“¡Chinga tu madre!” he yelled at Raul, holding up two broken pieces of his chewing gum wrapper. “Despacio, por favor.” He threw the bits of paper out the window and pulled out two more sticks of gum. He offered me a piece after he took it out of the wrapper. When I declined, he threw it out of the window as well.
I bought four more beers, and Raul started heading out into the country. “Mira,” Chino said, showing me how to peel the tinfoil off the paper.
“What is he doing?” I finally asked Charlie.
“He is making, how do you say…you know, Papel por la…” he held up his thumb and forefinger to his lips and inhaled deeply as if he were smoking a joint. I understood what he meant, but he held his breath for a while longer anyway before breaking into a fit of fake coughing.
“They think no papel is going to stop us from smoking the mota? Nothing can stop us.” If “they” meant the police, then “they” was sitting right next to him with no intention of stopping him from doing anything. This time Chino was successful.
“Now ju try,” he said, handing me a wrapper. I gave it a try but ended up ripping right through it. He handed me three more sticks of gum to practice on and started rolling a joint.
If there was ever a time I felt serious peer pressure to smoke pot, this was it. I couldn’t imagine a worse situation to get high than in a cop car in the middle of the desert in northern Mexico. I should have told Raul back at the house that I was allergic to cop cars, that the lights gave me seizures, that I was molested in one, something, anything. How did this happen?
I tried taking as small a hit as I could, but within moments I went straight into that self-absorbed place in my head that pot always took me to. This time was different, though, because the alcohol was making it hard to hold on to any one thought for too long. It was more of a free-floating sense of anxiety and paranoia than the everyone’s-out-to-destroy-me vibe I usually got. The combination also nauseated me. Raul had now left the highway for the open desert, and we were bumping around all over the place.
“Alto,” I yelled at Raul, but it was too late. I started puking out the window before he had a chance to stop. They all burst out laughing. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out of that fucking car, but as soon as I did, Raul did his classic peel out, leaving me there in the middle of nowhere.
I was too fucked up to care, and too fucked up to stand, so I just sat down, trying to stop my head from spinning as I watched them drive away. They didn’t go too far, just sped around, swerving left and right in an apparent attempt to flip over. Then I watched them jump the car over a hill a few times before coming back to get me.
“Vámonos. We go back now,” Charlie yelled down at me. I stood up and felt much better, having puked up all the alcohol.
“Una más para Ordan,” Raul said, stepping on the gas.
I put on my seat belt and clenched my stomach muscles as we sped toward the hill.
“Raul say he take you to Moscar now, but you can’t say him what happened. ¿Sí?” Charlie said as we were getting back to the town.
“¿Moscar. Que es Moscar?” I asked.
“Oscar. We call him Moscar. It means, you know bzzzzzzzzz…” He pretended he was watching something flying around the car, and then slapped Chino on the top of his head.
“Chinga tu madre, pinche puto cabrón,” Chino said, trying to hit him back.
“Fly?” I asked after the two of them settled down.
“Sí. Fly,” he said, taking a bag of white powder from Raul. He dipped a key into the bag and held it out to me. I shook my head, but he insisted. “Es muy poquito. You need it to help Moscar. I promise, you won’t even feel it. If you don’t, Moscar will know you are borracho, and we are all in trouble.”
It was so tiny, just a white spot on the tip of a key. I sniffed it up and felt instantly sober. Too sober really. I started smiling at the absurdity of it. It was a lot easier to smile now that I had made it safely back. How did this shit happen to me? I didn’t ask for any of it. Not that I was complaining, but how many thirteen-year-olds had gotten drunk, smoked pot, and sniffed cocaine in the back of a police car?
RAUL HAD DROPPED me off on the other side of the roundabout, and I had to step over more than a few passed-out Mexicans on my way to Oscar.
“Hola, Moscar,” I said as I approached him on the sidewalk in the town square.
“Ay chinga. You are borracho,” he said, obviously annoyed.
“Who me?” I didn’t feel drunk, but I couldn’t stop grinning. The whole night had been too much.
“Yes, you. I try to make my nephew into good kid, but yo no sé. Es muy malo because Carmen is coming to check on us en la mañana.”
Fuck. I had forgotten about that.
“We no worry about that now. Ahora we have work to do,” he said, walking over to one of the guys who was passed out in the gutter. “Mira. I grab the arms like this,” he said, squatting down to get a grip on the guy, “and you grab his legs.”
We carried him on to the sidewalk.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked. It was obvious they were drunk, but there were so many of them it was hard to believe.
“Es muy peligroso. Every weekend twenty, thirty muchachos go to sleep right en la calle. Es un milagro no one has died yet with Raul driving around like he does. Raul está loco. These are mi amigos. I no want them to get hurt. Juan! Arriba hombre!” he yelled at one of them.
There was no response, so we laid him down next to the last guy. A few of them started kicking and yelling, but for the most part it was like carrying sacks of potatoes. There were a lot of them, though, and the cocaine was wearing off. I kept apologizing as I started to lose my grip more often. With one guy, I didn’t clear the sidewalk and could hear his tailbone hit the curb. I felt horrible about it, but it didn’t even wake him up. We moved about fifteen more of them out of harm’s way, but the drunks kept coming.
“Vámonos. There is nothing more we can do,” Oscar said. “You know I like the cerveza, too, but I no understand these men. They are good hombres, but every weekend here they are. I drink one maybe two beers, that’s enough for me.” He was shaking his head in confusion. “Mañana, we says to Carmen you drank some agua by mistake, and are no feeling good, bien? She no show me her panocha if she thinks I get you borracho,” he laughed. “¿Comprendes?”
“Si. Comprendo,” I said, trying to stay upright. That cocaine was amazing while it lasted, but, holy shit, I just wanted to sit down for a minute.
“Ay chinga,” Oscar said as I started to lie down in the middle of the road.
THE NEXT DAY Carmen came and left without incident. We had been told that every year more than half the students did get dysentery from drinking the tap water, so it was a believable excuse. I had been drinking tap water all week and couldn’t figure out why I didn’t get it. Maybe it had something to do with living in Guatemala when we were kids.
But who knows what Mom did to us. One time I had gone on a hike at camp, and all of the other kids were completely covered in rashes from poison oak. One kid was blind from rubbing it in his eyes, but I didn’t show a single sign of it. I told Mom about it when I got back home and she said, “Of course, honey. When you were six months old, I fed you poison oak and poison ivy. The Native Americans used to do it to all their babies.” The American Indians also supposedly threw their babies in the water at six months old to teach them how to swim. The only reason I knew about that was because she had a newspaper clipping on the wall that showed a picture of me at six months, all by myself in an Olympic-size pool.
I had a terrible hangover though, and I absolutely refused to get back in the cop car when Raul and his two buddies showed up later that evening.
“No, gracias. Mi estomago no es bien,” I said.
“You will feel much better if you have a cerveza. Vámonos cabrón.”
“No. Really I can’t, plus Moscar is not too happy about last night.”
“Ay chinga. You tell him?”
“No. He could tell.”
“Bien. Maybe we come by later and see if you are feeling better.”
I sat on Raul’s stoop for a while, feeling shitty for a few more hours until Oscar came by on his way to the square.
“Hola, Ordan! I hoped to find you here. I was afraid you went off with my loco nephew again. Vámonos, it is time we go help mi amigos.”
“I stay here. No feel so good.” It was weird to hear myself speaking in broken English. I guess I thought it would help him understand me.
“You feel better after you eat something. Vámonos, amigo.”
I reluctantly got up and followed Oscar to a hot dog vendor in the square.
“I can’t eat those,” I told him, looking at rows of greasy hot dogs wrapped in bacon. Goddamn, they looked good.
“Está bien. I won’t tell mi esposa. You think I don’t know you just don’t want to eat her food? Every year es the same thing, until I bring you guys here. You think I want to eat that stuff she cooks? I wish I knew of this ‘disease’ you American kids have before I married her. I would have it, too.”
“Okay,” I said after I saw the vendor put one in a bun and completely smother it in guacamole. It was possibly the best thing I had ever tasted, and it only cost the equivalent of a quarter. I ate three of them in a row.
“See, I knew you would feel better. Let’s go to work.” He walked over to the nearest drunk guy. It was the same shit as the night before. We couldn’t seem to get them off the street as quickly as they fell down, and despite the fact that there were a fair amount of other people walking around, Oscar and I were the only ones getting these guys off the road.
“What do you do when you don’t have an American kid to help you with this?” I asked him.
“I do the same thing, pero they wake up in a lot more pain. When I no have help, I have to drag them over here by their feet.”
It seemed very sad to me, but it was comforting to know there was at least one guy who cared. I was actually proud to be helping him.
“Really the only reason I do this is because it makes me feel better,” he explained on the walk home. “If I do nothing, I have very bad dreams. I don’t mind, though. I do a good thing, I feel good. I do a bad thing, I feel…ah, it depends on what bad thing. Carmen, por ejemplo, I want very much to do that bad thing.”
SUNDAYS IN MEXICO were perhaps the most boring thing I had ever experienced. There was nothing happening there any day of the week, but at least there were always people walking around. On Sunday, everyone was either at church or hiding in their houses so as not to be seen not going to church.
Oscar was the exception. Despite being born and raised in this small Catholic town, he didn’t believe in Jesucristo, nor did he give a damn what anyone thought of that. Not only did he get away with being an atheist, but he was revered by everyone because he was the only guy who helped the drunks or escorted old ladies across the street. If there were leftovers at dinner, he would always make a plate and take it to someone who needed it. It was kind of problematic when it came to working on the house. If some old person happened to be walking by and happened to be carrying a bag—any size bag—Oscar would drop everything to run over and help the person carry it home only to come back and curse up a storm upon finding his block set at some crazy angle. It happened so many times he had to teach me first how to knock the misplaced blocks out with a sledgehammer, and then how to lay new ones since, undoubtedly, another old person was going to walk by at some point. Laying blocks was a welcome relief from the monotony of making them.
Oscar claimed to love Sundays because it was the only day he had off from helping everyone. We were sitting in his backyard drinking coffee. “Let those Catholic people do their job for once. Someone else can help those damn old people. Today, I no help nobody!” he said triumphantly.
“Let me see that,” he said, pointing to the sketchbook I was doodling in. Most of my drawings involved penises at the time, but I handed it to him anyway, curious what he would make of it. A loose sheet fell out as I passed it to him. He picked it up and examined it.
“¿Qué es?” he asked, showing it to me.
“It’s called an Exquisite Corpse. You fold the paper three or four times, and one person draws the head, another one the middle, and someone else gets the feet,” I explained. The one he was holding had been done in a Chinese restaurant in Flagstaff, where, for seventy-five cents, they would give you a pitcher of coffee with unlimited refills. Since I never had more than a few dollars at any time, I would often sit there for five or six hours, drawing and getting completely jacked up on coffee, so far the only drug I truly liked. “¿Comprende?” I asked Oscar.
“Si. Let’s do one ahora,” he said, ripping a blank sheet out of the book and handing it to me. “You go first,” he told me.
I folded the paper into halves and drew a character, extending the lines of the waist a little bit over the crease to show Oscar where to start. It took him almost twenty minutes of intense focus before he opened it up so we could see the whole thing. It was very disturbing because most of my drawings unintentionally came out as self-portraits, and this one was no exception. Underneath the unmistakable drawing of me was a pair of crudely drawn legs spread wide open, with an even cruder depiction of a vagina. He had written the words Panocha de Carmen next to his sketch.
“Muy bien,” I said. “I will show this to Carmen when she asks me what I learned in Mexico.”
Oscar lunged for the drawing, but I was too quick for him. There was no way I was going to give up this drawing. Dodging past him, I ran out into the street and hid the drawing in a bush to pick it up later.
I went back to see if I could get him to do another one, but he was already on it.
“Now I do the top,” he said, hunched over the paper.
He eventually handed it to me, and I drew a pair of pants and shoes. When I was done, I opened it up to find almost the same exact drawing of Carmen’s panocha, only this time it was sitting on top of a pair of pants. He was too quick for me this time and snatched the picture while I was still pondering how amazing it was. He stuffed it in his pocket.
“You no get this one. This is mine.”
“Even if I show Carmen the other one?” I threatened.
“I no care. I tell her you did it. Who is she going to believe? You, or Señor Oscar from the city council? Vámonos, we go work on la casa.”
WE HAD ANOTHER blurry week of grueling heat and grueling work. It was starting to look as though we might finish the house before it was time to go. I couldn’t believe that we might actually pull it off, until I saw him building a dirt ramp up to the ceiling.
“¿Que es?” I asked him.
“Stairs to second floor,” he answered. As impressive as it looked already, I wanted to be able to show Carmen and the other kids that I had helped build a whole house with nothing but cement and a level. I wanted to feel as though I had finished something.
“You have another gringo coming to work for free?”
“No. I finish myself. I didn’t expect to get this much done anyway, so now I say myself, ‘why I make casa only for mi madre? I tired of living with all those people.’ Now I build second floor for mi esposa and her family. Ay, they make me loco. Then I have other house for myself. ¿Sí?”
“That place? How are you going to take a shower by yourself?” I asked.
“If I am by myself, I no need shower. I no need nothing. I stay there and smell bad, and think about Carmen’s panocha. Es good life, no?”
“Si. Sounds great,” I answered, but I had spent enough time with him to know he would never leave his wife and stop taking showers. He couldn’t do the wrong thing if his life depended on it. All day I would listen to him bitch and moan about this or that old person whom he couldn’t stand, but the moment he saw one of these people crossing the street he would run over, grab their elbow, and ask them how they were doing, always making sure they didn’t trip over the curb. It was the opposite of bad
habits. Instead of compulsively shoplifting or masturbating, like I did, Oscar was a compulsive helper.
MY TRIP WAS nearing an end, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend my final night in Mexico with Raul and his buddies, but getting drunk did seem like a good idea. After I laid my last block on the house I would never see finished, I wandered around until I found the store that had sold me beers that night. The clerk didn’t even look at me, as if, by not seeing me, he couldn’t be responsible for selling beer to a minor. Since my only fear of the cops was that they were going to ask me to get in the car for a joyride, I didn’t even bother trying to hide my beer. I did try to stay aware of where I was in relation to the siren that could be heard crossing back and forth through the town.
I went to the square and sat down on the curb and watched the town come alive as hundreds of people started to show up. Some of the passersby would nod at me, say hello, or raise their own bottle, and I would raise mine back and say, “Salud.” It was still so hot and I was so zoned out from working all day that I drank the beer a little too quickly again.
While I was on my second one a kid a little older than myself decided he wanted to practice his English on me. I was feeling the effects of the beer, and I welcomed the company. After the preliminary “Where are you from?” “How do you like Mexico?” and “Can I stay at your house when I visit?” questions, I asked him why everyone was so dressed up. He was looking pretty sharp himself, so he seemed like the right guy to ask.
“It is the richest girl in town’s quinceañera.”
“Quince-what?” I asked him.
“You no have quinceañera? It is very big deal in Mexico. How do you say?” He was thinking hard. “Fifteen birsday,” it came to him. “You want to go?”
“Why not?” I answered, “but, primero yo necesito un mas cerveza.” It was amazing how much easier it was to speak Spanish when I was drunk.
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