It was my first day away from the house in some time, and my feet hurt, and I couldn’t tell if I was being regarded unfavorably because I wasn’t buying any of the hundreds of dogs I was shown or for less obvious reasons; these people in Chihuahua seemed alive and maybe I was back in the realm of common human indecencies, the dogs made me nervous in ways I was certain a big one would not; it got dark and I got tireder and lost, black-cave-nightmare lost on a trail on a hill that may not have been a trail and may have been not a hill but a fullblown mountain. Things got black and steep and I missed my María and the cool sheets and warm cinnamon and good cheer of a woman congratulating you for doing nothing beyond being there. I began most naturally howling like a wolf. By “most naturally” I mean it — these noises issued from me without a lot of thought. I did not say, Okay, we are in extremis, estranged from our friendly dead village, thing to do here is act like wolf — I just started rather groaning about my feet and María and the dark and then I began kind of singing the moaning and then I thought I was sounding like a wolf but don’t really know what they sound like, but even that idea — maybe I sounded like a bad idea of a wolf — did not occur and I kept at it, it felt right and meet so to do, amen. And out of the darkness walked unto me, looking terribly uncomfortable yet happy to see me, as might be said of any dog under circumstances like these, a forty-seven-pound Chihuahua, though its weight I did not determine then, I simply knew it was close enough. It was my dog. I had not believed in my lunatic quest until I saw its object before me in hesitant devotion.
Already it was surrendered to me, leader of our two-dog pack, and my self-esteem, which comes and goes, came. A fifty-pound Chihuahua, a mythical dog, surely a holy dog that I sensed was as old as the Aztec-Mayan mess I knew nothing about, was addressing me as Master on a lost mountain in Mexico. I shut up and said, “Home, boy,” and wanted to name him but only odd names arose — Algernon, Cremator, Dungeonballs, Turk (not bad — he looked Ottoman), Oldsmobile, Tampax, Terwilliger, Tweezer, Toulouse, I got stuck in the Ts until I hit Trotsky, perfect, and remembered I’d decided to name him that, and Trotsky led us home.
There we were put to bed like a couple of boys. María wagged a finger at me and said “Muy grande!” to either me or the dog and put him on a pallet in the kitchen, where he stayed, and we went to bed as usual, fond and hot. She smelled great and was firm and heavy, I should say solid, “heavy” misreads but should be taken favorably. María is the forty-seven-pound Chihuahua of women. I was to have been the hundred-and-forty-seven-pound eunuch of Taco Charley’s. My dog is the forty-seven-pound Chihuahua of Chihuahua. My head is a blunt instrument, a blunt instrument, and I don’t care. María is a good person.
A good person is a can of worms. A can of worms is a ball of wax. Sexually speaking. No. I do not mean that. I do not mean anything. If that were possible. I submit it is not. One may not mean nothing, never. One may amount to nothing, “be” nothing, and nothing may exist in a philosophical sense, but one may never mean nothing. This is, I think, obvious: What do you mean? Nothing. Oh?
So I mean something. A good person is a can of worms. That is what I mean. I am not good, probably. But the measure, the measuring, is…well, a can of worms, I believe is the expression. The expression seems almost universally applicable. Even a can of worms is a can of worms. Everything, however, is not a fly in the ointment or a wrench in the works. Shoe polish is not either of these, but shoe polish is a can of worms, clearly. Shoes themselves, wearing them, not, securing the proper size, the proper support, tying them — just what about shoes is not a can of worms? Nothing is not a can of worms. QED.
I took to taking the long, regular walk with my short, irregular dog. We went everywhere and nowhere together.
Perhaps a word about my past is in order. I have one. As they go, it is not astounding, probably, or outstanding, certainly, I would think. But as soon as I make such a claim, or claims, I wonder what I mean. You know about the episode involving Mrs. M. and Tod’s trike and my halfway-house time I have rather avoided. My presentation of these facts has not been altogether linear, I admit. I have said Mrs. M. is in indiscreet pursuit of me, and that that pursuit I have rebuffed. Something of the opposite might be the case. Or let us put it this way: I confess I was winder-peekin’ before I rode away from the window on Tod’s trike. That much I allow. Winder-peekin’ is as old a crime and harmless as they come, and in my book if you have the urge to winder-peek you’d best go ahead and winder-peek. The suppression of this impulse can bottle up into a nuclear mushroom of desire if you do not just go ahead and do it.
But my entire life, this is what I want to say, has not consisted of winder-peekin’. It has consisted in other enterprise. I have had jobs, good and bad, mostly the latter, mostly indoors, mostly involving paper more than people, and I have pension funds in place, etc. Much like anyone else, except those folk in lesser-developed countries where trades are still well thought of and you can be, for example, a fisherman for a living without having to join the Ku Klux Klan. I have observed Christmas at the appropriate time. I have browsed racks of greeting cards and been unable to bring myself to select one idiocy over the others. In many ways, I am approximately exactly like everyone else in the human predicament. But lately I am not: not everyone is walking the hills of Mexico unchallenged with a giant Chihuahua at his side for protection and a giant-hearted woman in his (her) bed at night for balm. I have seen my dog eat cacti, how tough he is — flowers skins needles and that ornery fiber-glassy down that really hurts, much more than the needles outright. He gives, I suppose, a cactus-eating aura and nobody messes with a cactus-eating aura, off a forty-seven-pound Chihuahua or off a mouse. I bask in this aura, drinking the occasional Yoo-Hoo, making the occasional sketch of hillside, whistling the occasional tune, inspecting the shoes I occasionally notice on my feet, the twenty-thousand-mile sandals, wearing well in the unpaved desert. My life, you might say, lacks definition. I had definition looking in Mrs. M.’s window, riding Tod’s trike, drinking that chocolate milk.
Yes, so I have, as any modern burgher citizen denizen fool census-mark does, annuities and a litter of wives and lesser mistakes in my wake. But something distinguishes me from those doing their time, workaday halfway-house cons who do not take inspiration from a black cabdrivers insolence and flee country of origin. Let’s just not go into it. I have made some phone calls and effected a cleaner getaway than it might have looked. There are realtors in red jackets showing my house. My modest man fired from Merrill Lynch for not pushing company stock on me is now holding my holdings at Smith Barney and observing my “conservative” investor-profile status, all interest and dividends on auto-rollover mode until such time as I need cash down here, which does not seem to be imminent. María does not know of course that I could buy us anything at all, and I find it agreeable not dwelling on it myself. I sometimes do wish I had Tod’s Harley down here, but that would elicit more notice than is healthy. Halcyon as it is, there are still the switchblade boys in the hill and dale. My dog and I have done some naughty spelunking — unobservant of safety precaution, I suppose I mean — in old silver mines. These have a greasy groped feel to the walls that tells you the last thing you will ever locate within is silver, and this seems to excite us as to the possibilities of finding truer treasure. We don’t know what, my bug-eyed hyper pal and I, but we look. Deep in a mine, too dark to see rock before you nose it, I can hear my dog pee from excitement in the soft guano. We squish on. This is life, perfectly put: go not you know where, except down, for reward already removed by those cleverer than you, sliding agreeably in ammoniac excrement, and “give up” and turn around with a sigh of resigned cheer with your boon companion, who does not complain. In Cincinnati, drink beer with grumbling colleagues until you all get DUIs going home to abuse the family. In untamed Mexico, drink a Yoo-Hoo with your dog and walk home and have a pill and a nurse. Altogether better way of life. Another thing: an egg down here is either in a nest, and usually not a formal one but one of convenience, such as a drawer, or it is in a pan acookin’, or it is in someone’s hand going to the pan. It is not in a box on a shelf in a store or on a truck going to the store or on a belt going to a box to go in a truck to go to the store to go on a shelf to go on a belt to go in a bag to go in a car to go in a house to go in a refrigerator to go from the box to go in a pan. I rest my case. Let your mind swell with the implications of the horseshit attending an egg in the United States and see how far you get. Gedouttahere is where you get.