A 'Strong Force' Snipe Hunt?

I want to quote from Max Born something which I read just the night before last. It comes just a few pages from the end of his book on Einstein's Relativity in the chapter on E's attempts to devise a Unified Field Theory. Here at the opening of that chapter he says . . .

"We have mentioned that Einstein's law connecting energy and mass E=mc^2 . . . has its most important applications in the domain of elementary particles, nuclei, and electrons. The masses of these represent enormous concentrations of energy in very small regions of space. Hence one should presume that they will produce considerable local curvatures of space and corresponding fields." Max Born. Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Dover 1924, 1962: pp. 369-70

This statement by Born could not be more pertinent to what's been on my mind as he goes on to speak of the disappointment of finding that the equations of GR did not serve to produce any such hoped for solution that is, for gravity to be the force that should account for the "cohesive forces which keep the [nuclear] particles together against the repulsion of the electric charges which they carry . . ."

Just making it, for now short and sweet; a sketch of what those comments have set me to thinking . . .

Born has made it quite clear from that statement what reason would seem to dictate following from the terms of E=mc^2. And yet, when it comes to the more difficult, highly complex equations of GR, such a result is not forthcoming. Now is this a fault of Born's reasoning, of the earlier so elegantly simple equation or is it to be found somewhere in the immense complexity of GR? I suggest the latter, as also I would propose a new view of gravity in relation to magnetism

Consider that when it comes to the theory of the Unified Field, it would be helpful to observe such an hypothetical unity as being in the nature of a spectrum, a continuum with gravity at the low end and electromagnetic force being at the upper. In this way, you would not ask of the color green to be 'at unity' so to speak with a cosmic ray. Rather, you would simply be given to understand that both are part of a single continuum or spectrum.

Given that, as the physicist would turn his mind back to Born's thought about how the immense amount of energy (which at the other side of the equation is mass) in an atomic nucleus should be curving space immensely, then we see from Born that he thinks this because of the proportion of energy to space; immense energy in an incredible tiny area of space. It SO stands to reason! Yes, because if Born was right, the present search for the so-called "Strong" and "Weak" forces would be shown for a highly scientific Snipe Hunt; that all the time, it was gravity, and only gravity, a form of gravity so far down toward the bottom of the spectrum, that GR could not account for it!

This would not be to suggest that GR is "wrong" but that there just may be an equation or two in it that need tweaking. That's all.

Moving on . . .

I tend to eliminate the terminology of "wave packet" which has always struck me as probably a very poor description of what's really there. The "wave" part is just fine, it's the "packet" part that bugs me, as such a term seems more appropriate to the grocery business than to physics, and not an adequate verbal description of what is trying to be seen as one discrete burst (or quantum) of waves and then another.

I am trying to describe a true particle, one that has true mass, and which has for its substance, at its substance nothing except the proof of E=MC^2. Here we see the reverse of the equation in operation: energy creating matter, being at the foundation of matter. We are no longer talking chicken and egg. We know what comes first, if we may take Shrödinger's wavefunction literally. First is energy, wave energy, then matter (or mass).

Now, looking at the atom, I suggest that nuclear wave energy is emitted in quanta, constantly, and when that 'waveburst' comes to amplitude (in the hydrogen atom); there it arrives at the end of its wavelength, and that is the locus commonly called the "electron shell". I do not say "electron" because for this 'starting from scratch' theoretical standpoint, we don't know that's what it is yet. The term 'electron' assumes something strictly of particular nature. We don't know that yet. All we have so far is the wave energy emitted by the nucleons coming to amplitude and an end of wavelength at the locus of the shell to create not yet the electron but the place for it, a pure quantum ring of wave radiation. Now we get to what you have here . . .

The essential point is first to see what has been, in theory, defined, pictured, modeled as an "electron", which here is to be seen as a particle *about to be formed* from wave energy. We do not see this as a stationary state but a dynamic one. The particle is *about to be formed* in the ring of the "electron shell". First it is a quantum of wave energy emitted in bursts from the nucleus. But as it arrives at one wave-length's amplitude, this is the creation of the "electron shell" -- but not yet the particle electron. This is dependent on "the environment" which is filled with other atoms just like this one. Now only by virtue of other atoms with other "electrons about to be formed" can this electron-about-to-be-formed obtain mass, obtain the energy of diffraction, the angular momentum, the spin to create the particle known as an electron, a true mass particle.

Again, to summarize: a true particle is *about to be formed* from quanta of nuclear wave energy coming to amplitude in a ring at the locus that is seen for an "electron shell". It is created there by dynamism of diffraction from three immediately thinkable, constantly available sources, either with light waves which will form into photons at the moment of this diffraction/collision, or secondly it will come of no more than field energy from nearby atoms to create an ion; or thirdly from actual direct diffraction/collision with the quantum burst ring of another electron-to-be, to create a molecule, with one electron shared between the two.

Many are the gaps needing to be filled, and for but one, I will quote from the Shrödinger bio by Moore in which he paraphrases the EPR (Einstein, Podolksy, Rosen) argument . . .

"Electrons and other elementary particles have an intrinsic angular momentum or spin, so that in a magnetic field they act as little magnets that can take only either one of two orientations to the field direction, which may be called + or -- ."

Now keeping that in mind, here is the gap my mind is presently trying to pry open for an answer. When I first studied the basic dynamics of electricity, I recall being quite flummoxed to learn the fact that electrical current flows from negative to positive! I thought, "Shouldn't that be the other way round?" But of course it is not, because in order for a pole to be positive, in order for it to have energy, it has to get it from somewhere, and it gets it from the negative pole. You could say that the power of the positive pole is it's capacity to draw energy from the negative pole.

Now consider the atom. The nucleus is essentially positive. The electron (electron shell, quantum electronic wave ring) is negative. Have we once again been putting the egg before the chicken, the cart before the horse? The horse is what's running round the corral fence of the electron ring. The cart is the nucleus full of all kind of particular cargo. The nucleus is electrically positive and it has to be getting its energy from somewhere, and it gets it from a negative polar source.

We can say that the positive power of the nucleus is its capacity to draw energy from a negative source--and what is that? That is spacetime. What is an atomic nucleus but a little hole in spacetime; a tiny little black hole, a spinning quantum of many vortices like a cluster of tornados that extends first most mightily in its drawing force out into spacetime to the limit, kinetically of its outermost electron shell, but then beyond in potential, in quantum waves of an electromagnetic field, transmitted at such high frequency and velocity that it appears to be stationary, describing discrete lines of magnetic force, which nevertheless are being constantly refreshed like any still image on a widescreen HDTV.

The burst of waves (from each and every nucleon) that appears as the single electron shell of an hydrogen atom; that ring is the place where the energy of the nuclear drawing power is greatest--and that is the fault-line of the nuclear earthquake, it is where the scarp of the atomic mountain pushes up from spacetime, at its amplitude. It appears, as would be seen after the toss of a pebble into any pond, that the ring is moving away from the stone. True! This is the natural wave reaction caused by the action of spacetime being drawn into the nuclear vortex. It is the negative tsunami moving away from the positive quake. It is the negative wave energy of the positive drawing power that is radiating. But is spacetime REALLY being "drawn into" the nucleus?

No. It is curving into the nucleus. Spacetime remains stationary, because it is the Classical stationery Aether Sea. It is stationery as any pond is stationery while the ripples are merely curving its surface. It is not the water that moves in the wave, much as that may appear to be so. No, only the disturbance is moving, translating, transmitting, radiating, oscillating. And every wave, every line of magnetic force is a curvature of spacetime.

As with any earthquake creating a tsunami, the earth has fallen out beneath the water forcing it to curve. So it goes also for atoms in the Aether Sea, formerly so-called, of spacetime. The spacetime earthquake beneath the atom is gravity; it is the gravity we have yet to detect and understand and discover in the equations of GR. This is the gravity that is created, exerted, produced by the extraordinary amount of energy [mass?] in the atomic nucleus, in utterly the tiniest conceivable space.

But we have not accounted for gravity at this level because we have simply not yet thought about the geometry of the atom in a fully relativistic manner such as to conceive it in anything other than our standard conceptions of mass. All our thought and calculations concerning gravity depend on a macrocosmic, macroscopic view of mass; mass at the planetary level, not the subatomic.

It's an error of scale. That's all. It is that plus an error of definition for mass. But what IS mass at the subatomic level? This is a question I continue to ask of the Universe, as I continue also not to be favored with an answer--except to an extent that I am not mathematical enough to understand, which has something to do with the wonders of the Infinitesimal Calculus. For we are surely talking about infinitesimal mass, but enormously infinitesimal mass. These thoughts cause me to propose that there's something not right in the math, something which as yet is not taking account of scale, of range. I see that here in the atomic nucleus we have fallen beneath range of our mathematical and geometric instruments so that GR cannot detect the mass that is there, curving space around the atom and creating an enormous force of gravity we simply as yet cannot conceive or detect.

Keeping it simple . . .

Spacetime has fallen out, curved away beneath and all around the atomic nucleus. Spacetime has been bent inward around the nucleus, and just so sure as Newton would have there to be for every action a reaction, waves flow out in the opposite direction from the implosion.

Great arguments go on constantly about the physics of this with respect to the Kennedy Assassination. They see in the Zapruder film sprays of blood and tissue which some say goes to prove the location of an assassin on the Grassy Knoll. But physicists enter the argument to say, "for every action there is a reaction." The gory explosion that went out the back of the President's head on to the trunk of the limousine is just the way these things happen in the universe.

The implosion goes in, the wave goes out. This is the Copernican revolution of thought that may yet come to nuclear physics to solve its most basic, fundamental controversies. The electron ring is the negative riptide to the positive nuclear storm.

Now by way of futher summary, here is the former text, somewhat edited for better clarity. See if it's easier to read, now, as for every occurrence of the term "drawing power" we read instead "curving power" . . .

In view of all this [Schrodinger's wavefunction] how can one avoid entertaining the hunch that both photons and electrons have two possible states, a particle state and a wave state? Consider that the electron (or what that is in the atomic space called an electron shell) is pure negatively charged energy in a wave state until the instant of diffraction ("collision") with another wave-state electron or photon, at which instant, the electron or photon (or both) go into the particle state; this because only the event of such diffraction or 'collision' can localize, induce spin, and therefore create a particle (or particles) there in that place, at that time as the result.

Just suppose that before such interaction of diffraction, electrons and photons are electromagnetic waves radiating like rings generated in a pond around a tossed pebble; circular in nature they are constantly transmitted from a light source or the nucleus of an atom. These electronic ripples in spacetime would always appear at highest amplitude at a particular distance of wave-length from the nucleus, and there at a discrete quantity of energy. Then as the former wave moves on away from the atom it becomes part and parcel of the electromagnetic field around that atom, as each succeeding wave from the nucleus is replaced by the next, and at such high frequency and velocity it is as if that "electron shell" is a stable, stationary, quantum phenomenon.

But because no atoms are alone in the universe, an 'electron wave' is rarely free from being disturbed, diffracted by another nearby electron wave to produce e.g. the formation of a molecule--or if the diffraction is from a light wave, then the photon is created right there along with the electron to be "absorbed" so to speak, by the atom in just this way for the photoelectric effect.

Or how can the mystery of the two-pinhole diffraction experiment be explained otherwise?

Two Candles

This is a rough draft. A reader will note that certain character names, like the models of certain cars somehow manage to actually morph during course of the narrative, such as for the main character, where the name goes from "Stewart" to "McClelland", and for his ride, from "Ford Escort" to "Ford Fiesta." So, for a final draft it is now being thought that McClelland and Fiesta will do just fine. Other such little oddities might also be noted, such as where it speaks of a place "east of Blue Eye" when in truth, "west" is correct. And in another place, where respecting a bridge, "down river" is announced, instead, "up river" is the more geographically correct.

This has been a "head's up" meant just for the reader to know that such seeming extremes of postmodern license were not being taken just for sake of style, or kitsch, or simply for the fun of watching a river run backward. Magical realism is wonderful and inspiring to a point, but one might prefer not to get completely capricious, let alone malicious about it.

I was gone all of thirty miles down the road before I'd come to realize I'd left my other set of keys at home. Damned if there'd be any way of getting into that house we'd been renovating without doing damage to a window or arousing the suspicion of a nosy passerby or some neighbor I didn't know from the Addams Family. We'd only lately bought the place and had yet to meet anyone around there, none being any nearer than a good 3/10's mile along the highway, either side or across it. And that had been just swell in my book; exactly the kind of seclusion we'd been after--though I was never too sure she'd wanted it so much as I.

It was our first house, so at least she liked that, after being cooped up in that Joplin apartment the entire three years since we got married. I'd been working on the house evenings and weekends going on two months, to make a decent home of it for her, for my little Baby Doll, my pretty Camilla. Where I slowed down to a stop at the outskirts of Baxter Springs, it was but another five miles to the house and my day's work, and now I had to turn around, head back to the city for those miserable little keys, leaving it all once again behind, that sweet, quiet little three prairie acres of ours.

There was an odd scent and a sound of bumping and scrambling as I entered the living room. "Camilla?" I called. In the dimly lit space I paused to listen, but only to the sounds of city traffic. As to the scent, I needed only follow my nose along the corridor that led to the bedroom. The storm candles were out and burning, that rotund scarlet stump of a jasmine scented Christmas candle, and a long white taper that till now had never yet been lit.

Before I could fully grasp what was assaulting my senses with all that musky sweetness, I was startled by the creaking of the bathroom door; I turned to the sound of a flushing toilet. It was my tall and ruggedly handsome neighbor from the same building, Daniel McKee, an often visitor to our home; a friendly acquaintance to my wife, Camilla, and as I'd always supposed, first of all to me. It was not unusual to find this old fishing buddy of mine at times sitting in the kitchen over a cup of coffee with my wife when I'd get home.

"Hey! I thought you were gone to do some work on the new house," he said, that big friendly smile tugging the corners of his mustache. "What's up, Buddy--forget something?" He'd clapped a hand on my shoulder which was soon shrugged off, as I turned to the corridor. "Camilla!" I shouted. "What are these candles burning in here for?"

"They're nice though, ain't they?" said McKee. "Camilla was just showing me, like, you know, the difference between that short fat one, and the tall skinny one, ya know--like the smell?"

Just as I was about to step from the room and head for the kitchen, I heard a sound of bare metal hangers jangling. I came around slow before the big mirror on the dresser there and stared across at the closet. I looked at McKee and watched his eyes get big. It was like I'd pass out if I didn't move, like my heart would jack-hammer a crater in my neck. I took those steps and jerked open the door. In her panties, there stood Camilla, 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 arm 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, Buddy, but it's really not . . . what . . ." He stared open-mouthed, his eyes going to the hatchet that had come to my hand off the top shelf of the closet. I'd been keeping that up there ever since Camilla 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 "Wait a minute!" From beside my thigh, it went backward in an arc, up over head and down to the base of my ever so neighborly neighbor's neck. As I jerked it back out of him, he stood there, right where he'd been, in front of the dresser. I watched him reaching for his neck as he turned to the mirror to assess the damage.

His blood splashed to the dresser, dousing the hand that held him leaning there; the hand now closing to a fist as he reared up almost laughing to say, "You dumb asshole! Just how long you been kidding yourself about this, as if you didn't know?" He was taking aim with that big, bloody fist when the blade came down to his forehead, neatly parting his hair like in that old daguerreotype portrait of my great uncle Noble, the barber and hair tonic salesman; parted in the middle, the way he always kept his, so very debonair with a razor cut and a comb.

Leaving the hatchet embedded right where I'd put it, I took him gently 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 a little more clipped off the front, just say so, Buddy." The hatchet smashed the mirrored glass as he crashed forward to it.

In the living room, I found Camilla standing, now dressed in both her bra and her panties. She stumbled back staring 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 whisper-shouting, "Danny!"

I'd just got to the kitchen sink when I heard Camilla'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 dead man where he'd 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 lover. "Christ!" she hissed, taking 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 deadman's chest 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.
--
JM http://bobbisoxsnatchers.blogspot.com

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 did, I shoved it into my shirt pocket and put my Ford F-150 into gear, but all the while I was accusing myself for a prime fool, leaving that remaining $11,500 or so to Camilla. Then, just before taking the turn out into the street, it dawned on me 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. Stewart, 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/Kansas 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.
--
JM


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.
--
JP


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 east 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.
--
JM

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 Escort 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 Escort, 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.
--
JM http://whosenose.blogspot.com

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?"

--
JM http://bobbisoxsnatchers.blogspot.com


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."
--

"Don't you think that if you turned yourself in, you might get a fair shake?"

"It's a big chance to take."

"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. The best I can do is try to convince you to turn yourself in, and to have a little faith in the mercy of God, that 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?"
--
JM

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 sang it:

"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."
--
JM


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."
--
JM

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 down 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 to Mexico, the sidewalk beneath my boots went 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.
--
JM

TWO PRETTY NINOS

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 your niños are such little darlings." 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.
--
JM


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.
--
JM

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.
--
JM


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. "Give it out," he said, handing my billfold back to me.

"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. "Put it there!"

When it was all laid out in three stacks, he looked at that; then he looked at me and said, "Maybe you got more?" He shoved the barrel of his pistola right 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, right on up to my nose and he said, "Come out with them. All the dollars you got in there."

And that's what he got, all the dollars I had, eight thousand, four hundred and six, to be exact; in stacks of hundreds, twenties and the chump change. He kicked the coral-colored chair at me, and said, "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, I'd have thought. He turned his light to my eyes. "Okay, Ése, remember what you say, over in la mercado; you can pay anything I like?"

"Within reason!"

"Reason?" He smiled. "We don't neeeeed no steenking reason! 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 thousand dollar stacks. He stuffed that in his pocket 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, now? I got 4 more here."

"Alright," I said, giving it some thought. "You could take those four and shove them right 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!" motioning to me. 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 damn philanthropist is what you are, Suarez."

"Hey!" He jammed my chest with the gun. "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. 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." He pushed the chair over to the Indio and said, "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, and how--"

"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 Mescalito to come and turn you into a man who likes the muchachas instead of the muchachos?"

I was just about to call him the dirty, lying, slanderous bastard he was, when suddenly I heard myself saying, "Si! Tell him this is so, and what's more, I would like to know what to do with the peyote, how to take it."

"You stick it up su culo, like you tol' me, Gringo!"

"Man, he doesn't even know you robbed me!"

"You got it. But you tell him, I 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?"

"Nahuatl, and a little Spanish. Now he say to you that today is your Day of the Dead. And are you really, really ready to eat the meat of the Dead, so that you may go and speak with the Dead?"

"Is that what he said?"

"This is what he asks from you, Gringito."
--

A Lady

She was a lady of the kind they don't make anymore,
and of all women the great writer had known,
the bravest he said was Marty Gellhorn,
his blonde paramour of the Spanish Civil War.


So had he said it and he would say it again,
of his stately Bryn Mawr journalist friend,
a correspondent on the continent reporting at the scene
of the horrors then in fashion, for Paris Vogue,
and free-lancing on the side for Colliers magazine.

So had he said it and he could say it again,
that braver was she than most of the men,
bound away with the Navy for a war-torn shore;
to land on D-Day with the Army and Marine Corps.
Such kind of pluck would be too hard to find,
For a woman reporter with her press pass denied.



Left to book passage on a dynamite ship;
in trappings of a Red Cross medic, equipped,
she came ashore at Normandy bearing a stretcher,
packing bandages instead of her trusty pad and pen,
and that necessary pass now borne as a feather,
in her husband's hat band.

Who indeed of all men would be so brave as to take
the nerve to step into such a daring dame's place,
as Collier's correspondent to fill that tough post,
lest by her works any woman should boast;
None other than he, her own husband, of course!

Oh, so courageous a man it would take to do that,
a hero all alone in a class of his own,
a man braver than most of the men he'd known,
if not bravest above all in his own esteem;
a sentiment well known to his ex-wife Pauline,
who so loved to tell of how Ernie had whined,
to hear he'd been called 'yellow'
by his old pal, Gertrude Stein.

Patricia

If they don't play Prez Prado
at my funeral,
and don't dance round my casket,
the Mambo,
strewing flowers en route to my grave
from their baskets all the way . . .

If they don't squirt red wine
from skins full to bursting,
singing their gladness,
song for song,
that I'm gone,
I'll haunt them to death,
with my white sheet on,
to their last living breath,
If they don't play Prez Prado,
at my funeral.

And when I've been planted
for so long as it takes,
to rate a handful of posies,
come the Thirtieth of May,
let them do me the honor
of a sooner holiday,
to make me a Fool
for their love,
on April's first day,
or I'll burst through the sod
with my lawnmower running,
and ride 'em all down
till the music is playing
a hot Latin eulogy of song
to your Sweet Life,
from the day of my funeral on.
Cha Cha Cha!

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