by Pastor, Juan
"De‐coffinated café." El Presidente's wife calls it.
Mrs. El Presidente has black wavy hair and very dark
eyes. Her hair falls in ringlets on her face and forehead whenever she leans foreward, and there is something extremely sexual about the way she tucks those ringlets back behind her ears as she looks at the President's wife and smiles. Tejana seems to have this effect on almost everyone that meets her.
Mrs. President is often called in the American Press a
"Stepford Trophy Wife" and Mrs. President deeply resents this title. She is very blonde, courtesy of Loreal. She has very green eyes, courtesy of the Bausch and Lomb contact lenses she wears. And she has very white perfect teeth, courtesy of $70,000 worth of prosthodontics . She has a very nice figure, even for her age. She has heard that the Secret Service's code name for her is FLILF. When she finally learned what that meant she was taken aback, but now she's decided she likes that acronym better than STW, which she thinks would better suited to one of the several Cadillac SUVs she owns and drives.
There are two other women at the table and the four of them together there are playing a game of hearts. God only knows how long the men will be talking about what men talk about. In the meantime, there are the after dinner games, after dinner confectionaries, and after dinner drinks.
The very tall, very slender, man with the long hair in a ponytail comes up to the table with a little cart with pastries and beverages on it. He begins to fill a dainty china cup for Mrs. El Presidente.
"You should serve the other ladies first, Dear." Mrs. El Presidente says.
The man with the pony tail, so far known only as
"Dear" to the women at the table, serves each of the other ladies first, making a ritual of giving each of them exactly what they ask for. Then he gets out a clean cup, fills it with a special low‐caffeine arabica coffee from Ethiopia. He adds some honey, stirs it thoroughly, then adds some goat's milk. He sets it next to Mrs. El Presidente. Without asking, he picks up a small plate with a piece of carrot cake spread with cream cheese frosting, and reaches near Mrs. E. P.'s shoulder to set it near the cup of coffee he's already served her.
As the man with the ponytail is retracting his now‐ empty hand, Mrs. E. P., without looking, ever so softly and briefly grazes the top of his hand with her fingertips.
The gesture doesn't escape the notice of the pair of sharp green eyes just across the table. Unlike everyone else in the game room, everyone but one or two members of the Secret Service detachment assigned to her, Mrs. President sees everything and forgets nothing. That is, after all, how she got to be Mrs. President.
Seeing and remembering everything, however, is not the most important thing. Analysis and interpretation of the acquired surveillance is often more important than what intelligence has been gathered.
How is it that this lowly, rather unattractive, most forgettable man knew exactly what the First Lady of Mexico wanted, and how she wanted it? And how is it that his actions elicited the most intimate of thank yous? Why did not the First Lady of Mexico just say a cool, mechanical Gracias to this man? Did the First Lady of Mexico realize with what affection she briefly touched the hand of her waiter? Did she even think about what a bad idea it was getting too close to any of her help? Did she realize, period, that she had even touched him? Of course she did!
As the green‐eyed Mrs. President knows, it is often the most casual, most impulsive, actions that carry the weightiest
message.
A Good Old Mexican Standoff
Uncommonly roomy is how I would
describe the trunk of the vehicle I woke up in. Most car trunks wouldn't have allowed me to stretch out so comfortably, even though I am not really a very big person. The trunk smelled the way an old tire might smell if it had been left half‐flat in an old garage for years, and then someone decided to use it again, fill it to its proper pressure, but then a puncture in the tire allowed a little of the compressed air to escape. In other words, the trunk smelled of agitated stale air and old decaying rubber. The trunk also smelled of grease, oil, dust, and mold. And exhaust fumes.
Although the trunk was roomy, I couldn't lie on my stomach or back. My hands had been handcuffed behind me. I tried laying on my stomach, with my head turned first one way, and then the other way, but soon realized the best thing to do was lay first on one side until I began to ache with cramps, and then roll over, with my hands close to my behind, then lay on the other side until I started to cramp up again. My feet weren't tied together, so that made movement a little easier. I was wearing a dress, and every time I tried to move the dress rode up a little higher, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Something, a light pillowcase I think, had been quickly slipped over my head at the time of my capture. I could easily breathe through the fabric which was like a light linen that, fortunately, was very comfortable against the skin of my face. It had a silky, maybe satiny, feel about it, but I'm sure it was neither. Not that I had much experience with silk or satin.
It had a very faint feminine floral smell, and fortunate it was that the smell was faint, otherwise the combined smell of it and all the other odors of the trunk would have been sickening. But I couldn't help thinking that this item had been intended for a woman, to somehow, in some bizarre way, make that woman's capture and captivity be a little more pleasant than it otherwise would have been. This gave me hope. If the original intent had been for the conspirators to torture and kill me, a burlap bag and duct tape would have been sufficient.
I had treated prisoners who had had tennis balls shoved in their mouths, and their mouths taped shut. They had almost drowned in their own saliva. I've seen former captives with eyelashes and eyebrows missing, the hairs which we take for granted having been ripped out when the duct tape was torn from over their eyes.
But, when I think about it, how often are burlap bags or duct tape readily available? Any residence or hotel would have freshly laundered pillow cases. Maybe even silk or satin ones.
One more thing I remember about the pillowcase. In the daylight, I was able to see through it. The effect was like that of the old photographer's trick of putting gauze over the lens to soften the image, but I could see through the fabric, until they put me in the trunk, where it was dark, except for where the light bled in through the crack between the trunk and the trunk door lid, probably through damage gaps in the rubber gasket, which also explains the exhaust smell.
I only mention being able to see through the pillowcase for one important reason. After it was put over my head and secured, a man, most likely the one who'd just put the pillowcase on me, walked in front of me, and noting my agitation from my body language, put a finger to his lips, as if trying to quiet and calm me. I tried not to give away the reality of my vision by keeping my shrouded head down but looking up with my eyes only. And I had to strain my eyes upward because the man was well over six feet tall. He may have been over seven feet tall. He looked like a giant.
It didn't occur to me until I was in the womb of the trunk, but this giant of a man wanted me to see, wanted me to see him. And what I did see was a very very tall, very very muscular Mexican bandito with a very large black mustache. He wore a particular style of sunglasses that I often see bicyclists or outdoor athletes wear. Not the aviator style that law enforcement people usually wear, but the ones that hug the curves of the face and make the wearer look like he has insect eyes or alien eyes. This bandito, like all his comrades, were dressed as Mexican Special Police, the Policía Federal, all in black with black bullet proof vests. Two of them wore the special bandanas that made their faces, from the eyes down, look like skulls.
All of them but the giant wore special flat black
cammie helmets. The giant did not wear a helmet. He wore a black baseball cap that had a frontal insignia patch which read "EVERY MARINE A RIFLEMAN".
We don't travel very long, maybe thirty minutes, when the vehicle slows to a stop and I hear four quick shots inside our vehic
le. Is the driver hit? I hear other vehicles approaching. I hear automatic weapons firing and bullets plinking through metal or cracking through glass.
Someone gets out of our car. I can hear it and I can feel it. And I stress some one. Our car had three passengers and the driver and me. There is a man somewhere near our car screaming in pain. There is a quick shot. The screaming stops. There are footsteps crunching in roadside gravel, at least roadside gravel is what comes to mind from the sound. The footsteps come closer, toward me and the rear of the car.
I am on my back, my handcuffed hands under me. I want to be able to see who is about to kill me, if I can, if there is enough light to see through the pillowcase hood.
No shots are fired through the trunk of the car. I take this to be a good sign. Keys are inserted in the trunk lock. This must be an older car? I have searched in vain, contorting myself in various positions, to allow my handcuffed hands, which are behind me, to probe for a trunk release cable. If there is one, it is well hidden. I'm pretty sure there isn't one.
I have noticed during my brief time in the States that sometimes TV shows extend their seasons by creating one or more episodes that consist of outtakes snatched from earlier episodes which are then spliced together with or without narrative, but usually with, explaining where the show is at each point in time in the show's timeline. I find myself watching outtakes from the "Life of Pequeña" show. Hundreds of brief clips and still shots flash rapidly before my mind's eye. I have heard this means I am about to die. This makes me wonder why I didn't see all these scenes when I was shot near the border. Is it because fate had already decided that I was not going to die?
I see my childhood home in Antigua. I see my dearest friend, Rosaria. I see the Volcan Agua. I see the beach at La Libertad at Eastertime. I see the handsome blue‐eyed American boys attending college in Guatemala. The faces of my family and friends flash before me in ever increasing swiftness. I see Jesús and I see the Virgen Maria. I think of the people I met at the Medical School at the University of Arizona, at the hospitals and clinics where I interned. I think of the Clinic I started this side of the border, the Clínica de Santa Rosaria.
I see Sin. Really. The trunk is open. The sunlight is blinding even with the pillowcase still covering my eyes. Sin is bathed in the glaring halo of light like a very old Jesús, just returning from the desert. Beside him is a Goliath of a man with large bushy mustache and alien sunglasses.
"Close your eyes." The Mexican giant says.
Someone unties the pillowcase from around my neck
and removes it. Then glasses are placed on my face.
"Wear these until your eyes adjust." The now‐
sunglassless giant says.
Sin's left arm hangs at his side, and blood has stained
the shredded sleeve.
"Know where I can find a good doctor hereabouts?" He
asks in his low dusty voice.
Every Girl Deserves A Party Dress
Everyone has a flower inside,
And inside that flower is a word.
‐ a Seri saying
You had to kidnap me from the Cinco de Mayo
party they were holding in my honor?" I say. "You couldn't find someone else to treat your scratch?" I ask Sin angrily.
"We didn't kidnap you to fix me up." Sin says. "Even though that would be nice."
"I must look a mess." I say. "And for the first time in my life I had on a beautiful dress. I have never had a beautiful dress to wear to a party. Now look at it. It's ruined."
"The U.S. President is dead." Sin says. And El Presidente is wounded. Somehow a bomb was placed in the library of Mexican Presidential residence. The U.S. First Lady is on a plane out of the country. No‐one knows where Tejana is. The rumor mills are already saying that she was behind the bombing. That's just bullshit."
"Somebody's kind of sweet on somebody, isn't he?" The Mexican giant says. "I've got to admit, she is a hot tamale."
"Who are you?" I ask the giant. "You're the biggest Mexican I've ever seen."
"You mean I'm the biggest person you've ever seen." He says.
"No." I say.
"I'm not Mexican." The giant says. "Well, I am in a way. I'm Seri. We were the first Mexicans. Now there are only 650 of us left. If it hadn’t been for Mary Beck Moser and her husband Edward, there wouldn’t be any of us left. There were only 200 Seri left in El Desemboque when the Mosers arrived in the 1950s. Seems like Marias are always trying to save the world. Mary, like her husband, was a linguist. They came to study the Seri language, Cmiique Iitom, but she wound up being primarily a nurse and midwife for our tribe. I understand Mexicans. Never could figure out what Americans are about. At least not the ones outside of Texas. They're all effing crazy. Texas should just secede and become part of Mexico again, like it used to be."
"There are people who've said that before." Sin says. "Rick Perry was one of them. I don't know if the rejoining Mexico was part of his plan ‐ unless he planned to be governor of that too."
As they rambled on, my eyes started to adjust to the light. There were shot‐up vehicles all around us. Some vehicles were missing almost all the glass, some were riddled with holes like Swiss cheese. Bodies were all over. Blood was splattered on remains of glass and remains of car interiors. The car I had been in had only four bullet holes through its glass, but there was blood all over the glass.
“By the way,” the giant says, “I am really a giant.”
“Yes.” I say. “That is obvious.”
“No really.” The giant says. “My ancestors were real giants. I am a midget compared to them. They came to the Sonora by stepping across Hell’s Channel in the Gulf of California from Tiburon Island. At least that’s what the Spanish called the island. We Seris call it Tahejöc.
“I’ve heard that legend.” I say.
"It’s more than a legend. We step right over walls as if they weren’t there. If you need to get over any wall. Let me know. I’m your man…er…giant. My name is Bo, by the way." The giant says. "Tejana says we're supposed to get you to Jalisco as soon as possible."
"Jalisco?"
"Yes. Jalisco."
"Why?" I ask.
"Because that's where they've taken her husband." Bo says.
"And why would she want me?" I ask.
"She says that you are the best doctor in Mexico." Bo says.
"Did she say anything else?" I ask.
"Yes." Bo says. "She says to tell you she'll buy you a new party dress. She says every girl deserves a party dress."
“That is kind of her.” I say.
“Corazón.” Bo says.
“Heart?”
“Yes.” Bo says. “That is the word inside the flower within you.”
Already Seen
Citizen Band is the most reliable form of
communication in the desert. We had already heard over the radio that a truck driven by coyotes had broken down in the desert. The cargo of course was men, women, and children. And since that trip was being run by the coyotes, we knew the passenger service was “first class”. The only ones who had food would be the three scoundrels in the cab of the truck. The men, women, and children in the back, protected from the scorching desert sun only by a flimsy layer of battered canvas, had no food, and the water they may have had, if they were lucky, would be putrid and warm, in a few plastic gallon jugs filled at the last stop, which had been several hours ago at some livestock watering hole.
Anyone who has not grown up in a poverty stricken
Third World country that has been kept under the thumb of one oppressor after another has no idea what the conditions were like in the back of that truck. The aforementioned water would have some form of larvae swimming in it, proof that it was good for life forms of some type. The back of the truck would have two dozen people crammed in it. Those people would have almost no room to move. It would smell like very bad body odor and stale urine. The men, who were a little luckier than the women, could pee at the base of th
e canvas tarp, or through a hole ripped in it. The bouncing of the truck over the poorly maintained road made sure that most of the urine got on the canvas or the floor of the truck bed. If you had to crap, you either hoped there was a hole in the bed floor, or that someone had an old newspaper that you could defecate on, clean yourself with, and then toss the whole mess out the back of the truck without opening the tailgate, because, if you fell out of the truck, no one was going to come back and get you. There was always someone who got sick and threw up. There was always someone that was wrestling with diarrhea. There were always several very young children that had either pooped and/or peed there pants. There were always one or two people that were so sick or old they should never have made the trip in the first place, but someone was always happy to take their money.
These were the people that the recently assassinated President said should self‐deport themselves from the United States, once they had, against all odds, miraculously gotten there. Most likely it was bullshit like this that had gotten him elected, and then violently unelected.
Things hadn’t changed much since Rosaria and I had had our big adventure. But I was here now, and I had a lot of people on my side now, so things had changed, but you had to be lucky enough to get to me to find that out. I had my own clinic now. I had patched up, put back together, healed, treated, cured and resurrected enough people, good and bad, from both sides of the border, that I, and my clinic, were left alone for the most part. I wasn’t here to judge. “Let he without sin be the first to cast the stone.” The Biblia says. I wasn’t here to cast stones. I was here to heal.
