The Devil Knows Best

by Ryan Moehring

negativity was beginning to overwhelm me, when off in the dusty, cactus-laden distance I saw a bus approaching the complex. I suddenly wanted out of this place, and the next bus to Mexico City wasn’t coming for another two hours. If I was going to catch that bus I needed to hurry. I sprinted down the sheer steps, nearly plummeting to my death several times like the countless human sacrifices before me. As I made my descent, I imagined Aztec parents taking their kids to watch the sacrifices: “Mommy, mommy, when are they going to rip out the heart?”

  “Shh, child. Very soon. We must be patient.”

  “But, mommy, I want to see them rip out the heart nooooooow!”

  When I reached the bottom I took a deep breath, dusted myself off, and raced to the bus loading area. On the way out of the complex, I noticed the same little girl’s parents buying her the doll she so coveted. As I passed through the vendors’ square, the sweet aroma of roasted pork filled my nostrils. I heard a man yell something in Spanish that sounded like, “Stop, chorizo!” but as tempting as a chorizo sausage snack was, I needed to catch that bus. I ignored my hunger pangs and continued sprinting. I reached the loading area with just enough time to catch my breath while I waited for the last handful of passengers to board.

  This was a state bus, so it would be packed with locals and the fare would be cheap. I looked around as I paid the driver twenty pesos, noticing that I was the only gringo on board. I made my way to the back of the bus and sat down in front of a young man who was playing “Hotel California” on his acoustic guitar. The bus took off and I reclined in my seat, relaxing to the guitar’s melody. Twenty minutes into the trip, I had almost fallen asleep when

  the hydraulic brakes screeched and the bus came to a stop. Two men dressed completely in black boarded the bus—M16 assault rifles in hand—and surveyed the faces of the passengers. If these chaps got on your bus in America you could be certain that something was terribly wrong, but Memo had warned me about the Mexican Federal police and their overly-dramatic tactics, so I didn’t panic. I heard one of them say gringo, and I sighed heavily as they walked towards me. Naturally, I thought. In the middle of the Mexican desert, two angry men with assault rifles are looking for me.

  One of the men asked me in Spanish to open my backpack, saying something about chorizo. “A thousand sorries, sir,” I cordially replied in his language. “What business has you with my gigantic sausage? Everybody in this places seems to be in love with my sausage, yes?”

  “Open the backpack,” he repeated in Spanish, confused by my response, but undaunted.

  “Listen, dude,” I responded in English. “If this is some kind of joke, it’s not funny. I know that sausage guy is probably pretty broke, and on most days I would have bought lunch from him, but I was in a hurry, OK?”

  “Open the backpack.”

  “Is that the only sentence you know?” I started in English. “You might be the only person in Mexico whose Spanish is worse than mine.” I tried to continue in Spanish, “I knows not what you think in your fat Latin brain, but I read on occasions about the constitution of Mexico’s greatest nation, and even foreign intruding viruses such as me is protected from the searching, even so far up as seizures in the anal cavity. Now you understands me, yes? I have no sausage in my sack.”

  The man paused for a second, clearly confounded by what had just escaped from my mouth, and trying to decide if he should be offended. “Open the backpack, chorizo,” he said, emphasizing the last word as if it were an insult. Why this guy had nick-named me after a spicy sausage I did not know, but he was persistent. He was also now pointing his gun directly at my face.

  “Jesus Christ. All this over some goddamn sausage?” I had given up speaking Spanish to them. It was going to be all English from this point on. “Memo was right—you guys are a bunch of lunatics. Fine, have it your way.” I handed the backpack to him. “What happens next, are you going to plant some chorizo in my backpack and take me down to the precinct?”

  All I had in my backpack was my passport, my wallet, a couple of liters of water, the Tomás Rivera book, a bottle of sunscreen, three granola bars, and a digital camera. The twenty-dollar bill Memo had given me, along with the rest of my money, was stashed safely in my sock. It didn’t take long before the police officer realized that I did not, in fact, have any stolen sausage in my backpack, and that my passport matched the only wallet in my possession. He threw my bag back at me and departed with a grunt. Before I knew it, the bus was moving again. I noticed several of the passengers staring at me, which made me uncomfortable. I shrugged at a woman across the aisle and said, “I don’t even like chorizo that much.” She glared at me accusingly, as if I were some sort of perverted sausage addict. I asked the man with the guitar sitting behind me if he would

  let me play his instrument for a while, but he just gave me a dirty look and silently stared out the window for the remainder of the ride. I’ve had the good fortune of being punched in the face many times over the years, and I could tell from those experiences that this guy had a sincere hankering for punching me square in my nose. Mexicans, especially Mexican men, are very proud, I thought. Maybe it’s an insult to ask to play another man’s guitar?

  Memo was waiting for me at the bus stop. When I got in the car he grinned and said, “I bet you wish you had gone to Acapulco and gotten laid, yes?” The look on my face apparently said it all, and he laughed, relishing his victory. I tossed my bag in the back of the car, and as we drove away I recounted the events of the day to him. When I told him about the incident with the police on the bus he laughed so hard that I thought he might crash the car. “You actually believed that they thought you were a sausage thief?! Hahahaha! A chorizo is a pick pocket, you moron—they thought you had stolen someone’s wallet! God has sent me this shit-forbrains for amusement!”

  I then asked him about the guitar player and why he had acted so strange when I asked to play his guitar. “You asked him what? Oh my god, just when I thought it could not get any funnier, you top even yourself! Eres pendejo, o nomás te haces? You know that you asked this man if you could touch his penis? You are lucky he did not punch you right in your stupid American face. If you value your life you do not say such things to a Mexican man. Oh my god, the comedy! What have I done to be so blessed today?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I responded, blushing. “Laugh all you want, old man. But seriously, I guess I need to thank you. After all, if you hadn’t made me give you that joint, you’d be bailing me out of jail instead of picking me up from the bus station.”

  “This is true, Ryan. And you know why? It’s because the Devil is smarter from being old than from being the Devil. If your empty head remembers nothing else that I have said to you, remember this.”

  Memo fumbled through his ash tray and pulled out the joint he had taken from me earlier. He lit it, took a couple of puffs, and broke the silence before I could express my shock. Memo smokes pot?

  “You know, Ryan,” he said with a strained voice while holding in a lungful of smoke, “You should not feel so bad about making these mistakes with your Spanish.” He took several more puffs and passed it to me. “Even big companies do this sometimes. I remember an airline commercial many years ago. They were trying to advertise their new leather seats and extra leg room in first class. The problem was that their slogan, ‘fly in leather,’ sounded like ‘fly naked’ when translated into Spanish. Get it? Those sonsabitches were saying that when you flew naked with them they would give you three extra inches. Hahahaha!”

  Before long, we took the final puffs of the joint and our laughter died. We were quiet as Memo drove the car over the mountain pass, revealing the beautiful valley below. A brilliant red-orange sun was beginning to set over the ridge in the west, bathing the valley in a rich, scarlet hue. Memo and I weren’t exactly Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but we were friends, and I felt for a moment that we were riding off into the sunset in an old western movie. The devil was nowhere in sight.

  Other Titles by The Author

/>   The Fried Twinkie Manifesto:

  and other tales of disaster and damnation

  Whether solving biblical foreskin mysteries, having his head split open by a crowbar-wielding man named Thor or getting busted for pickpocketing in a remote Mexican desert, Ryan Moehring reveals in his debut collection of stories and essays, The Fried Twinkie Manifesto, that his irreverent wit and capacity for uncovering nuggets of insight from the rubble of the mundane make him one of humor’s most promising newcomers.

  While maintaining a voice unmistakably his own, Moehring evokes the wild imagination of Tom Robbins, the soul of Sedaris, and the wisdom of Vonnegut. Though readers will more often than not find themselves laughing out loud, Moehring’s eye for the profound and his unyielding honesty ensure that they are just as likely to cry—or cringe. 

  www.friedtwinkiemanifesto.com

  About The Author

  Ryan Moehring was born in Nampa, Idaho and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. (He’s still not sure what he did to piss off his parents.) Ryan attended Beals Elementary School in Omaha, where, as a result of his unfashionable mullet and husky physique, he was indiscriminately pummeled during