later when the kid offered me a cookie I remebered it was just a couple of years ago, they nabbed that dartmouth new england clamchowder money belt that had fallen for a peruvian drug runner, who used her arraignment to spout some kinda sept whatever date propaganda cheer. I was not willing to end up on the back of a cereal box, or in an editorial collum of the new yorker. “tienne conflicto” I said loud, and angry, enough to scare the kid in the backseat, and make the older brother, the good brother, the public enemy number one rethink the gringo in the white fiat rental car. the tomato stands kept coming,little pine slat scabs of bark, tacked onto fruit baskets and bmx huffys leaning on trousers made of wool and training wheels. “tranquillo” he said
I got hungry and pulled off onto the vegas diner, next to the tepic station, that had a beef backbone soup with a huge nugget of corn cob bobbing in the pink doily dish. the two kids stayed outside under the twig shelter where I had parked the car. obviosly pennyless, playing fetch with a black and white mut, that was too low to the ground and to fat to have been made on purpose. they passed a gingerale bottle full of bug juice back and forth and kicked rocks into the dust made by farm trucks and buses that passed on the road in front of the petrol tanks. eventually they came sulking up all shy to the door by the table where I was eating, I said “venga” but realized after I invited them in, that I was gonna end up paying for there lunch, that it was gonna be impossible for me to explain I was looking for just a little talk over backbone, that I didnt want to take over there moms job, or correct the national deficit. I had only a couple extra pesos that got swallowed up by the ten year old who unabashedly had seconds on a plate of boiled beats and cabage that set me back a buck fifty. thats the last time I invite kids in out of the dust, let em play with dogs and kick rocks, and suck fumes, let em be what they are, poor and penniless, let em make there own way,hungry if necessary out down to the reservation.
I decided I was gonna get my buck fifty worth and go with them to the little town they where heading to, and sleep in the tent with them. so I changed my loose plans from spending my first night at some remote scrag of rock coast to, sleeping heal to head with the kids in a four man popup, 25k on a dirt road south off the five in a town called ralco. I figured Id save the 6 dollars that a guide book said a young california couple charged for “cute as pie cabins a stones throw from crashing waves”, Ive had enough california couples to last a lifetime. we got to the turn off in ralco late, it was farther than I had figured, los angeles aptly named for its barren grid of dirt lanes was the landmark town on the five where the small road to the reserve began. we missed the first leg, and ended up backtracking following multiple directions first, from a hot chick passerby in a pink sweater that turned out to be incorrect and then more succesfully from a fat cab driver reading the paper next to his vacant black and yellow opel. the kid woke himself up by releasing gas, which i usually dont mind if you got money in your poket, I mean what are you gonna do right its a function of nature, but some how cause I paid for his lunch his fart seemed more derelict and a larger imposition. I rolled down the window and let some of the night air in, it smelled like a mix of fresh cut pine, and cow shit. I hadnt seen any animals since the sun went down, and I was glad for it. I dont want to die colliding my little two stroke into a steer, on the granite tumblers and roll down the cliff. I can just see it now, my back broke into me, my legs flatly laid between the detroit flanged leafs piercing ucoiled spring struts, the 2 inch ridged twelve gauge sandwiching my foresaken spleen, my peeled tattoed arms and my flambayed constricted septum. car crashes, death by metal not a way to go. I saw a little brown woman in a blue coat bent over on the gravel shoulder pulling up her socks with her back to the lanes, it was a blur that my mind unfolded into the 100 feet of road as we past. I turned the car around, looking for answers, looking for a place to stay. a word to the wise, looking for whatever it was I was incapable of finding. I rolled down on my side, and the older brother of the two, leaned his neck forward so that his eyes could view past the sightline of my head, out through the open driverside door window his little fat lip bulged down onto his chin like a pregnant icycle hangs above a door, a benign danger that is easily sliced. the little brown woman raised her head and she looked like a painted witch, when she ran over to the car waving her hands above her head screaming the lip flexed and I thought I heard tear, but maybe it was tear with the intonation on the soft e, the one that makes the sound of pants splitting when a car rolls onto itself. I looked out through the windshield at the splattered bugs that where a creamy yellow mucus stuck to the glass and was absent for a moment in the acute delirium.