Chapter 12

Table of Contents

Chapter 12

When Michael Gasden arrived back in Cornudo after a circuitous journey home, the first thing he intended to do was fire his grounds keeper slash maintenance man slash car thief slash worthless malingerer Tony Vargas, then chase him off the premises. He was pretty sure Tony was responsible for his afternoon in jail, and in spite of the fact Mike had been granted clemency for his own alleged crime, he could feel no clemency in himself for the alleged crimes of others.

Michael actually wound up spending the night in Tucson, where he put Otis on a plane. Otis kept repeating that his mother was worried, and if he didn't arrive home on time she was liable to slice her wrists and bleed out in the bathtub.

“At least somebody worries about you,” Mike kept reassuring his unlikely friend, and he meant it. He had never spoken meaningless platitudes with such sincerity before, feeling lonelier than ever. Otis helped a little, though not much.

It was impossible to rent a car in Nogales because of the Trump rally, but Mike bought a Ford Explorer selling for 1500 bucks in a gas station parking lot. He hoped the shitty clunker would at least get them to Tucson, where he could ditch it if it broke down. The car made a lot of inexplicable noises and shook badly over 60, but it moved.

The only flight available to San Jose was a late one. Otis looked so scared and vulnerable in the airport that Mike couldn’t bring himself to leave him.

“I never flew before bro," Otis admitted.

The comment stirred Mike from a nap. He was exhausted, more emotionally than physically. "Seriously?"

“Heyward won't let me take an airplane anywhere. He says they make a big carbon football."

Mike thought it futile to tell Otis the real term was carbon footprint.

"Don't tell Heyward," Otis said. He looked worried.

"I won't." Mike drifted off to sleep, where he dreamed he was throwing a black carbon football at Donald Trump's head. He woke up to see people lining up for boarding, with Otis still sitting there clueless.

Mike bounced awake, then scurried over to get the gate attendants to get them to preboard Otis with the handicapped, elderly, and children. At 260 pounds Otis beggared no sympathy, even though Mike had been able to accompany Otis to the gate by claiming handicapped. So Mike stood in line with Otis, resisting the brute's attempts to hold his hand. At last he got his friend on the plane, where he promptly took a nap on a nice lady's shoulder. Luckily the nice lady managed to squeeze a drool towel over her shoulder, or things would have gotten sticky. Getting drooled on at 50,000 feet was a strange new variation of the mile high club.

Completely worn out, Mike checked into a motel that matched the ramshackle Ford Explorer the closest. Being somewhat of a germaphobe Mike did not like cheap motels, but you didn't pull up to the Hyatt in a rusty bucket of bolts like this.

After a restless night atop yellowed, itchy sheets Mike got rolling, or rather rattling down the I-8 west. As he approached what was now home by dint of nowhere else to go, Mike tried to rehearse what he was going to say. Should he use the hardass or diplomatic approach? Yesterday he was so full of righteous fury that hardass would have been easy, but by now his anger had mostly evaporated into the desert air, as anger will in proximity to one's own bed. Now Mike was thinking that hardass would come across as feeble and unconvincing. Maybe the best tactic would be to lay down a polite ultimatum. He tried to compile a list of grievances in his busy head. His Dad had made him memorize the Declaration of Independence when he was a kid, so he used this as his guide. When in the course of human events. We hold these truths to be self evident, he chanted, then modified the text to meet his own needs.

It becomes necessary for one person to modify the political bands which have connected him to another. In other words, no hard feelings, but get the fuck out.

....but when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design... Translated - you designed to leave me stranded when I got arrested and you usurped my truck on more than one occasion, you fat mother fucker.

…The history of the present caretaker of the Gasden Motel is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations.

...He has refused to do any work, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good...When given work, he has utterly neglected to attend to it.

He has screwed Striggys waitresses in my truck repeatedly, imposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of these young ladies.

He has erected a multitude of new shopping lists, and sent hither his appetite to harass our people and eat out their substance.

For transporting us over deserts to be arrested for pretend offenses.-

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. That part was pure hyperbole, but he liked how it sounded, so he kept it.

As he drove along, keeping his hands tight on the steering wheel of a rattle trap that tended to veer out of the lane, Mike completed this statement of circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, then rehearsed through the injuries and usurpations until he thought he had it straight. By the time he pulled off of the freeway he was laughing with psychotic glee. Immediately his eyes shot to his motel, where he saw his own truck parked in front of Tony's room, a sight that sent him seething with rage again. He forgot his carefully constructed list of redresses and thought he would just burst in and bitch slap the son of a bitch.

The clunky Explorer rattled across the gravel lot. The brakes protested with a metallic whine before the jalopy finally skidded to a stop. Mike dismounted and charged toward Tony's door, but then pulled up politely, stopped and knocked.

"Come in," Tony's weary voice entreated.

Mike opened the door, then immediately wished he had not. Tony was sitting shirtless in front of the television, his man boobs sagging pendulously and his belly flab flapping over his underwear, making him look naked. How could he lay his angry hands, furious or not, on such a disagreeable ball of slime?

Tony looked up as if Mike has just popped in from the parking lot, not from across the width of the state after spending a day in jail. He was as shameless about his dishabille as a two year old in a diaper. His loose hanging bearded jowls were stuffed with mayonnaise, which he spooned from a industrial-size jar labeled Kirkland. Around his neck hung what at first glance appeared to be a black, yellow and red striped necklace, but unlike most necklaces it was wriggling.

“Yeah, hey, what's up?" Tony said blandly.

The unsavory spectacle had taken the wind out of Mike's sails. "What the hell is that around your neck?"

"Huh?" Tony looked down at the squirming thing entangled about his collar, and for a moment looked as surprised as Mike. "Oh. That's Florem. She crawled in last night."

"Aren't those things supposed to be poisonous?"

Tony looked upward in contemplation. "Well, let me think." He set the jar of mayonnaise on the dresser and started making balancing movements with his hands, as if physically weighing ideas.

“There’s a coral snake and a King Snake that look a lot alike, and one of them has the most potent venom of any North American snake. The toxin can paralyze your breathing muscles and kill you without antivenin, it’s so bad. I think the dangerous one is the coral snake, or maybe the King Snake." He kept flagging his palms up and down, as if the truth lay there and not between his ears. "There's something I heard about the snake stripes to help remember who the dangerous one is - red on yellow will kill a fellow. Or is it red on yellow, stay mellow? Fuck, I don't remember. I'll look it up later. Why, what's up?"

The snake around Tony's neck, whichever kind it was, curled upward contentedly to lick some mayo off of Tony's finger.

How do you deliver an angry ultimatum to a person sitting there practically naked, with a potentially poisonous reptile dangling about the neck? Mike felt grossly outnumbered. For all he knew, Tony could summon his entire deadly menagerie against him at the snap of his fingers.

But if his carefully crafted manifesto stayed stuck in his head, it was likely to rot and become infectious, perhaps metastasizing to other parts of his being, including his vulnerable soul. He had to be a man and let this out, or risk remaining a cringing bitch the rest of his life.

Just then, a series of agitated yips and howls pierced through the walls, like a siren in Mike's conscience blaring out a warning. The sound did not immediately register with Mike, but Tony reacted instantly, bouncing to his feet before lowering the snake gently to the floor, where it slithered off to find a warm, dark place to hide. Tony threw on a pair of Ninja Turtle pajama bottoms hastily and scampered for the parking lot, with Mike following cautiously.

"Mother fuckers!" Tony roared as he ran shirtless toward the brush at the edge of the lot.

For a man who routinely and purposely treated human beings badly, Tony was very protective of his animal friends. He would tolerate absolutely no insult or injury against Rölf the Coyote by members of that ragged, mangy, degenerate pack of half-feral mutant canines that prowled the prickly fringes of Cornudo. Tony paused only for a moment, to grab a baseball bat he kept by the door for such contingencies, before rushing out barefoot at full speed on bad knees.

Upon reaching the brush, Tony immediately skidded to a stop, then flailed his arms comically to keep from falling face first. His astounded eyes landed on a point of the Earth just beyond the lot.

"Holy shit," he said in an uncharacteristically reverent tone for fecal material.

Tony's completely un-Tony like stance indicated something out of the ordinary out there in the bushes. By the standards of someone who lets venomous creatures forage freely around and upon his body, this something had to be pretty fucking amazing. Realizing this, Mike quickened his pace and caught up.

A tiny boy in ragged clothing sat at the foot of a cluster of weeds. "It's a little guëro," Tony said with the awe of a naturalist who has discovered a new species. The little fellow's hair was golden brown in color, but much lighter than his face and arms, which were smeared with dirt and badly scratched. He was wearing a T-shirt of Dora the Exploradora so unrecognizably filthy it made the iconic children's cartoon heroine look like Jabba the Hut. His blue denim pants were equally ripped and soiled.

"This poor little fucker has been through a lot," Tony said tenderly. The child looked up attentively, as if he had been called.

"Where did he come from?" Mike asked.

"How the fuck should I know?" Tony swept one arm southward. "From out there, obviously. Nobody is coming to this shithole from up north. They only use our shithole as a way station to places less shitty. Don't you know by now we're the unwiped butthole of the country?"

This statement succinctly summarized the conclusions Mike had formed since unwisely choosing to settle here, but right now he was more preoccupied by the abandoned child sitting in the dirt at their feet.

“He doesn't look...well, Mexican," Mike said cautiously. "Do you think they abandoned him at a rest stop on the freeway?"

"You don't have to say Well, Mexican, with me. Just spit it out and if it bothers me we'll duke it out, best man wins, then go have a beer and tell beaner jokes. It’s pretty obvious the kid ain't no Mexican. It's pretty obvious he didn't crawl all the way here from a rest stop. The closest one is miles away. And nobody abandons little güeros like this.”

The little boy was looking down morosely at the furry, lifeless splatter that had once approximated a Chihuahua. He pointed toward it, then began to mumble incomprehensible sounds that seemed too organized to be mere baby talk.

"What's he saying?" Mike asked.

"I don't know. He ain't speaking beaner, that's for sure. I guess he's trying to say something about the dead dog there. I think my coyote saved his life. Those furry fuckers would have eaten him."

The two men stood there with their jaws dropping down to the tumbleweeds. The boy continued to point at the splatter and to insistently repeat the same words. Then he drew some squiggly lines in the dirt that to them looked like childish scrawling.

“Well shit, we better get him inside," Tony said. "He's so dry he’s like a tumbleweed that blew in. Come here, little fucker."

When the little boy saw Tony's outstretched arms, something dormant inside woke up. Although angry apes hold their arms upward to make themselves appear bigger and more threatening, arms stretched downward is a universal invitation for nurturing made by all the primates, including human monkeys. The boy realized instinctively that he was now safe, and reached up with his own arms. As Tony scooped him up the boy started to cry, his tears carving little wadis in the dirt of his face, while at the same time he gestured outward into the desert.

"What's he pointing at?" Asked Mike.

Tony looked over toward where the boy pointed. "I don't know. He's probably worried about those dogs. Let's get the little fucker inside."

“Why do you have to call him little fucker?"

“ I don’t know, it just fits. What would you call him? We'll think of a good name later."

Although it didn't occur to Mike at the time, this concern about an appropriate name was the first indication that the situation could assume a degree of permanence.

Tony followed the boy inside while Mike followed nervously, thinking his flight to freedom in the desert was becoming more like a prison all the time. He had escaped his business in the city to get away from complications, but complications stuck to him like dirty chewing gum to shoes. Now there was a kid in the mix. Mike didn't like kids. They were noisy, asked annoying questions, made a mess and smelled bad. He had to put his foot down. He could not let Tony add a baby to his zoo.

The child was already perched in a chair, drinking thirstily from a bottle of Kirkland water. He was a little tyke, but he gulped it down like a camel and Tony gave him another.

Tony reached for his jar of mayo. "You like mayonnaise, little fucker?" The child grabbed the jar greedily.

"Wait, you can't feed him mayonnaise," Mike protested.

"Why not? Mayonnaise is good for you. It has anti-oxidants. That’s science. Besides, I had the munchies bad and scrounged around, but nothing else to eat."

"Fake fucking science. I'll go to the cafe and get him something. Do you mind if I take my truck?"

"Watch your mouth around the little Fucker," Tony said. He grabbed the truck keys off the dresser. Some kind of beetle crawled over his knuckles. "Get milk," he said. "The little fucker needs milk. And grab me a burger while ...you're there. Hold the mayo. I hate that shit on burgers."

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Photo courtesy of Luther C. Goldman,Courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service, via Wikimedia Commons