María José at Cowboy Jamboree

My story "María José" now out in COWBOY JAMBOREE's new themed anthology, I Feel Just Like A Dogwood Tree, writing inspired by Terry Allen's alt-country album Juarez.

[Note: loyal readers may recognize that this story has appeared previously, and is even on this my very blog]

 

Rod Stewart in Mexico

My short story "Rod Stewart in Mexico" in the print issue 41.1 of LOUISIANA LITERATURE. Just got the two free copies!

http://www.louisianaliterature.org/

I guess you can order issues through their Submittable page?
https://louisianaliterature.submittable.com/submit

 

María José—short fiction

"María José" appeared in SOL LITERARY JOURNAL back in 2011, and was chosen for their 'Best of' anthology in 2012. You can buy the anthology here. Note: The SOL website no longer exists.

"María José" is also part of my novel MASKED MAN, the first 20 pages of which you can read here. 

Who am I? You’re just now asking me? Ok, I’ll tell you my story, though you won’t understand me. I’m from Guadalajara, I was born there. My father worked in a panadería, a bread store, and mother worked in a tortillería, where tortillas are made. The real kind that smell good and you can eat them warm and fresh right from the over. My parents had three children. Me, my little sister Marta, and my little brother Arturo. Bueno, when I was twelve, my father left. He was sleeping with another woman and my mother found out. She didn’t tell him to leave, just got angry and called him stupid and a hijo puta, because he was, and then he left with the other girl. She was closer to my age than my mother’s, which is strange. They went to Mexico DF and we never heard from him again. In Mexico, a man doesn’t have to take care of the wife if he leaves. Yes, there are laws but they don’t matter.

You want to know how I learned to shoot a gun? We stayed with my Tío Octavio and his family a lot. The brother of my father. My mother had to take another job. His house was out in the country and he used to be a mili, a soldado, and he had guns. He taught all of us to fire guns, even us girls, because he said one day the people would rise and take back the country from los ricos. And also he said that mexican girls should know how to defend themselves. From who? From mexican men. And he was right.

As soon as I was old enough I quit school and started working at the tortillería, but even then there wasn’t enough lana, enough dinero. Tío Octavio paid for our house. Then his wife, Tía Linda, found out he was sleeping with my mother. Ay ay ay, she even came to the tortillería to scratch out my mother’s eyes!

After that, Tío Octavio never talked to us again and never gave us any more money and my mother had to sell the house. We had no family there, her parents had died before. She had a friend in Puerto Vallarta who could get her a job working at a hotel, she couldn’t take all of us. Or bueno, sí, she could have, but she had another plan. We have family in Phoenix. She wanted to send my sister and me, and later my brother when he got older, to Phoenix, where we could make a lot more money.

The problem was that we didn’t have enough money to get my sister and me to America. We could barely get to Santa Teresa by bus. There are men, even in Guadalajara, who will take people to America, but the majority of them are narcos, los narcotraficantes, the ones who sell drugs, and my mother didn’t want nothing to do with them.

But my mom’s plan was for us to go to Santa Teresa and work at one of the maquiladoras and make enough money to pay a coyote to get us across the border. My mother knew someone who worked here, and called her, one time only, and told her that we were coming. Then she put us on the bus. I just turned sixteen.

When we arrived in Santa Teresa, my mother’s friend wasn’t there. We called the phone number but the person we talked to said she didn’t live there no more and she didn’t know where she went.

In Santa Teresa, there are men who wait at the bus station, looking for girls to work in the maquiladoras. I didn’t know what to do. We didn’t even have a place to stay! A man said he could get us work, but that there was what he called a hiring fee, which was just a bribe. I told him we didn’t have no money and he said, That’s ok, we’ll take it out of your check. So I said yes. What was I supposed to do? And the man took us to an apartment building filled with other girls working at the maquiladoras and found us a room to stay and said he would take the rent out of our check too. I said ok because I’m stupid. But I was only sixteen and had to take care of my sister, you know? We didn’t have almost no money. The guy, he had us sign papers, and told us where to go to work. Then he asked me if we needed money for food. I thought he would just take that out of our checks too, but no, He said he’s give me some if I sucked him! He said it right in front of my sister! Hijo de puta! Of course I said no. He just shrugged like it was no big deal and left and I sat and cried, and my sister cried and there we were, we didn’t know anybody, crying and holding each other.

Our room was the size of closet and we shared a bathroom down the hall. But it was ours, and we started work the next day.

The other girls were nice. They were from all over Mexico. All of us doing the same thing, except some wanted to go to America and some just came because they thought they could make enough right there. I thought so too, until saw our first checks! Thieves! Ladrones! All of them!

What did we do? We sowed shirts. This shirt I’m wearing? My maquiladora probably made it!

Here’s what they do. They give you a job on first shift, during the day. The maquiladoras are filled with girls. Some guys, but mostly girls. The men are the supervisors, of course. Los jefes. But then there are the jefes of the jefes, the men who come in suits, they walk around, look at everything. They go in the office, they come out of the office. They drive around in their fancy trucks, theirs SUVs, watching, looking. When they see a girl they like, they take her. They ask her jefe, Who’s that? What’s her name? Then they wait outside for the girl, and tell her to get in. This happens a lot. And the girls get in. Why? Because the men have money. The men tell them they’ll take them out, to restaurantes and clubs. To dance and drink. Except, sometimes the girls don’t come back. I didn’t learn this until later.

Mostly it’s just guys. Regular guys. Meaning mexican guys, so cuidado anyways, but yes, girls go out and nothing happens. They drink. They dance. They fuck. The girls come back crying. Or not. They come back smiling. Or not. They get pregnant and have abortions. Or not.

The jefes of the jefes, they want a girl, here’s what they do. They tell the little jefes to change a girl’s schedule. Suddenly she’s not working the day shift any more. Now she’s working the night shift. Now the buses aren’t running. Now there’s not people in the streets. Now she has to maybe walk home in the dark. Now she’s a little scared. Then there’s a rich guy in a fancy SUV asking if she needs a ride. He and his friends will give her a ride. And why doesn’t she ask one of her friends if she wants to come along too. That’s another way. They get one girl, who will invite other girls. Not her friends. One time I had a girl that I didn’t know ask me if I wanted to go out dancing that night. She wasn’t even smiling. She looked scared and desperate and had a bruise on the side of her face. When I said no, she looked like she was going to cry.

So I start to learn what’s going on. Our friends, the other girls, start to talk, tell each other what we heard. Help each other survive. Tell each other about when a girl is found out in the desert, dead. Killed. And more than killed. Tortured. Raped. And then one of the girls was someone I knew. Tatiana. She lived in our building. One day she never came home. Nobody knew what happened to her. We thought she just left. Some people do that, just leave and go home. But then two weeks later we knew what happened to her. Two boys found her out in the desert. It was on the news, but you know what? No police ever came to our buildings to talk to us. No police ever came to our maquiladora. They didn’t ask us anything. Only because her family came to Santa Teresa and asked did they know anything.

And then my sister got moved to night shift. I told her no, don’t do it, but she said it was ok, she would always go with friends, and that it would be better for us to work different shifts so that we weren’t crowding each other in the room all the time. And I said ok, está bien, because you know? That sounded good. I was tired of living in the building and tired of being with my sister all the time. I was egoísta and said, está bien. And then after a week, just one week, she didn’t come home. I knew, but I had to ask anyways. I found some of the girls she was friends with, the ones she said she would always come home with. And you know what they told me? That she got in the car with a man. She said it was ok, she knew him. And then she never came home.

And so...And so I had to be the one to call my mother and tell her. I had to be the one to listen to my mother cry over the phone. I had to be the one to listen to my mother ask why I didn’t take care of her. I had to be the one to listen to my mother get angry with me, yell at me, for letting my sister get killed. It was my fault.

I never went back to the maquiladora. I just never went back inside. But yes, I did go back once, to look for the car. I waited outside for two days looking for a car that fit the description of what my sister’s friends described. And then it appeared. It was parked out front, down the street from the entrance, where they could watch all the girls leaving. There were two men inside. I walked to it and pounded on the window. The driver, he rolled down his window and I started yelling, Where’s my sister! Where’s my sister!

And the man asked me, Who’s your sister, and I said her name and without even thinking about it he said, I don’t know her. Then the hijo puta asked me if I wanted to get in the car so we could go look for her. And they laughed. So I kept yelling, calling them names, insulting them.

Then the driver, he pulled out a pistol and pointed it right at my face and called me a puta and told me to shut up. The other guy kept laughing and I hated them both. The driver said that my sister was a puta and that she got what she deserved and that I was a puta and that I would get what I deserved. Then he told me he would come find me some night and show me where my sister was. And he asked me if anyone would care if he shot me right there in the street.

What could I do? I was so angry, but I backed away. I thought if I turned around he would shoot me in the back, so I backed away, down the sidewalk, and when they stopped looking at me I turned around and started walking.

So what does a girl do to earn enough money to pay a coyote if she doesn’t work at a maquiladora? What does she do when there are thousands of other girls the same age who are coming to Santa Teresa to do the same thing? Well, I’ll tell you. She can’t work at a restaurant and even make enough to survive. Or a supermercado. So, she can become a puta, just like that man said. They call us putas and then make it so that’s all we can do if we don’t want to die. So I become a dancer, because being a dancer is the least bad way of being a puta.

It’s not so bad. You get used to it. You separate yourself from it. You separate yourself from your body. You act they way you know you’ll get the most money. And men don’t care. They don’t care if you are pretending. I don’t know if that’s because they’re stupid or because that’s they way they really want girls to act. Which is stupid also. So either way men are stupid. Or that’s how it is in Mexico.

In America men must not be like that. Both of you are caballeros. That’s a joke. You are caballeros, but you are also crazy. That’s ok, está bien. I’m crazy too.

So why did that pendejo hate me so much? Well, because when I left the maquiladora, I just left. I didn’t go back to my apartment. There wasn’t anything there anyway, just clothes. I left. Vanished. Everyone probably thought I was another dead girl they’d never see again. That’s what I wanted. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that place or those people.

But there was another reason. Before I started saving my money to pay a coyote, I started saving my money to buy a gun. And dancing at El Torre gave me plenty of chances to buy one. I never did some things, like drogas, neither sell them or do them, or prostitue myself like most girls do. Never. But I did buy a gun. I made sure it was from a guy who wasn’t a regular.

And then I went back to the maquiladora and waited for that car. Three days waiting. Then it was there. I walked by it to see who was inside, and it was the same two men. I would never forget them. They didn’t even recognize me the first time I went by. They just whistled and asked me if I needed a ride. I walked past them. I was scared. I wasn’t sure if I would do it. Then I heard one of them laugh and call me a puta. That did it. I walked down the street and back, and when I got to the car I walked up, raised the gun and shot the driver twice. Then before the other guy could get out his gun I shot him twice. Then I kept shooting until the gun was empty and I left.

It was easy to disappear. People saw me do it, but I just walked away and no one said anything. I walked a couple blocks, took a bus into the city and got off after a couple blocks and took another bus. No one knew where I was, or where I lived. Just another girl. Just another puta. But I was a ghost, come back from the dead for vengeance.

So now you know why I want to go to America. Not because of my mother, not because it’s what she wants, but for me. To leave. To leave Mexico forever and never come back and all the mexican men can go to hell and die.

LA LUCHA: The Story of Lucha Castro and Human Rights in Mexico

My review of LA LUCHA: The Story of Lucha Castro and Human Rights in Mexico, now up at COMICS BULLETIN. Click on pic to go:

PERDIDO IN SANTA FE—novel excerpt

First 18 pages of my (as yet unpublished) novel PERDIDO IN SANTA FE:

 

I have no idea what I’m doing with my life after this last fire season, so I’ve headed down to Mexico again, Land of the Lost, taking cheap pollero buses, with nothing but what I can carry in my backpack. No real destination, except maybe to head south where it’s warm, but on the way I’ve ended up in Santa Fe, an old mining town up in the mountains, sitting in a restaurant called La Vaquera, with the most beautiful waitresses in the world, looking through the free weekly English newsletter for expatriates, El Gringo Seminal, where I come across an announcement for a seven day meditation retreat starting tomorrow, Sunday, at a Zen Center there. All of the books on Buddhism I read and left behind back in college and I’d never tried meditation. And, I don’t actually feel like another bus ride having to watch dubbed over Rambo movies. And I'm tired. I need a rest. So, why not?

I ask my waitress where ‘el templo budista’ is but she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Ditto with ‘El Centro De Zen.’ Fortunately, another customer, a fellow gringo sitting at a nearby table, hears and helps me out. Turns out the Zen Center isn’t that far, north up the canyon in the residential neighborhood. I grab my big backpack and follow the map the guy draws me, the paved roads twisting and turning to dirt, most of the buildings in that area adobe-looking, or maybe faux adobe, with coyote fences ringing the yards.

The road runs midway along one side of the canyon and loops around to the other side farther up, but I don’t get that far. The Center is on the down hill side of the road, towards the arroyo running down the center of the canyon, part of a compound of buildings in an open area, less trees and more buckhorn cactus. One two-story adobe house right near the road actually looks like somebody lives there, then a bigger, wider, one-story adobe ranch house off to the side and down hill a little, and furthest downhill, a bigger more imposing building, with a bell tower on top. Cars in the parking lot going from brand new SUVs to clunkers, most with American plates. I follow some people on a rock path back up to the second building with a long table set outside. A man and woman in black robes sit behind it, stacks of papers laying in front of them. The man’s head is shaved, but the woman’s isn’t, so I’m not sure what she is, a monk or pseudo monk. He seems Mexican, but speaks near perfect English. She’s americana all the way. Both very friendly. I ask about the retreat and whether there’s still time to sign up. The man, his nametag says Roberto, explains that this is more of an intermediate-level retreat. —There won’t be a lot of instruction on basics. Have you meditated before?

I hesitate, then fib. —A little. I think I can handle it. Please? I have money.

He smiles. —It’s not a question of money, but ok.

I give them what little information I have and pay cash in pesos and he shows me an overview map of the building and where I’ll be sleeping.

I walk into the building, into an inner courtyard, open to the sky, with a fountain and tiled floor and benches against each of the four walls, plus a tree growing in one corner that shades the area a little, though its roots seem to be pushing up some of the floor tiles. Doors line every wall of the courtyard, two each to my right and left, but the big one straight ahead goes into the zendo itself, mats and zafu meditation pillows inside. I look inside one of the open doors to my right. Two men, both older than me, one in his forties, the other maybe in his fifties, unpacking their things. The room small and spare, with a bed and three cots set up in a row. The older guy has claimed the bed and the other is putting his stuff out on one of the cots. They both turn when I poked my head in and, without saying anything, stand and bow, placing their palms together, smiling. I bow back and leave and go back outside. I’m not too keen on sharing a sleeping space with three other dudes for that whole time, knowing how that goes from being on a hotshot crew: the whole crew laying in sleeping bags at night in the woods somewhere, exhausted, but kept awake by someone snoring. Seems to defeat the purpose of meditation by cramming that many folks into one space. Beyond the newer building there’s an open field. Or, a fairly open field, with cactii and some brush and long grass. But a good acre down to the arroyo edge. I go back to Roberto and ask if I could possibly just throw up my tent up and sleep out there for the whole session. He looks surprised, considers it, then shrugs and laughs. —Sure, why not? Go ahead!

Sweet. A little path, not really walked on a lot, leads right by a relatively flat clear area big enough for the tent between two small brushy trees. I flip it out and assemble everything, just a little one-person deal, maybe one and a half in a pinch. I put up the rain fly, not so much because it seems like it’s going to rain, but because the nights can get chilly at this elevation and another layer will help hold the heat in. I have no idea what else I’ll need. I have a bunch of clothes, some toiletries, plus a flashlight and a notebook, even though Roberto said we shouldn’t do anything like that, writing or reading books either, when on retreat.

More people have been checking in. I’m not exactly sure where they’re all going to fit, but maybe some of them are friends dropping off friends. The retreat doesn’t start officially until that next morning, early (four-thirty!), and after that, we aren’t supposed to leave, even go to the cars. It’s still late afternoon, and there’s no introductory speech tonight or anything, so after checking with Roberto, I walk back into town, which feels great without my backpack, for one last big Mexican dinner with green chili, resisting the urge to see a movie, knowing I should just get back and try to go to bed early, even though by then I’m actually kind of nervous, which seems odd. Getting nervous about sitting? What could be easier than that?

When I get back to the temple, it’s already dusk. A couple of people talking quietly next to their cars, lights on in all the buildings, a few shadows walking around the grounds. I walk back out to the tent. The air already cool, I’m glad I brought my firefighting hoodie, since I’m going to need it in the morning, plus it makes a good pillow. The stars coming out, the sky dark behind them. From here I can also look south down-canyon at part of the town and houses and car lights. Quiet.

With the rain fly unzipped and the front flap tied off, I’ll still be able to look up at the stars, figuring if the weather really gets cold I can close it again, especially since I’m using my super warm sleeping bag. I just don’t want to mess around and find out in the middle of the night that I don’t have enough covering. Except that, basically I’ll be getting up in the middle of the night anyways. Though, as a wildland firefighter, I’m not unused to getting up early, nor to sleeping in tents. In fact, a tent is a luxury! Many was the time that me and my crew dragged ourselves out to some clear spot near fire camp and crash out in just our sleeping bags. No time for tents, since we’d be packing up the next morning and we never knew if we’d back to the same spot.

Plus I do a lot of camping and backpacking in my free time too. Fire season tends to last about five months, then most of us, the seasonal employees, get laid off “due to lack of work” at which point most guys went directly to other jobs, which has always seemed odd to me. After working basically more than 80 hours weeks, with almost no days off, why would anyone want to keep working? Me, I sign up for unemployment and head off for other adventures—camping, backpacking, and/or travel, to Mexico and/or some other country, though Mexico is the cheapest.

I’ve mostly worked on hotshot crews, twenty-person hand crews that do the heavy grunt work on bigger fires. We’re the ones that dig line in extreme conditions, on big and/or remote fires, ready at a moment’s notice to travel anywhere in the American west, wherever there are fires, from the Sonora desert, to California redwoods, even to the black spruce forests up in Alaska a couple times. I didn’t mean to even work so long at the job, not something I planned on doing. When I graduated from college with a philosophy degree, which is about as useful as basket weaving, less even, I had no idea what I wanted to do, or could do, or should do, which seems to be a recurring theme for me, so I bought a backpack and headed west, ending up in Arizona on a trail crew for a National Forest, where I got the firefighting classes I needed and suddenly I was fighting fires! Crazy! Back in Michigan I didn’t even know this job existed. Firefighters, for me, were those dudes in the big red engines. This was way different: there are still engines, but they’re green, and small enough to access dirt roads in forests and deserts. But hotshots hike into remote fires where some engines can’t go, who ‘digging line’ around fires, cutting out any vegetation with chainsaws and digging tool like pulaskis and chingaderas, sometimes right next to open flames. And once the fires are contained, we’ll stay on to ‘mop up,’ make sure the fires are out.

I like the physicalness of the job, working with my hands, the complete opposite of what I did in college, which was to sit and think, or pretend I was thinking. Plus, travel: I’d never left Michigan. From Arizona, I got on a California crew for a couple seasons, then a crew from Montana, then back down to Arizona. I jumped around because, however much I like travel and work and being on fires, I generally can not stand the people in charge. Fire knowledge does not transfer over to people skills, and since there are so many redneck type guys, and so few permanent positions on these crews, competition is fierce, and uppity college boys are not welcome. On each crew there have always a few good guys, whose company I enjoy, but they never last, generally getting out of fire and going on to other jobs where their skills were better appreciated, which is maybe what I should have done, but I like having my winters off too much. I just kept saying, well, one more year then maybe I’ll decide what to do with my life and grow up or something. Six years later, I found myself with a lot of experience, but not very far up the food chain. I never expected to have firefighting as a career, and, as I got older, taking orders from incompetent people became harder and harder, especially when it involved safety. I started to have too many incidents where I was being put in dangerous situations, with the crew half dead from fatigue, but refusing to admit they might not be up to the job. That plus having coworkers, and supervisors, embarrass themselves, and me, and our crew, with drunken binges on our off hours. Living 24/7 with people I didn’t even respect began to get tiring. Plus, the woman factor. As in, not a lot of them. Some crews had none at all, though a couple had one or two, which is where I met Maya last summer. Leaving me where? In my thirties, with a philosophy degree and no real marketable skills. I could talk about Existentialism or dig dirt. Not that I want to work in an office, but neither do I just want to go into landscaping.

domingo

I don't sleep well. New place, new sounds, new wind and coyote howls and occasional cars driving by on either side of the canyon. I dream I’m sleeping in the desert and being woken up by a bell and when I realize there really is a bell tinging, and that I’m awake in a strange place in the dark and I panic, wondering how long it’s been going. Am I late?! I throw on my hoodie and jeans and unzip the tent. Cold air rushes in and I twist around and stick my feet out, slipping on my moccasins and standing up. Cold cold cold! A dim light off to the east on the horizon, or maybe it’s my imagination, but still basically dark, so I grab my little Mag-Lite and make my way up to the temple, walking fast, still kind of groggy, hoping I don’t run into a cactus.

The grounds quiet except for the bell, now ringing frantically, which I hope isn’t just for my benefit. Roberto is the ringer, standing outside the main doors into the ranch house. In one hand he holds a metal ‘stick’ which he hits the bell with. His other hand, his left, he keeps raised and flat, palm to the right, in the prayer position, except without the other hand. Maybe to clap with? He sees me and stops ringing abruptly and bows, face expressionless. I put my hands together and bow back as I walk by, though I can’t help smiling and have to resist the urge to tell him buenos días.

I pass through the main door and hallway, through the courtyard, and through the open doors of the actual temple area. Everyone, the other meditator folks, are already inside, sitting on the zafus. Eep! I kick off my moccasins and go inside, completely forgetting, or at that point not even really knowing, to bow, though I stand a second, looking around trying to find an open pillow and mat. The room dark, the electric lights off, but with some candles on the altar the far side of the room lit. Incense fills the air and I almost sneeze.

People sit against the wall running around the L shaped room, going up to either side of an altar on the far side, with a huge metal statue on in, though it doesn’t seem to be the Buddha: It? She? Are those breasts? She’s certainly not fat, no Buddha belly there. I see an open zafu and force myself to walk slowly over to it and sit down. Once again I blow proper etiquette by not bowing to it, nor to the rest of the room, which I soon learn from some people who come in after me. Oops. Well, at least I wasn’t last!

Roberto comes in preceding a person who has to be the ‘roshi.’ She is also wearing a black robe, with a shaved head and glasses, holding her hands flat together in front of her face, elbows sticking up and straight out to the side. Roberto closes the door behind her, and follows her straight through the room to the altar, where they both kneel and bow and make three what I guess one would call prostrations: Kneeling, bowing, placing their foreheads on the floor then back up again. They stand and walk to the side of the altar to two empty spaces and first both bow to their spaces, turn, and then bow to the room. Everyone, and me a second later, bows back. They sit down cross-legged, and the roshi takes off her glasses and lays them next to her right knee on the mat. She opens her eyes and stares right at me and I realize I should have had my eyes closed by then, so I do, trying to adjust myself on my zafu without making too much noise, which is basically impossible since there is no other noise at that point. I’m making a terrible first impression.

BONG!

My eyes shoot open and I look up front. Roberto has taken a stick and hit a huge metal bowl sitting next to him, which I’d thought was only decorative. It continues to vibrate, the vibrations feeling like they’re in my bones and skull. I try to close my eyes again but then BONG! he hits it again, vibrating my head.

BONG!

Quiet. Or, faint breathing. Faint rustling of clothing. A muffled cough. A yawn. I sit on the zafu, just my butt on it, legs crossed in front of me, right knee and most of my left on the mat, making kind of a three point contact, though the left knee isn’t as easy: I don’t know where to put my right foot, so kind of tuck it under my left leg, which later gets uncomfortable. If I were a badass, I would pull my feet up onto the opposite thigh in a super full lotus cross-legged position, but I’m not feeling like a human pretzel. I’m sure everyone else is probably lotusing up, and silently sneering at my pathetic attempt. The shame!

And we sit.

And we sit.

I’m starting to get an inkling of what I’ve gotten myself into. Wow. I’m squirming already, trying to stay comfortable, my butt getting sore. More than once I find myself slouching, straightening my back, then a minute later back to slouching. I don’t know what to do with my hands. Putting them on my knees seems kind of pretentious somehow, not sure why. Just too Indian guru-ish maybe, so I keep them in my lap, one on top of the other, which I see others have done. Yes, I sneak looks. I can’t keep my eyes closed! I feel the room getting lighter, so kind of raise my eyelids slightly to check out the windows, and then can’t help checking out the other people, which actually makes me feel a little better, since I can see that no, nobody is in full lotus, maybe not even Roberto and the roshi, though it’s hard to tell since their big baggy robes. Also, there are other slouchers, and other sneakers of looks, we make eye contact quickly.

Ding! Roberto holds a small bell, tapping it with a small stick. Everyone raises their hands together, bows, and starts to get up. I follow, one step behind everybody. Once standing, we turn and bend over, wiping the mats. Of what I’m not sure, since mine is spotless, almost new I think. We turn back around, facing out to the room, hands in prayer position at our chests. Roberto takes out two flat sticks and slaps them together. Tack! He brings them together. We turn to our left, facing the person now in front of us. Tack! Nothing seems to happen. I sneak a look around. What’s going on? Oh: The person in front of me takes a very slooooowww step, seeming to almost stop after she has extended her foot. I imitate her and take a slow step of my own. She slooowwwly takes another one. I sloooowwwly follow.

Gradually, we circumnavigate the whole room. Which feels good actually. A good break for my butt and tail bone. I flex my leg muscles as I go, giving them as much exercise as possible, though I’m not sure if that’s legal. Feels like forever, but can’t be more than ten minutes. Time is flowing weird. Or, that is, I have no idea how fast time is flowing. Light coming bright through the windows, but that could make it seven, or eight, or noon. Speaking of that, my stomach grumbles, and I’m not the only one.

Tack!

Everyone speeds up, hauling Zen ass back to our zafus, and I’m glad the woman I was following recognizes hers, I might’ve walked right by, they all look the same. We stop, turn and face the room. Roberto dings the small bell. We bow, and turn and sit back down, adjusting our legs and butts.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

We sit.

And we sit.

For how relatively still my body is, my mind is racing, from wondering what’s going on in the room, to wondering if I’ve made a bad impression, to thinking about Fire, about ex-girlfriends, about Maya, about whether I’d remembered to zip up my tent before I left and if some buggy critters will get in, and if we are ever going to fucking eat, and what kind of food it will be (please God not oatmeal! Make it something of substance, not gruel!) and I try to calm myself down, to breathe slow, but that doesn’t seem to stop the thoughts at all, just gives me one more thing to think about.

Ding! Time to get up, stand up, and turn to the left for another walkabout, and at the balls out section, I almost run into the poor woman in front of me when we get back to our spots. Jesus, what time is it? Is it lunch time yet? I’m fucking thirsty too!

We sit back down, and sit some more. Holy Mother of God do we sit. And this is the first day! The first morning!

The roshi leaves as the rest of us return to sitting. She rings a bell in another room, I think next to this one. Someone bows, gets up, and leaves the zendo. Silence for a few minutes. I kind of forget until the bell rings again, and another person bows and stands, leaving as the first comes back in. This repeats throughout the session, and it’s actually not as distracting as I first think. The bell kind of serving as a signal to return and focus, drawing me back from my wandering thoughts.

More thinking. There’s just nothing else to do. About Santa Fe, and green chilies on a huge veggie burrito, about work again, and doubting myself: Maybe I shouldn’t quit? But no, yes, I should. Enough. Argh, don’t want to think about work again, but it won’t stop. Because in addition to work, there’s Maya, girlfriend and friend on my last hotshot crew, someone to talk to, vent to, have sex with. Someone who I thought might have wanted to transition into real life with me, maybe both of us leave Fire behind and try living together, until I found out she’d been sleeping with Eight Ball, her squad boss, all summer too. Found out. Meaning, walked into her trailer after the whole crew had gone out drinking, and found the two of them spooned together in her bed. So, yeah.

Or running, I haven’t run in a few days. A whole week’s going to be rough. Or my sore butt. Or Michigan, must be getting cold back there by now. Snow? Not yet? Why am I doing this? I have nothing to prove. I could leave. I could take off, just pick up my tent and go get a taco.

Creeeeaaaak, the door opens. I look up. Or, I open my eyes. I’m basically facing it, and there were people standing there, holding bowls of food. Could it be? The breaking of fast?

BONG!

We put our hands up in prayer position and together and bow, and stand. Yes! With a clack of the sticks, we turn to the left and walk out to the courtyard single file, going into a side room where bundles, bowls wrapped in cloth, line a table, with our names on a piece of paper in front of them. We each grab ours on the way by, cupping the bundle in both hands and holding it chest high, circling back out another door into the courtyard and back into the meditation hall. A ring of the small bell and we sit. I watch my neighbors: We untie the cloth, spreading it out in a big rectangle. Three bowls, in three sizes, lined up, big so small, left to right, on the cloth. In front we place, carefully and amazingly precisely, a pair of chopsticks, a wooden spoon, and a small plastic spatula. Another smaller cloth goes on our laps, as a napkin.

When everyone has their bowls lined up, the roshi recites some words about the importance of the food, kind of a call and response, with us meditators saying some words back. I try to mumble along as best I can. The people sitting next to the two groups of food dishes serve themselves, scooping out portions with a ladle. One with granola, one with some strawberries, and jugs of milk and apple juice. Anything would be good by now, but this is definitely good, the strawberries especially. And fortunately I don’t have to demonstrate how much I don’t know how to use chopsticks—we eat everything with the spoon. Well, actually, some hardcore show offs, eat the granola with the spoon, then carefully place it down and eat the strawberries with the chopsticks.

As we finish, the servers come around with a big pot of hot water and ladle some into our biggest bowl which, I soon see, is to clean the bowls before returning them, swirling the water around one bowl, then pouring it into the two others. The weird part is, to get rid of the water, we’re supposed to drink down the dregs. Ok, well, I’ve drank worse on the fireline I suppose, so down the hatch. I’m sure that the bowls will get a proper washing anyways. I mean, I hope so. I don’t do a very good job though, I think, not that I know what a good job is, but seems hopeless to make them perfectly clean, so what’s the point? Still, I didn’t want to be a slob. No, the only problem with the food is there isn’t enough. After I scarf it all down, I’m like, that’s it? Is there seconds? And I can see the leftovers sitting there in dishes at the end of each row. Right there. In a flash of Dickens Zen, I want to go up to the roshi and say, in a pathetic young British accent, —Please Ma’am, may I have some more?

And she’d turn to everyone and say, —He wants some more!

And then everyone would laugh.

But, we stack the bowls and tie them up in the cloth. There’s some trick to it, some positioning of the hand, to make it look like a lotus flower or something, but I can’t figure it out, so my bowls just looks like the way those old cartoon characters look when they have a toothache.

I assume that we’re to go back to sitting, but after standing and carrying the bowls back to the table in the other room, we stop and circle up around Roberto in the courtyard. He has a list of all our names, and with as little talking as possible, he assigns chores to do around the temple for an hour, as what he calls ‘work practice.’ For example, some help wash dishes in the kitchen, some clean bathrooms, and some people even get to go down to the new building to help get it ready. Since I was last to sign up, I’m last to get an assignment. Without saying anything, Roberto walks over to a utility closet, grabs an old broom, and hands it to me, pointing in a circle to the whole courtyard. Ok, I get it. I walk to one corner and start sweeping. And sweeping. But I don’t mind. I’m on my feet and somewhat active, and actually sweeping can be kind of meditative too.

After an hour or so, we meet back in a circle, bow to each other, and go back to sitting. By now I know I’m not alone: Some other folks are squirming around and experimenting with alternative sitting positions, like kneeling with no pillow, which I try, and like, especially when both my knees crack. But after a while of that, the circulation in my calves and feet start to go, so I try slipping the zafu under me sideways, essentially staying in kneeling position, but lifting my butt and body off my legs, which also feels good, until the zafu starts to feel like it’s jammed way up my crotch. Poor zafu: it’s going to get a workout with me. But, once I get over my guilt at actually moving and readjusting during quiet mediation time, I figure I can just keep rotating through these positions. Some people have even brought special wooden ‘kneeling seats,’ with wood panels raising the body off the legs. I hope I can try one of those out.

Meanwhile there are these human statues who just sit, cross-legged, perfectly still, not even twitching, not even a nose scratch, like the roshi, and Roberto, and a few others around the room. Not once do they slouch, not once do they even open their eyes. I imagine all the firefighting guys I’ve known, the really macho ones, who could cut fireline all night and hike miles and miles and I wonder how long they could sit perfectly still like that, if they could actually have been talked into trying it, which would be impossible. I particularly liked picturing these macho dudes sitting on a zafu in full lotus position.

And we sit.

My brother Sean. Basically he and I were feral even before my parents divorced. Neither of them was home much, and if they were, my father was glued to the television and my mother was either grading papers or writing one of her own papers. In our early teens, Sean and I would come home after school and actually break into our own house. We didn’t even have our own keys. We’d already figured out that we could take off screen off one of the front windows and push open one of the large sliding windows. As the youngest and smallest, I would hop in and go around to open the front door while Sean put the screen back on. And, because we never had homework, or if we did we didn’t do it, we’d either immediately start watching cartoons, or playing video games, or, and these were the best, we’d go for walks out back of our house with our dog Sammy, in the forest, and pretend we were commandoes.

As we got older, Sean started to keep busy with sports after school, something that interested me less. He’d sometimes come home even after our parents, and ironically, have to do homework in order to stay on school teams, so that his grades actually went up, whereas mine stayed at the B/C range, even though I was reading all kinds of books. He didn’t even like to read comics.

When my parents did divorce, that pattern didn’t change, we just continued it in two places instead of one. My mom would usually bring home pizza for dinner, and when Sean and I went to our dad’s, he’d ritually buy us pizza, then we’d go back this apartment and watch tv. Every other weekend we’d do that same thing. Sean didn’t mind this as much, since we usually watched sports. The only excitement I had visiting my dad was when I discovered his Penthouse magazine collection, which I never told Sean about, though surely he must have found them too. How hilarious: three males all secretly looking at the same porno mag collection.

My mom decided to earn her PhD back at her old college, the University of Florida, requiring her (or that’s what she told us) to spend large chunks of time down there, including two summers, and then a whole year. When she did this, my dad, strangely, moved back into our house to look after us. I say strangely, yet at the time I, and I think Sean too, took this all as normal. We had nothing to compare to. This must have been what all families did, right?

So by the time college rolled around, I was ready to go. I took the easiest school I could get into, Eastern Michigan, in Ypsilanti about an hour from Jackson, on the east side of Ann Arbor, and I never went back much. I just took summer classes and stayed there. Sean didn’t get any athletic scholarships, which I think devastated him, and went to Michigan State and had, as far as I can tell, a horrible time, though he never went back home much either, because as soon as he was gone, my mom sold the house and moved down to Florida for a teaching job at a community college.

And if it seems like my dad was a ghost through all this, he was, though he stayed in Jackson and even re-married, to Janet, a nice, if extremely catholic woman, with two children from a previous marriage. Yes, extremely catholic and extremely divorced. She actually got him to start going to church, something I never thought possible. Not that that was a good thing. To my dad’s credit, he 1) paid most of our tuition, and 2) always kept one room open for us if and when we did ever come back to Jackson for a visit, though when we did, one of the last things Sean and I talked and agreed about was that staying there felt like being a house guest.

And el luncho! Whew. Same procedure as breakfast, but this time with rice and fried veggies, and some kind of sweet dumpling things for dessert. Now my un-knowledge of chopstick use comes to the fore. Instead, I just hold my bowl up to my mouth and shovel it in, like I’ve seen in Chinese and Japanese movies. Fortunately I’m not the only one, but I am the only one who doesn’t seem to like broccoli. Yuck. And then a dilemma: what to do with the leftovers? Fortunately, one of the servers saves me, holding out a shallow bowl/plate when he comes around with the hot water. Whew. Still embarrassing, but better than the utter shame I could have felt.

Thankfully, after lunch we have a tea break. We must be doing some British form of Zen meditation. But, we get a half hour break to stand out in the still sunny courtyard with cups of hot green tea, which tastes, and feels, wonderful since, though sunny, the air is cool. Holding the warm cup in my hands, each little sip warming my stomach. We still can’t talk, which is fine, but we can wander around and a few of us kind of do laps around the fountain.

And more sitting. Getting a goddamn Beatles tune in my head. I don’t know why you say goodbye I say hello over and over again. Please God or Buddha, let me think of something else. I’d like a shower. I must stink. Good thing I’m wearing a hoodie. This room is going to reek after a week of us not showering. Surely we’ll get to shower? How come I didn’t ask? Argh. I wonder where I’ll go after this? South? Or back to the States? Oh, I wonder where Maya is right now. Still working? Her black panties. Her ass. Her sexy smile in the half-dark. God I want to have sex. There are a couple attractive women here. Are they thinking about sex? No, probably not. They’re probably thinking about good Buddhist things like how to be compassionate and relieve others’ suffering. I’m a sucky Buddhist.

BONG!

We all bow and get up, turning back around to clean our mats and fluff the zafus. I feel like I’ve just been cutting fireline with a chainsaw all day, like I’m about to have uncontrollable back spasms and start flopping around on the floor like a fish. Are we finally done? Is it finally la hora a cenar?

We shuffle outside, through the courtyard to, yes!, a kitchen, where we scoop out big bowls of chunky lentil soup from a big pot and grab some good bread and either eat at two small communal tables there inside, or we can go outside in the courtyard, which I do, to listen to the fountain, which has been going the whole time though I’ve never really registered the sound of water. I sit on one of the old wooden benches against the walls, joined shortly by another guy, I think one of my almost roommates, who bows. I bow back. We all bow. No words spoken by anybody. A bow is a question. A bow is an answer. A bow is a, Hello, mind if I eat with you out here? A bow is a, Not at all, dude.

And the lentil soup so so good. Slighty spicy, and rich. God, whoever is cooking this stuff knows what they’re doing! And good grainy bread to sop it up with. Wonderful.

The sun still out, though in the courtyard we’re already in the shadows. Great idea. If I ever buy a house out west, or anywhere really, I want a courtyard with a fountain and tree. But, the light looks like it’s fading, must be getting down behind the mountains to the west. I’m beat, the soup acting like a drug. My belly filled to bursting, to Buddha belly capacity, though if there were more I’d eat it just to have that spicy taste in my mouth.

People drifting back to rooms, looking as weary as I feel, and I see some of them heading to where the showers must be, so that question is answered, except I’m too beat and don’t want to go to sleep with wet hair, so I put off bathing for a while, though not sure when else would be a good time. I return my bowl to the kitchen and bow to the bowl bearers, because a bow also means thank you that was amazing, and I head out the front door.

MASKED MAN—novel excerpt

The first 20 pages of my (as yet unpublished) novel, MASKED MAN. Enjoy.

Crow circles over South Mountain, in Phoenix, early morning, cawing occasionally, flying lower and lower until it lands on the branch of a palo verde tree outside a ranch house in Ahwatukee, side-stepping until he can see through the window, at the old man laying on the black pleather couch in the middle of the room, asleep with an empty bottle of scotch on the floor. Long-sleeved green shirt untucked, fly on his Wranglers unzipped, and snakeskin cowboy boots.

On the wall behind the couch, with the door on one corner, hangs a college diploma, a doctorate in literature from Wayne State University. Also pictures: The man a little younger, but not too much, smiling, with a thin woman his age next to him, a bit tired looking, though also smiling, wearing a bandanna, because she has no hair.

More: The man and woman, at different points in their younger lives, with a young woman/girl with them, hugging them. The young woman in graduation robes and hat standing on the University of Arizona campus. The three them standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The man and woman looking like frazzled graduate student parents, the man with dark hair and a beard, the woman with long brown hair, holding their baby.

Shelves of books on the next wall: Russian and American anarchists like Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Thoreau, Abbey, as well as novelists like Tolstoy, Cervantes, Hugo. One whole section filled with Louis L’amour and Zane Grey. A large screen tv against the third wall, with rows of DVDs on each side. The television on, sound down low, a woman on the screen. The bodies of two more young women were found buried in the desert on the mexican side of the border this weekend, yet more victims of drug-related violence that has been building for years in the city of Santa Teresa, in the state of Sonora.

Crow inches himself closer to the window, cawing again, the branch dipping down under his weight. He caws again, and lightly taps its beak against the glass. The old man inside moves slightly, putting his arm over his eyes. Crow tilts his head, waiting, then caws and again taps on the glass, harder this time.

The man snores once, loudly, jerks, and opens his eyes, looking around, not moving, then slowly closes his eyes again. A Taco Bell commercial. Head to the border!

Crow moves his head, looking at the man with its other eye, and caws again.

The man opens his eyes again, sighing. He sits up and rubs his face. Goddamn crow. Goddamn everything.

He looks out the window and sighs again. He stands up, accidentally knocking over the bottle. Looks at it. Leaves it. Walks around the couch to the pictures on the wall, looking at the newest one, the latest one. He kisses his pointing finger, then puts the finger against her mouth. Hello Jenny.

He leaves his Man Room, goes into the kitchen and starts a pot of coffee, leaning against the counter, staring out the window at the corral next to the house. The horses up and out and walking around. When the coffee is ready he pours a big cup, straight, and walks outside.

The air still cool. The old man holds the coffee cup in both hands walking out to the corral. The horses see him and trot over to the fence, lifting their heads. Morning Silver. Morning Sunshine. Morning Lady.

He strokes their snouts. Are we ready?

He goes into the barn and pours their oats. The horses come in and dip their heads in, munching while he runs some fresh water into their tank.

Back inside, he goes into the bathroom with a pair of scissors, looking at himself in the mirror as he trims his beard. With a razor, he shaves the rest off, splashing aftershave on and wincing.

He showers, puts on his Wranglers and boots, then a fresh, light-blue long-sleeve shirt that he buttons up all the way. In the bedroom, he finds his white hat and puts it on, looking at himself in the full-length mirror on the closet door.

He packs a travel bag with two extra shirts, some underwear, and toiletries. Back outside, he goes into the barn and saddles up Silver and Sunshine, with saddle-bags, and puts a packsaddle with bags on Lady, filled with oats. All three of the horses stand and wait patiently while he does this, excited. He ties a lead line between them and leads all three out into the driveway next to the house, tying Silver’s rein to the doorknob.

Back inside to get his travel bag. In the hallway he stops and looks down at the Navaho rug. You need a blanket Ed.

He stoops down and rolls up the rug, then takes it and his bag out, putting them on Silver.

For the next hour he goes in and out of the house, bringing food items, bread, almond butter, Grape-Nuts, raisins, some chocolate bars, coffee, along with a pan, a coffee pot, and some cups, all of which he tries to put in Sunshine’s bags, and if they don’t fit, he ties them on the outside with zipties and bungee cords.

When the horses’ bags are bulging, he tells them to hold on, and goes back inside, walking around the house, looking for something. He can’t find it. He stands in his study, looking around, thinking. He looks at his desk, goes over to it, and opens one of the side drawers, labeled “School Stuff.” Taking out a black marker and going back into the bathroom. Leaning in close to the mirror, he uncaps the marker and draws a large circle around each eye, up over his eyebrow and over the bridge of his nose, filling them in all black. He puts on his white hat. He smiles.

Leaving his keys on the kitchen counter, he goes outside, locking the door behind him. Untying the horses, he swings himself up into Silver’s saddle and sits, straight-backed, looking around one last time. With a soft flick of the reins, he says to his horse, Hi ho Silver, and heads south.

Gordon Lightfoot came out the front entrance of the Wildhorse Casino, rolling up his smock. His supervisor, Gus, right behind him. Hey college boy!

Gordon leaned up against one of the columns, searching with one hand in his jean jacket pockets.

Gus came up to him, pointing. No one talks to me that way, college boy.

You mean when I said stop talking to me like I’m an idiot?

I mean you disrespecting me.

Me disrespecting you? Gordon handed him his bunched up smock. You can find someone else to cook burgers.

Gus grabbed the smock. I can find anyone to cook burgers.

Exactly.

You can’t quit.

I just did.

You’ll never work on the Gila River Reservation again!

I think that’s ok.

Gus stared at him a second, then walked back inside. Gordon checked his pockets again and found a pack of cigarettes, American Spirit, and took one out and lit it. After he took his first drag, he looked out across the parking lot and saw a man with three horses riding towards the casino. They reached the parking lot and kept coming through the rows of cars, right up to the front step where Gordon was standing. The man said whoah softly and pulled on the reins, bringing all three horse to a stop. He looked at Gordon, pushing back his hat. Howdy.

Gordon did a double-take. What’d you do to your eyes?

Tonto, that’s my mask. You should know that.

Gordon took a last drag of his cigarette, and threw it to the ground, stepping on it. What did you call me?

Tonto.

That’s what I thought.

We’ve got a mission Tonto.

A what?

A mission. An adventure. A quest.

Man, are you fucking batshit crazy or what?

Two middle-aged white ladies walked past them, going in, looking at both of them, wide-eyed. Gordon heard one whisper to the other, Do they have wild west shows here? Gordon looked back through the doors and saw Gus inside, talking to two security guards. Shit.

Well Tonto, ready?

Let me get this straight. You want me to go with you? Where’re we going?

Mexico.

Mexico? Why?

To rescue a mexican señorita.

Why?

Because that’s what we do. We help people. We rescue them when they need rescuing. Like mexican señoritas. It’s our job. I need your Indian tracking skills.

Gordon shook his head. Oh shit. Look man, I never rode a horse in my life.

The man pulled out his wallet, which was bulging. I have wampum.

Gordon smiled, shrugging. Well why didn’t you say so?

He looked back at the casino doors, through which the two security guards were coming. He jumped up on Sunshine’s saddle and flipped them off, smiling. Adios muthafuckas!

The man flicked his reins, saying Hi ho Silver, and they started off through the parking lot.

They crossed the parking lot, south and a little west, out into the Reservation desert, until they were paralleling the freeway. Turkey buzzards circling overhead. Garbage scattered everywhere. Beer cans. Diapers. Somewhere up wind, a sewage treatment plant, its foul stench hitting them like a physical blow. They wrapped bandanas over their noses and mouths, but that did no good.

In the middle of tall scrub and palo verde trees, nearing an old deserted building, windows long smashed in and half the roof missing, they passed three big rectangular cement holes, with about a foot of green algae-filled water. Gordon almost jumped out of his saddle when something long and slimy, primordial, flopped in the deepest area. Jesus Christ what the fuck is that?!

They stopped the horses, covering their mouths in the crooks of their arms. In the murky water lay a huge mutant trout, the marks on its back like black eyes, or torture scars, or a prophecy thrown with ancient bones. The fish flopped its tail again, barely moving in what little water there was. What they looked more closely they saw two other fish just as large, barely moving their fins.

Gordon looked at the building. What is this place?

Ed McCarthy looked around. Trout farm?

A trout farm? In the middle of the desert? How? Why?

McCarthy shrugged.

Gordon shook his head. Fucking Indians. Only they would do something like that.

The first fish flopped again, like a death throe, but they saw that it was actually raising itself to catch one of the bugs, flies, mosquitoes, that had begun to buzz them and the horses, going straight for their eyes.

Come on, Tonto, let’s get out of here. Nothing but ghosts.

They passed some BIA houses, ten of them out in the middle of nowhere, all the same, faux-adobe squares, scrunched together on a few acres of land when there were acres of desert all around. Some children were playing outside one of the house and waved to them. They waved back.

They took a dirt road south from the BIA houses and got to a brand new complex of buildings, though no one seemed to be around. The sign out front at the paved road/highway proclaimed it an alcohol rehab center.

They looked up and down the road. Nothing to the west, though to the east in the distance they could see buildings and the sun shining cars on I-10. They nudged the horses across the pavement and into more garbage-strewn desert.

They rode until evening, then stopped in an old sandy wash. Ed took off his hat, wiping his brow on his sleeve, slightly smearing the marker, which had already been running down his cheeks like black tears. We’ll stop here and camp for the night.

Gordon looked around. Here?

Yep.

We’re not going to get a hotel or anything?

Nope.

Not even a motel?

Nope.

Alright.

Now Tonto, if you want to collect some wood, I’ll take care of the horses and then get out some food for us.

Ok boss.

There wasn’t much wood to get in a desert, but Gordon found some old palo verde branches and a dried out saguaro trunk. He dragged them back and piled on other smaller branches and some grass into a pile. Taking out a notebook from his inside jacket pocket, he tore off a page and stuck it in the bottom of the pile, lighting it with his lighter. The grass took, and soon flames spread to the branches. He stared at the flames for a while, then looked up at the sky. The stars had started to come out, bright and clear away from the city, though he could still see car lights from the freeway way off in the distance.

Ed put the coffee pot on the edge of the fire, and threw some beans in the frying pan. When they were warm, he poured half in a bowl and handed it to Gordon, along with some bread and cheese.

Gracias.

I didn’t know you spoke Spanish, Tonto.

A little. Couple years in college. For example, did you know that tonto means stupid?

I didn’t know that, Tonto. We’ll need your Spanish-speaking skills when we get down to Mexico. When we rescue María.

The mexican señorita?

Yep.

Do you actually know this mexican señorita?

Not actually, Tonto, but I’ve heard she’s in trouble. Mexican banditos.

Banditos?

Or maybe the federales. But probably banditos. Hard to tell nowadays.

Well, that’s probably true. Do you know where to find her?

That’s where your Indian tracking skills come in, Tonto.

Right.

They ate refried beans on tortillas, with slices of cheese, washed down with water, sitting over the fire, which had dwindled to some embers under the coffee pot. After he had washed out the pan with a little water, Ed McCarthy continued to throw small twigs and branches on, as they sipped coffee.

Gordon spat. Damn Ed, you could’ve brought some instant. These grounds are killing me.

That’s cowboy coffee, Tonto.

It’s like rock coffee. If rocks could float, which they can’t, so never mind.

Adding the cold water is supposed to make the grinds sink to the bottom.

Supposed to, huh?

Ed McCarthy shrugged. The life of a cowboy is rough.

Gordon spat out another ground. For an Indian too.

So Tonto, tell me about yourself. You’re always so stoic, never saying.

Gordon stared at him. Are you serious?

Your help is always appreciated, but we’ve ridden so long together I feel we should finally unburden ourselves.

As he said this, Ed McCarthy was staring into the glowing coals. Gordon took another sip of coffee and ate another piece of 82% cacao chocolate. Well, Ed, my father’s Apache, but my mother’s actually Crow. She and my dad met at a powwow up in Boseman, and she just came back down to Arizona, to Globe, with him and they got married. My dad was a firefighter for the BIA for a long time, he was already in his thirties when they had me. My mom, she was like eighteen. Bad mix. Also, they both drank. My dad not so much, but my mom, a little too much. She didn’t work cause she had me, and my dad was always gone on fires, so there she was stuck on a new reservation and basically stuck in the house taking care of me, so she did a lot of drinking. My dad would come back from being out of state on fires somewhere and sometimes just find me by myself in my crib. My mom would be down at the bar. I don’t remember any of this, you know. Anyway, this went on, I was oh, two or so, and then one time my dad came back home and she wasn’t there and she never came back.

They stared at the fire.

So I got raised by my dad when he was home, but mostly by my aunt, his sister. She already had five kids of her own, so she didn’t really mind. I guess.

Did you ever see your mother again?

Oh yeah. Later. Like when I was ten she got back in touch with me. She married this white guy up there. An oil driller, but like the owner of a company. Big christian. So he kind of cleaned her up. Or she cleaned herself up. Didn’t want to lose out on that money. She called, asked me if I wanted to come live with her. But I said no. I didn’t even know who she was. Like, who was this strange woman talking to me on the phone? She tried talking to my dad about it, but he wasn’t having any of it. And, she didn’t push it. Probably could’ve made me go up there if she really wanted. But she didn’t. I think she was just doing her christian duty, though I don’t think she ever really cared about all that. Later when I was a teenager I did go up and visit. Wanted to check it out, you know. Her husband, Jack, was a real winner. Nice house. Nice church. She never said nothing when he was around. Fucker tried to make me go to church when I was there. Like, any person under my roof goes to church, but I was like, no way. His face got beet red, you know the way palefaces get when they’re angry, which is all the time.

Later that night I heard them fighting in the kitchen. About me. Like, arguing, but then fighting. I was upstairs in the guest room and I heard him hit her and I was down there like a jackrabbit. She was sitting on the floor crying, holding her face, and he was standing over her and I didn’t even slow down, I just walked right up and hit him right in the nose. Knocked right to the ground. I think all three of us were surprised. I didn’t know what else to say, so I said something like, Don’t hit my mother or I’ll kill you! He just stared at me, then got up and went upstairs. Big guy too. I was just a scrawny Indian kid.

And what’d I get? My mother told me, You can’t stay here. You have to leave now. So I packed my stuff. Right before I left, she handed me an envelope with a thousand dollars in it. I don’t know how she got it, if she just stole it or had been saving it. But she told me, Gordon, you have to get off the Rez. You have to make money. This is what happens to us because we don’t have any money. I’ll always remember that. So I took the money and left. I didn’t know whether to say thank you or what.

You never saw her again?

No. Thing is, she stayed with the motherfucker. But, she had my address, and sometimes she would send me money. When I got in high school, every letter had some money, a check, and a short note, saying she was ok and that she hoped I was ok and that I needed to keep my grades up and get into college. Get off the Rez. Get off the Rez. And, she was right. I don’t know how she was right, since she was so fucked up, but there it is.

You should see her again.

And say what?

Just, hello.

Yeah, well. Gordon poured himself some more coffee. This isn’t decaf, I can tell. I’m gonna be up all night.

So how did you get off the Rez?

Well, somewhere, I started to like reading. Didn’t get it from my dad. Didn’t get it from my mom. And not from my aunt Mabel either, but her kids, my cousins, they were in school and bringing home their books, and as soon as I learned to read I was always poking around in them. Plus at school all the poor old white women who taught us were just so grateful that some of us ignorant Indians had any interest in reading they’d start giving us books every day. I didn’t fit in anyways, since I was the runt of the family I was already being picked on at home, by the time I got to school, being picked on was second nature. It was just the way it was. Books were just a way to escape, get away. Better to go to the library for lunch than hang around the cafeteria and get picked on. And the teachers and librarians let me, and some others. Like I said, old white ladies love Indians. Or at least the ones who want to read books about white people.

My daughter’s a schoolmarm too.

A what?

A schoolmarm.

Jesus Ed, I forgot, you’re crazy. Anyway, I shouldn’t make fun of those women. They saved my Indian ass. By junior high I moved back into my dad’s house and basically lived by myself, since he was gone a lot. I shouldn’t say that. In the winter he was around, and he took me hunting. Sometimes we’d just drive, go on all the old two tracks, listening to the radio if we could get something way out there. Fishing. He knew some good fishing spots too. So, suddenly I wasn’t an Indian nerd. I wasn’t overweight, didn’t have glasses. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there were plenty of other kids who were eating Coco Krispies every meal and just watching tv and getting beat and fucked by their fathers. Prime victims. Whereas I had actual real Indian skills like fishing and shooting guns. Kids stopped picking on me.

I never forgot what my mom told me. Whatever else she did, she was right. I looked around at the Rez and just saw that we couldn’t win. My dad was one of the lucky ones, with an actual real job, but firefighting doesn’t pay that much unless you’re on fires, unless you’re working overtime, unless you’re gone a lot. But those kinds of jobs are the ones all the guys want. Any other BIA jobs are just hard to get, and people who work them tend to get their family in on them. Other than that, nothing. So, you stay and have no work and are poor, or you leave the Rez and are just a little bit more than poor, but nobody ever does. Families don’t want their kids to leave. They say they don’t want us to lose our culture, our heritage, so we stay and end up like our parents, poor, overweight, living in shitty houses in shitty cities, like Globe.

Did your father want you to stay?

You know, I think maybe they only thing my parents had in common was to get me to college. Once I was sixteen, he got me into firefighting, on the BIA handcrews, during the summer, and sometimes even during school, for the money, but even if he wasn’t home a lot, he did always ask about my grades. I think his plan was for me to go off to college, but then come back.

Is that what you’re going to do?

Does it look like it?

Something happened.

I got up with the fire bug. Instead of heading to college right after high school, I just fought fires. Good money, lots of travel. Kept me in shape. I could drink all the beer I wanted and never get a gut. I started to be gone more than my dad. We hardly saw each other for two years.

I know why you stopped fighting fires.

Yeah? Why?

I saw that notebook you were scribbling in.

Gordon grinned. Ed, you guessed my secret! The reason those white ladies loved me so much in school was because I wasn’t just reading, I was writing.

Tonto, you are a poet.

He nodded. Yep, and after two years of fighting fires, I realized I hadn’t written anything, and hadn’t read much either. I could see that I was going to end up exactly like my dad. Which to most people, that’s not a bad thing. Most guys on the Rez would kill for my job.

You quit.

Yep. Cold turkey. Went back to my white lady angels from school and they helped me get my application for Mesa Community College together and then I left.

That’s where my daughter’s a schoolmarm.

Yeah? Small world. I didn’t even say goodbye to my dad, he was up in Idaho with his engine. With the fire money I had from that summer I headed to Phoenix and fell into the Indian curse.

The Indian curse?

Away from the Rez, surrounded by white folks. I started to understand why no one ever left. Every fucking day somebody calling me Chief, asking me where my bow and arrows were. Trying to go to classes, filled with white people, and work at a Safeway filled with white people. It’s hard bagging groceries knowing you could be on a fire out in the Chiracawas, getting paid three times what Safeway pays, and at least getting respected. Or at least just, you know, walking around on a mountain with a pulaski in my hand watching trees torch a hundred feet in the air. So, I did what any self-respecting Indian would do: I started drinking.

That’s the Indian Curse?

The whole thing’s the Indian Curse. The drinking’s just the final manifestation of it. Or, no, the final manifestation is waking up under a bush out back of my apartment complex.

Did you drop out of school?

Gordon smiled. Not at first. I made it to year two, and I never would’ve done it without another white woman helping me. She was my composition teacher my first semester and then my second. She didn’t give up on me, even when I would vanish for a week because I was drunk. I barely passed most of the other classes, and she did some talking to some of the other instructors too. I’m telling you, she went out of her way. I don’t know why. No, I know why. She liked my writing. She said I was a good writer. So I took her second writing class, and then the next year I took a creative writing class she taught. After that I didn’t have any more writing classes and things went downhill.  As long as I had writing classes, I could keep my GPA up. That, plus I did ok in the two lit classes I had, and ok in Spanish too. The rest? Math? Science? Not so good. Meanwhile I kept losing jobs. They’re not so understanding about vanishing for a week. My fire money ran out. I couldn’t get work. I just could not take going to another white guy and asking him for a job bagging groceries. I just couldn’t.

What was this teacher’s name?

Ms. McCormick. Hot too. And young, sort of.

Tonto, that’s my daughter you’re talking about.

Ed, are you serious? I’m sorry I said she’s hot.

It’s alright. Why didn’t you ask her for help?

Gordon hesitated. Well, she was always busy. I mean, she wasn’t my teacher anymore. I guess I was just ashamed.

He dumped the grounds at the bottom of his cup into the fire. I just didn’t want her to know how bad it was. How bad I was. I didn’t want to disappoint her.

Ok, go on.

Go on? I haven’t talked this much in my whole life! Nothing else to say. I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t work in another fucking Safeway, so I went down to the Wildhorse Casino. I went to another Rez, just so I wouldn’t feel like a freak. Just so I could be around some more brownfaces. And you saw how that worked out. Not all brownfaces treat other brownfaces from other tribes very well. Plus, I’m an asshole.

Tonto, you’re a poet.

I’m an asshole poet.

But a poet nonetheless.

Ed McCarthy stood up, tossing the dregs of his coffee on the fire. Well Tonto, we have a long day tomorrow.

Ed, can we maybe stop at a WalMart or something tomorrow? Get some water? Or a Coke?

If you can use your tracking skills to get us to a trading post, Tonto, I’d be much obliged.

Ok Ed. Well, I’m going to turn in. You got a sleeping bag for me?

I’ve got this Navaho blanket for you.

You know Ed, nobody actually uses those anymore. Not even the Navahos. Look, this one was made in China.

The Navahos make great scouts, Tonto.

What’s that got to do with anything?

Ed McCarthy didn’t reply. Gordon stood up. Hey Ed?

Yes Tonto?

Did you pack any toilet paper?

Cowboys don’t use toilet paper Tonto.

They don’t? What do they use?

Leaves. Rocks.

Rocks?

River rocks work well because they’re smooth.

Ed, we’re in a desert.

Goodnight Tonto.

Ed lay down on his rug and wrapped himself up. Gordon stood looking at him for a second, then got out his notebook, tearing out a couple sheets. For once, his poetry notebook would be good for something.