concoction through a straw, I couldn't help thinking that it wasn't anywhere near so exciting to drink, as it had been just to see it on a color poster. I figured that maybe Hell was like that. And I dreaded the thought that this should be my experience for the whole of Mexico! "What a goddam drag that would be," I said to myself nearly aloud, as just then a thought that was a real drag began to return to mind through the waning vapors of tequila.
The car. They find that sitting there in that lot and I'm cooked. And that wasn't all, for as that thought began all the more to sober me, the next one did it but good. My parking ticket was valid only till 6:00 pm. But how could I now go back for it, without first passing through customs on the US side? And me carrying my old anything but fake I.D. in my wallet. I left that fruit drink half consumed on the counter and headed out on to the walk. There had to be a solution to these things; I needed only to clear my head, and think.
After some three blocks, stopping only momentarily into a drugstore for a pack of Mexican cigarettes, I came to a plaza shaded by large linden trees, where the two major thoroughfares of the town parted company, one to go east at my left and the other southwest to my right. I went across kitty-corner and sat down on a park bench to open the pretty little rose embossed packet of *Ovalados Delicados* for a smoke. A kindly looking old man was eying me as he slowly made his way along the walk, a child in either hand; a Yaqui Indio possibly, with what looked to be his grandchildren, a boy and girl, both dressed in prettily embroidered, home-sewn shirt and blouse, skirt and short pants. And as he could see how I admired the appearance of the children he said, "Buenas Tardes, Senor."
No sooner had he stopped at my bench than the children were upon me, one reaching for my glasses, the other for my hat.
--
TWO TOUGH CUSTOMERS
My Spanish was less than rudimentary, it was a rough, fractured artifact of a dimly recalled course with a fire-eyed brunette teacher from Seville, who had made Spanish the most popular language in my school. A good thing that the old vaquero's command of the language was every bit so authoritative as hers, that it should now rescue me from the proddings and pokings, pullings and pilings on of the pint-sized progeny in his charge. A few magic words from him and poof! They were off me and back at his side, laughing their little los colos off, right along with grandpa. I wanted to say to the man how nice it was to meet them, as the phrase that came from memory to mind fell to my lips, "Yo me gusto tanto!"
This set the children into an ecstasy of mirth. I shrugged and had a try at--"Mi Espagnol es muy poquito. (My Spanish is very little)."
"Si," said the Old Man, "you have just say to us, 'Yo me gusto tanto': you like to taste . . . yourself very much!"
I could not have been more embarrassed. And while he was still laughing I said, "I meant to say, 'Pleased to meet you.'"
"Ah," he nodded. "So you say, 'Mucho gusto'."
Much as I appreciated this occasion for a lesson in Spanish, I thought also to make the very best of it, and most particularly toward the purposes that were then uppermost in mind. I produced from my pocket an item for identification, and put the question: "En Espagnol, come se dice estos (How do you say what are these)?
The old man put forth his hand, and I relinquished to him the keys for the Ford Fiesta. Grandpa held them up ringing and sparkling; he squinted closely to say, "Las llaves para un coche."
"The keys for a car!"
"Para un Ford," said he.
"Come se dice, 'They are yours?'" I asked.
"Como (How's that)?" He looked at the keys and then at me." I repeated the question. He lifted his hat and scratched, only then to say, "Ellos son suyos?"
"Bueno!" said I, as he held out his hand to return the keys.
"No, no!" I said, "Ellos son suyos."
He took a step back. "¿Pero por qué?"
I was too fatigued by all the Spanish speaking, so I came right out and told him, "Because I like you!. And because . . . you have two such pretty niños!" I stood up and I said, "Come! I will give you the Ford." Having taken the children in hand, Grandpa stood there only to watch as I began to walk away toward Texas. By the time I got to the corner, I could see over my shoulder they were ever so cautiously approaching.
Over the course of those three blocks to the Rio, it was all the way, "¿Qué tal los papeles (What about the papers?)" And it was me with my hand to my heart, and a finger up to God, swearing that the Ford was not hot, and that soon as I had the chance I would locate him here and hand the title over. He was still looking very skeptical about it, even after I told him that I'd left my casa in a hurry, because I was late for an appointment with a podiatrist in McAllen."
"McAllen?"
"Si senor. A specialist of world renown who is only to be found in McAllen, Texas."
"TeCHas," he corrected me.
"Si," I said, "but like I was about to say, I never leave the papeles in la cocha."
"No?"
"Never. Because that way, if they steal it, they don't get the papeles."
"Ah, si!" he said. "So why you not do this for a spare tire, or jack?"
"Well--" I had to think. "Because I never thought of it!" I threw an arm about his shoulder and pointed across the river. "Right there," I said. You see the little blue one?"
"No, not too good."
I turned him a bit, ran my arm right up against his cheek so he could take his sights by my firmly pointed finger. "There!" I said.
"Oooh, es muy bonita!"
"Si, compadre," said I. "And it's all yours, if you go there now." I pointed to my watch. "You got to get it out of there by seis horas (six o'clock)." I gave him the parking stub, stood back, and said "Go!" making a pushing motion with my hands. "It's yours, only if you get over there now!"
"Si?" He was taking the children by their hands.
"Si! Si! Si! Andale, Viejo (old gent)!" I suddenly approached him, producing the grizzliest grin, the most guttural tone I could manage, "And remember, amigo, We Don't Need No Steenking Papeles!"
He whistled. "Umberto Bogar!" Nearly in tears, he let go the boy's hand to doff me his hat. And with that I was pleased as tortilla pie to see him again secure the children, turn and walk away toward the other side of the avenue, in the direction of the entry to the American side.
--
TWO JUGS
Quite a curiosity, what l I held in my hand, sitting there once again in the plaza, same bench, with the same Linden tree overhead, and as I took my first bite, I found it every bit so pretty in the mouth as it had been on display across the street, on a tray propped against the belly of a vendor, still standing there on the corner, calling to the four directions, "Tortas! Tortas! Fresco y Deliciosas!" It was something I'd really hate to demean by describing it as an "avocado, chili, and cheese sandwich" because aside from each having its very own little loaf (which would not want to be called "a bun") sliced once through the center; it is all to do with how this delicacy is anointed with spiced oil and given that universal Mexican baptism in juice of the *limon*--which is not to say "lemon" but "lime"--and not just any big, fat, boring old dark green Gringo lime, but the South of the Border kind which are small and round, and somehow paradoxically sweeter, despite the savory bite of tartness.
And what description could better be found to suit my own situation than this, of the sweet and sour coexisting as the taste to your life, all at once? The extra two changes of clothing, socks and underwear I'd bought in Eureka Springs were now gone with the car. I'd been up and going without sleep now, getting on to 36 hours, and I was starting to stink. In the drugstore where I'd bought these incredible Mexican cigarettes--not cigarettes as a Gringo would know them but little cigars in disguise of white paper--there also I had managed to exchange a hundred Gringo greenbacks for just a little short of a thousand multi-colored Mexican pesos. It was now long past time to strike out and find a nice warm bottle of tequila to crawl into for the night, and a room to roll me into with it.
There was a sound of trumpets and guitars coming from the east of me and to my right, as I sat there facing Texas and the Rio Grande, and as I strained to beam my gaze up along the avenue through the procession of people, the foliage, and rainbows in the spray of a large fountain, I thought to make out what appeared to be some sort of open air "peasant market". The aromas that had been wafting downwind to me from there were a mixture of things so unfamiliar, if not to say, without exaggeration or pretense, 'exotic' to my senses, that as I stood up from the bench there was just no option other than to go that way in search of what I was after.
An open air market it was indeed, with wares, animal, vegetable and mineral on display in such a plethora of variety, one would hardly know where to begin in description of it all; there were permanent structures both walled and unwalled, roofed of sheet iron or thatched with straw; blankets were spread on the ground with every manner of pottery, religious iconography, plaster and enamel statuary. And there were fruits, there was maze, vast heaps of black and purple beans, and home-cured cheese, large ivory blocks of the stuff, spiny ears of the Cholla cactus, roots, herbs both fresh and dried, and---what was this? Had my stinging eyes with their lids drooping to half-mast seen right?
I backed up, bumping into a pretty, laughing senorita and her mama who dourly took her in hand and marched her off into the paseo right on around me. That didn't stop her deliciously darling daughter from giving me a dark flash of the fire eye, over a cocoa brown shoulder framed in lace that tasted every bit so good as it looked--so long as eyes have tongues, which of course they do. But what was this on display over a hand woven blanket which was the place of business for two men? One looked to be the pure-blood Indio who sat there cross-legged, under a full size, chin-strapped sombrero big as a bicycle wheel, and the other a mestizo regarded me coldly in a New York Yankees baseball cap, bill turned to the side and pulled down over a pierced, ring adorned ear.
The chap in the cap was already shaking a finger to say in perfectly serviceable Gringo-Speak, "No, not for you."
Being the sort I am, this only caused me to drop down to one knee to say in so discrete and quiet a tone as my excitement would allow, "No problemo, amigo. But is this what I think it is?"
He was exchanging a glance with his partner, who despite the shade that his hat put his face in, just kept beaming a smile that seemed to light the space under there like the sun. He was laughing. The other was not as he said, "Who would know what you think it is?" It was quite clear that the Indio in the big sombrero had no idea what was being said, though the tone of it was giving cause for him to cast an eye toward his partner with a certain look of shame.
"These are the buttons of a certain kind of cactus, is my guess," said I.
"Si mon," said he. "They are the kind that's not for Gringos."
"Right, but--"
"Hey, cabrone! Maybe you hear me wrong? Maybe you don't know there's narcos crawling all over this place, Ése? Maybe you should just go away and leave us alone, eh?"
"Yo entiendo (I understand)," I said, standing up.
"All right," he said. "No problema."
"You know a good hotel around here, muy barrato?"
He laughed. "You got something wrong with your Spanish, mon, if you say a 'good' hotel 'really cheap'."
"Okay, stick with the 'muy barrato', because cheap *is* good in my book."
He was pointing. "Mira (See)! Next corner? Go there, turn right, halfway down the block, you see a hotel. Tell them a guy named Suarez told you they got rooms for sixty pesos. If you don't tell them Suarez say so, you pay six hundred."
"Gracias, man."
"De nada."
I took a look around, waited for a couple old gents to walk on by, and then said real low and quiet-like, "You come by tonight, and I'll pay any price you like for 12 of those little bite-size chunks of Mescalito meat, mon." I lifted my hat off to him, and turned before he had any chance to answer.
I had nearly come to the corner that Suarez had indicated, when I stopped before a little shop open to the front and comprised of nothing but shelves all across the back, stocked with an array of figured ceramic jugs. Stepping back, I saw above the entrance an artfully painted sign with full color images of a spiny plant, and the phrase writ large, "Mezcal de Oaxaca", every letter of which was done by an ornate calligraphy of leaves from the same plant, the agave. I had heard of this super-strong "cactus wine" made from varieties of agave other than that from which tequila is made. And the story was that it was good to tear your ever-loving head off. For me, that was just what the doctor ordered, so I walked right in to make my selection; two of the cutest little unglazed, finely engraved, yet fully fired, red earthenware jugs that a person should ever care to call his home away from home.
--
SEÑOR DAY TRIPPER
There was no light in the room, but for what came from the corridor through an opening in the blue-painted adobe of the wall. First I came in, I saw that and thought, "What the hell kind of window is that?" But then you see no glass, and the adobe is a foot thick with that open ledge running about shoulder-level, either side the doorway, and nearly to the corners of the room. When I got close up, I found it too narrow to slip my head through for a look outside. I stood back and thought, so long as no skinny headed banditos were out there prowling that passage, maybe I could get some good uninterrupted sleep for the night.
There was no dresser, no mirror, just the bed, and one modernist style coral colored fiber-glass chair to be seen in the dim illumination come within as a common property from without, right along with the night air. Remarkable thing that, I mean, there being no roof out there over the corridor, no glass in the room-wide transom of that gap, and except for the sheltering terracotta tiled eaves above, there was no ceiling there, but the stars and the sun. This had partially to do with the way cooking was done, down on the first level over the open grate of a wood-fired masonry stove back in a nook toward the rear. There, provision was made also for a sink and within a little chamber I was shown the cold water shower and a common toilet.
This was solar heating, air-conditioning and lighting, Creole style, evolved from the ancient engineering of the Indios, to permit venting of air, smoke and passage of light, suited just right to the temperate climate of the Rio Grande Valley. Poor as the accommodations were, they were clean, even to the extreme that from the moment I'd counted that thirtieth dirty peso into the lady's hand, she was already, you could just tell, chomping at the bit against the moment when she could get in there after me with her hose and mop. The people of Mexico are like that; clean to the extreme; they'll even be out there at the crack of dawn scrubbing down the walks out in front of their tiendas and casas, but then once again at the setting of the sun. They are clean people. Clean? Man, they are clean.
I had been told, with an intensity almost malicious of intent by the lady in charge that if I turned back the bed to use the sheets, there would be right there and then--she had her hand out to make the point plain--an extra charge up front; one easy enough to avoid if I should be inclined to avail myself of the extra blanket folded at the foot of the bed to cover myself, on the cheap, instead. I didn't even bother to ask what that charge might be, so glued to my skin as my clothes were by the sense of exposure to that open fissure for a wall and no sign of any lock upon the door. 'No, muchas gracias, pero, no. Es muy bien.' So long as I could just kick off my boots for the night, bring one thin woolen blanket up around my ears to snuggle into that pillow, she could count on me to be one highly satisfied patron of her very fine Five Star (in my book) accommodation.
Savoring a last spicy bite from the newspaper packaged, corn husk wrapped serving of tamales I'd gone out to buy and bring back for my supper, I sat most comfortably at the side of the bed, to uncork once more the first of my little jugs of Mezcal, when there came a light tapping at my chamber door.
"Hey, Gringito!" I lowered the jug, and dropped back over the bed till I could see through the gap. It was not la Senora de la casa, of course, but Suarez out there, alone. And how I had been berating myself, but good, with some decidedly dark second thoughts over extending this invitation, for had I really forgot how my gun was now in the possession of that Catholic monk up in Missouri, putting me here with no way in sight to be enforcing my end of this deal?
No sooner had I cracked the door than he was pushing hard past me into the room going, "Hey, Ése? You keep a friend waiting out there when he's carrying? Not cool, dude."
"Sorry, man, just had my hands full is all." I showed him my little jug, while he was pulling the chair over to the bed. When I had the cork pulled, I offered it to him.
He waved his hand at that, a sour expression lifting an upper lip to show his canines. "Whew! Why you drinking that stuff, mon? That will eat your guts out like kerosene. You don't notice how it taste about the same?" He looked around. "You got some beer, I'll take some of that."
"Sorry," I said.
"Si, Gringo," he laughed, "you are, muy pinche 'sorry'." I braced as I watched him reaching under his black nylon jacket. "You want 12?" He brought out a paper sack, opened it and spilled its contents to the bed.
"Alright!" I reached for one of the more sizable green buttons, when my hand received a whack from the black barrel of a pistola.
"Hey!" I said. "You could try being a little more friendly there, Suarez."
"You don't touch our goods, my friend, until I be touching your dinero."
I lowered the jug, and as that jolt burned down my throat I said, "How much you want?"
"How much you got, Vato?" I hated to see the manner in which he now held that gun, to level it at my ear sideways.
"You got the wrong style, man," I said. "You hate a Gringo, and yet you copy the worst jive he has to offer. Least you could do is rob a man like a proper bandito, straight up and down, like Pancho Villa!"
"Yeah? You got a big mouth for somebody without nothin' to back it." He jammed the muzzle hard against the side of my head. "Stand up," he hissed, "and take out your wallet."
As I came to a stand with the blood roaring in my head, I barely made it out when he said, "How's all this look to you, Señor Day Tripper?" Now he too had risen right with me, to be keeping that gun right where he'd had it, and he sneered to my eyes to ask, 'You got a good reason for taking the easy way out?'"
I could think only of how it had taken me 'sooooo long, to find out.'
And I found out.
--
DEAD MEAT
He took the wallet, and with his free hand, flipped it open. When he got his thumb shoved down into the folding money department, I saw before me the look of a surprised and happy man. "¡Órale!" he said, handing my billfold back to me. "Now get it out, Ése."
"Say, por favor?"
He jammed the muzzle hard into my neck. "Do how I say, Gringo." He pulled the gun back and thrust it toward the bed. "Allí!"
When it was all laid out in three stacks, he looked at that; then he looked at me and said, "But maybe you got more?" He shoved the barrel of his pistola down into my left pocket, jammed it around in there until we both heard and felt the crinkle and crunch of better than 7 thousand dollars. Out came the business end of his intentions from my poke, and as it came on up to my nose he said, "Come out with them. All the dollars you got in there."
And that's what he got, all the dollars; eight thousand, four hundred and six of them, to be exact; in stacks of hundreds, twenties and the chump change. He kicked the coral-colored chair at me. "You sit!" He was pointing toward the other side of the door. He got out a key-chain light, flipped it on, the better to look over the beauty of his booty; though I'd have thought it plenty light enough, such as it did come in from out there--much as to bother one's sleep, by the look of it. He turned his light to my eyes. "Okay Homes, remember what you say, over in la mercado; how you can pay anything I like?"
"Within reason!"
"Reason?" He smiled. "We don't neeeeed no steenking reason! I hear what you say, when you say, 'anything I like.' So what I like is one thousand pinche, Yanqui Dollar!" He tossed the light on the bed and reached down to pick up one of the peyote buttons; he showed that to me. "Mira! One button." He dropped it to the mattress. "One thousand," he said, picking up one of the stacks. He stuffed that in his pants and reached down for another little big bite of the cactus. He showed that to me and said, "Two thousand." He kept that up till eight buttons were in a pile and all the money was in his pocket, but the 456 bucks remaining. He took that up and said, "You got only so much. What you want? I got 4 more here."
"Bueno," I said, giving it some thought. "You take those four and shove them up your big brown el culo, Cabrone. I'll chew my eight and we'll see who gets off first."
"Oh, man?" He coughed up a laugh. "You one muy loco chingara puto, Mon. But you make me laugh!" He showed me. He laughed, then he shook the rest of the money at me. "Now I give a big discount." He picked up a button, put it in the pile, took a hundred dollar bill and slipped that into his pocket. When all four C-notes were in his poke, and all 12 buttons were in the pile, he picked up the fifty-six bucks and said, "Venga!" When I got over to him, he shoved that into my shirt pocket, and he said, "You see what a good guy I am, Gringo?"
"Oh yeah," I said. "You're a prince. A regular goddam philanthropist is what you are, Suarez."
"Hey!" He jammed my chest with the pistola. "I don't know no big pinche Gringo words. What you want? Like the tourista always say, fifty American dollar go a long way in Mexico!" He laughed. "Why you complain?"
"Give me a hundred to go with it, and I won't."
"Hai chihuahua, mon? You want me to give you a hundred dollar of my hard-earning dinero?" He was already reaching in his pocket, but he stopped, pulled his hand back out empty. He backed over to the bed and scooped up the light, came back over to me and shined the thing on his pocket. "Go on, Gringo. Take one out." He knocked that black barrel against my head hard enough to raise a welt and said, "Take it!. Only don't try anything funny while you in there, Puto."
I could see how this could be real humiliating for anybody who cared more for his pride than his breakfast, but that just is not me. While he held the light, I gladly put both my hands to his pocket to carefully extract one green hundred dollar bill. A knock came at the door as I was shoving that money in my pocket. "Don' move," said Suarez. He went to look out the gap, stepped back and opened the door.
There stood the Indio, sombrero in hand. Suarez motioned with the light, "Pronto, muchacho. Venga!" Suarez shut the door behind him. He cast the light on me, then to to the bed, "You sit, para allí." As I sat down I watched to see him push the chair over to the Indio, saying, "Siéntese, amigo." Suarez shut off his light and launched into such a rapid mélange of Spanish with the Indio, that I could make nothing of it. Every now and again the Indio would cast rather a sorrowful looking glance at me, this alternating with a worried look at the gun in the hand of his compañero. Then came an expression that locked his eyes on me greatly at askance. "What the hell are you telling him, Suarez?"
"Mon? It's all about how you turn out to be muñeca, Ése and ---"
"What?"
"A sexy woman, a queen, gay! And I tell him how you put your hand in my pantalones, to explain why I got this gun on you, so you don't try no more funny business." Sitting there struck dumber than dumb, I turned to look at the Indio. He gave me a wink! Then, laughing his pantalones off, he addressed another torrent of Spanish to Suarez, who finally turned to me, saying, "He wants to know if you are hoping for -- how the Indio say -- uh, maybe the Green Giant to come and turn you into a man who likes the muchachas instead of the muchachos?"
I was just as surprised as he to hear myself suddenly saying, "Si! Tell him this is so, and what's more, I would like to know what to do with this food for giants, how to take it."
"You take it up su culo, jus' like you tol' me, Vato!"
"Man, he doesn't even know you robbed me!"
"Órale, Ése. But you tell him, I got to shoot you. He is a simple country man from Zacatecas, a good man. He goes out to the desert to find these for his people, and for having the big holy party on La Dia de los Muertos."
I repeated that to myself. "Day of the Dead," I said.
"Si, mon."
"Well, tell him!"
He turned to the Indio and spoke as the good man laughed, and laughed, and hard as I listened, again, I barely made out a word or two. Finally, I interrupted. "Is that Spanish you are speaking to this man?"
"Huichol, and a little Spanish. Now he say to you that today is your Day of the Dead. And are you really ready to eat the meat of the Dead, so that you may go and speak with them?"
"Is that what he said?"
"This is what he asks from you, Gringito."
--
A KNOCK AT THE DOOR
"Señor! Abra la puerta!"
I sat up. Bang! Bang! "Señor ! Es tiempo para usted ser fuera. Abierto! Horita!" When I got to my feet, still half-asleep, I managed to get the door opened a crack, and there stood la Señora de la Casa, fiercely pointing to her watch, then opening her hand, only to give it a good slap with the other. And if that wasn't telling you just what, then what could? It was almost wonderful, even downright sexy, the way she patted and petted the wrinkles out of every peso that came to her palm from out of my pants pocket; all the while she is breathlessly counting, ". . . quince, veinte, veinticinco, treinta!" How magical that was, to watch rage be transformed to pure pleasure of hot, sensuous greed. After such a lusty encounter, the only thing lacking for us was to share a cigarette in the afterglow.
As I closed the door, I could not have been tickled a rosier shade of pink to think of my great good fortune to have found that mess of forgotten pesos still abiding in my pocket. It was a damn miracle, is what, the way Suarez had got so completely immersed in that trade ritual of his over such riches as came out of my one pocket, that he'd completely forgot about the others. Marvelling over that, I sat down on the bed in an effort to recall what further had occurred after that; whether I'd finally managed to get the low-down on how to take, or eat, or prepare these goods I'd bought?
It was no good. I needed more sleep, and there would be time for taking account of all that. Now I just wanted to get the rest I paid for, so I lay back down and took it, so much as I could get, considering the power of a South of the Border afternoon sun to rob a Norte Americano of just that--and it seemed like what the bandidos couldn't get from your pocket, the elements were there to take out of your hide. Fortunately, the power of my fatigue was greater than that of the prickly heat pitted against it, so I was soon slipping off into some kind of sweaty semblance of slumber, even if it was only a mild case of rigor mortis, of sorts.
When I was once again awake, I sat up making a mental note to see somebody about taking some Mexican siesta lessons. Seemed there must be some trick to it unknown to any gringos. I went down to the first level and visited the toilet. Back at the sink the lady had shown me, I took off my shirt and washed up. Twenty minutes later I was back in my room with a sack of tacos con huevos and a styro cup of that sweet Mexican coffee ground from beans so green and bitter that it comes with brown Mexican sugar already mixed into the package, to be brewed together like that. The tacos were mighty fine, with lots of hot green chili chopped into the eggs, and all fried up in pork fat.
When I was done with that, I took account of what money I had remaining, both American and Mexican and put it in my wallet, from which I then removed all my I.D. and anything else with my name on it. These things I dropped in the greasy empty taco sack, folded that and jammed it into my back pocket, ready to be burned or jettisoned at the earliest possible opportunity. I could see no place other than under the mattress to put my stash of contraband cactus, so that's where it went, minus the four buttons I had in my pants.
I headed out the door, down the corridor and out into the mid-afternoon sun; I lowered the brim of my hat to that, and turning my back to it, started up the street toward la mercado.
--
THE BURNING MAN
As I turned the corner and the market came into view, my mind returned to the events of the night before, and some of that strange "talking with the dead" kind of conversation, and I recalled how that Indian had wondered if I thought I was really, like, "ready" to go and speak with the Dead?Hah! The way I was feeling now, I was way good and ready to be the Dead. Here I was stranded in a strange land, both locked in to it and locked out from it, so far as getting anything in the way of a legal travel permit, and now with no more than a pocket full of peyote, I had right around two hundred and fifty bucks to my name. My name? Hell, I didn't even have that, since all there was remaining to it got stuffed into a greasy taco sack.
As I came into the area of the market square, the thumping in my chest--hell, it could've gotten me a gig as a third drummer for the Allman Brothers band: if Suarez was still here for me to run into, what was I going to do? No chance I was going to get the drop on him; give him a bop over the head with my biggest peyote button? All I needed was attention to be drawn on me; attention like a battalion of six-guns sighting in from all around. I needed another look at that guy like a hole in the sock. But a change of those is what I needed, and a shirt and a pair of pants; something clean to get into after a shower.
Others were now sitting in the place where yesterday the Indio and Suarez had sat. It was another blanket and another spread of goods; the mango all sliced and spiced with cumin and spritzed with limon, or "key lime" as they say Norte de la Frontera. I had to have me one of those, and it only set me back three and half pesos, around forty cents.
Damn that was good, and as I was letting that succulent rose-gold flesh glide down my tube, my eyes happened to light on a booth set up against a white wall, an adobe partition at the very end between la mercado and the fountain of the square. There were the darnedest looking hats hung all about, straw, perfectly round of brim, trimmed about the upturned rim in a strip of fuchsia cloth, and all about the circumference were strung little beaded ding-a-lings, amulets or 'charms' one might say, showing the mosaic pattern of multi-colored hearts no bigger than a postage stamp; one of the men standing there had just such a hat on, to go with a blindingly white suit of trousers and tunic, these being decorated with figures sewed on in cloth of rose and blue, of deer at the cuff, and doves at the breast. There was a stand with a placard proclaiming in many hued print, "Huichol Hats, Craft and Bric-a-Brac."
That stopped me. "Huichol" was the name of the language Suarez said he was speaking to the Indio. I stepped up to the booth and said to the sixty-ish, totally ex-pat looking gringo standing next to the other man, "What's the haps, Jack?" He stood there regarding me as you would a rat that just crawled out of the gutter. He even stood back a tat, as if to get a bit further downwind.
"Don't know," he said, which was all I needed hear him say to know he was from San Francisco, which is always pronounced, "San Franciscaow" or "I don't Knaow."
"Yesterday," I said, turning to point up the paseo, "there was a Huichol Indio with some Tex-Mex pachuco name of Suarez, up there hawking the magic cactus?" I could see the recognition in his eyes soon as I mentioned the name, and the paranoia connected with it, as immediately his eyes began to scan for any possible interested ears nearby. And as he wasn't yet talking, I went on. "Well, as I can see, from the way you are looking at me, that what you see is a man in a mess, that got thrown down on and ripped off for a whole lot of dinero."
"Not by the Indio, I wouldn't think," he said, smiling the ill-concealed pleasure of his schadenfreude.
"No, it was all the doing of Suarez. So I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind getting down off your uppity-ass Marin County, short-hair hippie high horse long enough to tell an unfortunate brother of the cloth if you've seen any sign of that muy malo bandido around here today?"
After the initial shock of the insult had a moment to turn a rosy shade of shame, his smile came back as he said, "Sorry. I never mean my disapproval to be quite so obvious--if at all, really."
"Ain't that just the way it goes?" said I.
"But no, I haven't seen Suarez here at all today, but then I have been known to go out of my way to avoid him."
"What about the Indio? There were some questions I never had the chance to ask him, like what you're supposed to do, just eat the stuff raw or cook it, or . . . or . . . damn!" My eyes had continually been getting pulled away from the rather longish, but well-featured face of this man toward the display behind and around him, of a kind of tapestry, three and four feet square of the most eye-dazzling, mandala-like, outrageously colorful designs, rendered by an intricacy of tiny mosaic never seen in the Indian craft north of the border.
Gesturing toward the Indio who had never stopped smiling, silently standing there, his whole face seeming to be a vessel, a burnished brown gourd for the storing up of some secret nectar from the sun; the San Franciscan said, "This is the artist, Pedro Luis Ramirez." The attention seemed to daunt him; his eyes darted back upward to the sky before they went nearly shut. "It's all done with pine resin, dye and beeswax."
"And a lot of the happy cactus."
"Goes without saying." He extended a hand. "Christian Jorgenson from San Rafael." After one shake he said, "How'd you know?"
"How does anyone know a Frisco--pardon--Bay Area accent when they hear it?"
"By spending a bit of time there, I'll warrant. At least long enough to learn as you've done, how people in San Francisco hate it when you foreigners, you barbarians from beyond the pale of the Golden Gate call it 'Frisco!'"
"Man! Yeah. But really!" I indicated the tapestries. "You don't mean to say that this is the sort of thing they see when they have their little visit with Señor Mescalito in the land of the Dead?"
"Don't know about Mescalito, except from the fictional imagination of Carlos Casteneda. In the real land, the pure land among the Huichol, in the language of Wirrarika, it is Señor Kauyumari, the 'sacred deer person' who is author of all this." The eyes of Pedro Luis Ramirez had flown open, he looked at me nodding ever so slowly to say, "Si, es verdad."
"But in answer to your question," said Jorgenson, "Yes, you can just eat it raw, or it can be ground in the metate as they do for the ceremony, so that the juice may be imbibed with some lime and chili, a bit of salt. It is extremely bitter, hard not to erp it up as you take it, but they say that if you will concentrate on the bitterness, meditate on it, taste it without fighting with it, you can keep it down and it will be all the better for you."
"And how much should be eaten at a time?"
"That varies between so few as one or two to so many as twenty. For a first experience, if you can do two fresh buttons without throwing up, you'll get a glimpse of the gate, you might even get part way through." He noticed the question in my eyes. "Or I should say 'Gateway'. That's 'Gateway of the Clashing Clouds', to be completely complete."
"Whoa. What's that?"
"That's thunder and lightening, my man." And what had I to say to that? Nothing. So he said, "It's a sacred place, not only of the Burning Bush, but of what the Huichol call the 'Burning Man', and you WILL want to put the shoes from off your feet, since the smell of smoking shoe leather or plastic is not so very sweet."
"G'wan!"
"I speak metaphorically, of course." He laughed a little, then dropped his smile. "Seriously, this is nothing to be trifled with--not in the higher dosages. People have been driven insane by the fear and dissociation they experience. And nobody comes back the same as when they left. Many find they cannot return to the lives they formerly led. And this path of the Blue Deer becomes a whole new way of life. On the other hand, if it's just a little kick of sensory enhancement you want, eat one button and see what it gets you. But don't mess with the big cactus repast without a spirit guide."
"Is that you?"
He laughed. "Not by a long shot."
I nodded toward Pedro. "This man?"
"No. Not even him, though he is far further along than I. It takes a person fully of the ancient lineage of the mara'akame." He took from his snap button shirt pocket a card and gave it me. "Here. This is my address at Real de Catorce. It's a little old ruin of a silver mining town in the state of San Luis Potosi, a couple hundred miles south of Monterrey, a bit north and east of Zacatecas, way up high in the Sierra Madre Oriental just a little west of Matehuala. If I should happen to be out of town, just mention my name and ask that you be directed to my friends. I'm never gone longer than a couple of weeks on these caravans."
"Mon, you got you some kind of La Vida Loca going here! And I do mean that in the good way."
"And the right way."
"You got a right way to go crazy?"
"Si, mon."
--
DINNER IN THE DINER OF THE DEAD
Back in my room I had everything ready for my dinner with the Dead. I had the sack of cactus all poured out on the bed, and another of limones dumped out and rolled in amongst them. I had a tall quart of crystal cleanTequila blanco, half of which was poured into a clear green glass bowl I'd got at the market along with a large wooden platter, and these were set at the center of the bed to sterilize and receive the buttons as they were washed. Thanks to the jackknife I'd purchased from a vendor, there were three limes cut into quarters afloat in the Tequila basin. The only thing I couldn't locate there was salt, so in place of that I had a bag of Chicharrónes with a sufficient residue in the bottom of the package to serve the purpose.
After taking the first button of about 2 inches diameter, fresh and dripping from the bowl, I cut away the little tufts of fuzz, and set it down on the platter to sever and slice into wafers, this for each of the five cloves of which this variety of the plant is composed. After rinsing one of the wafers in the bowl, I dipped it in the salt and dropped that succulent morsel on my tongue. To say that it is "bitter" is truly to sell it short, for it is so far beyond bitter as to have made the dressing of salt and tequila absurdly moot!
The effect was as if the flesh of the plant wanted to suck everything from the flesh of you right out of you and drink you up. The sensation you get from the nausea of flu which begins the convulsions of throwing up, how you feel seized by the throat and by the flesh beneath your mouth and behind the chin was powerful, even such that you knew this was the plant devouring you, and not the other way round. Yes, you could see that no different than any Venus Fly-Trap, this plant wasn't messing around either, once it got its jaws around you.
The impulse to just put it away and forget about it was decidedly there, but I did not want to be a quitter; at the same time I wanted to get it over with, so I took all the slices I'd cut into my mouth at once, followed by a tequila dripping, salt impregnated section of lime. I had soon taken the rind of that out with an impulse to decrease the intensity by a good jolt from the bottle of tequila down on the floor beside the bed. Couldn't be done, bending over like that, and in any case it was so clear that there would have been no help to be had by anything so benign as tequila. I fell back on one elbow and then drifted back the more till I was suppine, eyes toward the ceiling and closing.
The words of counsel from Christian Jorgenson were now ringing clear as the bells from the campanile of a cathedral somewhere near that one hears at various hours of the day; I did as advised and tried to find the way not to fight it. I felt my hand rising to my chest, where it found that package of Mexican cigarettes, the little oval shaped Delicados Ovalados. I sat up and lit one, and found after one super strong drag, that the nausea was quite somewhat allayed, even enough to permit me to start working on the next button, a larger one this time, nearly three inches in diameter.
This time as I began once again to partake of my strange little salad in the diner of the dead, I made sure to have a fresh little Ovalado lit and smoking to serve as the helpful little chaser it was. And later when I would learn how very important a role tobacco does play in the peyote ceremonies of the Huichol, it would come as no surprise to me at all.
--
STONE SOUL SHOPPING
It was about 7:00 p.m. by the time I found myself passing along with the crowd that is forever out for the evening to browse among the shops and cafes. I was feeling good! Oh, and it was just nothing like being high on Tequila; it was a kind of euphoria so subtle and fine that the very thought of booze is about enough to make you throw up. You just simply wouldn't want it, because the wooziness and lack of focus would ruin it. It was intoxication on a whole different level, come not of a dimming out of the world around you, but of an intensification of it--which is just trite to put it that way, in old worn out phrases well avoided like "heightened awareness" but I guess it just can't be helped.
I couldn't get over the flaming glory of the fabrics on display in the window of a tienda de ropas; such a beauty as had stopped me there, just across the street from the little fruit-drink bar where I'd first sat down, fresh into Mexico after my walk across the Rio Grande. The more I looked into that window, the better I knew that now was the time to go shopping!
Rough as my appearance was, I took it as no grand insult to my pride to see that the pretty muchachas on duty were not going out of their way to serve me. It was alright, that was okay because we'd soon be putting things right on that score. My eyes lit on a shirt hung in full display at the wall; it was just the sort of thing, had this been any other day, place or time, that I would not be caught dead in. But what had the Indio said about my "Day of the Dead"? This was it, and here was just the shirt for it: the brightest most utterly eye-gouging fuchsia I had ever seen. Why, it absolutely radiated as if it were shedding rose petals of light in every direction.
This was a style of shirt worn by Mestizos and Indios everywhere in Mexico; a "camisa" as they say, but this being tailored more like a smock; it is minutely pleated on both front panels, there are pockets at both breasts with two tiny mother of pearl buttons to close them, and more of those for decoration at the chamfered hems of the sleeves. The shirt is meant to be worn over the belt as the length of it extends clear down to the hips, and there, both sides is a pocket; the lapels are wide, come down from a generous almost sort of "Mister B" style of collar. I took it down from its hook on the wall, brought it immediately over to the counter, and bought that outrageously living thing for howsoever many pesos it took; maybe it was somewhat better than fifty, but had it been five hundred, this would not have stopped me.
No sooner did I have that in the bag and was turning to leave than another majestic sight came smashing into my eyes. It was a pair of the most phantasmagorially glorious pantalones, why they were enough to require sunglasses to so much as take a quick peek at them: citron yellow. And the material! I am here to say they were the softest, finest, most elegantly thin and airy Gaberdine that never did you think could be encountered this side of a Sapphire City in an anti-matter Oz . By now, the pretty muchachas had got hip to the presence of a Sugar Daddy in the tienda. Ah si, Señor! And while one was taking my measurement at the waist, the other was showing me over an arm, a display of belts, woven, figured, and wouldn't you know the one she thought the best was exactly my choice as well: chartreuse and lemon yellow with dashes of scarlet winking through the weave--and, nearly wide enough to pass for a sash.
I don't suppose I got out of that store, for any less than 300 pesos. Well! There was that, and I hadn't got two doors along la calle when I found myself looking down through the glass at a pair of shoes that were perfection to the purpose of a man who would soon be doing just a whole lot of walking. Why, I could only regard them as being sent by Fortune herself. Now more than ever was my determination set to get myself into the rest of Mexico, even if that meant a trek into the desert, squeezing by the cactus, and playing matador to the Frontera guarding herds of Texas long-horned steer, and/or stepping between the coils of rattlesnakes. All this it would most certainly be for a man skirting his way round the Migracion post twenty klicks in along the carretera that runs south out of town the 136 miles a desert buzzard flies over the alto plano and the Sierra Madre to Monterrey.
I needed good shoes, shoes suited both to town and country, and the thick charcoal grey crepe soles I was seeing on this glorious pair were so delicious to look at in their contrast to the avocado green matte of the fine dyed leather--honestly! Had you served them to me on a torta with a squirt of lime and a slice of tomato why I would have eaten my own feet. But speaking of lime? Let me rhapsodize over the stockings I bought to go with these shoes; they were nylon and figured with black diamonds going down beside the sheerest chartreuse that ever -- well just let me put it like this . . .
When I got back up to the room after my shower and a shave, I applied some lime-scented deodorant, bought with the razors at a drugstore on the way back to the hotel, and slowly I enjoyed the pleasure of getting dressed. I don't know how long I walked around naked with nothing but those stockings on my feet giving the heart attack to every cucaracha within twenty feet. But at last the ritual was complete, and I couldn't wait to get back out there to get a load of myself in the mirror of a dark store window.
No mirror could have given any clearer a picture than what I was seeing in the eyes of the people I was passing by on my way back to the main paseo of the town; some looked outright frightened as though something had got off the screen of a 3-D movie to run amok through the town. Others just stared in stunned awe as though this were the 8th Wonder of the World bopping by. The muchachas were grabbing each other to point and let their eyes grow wide; two or three even dared take a few steps toward me, covering their lips lest they be heard screaming with glee.
But surely! I had to get a look at this for myself. When I walked in the door of the tienda de ropas where I'd bought all these duds, I didn't know from the way they had all stopped, as every mouth dropped, that by looks of it I may well have been delivered to their door from a flying saucer out of "Mars Attacks!" But then as it came to the lovely little ladies who had known me back when, well . . . it seems so despicably immodest but may I tell you? Before I even knew what, I was being escorted by three of the pretty muchachas back toward the center of the chamber. "Oh, Señor tan bonito!" breathed the lovely señorita guiding me by my right arm. "Ven conmigo y mira!" the third sexy young mujer verily growled as she took me from the girl on my left, and turned me to a full-length mirror now directly before me.
I really had to laugh, even so hard that I soon required the support from both those muchachas standing brave either side of me. Soon they were urging me forward for a closer look, and there this person was in his straw vaquero hat and sunglasses, the fuchsia camisa, the chartreuse sash-belt and matching socks, the citron slacks and green shoes. I was a Wrathful Deity right off a tapestry in Tibet! I expected to see fire jetting from all my pores at any instant. It was freaking me out! How could I have done this? How much had it cost?
With many heartfelt "muchas gracias" I threw big kisses to the pretty lips of my delicious muchachas all the way back toward the door and out.
--
PRETTY MONEY
Outside la tienda de ropas as I paused to get my bearings, if any were in me to be got, my eyes at last came to light on the gleaming exterior of a red and white checkered cab parked at the curb across the street. Arms folded, and leaning against the curbside front fender was a man in straw vaquero hat, bluejeans and a white camisa of quite the same style as mine. Here, I saw, was a brother of the cloth, and as I approached the nearer across the walk, scattered puzzle pieces of an idea began to come together as a picture in my head.
A break in the traffic came and stepping off the curb, I crossed, passing directly in front of the taxi's hood. "Que paso, Hombre?" I said, stepping up to the curb in my new green shoes. One look at me and he was immediately smiling as he looked around in case anyone else was noticing, that it might be affirmed he was not seeing things.
"No mucho," he said, his right arm falling from his chest with a gesture toward the cab. "¿Quiere usted un taxi?"
"Si!" I told him, and then I asked what would be the fare to Monterrey?" And why! the man just stood there and stared at me as if I must be mad. He straightened up off the bright red fender and he took off his hat. He bent down a bit for a closer look at my eyes. "¿Dijo usted Monterrey?"
"Si," I said. "Es mucho dinero, no?"
"Si Señor," he said, and told me it would be about 600 pesos.
"Ah." I nodded. And then I asked how far toward Monterrey I could get for about 300 pesos?
He shrugged and said for that he can take me a little over halfway, so far as Salinas Hidalgo. This was good, but as there were a few smilingly curious onlookers starting to gather around, I beckoned for him to come with me as I headed for the doorway of a closed shop. Here I explained--with quite some doing-- that I had no tourist card, so what would it take to get me past Migracion? He just flipped that off as it were nothing--or that is, nothing except an additional hundred pesos. I shook his hand and asked him to wait while I went into the drugstore a few doors down to change some money.
While I waited for the ladies ahead of me in line to be served, the thought occurred to me of what I'd be leaving behind back at the hotel; some deodorant, some peyote, some limones and chicharróns, some glass, wood, my smelly old clothes and frankly my dear, I didn't give a damn! I was on my way down to Old Mexico. I got my wallet out at the window, and what did I find to my gleeful delight? After cab fare, I would have some seventy dollars left, when so far as I would have guessed, I'd have been about flat. Near to seven hundred pretty multi-colored pesos can make a prince of a pauper in Mexico, and a nice fat pad of a person's wallet. I was feeling good, even downright fine, as I came out the drugstore to the warm and welcoming sight of my Mexicano Cabby opening the rear door of his taxi to me. I however made it plain that I regarded that as a needless conceit for a man of the people like me. I wasn't given so much as a chance to get my hand on the front door handle before this hombre had swooped around to open that for me. After all, you don't get a fare like this every day!
--
¡MONTERREY!
The lights at the last outskirts of Nuevo Laredo glimmered ever dimmer in the wash of that low red glow off the tail of the taxi. And as if it hadn't been quite clear before, my driver's command of English was turning out to be right at par with my Spanish. So what would this leave for a couple of gents rocketing through the night on such a mad adventure to be talking about? Little or next to nothing, through those first few abortive attempts at making even the puniest morsel of small talk; so it was until the moment came when my finely frilled friend in the clean white camisa and Ranchero hat had raised his voice above the rush of the draft and rumble of the tires, to shout, "¡Dígame! 'Mon--terrr--rey.'"
"Ah, si!" I crooned, "Vamos, muchacho. Andale! Y arriba!"
"No, no!" From side to side he waggled his hat most miserably.
"No?"
"No!" Laughing off the frustration, he repeated, "¡Dígame, amigo! 'Mon--terrrrr--rey.'" He waited as I stared being struck silly and silent. "Ho-kay," he said, pointing to me. "Joo -- habla -- a mi . . ." Having pointed to himself, he now put a hand under his chin, raised it to his lips and wiggled the fingers as five little tongues to say, "Mon-terrr-rey. Ahora, ¡dígame!"
"Oh." I said, thinking just maybe to be catching a smoky little whiff wafted from the drift of it. "Por el Migracion?"
"Si, si!" His hand came off the wheel to begin making motions as if I were a choir he wished to be conducting. " '¡Mon--terrr--rey!'" he sang.
"Monterrey?"
"No! Mon-terrrr-rey. Otra vez."
I tried again. "Mon-ta-l-l-lay!"
"No!
So it went with the One Note Samba music of this one word conversation, all the way from the edge of that border town to el Migracion 20 kilometers down the road. This was all of it the whole while as we drove, with me rollicking in a roaring ecstasy of getting my R's rolling, till my tongue felt like a thickening strip of rawhide. Riding high and handsome was I; bombing down the highway ever deeper into Mexico, and all the way singing our one word cancion that had every round of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," and "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer in the Wall" beat by a thousand bars of sweet, south of the border melody. And only the spiny green ears of the prickly pear were there to hear as we drove along, flying so high as the Alto Plano is wide, all the further along Carretera Federal 85; ever nearer the fateful Frontera of whatever in Aces or Deuces a south of Texas destiny should be holding in the flop for a badman on the run.
I was starting to get it, the gradually brightening glint of just what it might be that my driver had in mind, as to how we'd be pulling this off when it came time. It was to be done by no more than a casual sleight of hand, by the seat of our pants, by the barely concealed smirk of a poker-faced bluff. And if it should work, it's a hundred peso kickback to the hand of my man, or otherwise, that inevitable sharp 'bite' of paying the mordida. It would all depend on my very best enunciation of "Monterrey" yet.
We had come so near as 5 kilometers to the moment of truth (or lies, or a performance fit to transcend the line), and I had got the rolling of my 'R's maybe about close enough to pass for the diction of a Mexican drunk. But yet again, this was not good enough, so long as I kept getting the emphasis all wrong. A gringo wants to stress the 'rey' part, whereas in Mexico, it's first things first; so you hit highest emphasis at the downbeat of 'Mont', this to be followed by a finely softened purring of the 'errrrrr' part, and then with a slight rise of emphasis on 'rey', it is sharply clipped at the coda. Such a pity that what is so grand and graceful in a name like "Monterrey" can never be expressed in print.
But what may be said, even on the page if need be, is that in Mexico, the most refined people speak primarily in Waltz time. No one who has been to Mexico can doubt this; it is strictly (or at least mostly) behind a time signature of 3/4 that they speak, much the same as they sing in style of the Ranchera music they listen and dance to. Otherwise, for people of the country, the campesinos, they tend more toward the earthy 2/4 of their "Banda" tradition adopted from the German Polka, as bequeathed to them along with a never sated taste for Pilsner Beer, by Emperor Maximilian and Carlota.
And now, much as it was for that regal pair, gone from honor to execution of firing squad for him, and she to the miseries of the mad-house--so it was for me, a person certainly worthy of both for his destiny; yet to be nonetheless here received at the first, to feel so very welcome and well accepted as if for one of their own! Ah, such a matter of grand satisfaction it was to see that for this man beside me, after one look at my finery of gaudy new fashion bought off the streets of Laredo, my hat and sunglasses--but yes! This man, had indeed taken it virtually in hand to say, "I see by your outfit that you are . . ." if not a "cowboy" then certainly somebody fit to be mistaken for some muy loco Mexicano. Yes! It could work. I just might pass.
Sitting there thinking I could not possibly have invested most of my last remaining pesos in anything better than the shirt on my back, the lights of el Migracion hove into sight. And I had by this time actually managed, about twice out of dozens of tries, to get "Monterrey" off my tongue closer to right than wrong, and in full confidence of that, when we had come to a stop at the gate, it was . . .
"Que paso, Amigo?" from the Border Guard, as he bent low for a look inside, directly to ask of me. "¿Adónde va, Usted?"
I butchered it so bad, that my driver just sat there with a small smile shaking his head, explaining with an apologetic gesture toward me to say, "El es bebido muy," which I thought to take for, 'He is drunk as a skunk." That was good for a laugh from the guard, and for just how many pesos it came to, in the crunch I thought to hear crumpling in the hand of that Federale, I was way beyond worrying about, as my man had already thrown into gear. And as we rolled on out and down, I saw how it was just here where the carreterra first begins its decline from the Alto Plano, breaking down into the rugged canyon lands of the Sierra Madre Occidental.
--
MIRACULOUS TAXI
Travelling the distance from Sabinas Hidalgo to Monterrey is a leg of the journey I cannot relate, having slept all the way no sooner had I dropped into my seat on the bus. All I knew is that before I knew, it was the hand of the driver shaking me awake in the place of my destination. But as to my exhilaration of being at last at large and footloose many kilometers past Migracion and moving ever southward into the greater body of all Mexico? Why! How can it be compared to anything short of being at liberty out abroad over and ever deeper into the sweet, humid body of a beautiful woman?
Ah, but as to her scent, it was as the fragrance of fresh baked bread blending with a perfume of tropical fruit. It was enthralling my senses from the moment I stood alone on the cobblestone pavement of Sabinas Hidalgo to watch the diminishing glow of tail-lights on that miraculous taxi disappearing into the dusk beyond the central square of the town. The cafe that served as bus stop with its transparent walls of plate glass windows had the street out beyond so brightly lit, it nearly turned the night to day. And the scent of that bread just took hold, turned me round and led me by the nose up over the steep steps from the street to the walk and into the door of the cafe.
For the patrons, some 10 or 15 of the local rancheros and campesinos seated at table and lining the counter, it was if sunrise had come upon them quite unbidden and walking right in the door. Why, they were literally shielding their eyes--can you blame them? Yet this too was miraculous, for what can anyone do when the sun walks in the door but keep the eyes turned away and pretty much leave them like that, save for only the most occasional and furtive glance. In the garish glare of my highly clashing fashion, I had most paradoxically managed to gain none but the most fabulous degree of anonymity.
At the counter I was treated to a most pleasant reserve of deference as I ordered my little plate of pan dulces, a loaf about the size of a hamburger bun and made "dulce" by sugar frosted design of little blue diamonds; pretty pink rosettes, or the chocolate stripes, and nothing is nicer right around midnight than to be dipping a piece broken from that into a tumbler of cafe con leche, almost universally brewed from Mexico's own Nescafe with full fat milk.
The cab driver had informed me that the word for ticket is 'boleto', and for bus, 'camión', and that was all I needed know to get me from there and off walking over the broad expanse of large beige and black tiles of the big city bus depot for the ciudad of Monterrey, Nuevo de Leon. Being thrilled fully to wakefulness by the excitement of finding myself in a strange new city, but also at once to be adrift among the mysteries of such a very old world, even so venerable as to have been founded in the latter years of the 16th century--well! Because you could smell that, how could it be resisted, if I should desire to wander about among the ancient musts of the ages for all the rest of the night?
It wasn't long before I'd found my way out upon one of the most major thoroughfares of the city, a wide, tree and statuary divided boulevard. But it was monumental, this promenade, in the way of an Unter den Linden or Champs Elysees and you felt yourself to be soaking up the air of something uncommonly grand, as if you were sharing this space with the Shades of those who had passed along this way 300 years ago.
So late as it was, and nothing being open, there was little for it but to inquire of a fellow night owl among the few passersby as to where an hombre might go to find a bite to eat, a bit of the late Monterrey night life? It took some doing to make my intentions known to the drunk little fellow I'd stopped, but it finally came across; I got my directions and took the walk of some ten or twelve blocks to arrive at the crest of a slope that fell away toward the river that passes through the city. And down below, after but one look, by light of a profusion of dim yellow bulbs strung all about the surrounding veranda, the candles flickering over red and white checkered tablecloths; the bamboo framework of portico, and facing of the walls, well you just knew that this was the place.
--
CHICAGO JIM'S
No sooner had I come through the door than I knew I had found my element. And how did I know but by the way every eye that could be bothered to so much turn in my direction did so only long enough to say, "So what?" You had to descend to the room by a few steps from a wide entrance come in from the veranda. It was a broad space, and though there were tabled sections raised a step or two from the main floor, the ceiling was low, affording an intimation of intimacy that had otherwise been lost to an interior so spacious.
This was the joint known as "Chicago Jim's" and it was the late-night riverside resort of last resort for -- well! Only name the appetite, whether of the stomach or the heart, because this was the place where if it could not be found on the menu to be served, and if love was your meat (or vice-versa) then here was the place you might come to eat, for all the gaily laughing, mascaraed maricóns, the insomniacs and the dipsomaniacs, whatever manner of perfectly unprefixed maniac, but as to anything of quality in a nymphomaniac of under 250 pounds and going for about half a peso per the pound; that was looking anywhere between slim to nil. But, the musicians were there.
And they were all over the place, occupying all the booths along the far wall and around to the right. Stringed Instruments and accordions were arrayed on chairs and empty tables; there was a bull fiddle leaned against the wall, and here or there a guitar occupied the lap of a softly serenading Latin strummer. Though there were some five or six uniformed Mariachis, in the main these were the "cojuntos" of cafe and street musicians in their vaquero attire of fantastically studded blue-jeans and brightly embroidered shirts, the buckskin fringed jackets and tasseled torrero hats, who plied the city in their three or four man "bandas". Chicago Jim's was the gathering place where they came after hours to dine and celebrate a prosperous night out, or to lament of it, if otherwise.
Awaiting the plate of tacos I'd ordered, I was most content to sit at my table and savor the gentle ambiance, and the fragrance from a cup of black coffee. It was good, the soft strumming of a guitar from here and there, the voice of a singer softened for only his own compañeros to hear, and because each was showing others the courtesy to noodle in the same key, what might have been a jangling cacophony was instead, an equity of unintended symphony.
Among the scattered bursts of mirth, the simpatico crooning of commiseration came the ring of a plate set steaming before me and hard upon that, a timbale-toned rap from the base of a bottle of Cerveza Superior that I most certainly had not ordered, but then! a most surprising triplet of basso notes to the tune of "Te gusta?"
Here before me was a short, portly hombre of mid--to--late fifties vintage, and whether that be taken for the years of a man or the first full decade of his formation, it's really quite the same--but of all things! He was taking the seat opposite, as the white aproned boy who had brought my supper motioned toward the man to say, "Senor, le presento, por favor, Cheecago Jeem."
Rising, with hand extended to express the pleasure of this unexpected honor, my deference was promptly dismissed by a wave from Chicago Jim with the hand that held a beer of his own, and as he'd raised that to a toast, I sat back down to reciprocate saying, "Mucho gusto!"
Having removed from his half-bald head a well-worn Panama hat to post that over the white, seer-sucker clad knee of a crossed leg, he asked, "Te llama?" My name. My name? What name? I had no name. My name was in a greasy taco sack bobbing on a rivulet of the Rio Grande, bound for the Gulf of Mexico. "Me llamo Juan," I said once again raising the beer. "Y muchas gracias, amigo!"
Juan. John. Jean. Giovanni. Since "Jim" was already taken, it followed as the sugar with the cream. And as it had been with my Nuevo Laredo taxi driver so it was with Chicago Jim; the one knowing very little from the language of the other, but as two plus two comes up four, the sum is greater than any one of the parts. It turned out that Chicago Jim came so to be known by the one former triumph of his life, when he had while young and carefree, once bummed his way all the way from the border to Chicago. Or so had he esteemed this event as being so great till it came to the day his Uncle Javier dropped dead and left this riverfront cafe to this otherwise destitute and ne'er do well, nephew of his, Joachim. And so, if we may dispense with the clumsier aspects of cross-lingual chatter with its fits and starts, the conversation cleaned up and smoothed out for ease of recounting went something like this:
"I disdained any form of work."
"No! Es verdad?"
"Si, is very true." He turned the hat upon his knee. "And what else? Still, I am a bum, but a rich and disgusting one." He enjoyed my laughter and went on. "It is a great loss, and a fall from grace, for once I was a professional bum; a magnificent bum, and one of great charm, for that indeed was the art of it. Do you see?"
I begged him to enlighten me, for I had seldom encountered such a surprising topic of conversation. "If you are not a happy bum," he said with a great intensity of earnest intent, "You are a starving or dead bum; a lazy bum, a no good bum." He paused for his grand eloquence to take full effect. "But a happy bum is King; I tell you a veritable king of the earth whose welfare is the work of all the people." He smiled as he took by the crown, his hat and set it with both hands upon his head.
"You may have heard," he said, "of the great saints and sages of India, whose lives are sustained by the charity of all the people?" He acknowledged my affirmative nod. "But then you know that while they are beggars, no different than all the crowned heads of the world, so also are they of greater esteem than all!" He told me that a professional bum must never forget that the duty, or the 'dharma' of his high status above all men is to make them happy, and to do this by keeping himself happy, for there is nothing lower on the earth, or in a worse state of existence than an unhappy bum.
Jim told me of how the life of a professional bum is exactly like that of the greatest fish, the king of all fishes that swim in the rivers of the Orinoco and Amazon, the Pirarucu, which uses its gills for only the first fifteen minutes of its life, after which it then for the rest of its life, rises to the surface every 15 minutes for a breath of air. Like this, a good bum, an artful one will spend no more time submerged in the humiliation of begging on the street than it takes to gain the price of his first cup of coffee. And no sooner has he his place at the counter in the cafe, than he is upon his throne, or as you might say, he is now before the easel in the studio of his art, which as it turns out is the humor and delight of his conversation.
Thus, according to the gospel of Chicago Jim, if you can make people laugh, you have given them a precious and invaluable gift. By reason of this, of course they are indebted to you, so that if you should say to the man at the counter next to you, "Alas, though I am only a bum who has not so much as 50 centavos to his name, nor any way of knowing where he will lay his head this very night, is this any reason for such a one as myself not to be happy? Or let me ask of you, can you think of a better time for a man to be happy than when he is most miserable?"
--
THE JOY OF MISERY
But is it possible I had heard this right? How according to Chicago Jim, there is no better time for a man to be happy than when he is most miserable? Let us pause before we all go crazy, and take a moment to be frank, if I may just reach up and flip the switch to stop the rolling of the reels here; let the projector cool off a bit before it gets so hot as to burn right through the film. For indeed there are a few things that need clearing up right here before any more of this may be seen to unfold.
Certainly by now, a question might well be rankling as to the standpoint from which all this is being recounted. Would it be issuing from a cold, dank cell on Death Row? Or, which might be the more preferable, a computer desk in some alcove off the lowest ring of Hell? No, I might be capable of a lot things, but going all Sci-Fi on you here would not be among them. So maybe all of this is just being howled through a crack in the door of some padded cell in a Mexican booby hatch? I would say "close" but that could be misleading, so I say, "Close, but no Delicados Ovalados cigarros."
Pretty, eh? And in the day when some Yanqui war resister ex-pats were down here smoking those, for so much as their poor gringo lungs could stand it, they were never selling in those years, for more than 2 pesos per the pack. That's about 20 cents, in early '70s money. And this is just as I was told, by one of those fellows down in Real de Catorce, who'd been in Mexico ever since. As for the time of my sojourn, it's been right around 10 pesos which still isn't too bad, considering how you can't stand to smoke any more than about half a pack per day. Maybe it's good, the way it forces you to cut down, but here's the thing . . .
So far as the circumstances that have allowed for this laptop now here before me, the lamp that gives light to this desk, that ridiculous coffee mug for a pen holder with its broken handle, and its illustration of a Guernsey cow with eyes that follow you wherever you go--not to remind you by any means, of those portraits you may have seen of other sacred beings, rumored to perform the same miracle--but . . .
No. As to the circumstances allowing for this account to be told even now before any hopeful hangman should have his chance to get the noose about my neck, let it suffice only for now to say that there has been the time for it, and time enough for me to have undergone a great deal of change, since the day of these events. Whether it's been for the better or worse is anyone's guess. But it's pretty odd the sort of thing that can happen to you through process of beginning to write such a thing as a memoir concerning some particular portion of your life.
And what happens is plain enough to explain: for one thing, it allows you to gain the comical, if not hilarious conceit to start thinking of yourself as a "writer". So there ya go. And no sooner have you begun to fancy that of yourself, then next thing you know, you're starting to express yourself in ways that you've cribbed by paying close attention to how others tend to do it; your Fitzgerald, your Hemingway, your Melville, your Conrad, your Truman Capote, or what have you? So there it is, lest any had wondered, how some Ford truck driving Joe Six-Pack of a community college educated homicidal maniac from Joplin Missouri should come to be talking about "your Colette, your . . . . Schopenhauer, your Danielle Steel and Henry James," as if he had the nerve to think he's been talking 'like' them---?? Once again, all I can say is "consider the source." That, along with the yet to be revealed circumstances which have allowed for such a seemingly incongruous (or just plain unseemly) transformation to have taken place.
And so with all this in view, we return to the paramount question of the moment! What on Earth, Mars or Jupiter can Chicago Jim have meant to speak of being happy in the midst of misery? I reach up to the switch as once again we hear the fans in the projector whir and see the beam of light once more congealing into Technicolor on this Vista-Vision screen . . .
--
But he was asking of me how anyone could not agree! If by this they should see that nothing could be worse than to be miserable while you are miserable? Why! "Nothing could be worse," he said, "if you might choose to be happy instead!" He sat back awaiting the effect of such a thing upon me, as if my hilarity were not enough? But no sooner had I started to speak, than he gently put a hand on my forearm to say, "I tell you, a prince among beggars does have the strength to do this." His eyes registered the surprise in mine, till leading forward he said, "And how do you suppose it goes, in the best of company, when I take the last 50 centavos from my pocket to ask who among them would care for another cup of coffee?"
"Seguro?" I wondered.
"Ah, mi amigo! It is just here when I have seen the miracles begin, for I tell you they are all saints, given the chance to be so, our fellow man. It may be that one man will order for me a plate of enchiladas, while another is offering the hospitality of his own casa for a place to gain a night's rest. And why not? For there shall be many more miracles of life to celebrate over a fine dinner, and the glasses of tequila to follow!"
His eyes had so glittered in remembrance of these things, that now he was given to say, "Rarely would I leave the hospitality of that saint come evening or the next morning with less than two or three hundred pesos, for his offering to the spirit of Happiness. And how many rounds of tequila can a man buy that night for the whole cantina on so much as that before he runs out, and the gratitude of all is once again showered upon him in a thousand ways unimagined?"
"But," I had to ask! "Never in the way of a blackjack over the head?"
He shrugged. "This too, alas, must come into the life of the Royal Beggar, for it is true that some men are not so saintly as others."
"But, after 15 minutes," I said, now greatly in his thrall, "you come once again to the surface for the next gulp of happiness, or stay submerged in the misery and die!" The man had me all excited.
"Es verdad! Si, amigo. It may be that you too will become such an artist as Chee-cago Jeem!"
I confided that before long, I well might, and said, "That happy spirit must have put me here with you, this very night!" Ah, the cerveza was doing its wonders. But he had already turned aside at the sound of some particularly pleasing strains of a bolero being played by a guitarista in the booth directly across the way. And now at last I had an opportunity to observe, unobserved the overall look of this guest at my table.
His light white shirt was buttoned to a collar curled and yellowed by old starch, and through that he had a blue bandanna wound and knotted to a bow for a tie; the cuffs of the seersucker jacket, like the collar and lapels were a bit grubby--but this somehow seemed to suit him. He needed the grime, to be what he wanted to be. He had turned back to face me:
"I live for the present," he said, "and don't think about yesterday or tomorrow." He had lit a cigarette and upon an exhale he said, "You and I are here now. We are not in tomorrow. We are here. Why should we try to be somewhere we're not?"
"Si!" I heartily agreed. "Es muy verdad."
"Si! Si! Es very true. Here I am in the place of my business, but I do no work; others are paid to do that for me."
"Muy bien," I said. "But what if they should take advantage and --"
"Of course they rob me every chance they get! What else? But in this they do me a favor, lest I should forget how to be happy in the middle of my misery." I was amazed. But he went on: "Si, I do not worry, to let it ruin my day!" So, he declared and it was all I could do to hold back my applause. "Por que, es mas verdad: if you worry about tomorrow, or if you sit and cry about yesterday, how can you be happy today?"
"Chicago Jim," I said, "You are a philosopher."
He mugged and winked, raising his beer to say, "Beba su cerveza, and I buy you another." He pointed at the last taco on my plate and said, "You look hungry. I send you some nice, hot bowl of menudo." With that he was up from the table and headed across the room, toward a very busy door in the far wall. It wasn't three minutes before the beer arrived in the hand of the young lad, a boy of ten or twelve, who then sat down himself, just to my right. He motioned toward the musicians. "Te gusta la musica?"
"Ah, mucho," I said.
"Es muy bien," he said. "Por que, yo soy un cantante."
"Como?" He had spoken too fast.
Then, with impatience, "De la cancions!"
"Ah!" The boy is a singer! "Es mas bueno, muchacho," I said, and began to share with him the wonderful coincidence that I myself played drums, once, for a band, when I got to sit in for the regular drummer, the kid that lived across the street who never could keep me away from his drum set. And so, "when he got sick that time," I told my fine young friend, "there I was up on the bandstand, me; it was me! Like another Gene Krupa, but -- " I looked, and where was he? The chair was empty. But there! He'd been up and off across the room responding to a call from that swinging door.
I was cast into a spell of wondering how all of this could be, that from out of bloody hell, the undreamed of heat, the unimagined blast that made this charred and stinking ruin of my life, I should now so unaccountably rise, as an ash of myself, all clean and white into such a pleasing purgatory as this? It was no good, ruined so soon as I'd been so false as to think it. No, not in cadence with the sorrowful strains of a very sad corrida now breathing as a teary kiss to my ear. No, I knew the abyss of my misery to be, if anything, all the nearer for it, even so close to joy as this--when suddenly, there it is in the cry of a song. Ah! sadness is such a whore, a screaming Siren of temptation who brings indeed an ecstasy, a black kind of happiness all her own in which to drown you, all wracked to ruin upon her rocky, slippery shore.
When you are betrayed in love and that sacred place of your deepest kiss is invaded by another; oh how the very thought of her opening that place to someone else does bomb your heart to bits, to leave so cold and empty a chamber full of echoes and a broken rubble of ruined memories. So, she really hadn't loved me, or cared enough to spare me such an ignoble death. But that is the hell of it, when you get to thinking on it, how the one person who knew you so intimately to have become as the very heart of you, has fled? That is death. That is a coronary thrombosis, right there. That's heart failure. That's a heart attack. And you're dead after that, because the one friend who you truly thought lived for you as you lived for her, the one pal who cared a damn that you were alive, who would be there for you, wanting you and taking a care that what had bloomed from the hearts of the two of you together should not be crushed and trampled into the dirt--well!
That was a mighty sad song they were so quietly singing over there at a table along the wall to my right, and it brought to mind a thing I had seen this very night, after leaving the depot of Transportes del Norte, passing along the other side of the street from the wide, highly figured, Rococo-like facade of a cathedral. A woman, prostrate over the stair and crawling one excruciatingly slow step at a time toward the candle-lit cavern of the nave; toward the candles she was drawn, as you saw them flickering through the two-story tall archway of those massive open doors. How it did echo, every wail and sob as if wrung as the very blood from her heart; there should have been a crimson wake flowing out behind her, from the scarlet spring within the black curtain of her dress.
I thought of those cries, the candles and the blood, and here I'd been thinking that if there was anyone who knew what it was to be sad, that was me. The hell! Did I want to go blind to everything around me, to the laughter and music, the merriment in men's eyes? Fumes of menudo were rising from the bowl now being set before me, and just as the boy had retaken his seat, a call came from across the room, "Venga, Anjel! Canta un cancion por nosotros!" The boy's name was "Angel" and they wanted him to sing for them. While I might have been grieved for the loss of this cheery young company, now as he flew as a small bird from its perch at my shoulder, I suddenly felt myself to be seated in a place of much esteem and grace, and though I knew nothing of him, I was so very honored to have had such a guest as this a mi casa. So I watched as the boy removed his apron to join the musicos who had taken guitar and accordion upon their laps, ready to attend upon his song.
--
A FELICIDAD
Much as I hate getting all postmodern, nonlinear and like, Alejandro González Iñárritu on us here; sad as it is to say; even so hard as I've tried and failed to describe what happened when the boy began to sing, it's turned out to be just too much to be asking of a mere typer of words. Because this is a laptop and not a typewriter, that is not reason enough to prevent me virtually ripping pages from the carriage, throwing them to the floor, and jumping on them; all those useless words, as I've done for three nights running.
No. I've put an end to it, and now, calmly, patiently, I tearfully set it aside, all the wonder of that night and its song, till the moment should arrive that shall be born amenable to it.
For now I can only say, that was the night that lasted all night, my first night in Monterrey; the night that lasted till morning. And as the gray light was dawning, I was having a last bite of tacos con heuvos, with another sweet sip from my cup of cafe con leche, when I found that I was being pulled body and soul from that chair, and away from that cafe, out into the delicate, fragrant beginnings of the day, only then to be dragged, half-asleep on my feet, aboard a moving streetcar--for you see they still had them there, even in Mexico City, so late in the era of electric urban mass transit as 1986--if that should give some idea of the times for which we speak.
But, it was for a ride I was being taken and to what I knew not. Such a dear young lad as he was, this poor orphan; how could I refuse him this morning streetcar ride with this, the poorest of all chances for a Papa? Ah, such heartrending affection he bore me, and how it was made all the more acute, by its being so little deserved. I hardly knew for what this favor was being bestowed upon such a misery as me from this little star, fallen from the firmament of the ancient Toltec Night. But perhaps he had seen how very dear his song had been to me, and I was glad for his company, to have for my friend this preposterously talented young acolyte from the altar of Orpheus, choirboy of Corcovado, cherub of the samba; this sad, lost, lonely beautiful boy named "Angel" whose strong, clear alto had so entranced every soul to its core in some distant sun; so sweetly had he sung his song, his "A Felicidad" . . .
"Tristeza não tem fim,
Felicidade sim."
"While sadness lingers on,
Soon happiness is gone."
Every sound of a spoon jangling in a cup stopped. All chatter had ceased. Thrown back in my chair, breathless I listened . . .
"A felicidade é como a pluma,
Que o vento vai levando pelo ar,
Voa tão leve,
Mas tem a vida breve,
Precisa que haja vento sem parar."
"Happiness is like a feather,
The wind has lifted to the air;
Floating so free,
To a life so very brief,
As the breeze has a breath
To hold it there."
--Tom Jobim/Vinicius de Moraes
THROUGH A ROSE COLORED GLASS
When I awoke, it was to the hand of the boy, Anjel shaking me, and to the sway of the trolley that only minutes before had rocked me to sleep; its electric whine, a ring of rails, the rhythmic clattering of its overhead cable for my lullaby. Having alighted to the street and gained to the walk, I stood there on that corner trying my best to attend to the lad's earnest chatter which served mainly to confuse me. I watched as he gestured, pointing up along the block of tall old buildings, saying something about "mi hermana" -- his sister?
But, it had been my impression he was huérfano, an orphan? He told me yes, that he was, and so were they both; that his work at Chicago Jim's was only for tips and never enough to fully support them, that there were many other boys serving at the cafe same as he, and so wouldn't I like to meet his sister? Ah, so this was to be the use put to my last few remaining pesos--to debauch the poor little body of an 11 year old girl? For that was the truth of the matter as it turned out, after the look in his eye told me he was lying to say she was "13".
Anjel was very sad to hear me say that I now must leave him--and his sadness made me very sad, for he had brought out something in me that would have wanted to be father to him. But that sadness being compounded with the increasing infirmity of my fatigue rose to an intensity nearing nausea which was about to have me puking in the street. I took the boy by the shoulders, hugged his head to my chest, and putting my hand to his cheek, I told him that one day he would be a fine musico, a great singer, and then would he be very happy to be taking good care of his sister and himself.
He continued to protest approaching to tears to see me walking away, and I could not understand why it amounted to so painful a tearing away for me also--over someone I barely knew? But a child alone and uncared for in the world--why would you have to know them at all to have your heart broken for them? Or maybe the child in me that was lost and alone ever so much as that boy, so hated having to lose a companion of the same sad solitude?
After losing sight of the boy in the press of sidewalk traffic and finally turning the corner, I hadn't gone two blocks before I came to a hotel where I was able to get a room for right about a third of my remaining pesos, leaving about forty in my pocket, as I crashed to the bed and went unconscious.
It was well after dark by the time I was awake again, to the gravity of my situation bearing down on me; sitting there with the equivalent of 4 bucks in my pants; there am I, an American Wetback in Mexico without a toothbrush, comb or safety razor to my vanished name. I determined to go out and remedy that situation, get cleaned up before a thought was given to anything else.
As it worked out, the comb and the bag of razors was the best I could do, except I should plan on having toothpaste on tortillas for breakfast on the coming morning. After suffering that cold shower and the vigorous use of my forefinger for a toothbrush, having my shave, I returned to my room, sat down on the bed, lit a Delicado Ovalado and considered my situation. As of that moment, looking across the room upon my wringing wet fuchsia shirt, lemon yellow pants and chartreuse stockings hanging where I had them draped over a curtain rod, there was only one thing I was sure about, and that was the need to get a different pair of slacks.
I took from the bedside table the sack containing my two avocado, tomato and chile tortas, pulling out also one of the four little round limes. I unscrewed the cap from a pint of tequila blanco and poured a finger to the scratchy old rose tinted, ribbed hotel tumbler. I bit the lime in half and squeezed one of the ragged pieces into the glass. It would have been nice to have some sparkling water, but then a toothbrush would have been nice too, and since it's common knowledge that you can't have everything in this world, I decided to be happy in that wisdom.
I took a bite from a torta, and a drink from my glass. By the time the grub was gone and the glass flask of Casca Viejo was about halfway down, there were still two limes left, and I was starting to look on the bright side of things. In the morning I would look for a used clothier and see about making a trade for a more suitable pair of pantalones. You can get a long way on 20 pesos in Mexico, even so far as into a pair of pants for all anyone could say. And that was my view of it as I squeezed another half of lime into the pretty rose glass.
--
