"Si, I see," says El Mecanico Fantastico, fanning himself with the tortilla again. "Hokay. I come down mañana and take it out."
"Can't we get on it now? I'd like to be sure of getting it on that train."
"I see," says the Mexican. "Hokay. I get my tools and we rent a burro."
"A burro?"
"From Ernesto Diaz. To carry my tools. The big garage locks their tools in a iron box."
"I see," says the Tranny Man, beginning to wonder how to pin down a reasonable estimate for labor, tools and a burro.
Suddenly there is a big brodie of squeals and yelps in the dust. The sow's red-bristled boar friend has dropped in and caught Chief making eyes at his lady. By the time they are pulled apart Chief has one ear slashed and has lost both canines in the boar's brick hide.
But that isn't the worst of it. Giving away all that weight has been too much for dog's aged hindquarters. Something is dislocated. He has to ride back down strapped atop a second burro. The ride pops the dislocation back in so he can walk again by evening, but he is never able afterward to lift a hind leg without falling over.
They've been there a week now. They are flat-tiring back from the beach to the south in a rented Toyota open-top. The left rear blew out miles back. There is no spare. And a ruptured radiator hose is spewing steam from under the dash so they can barely see the road ahead.
Finally the wife asks, "You're going to just keep driving it?"
"I'm going to drive the sonofabitch back to the sonofabitch that rented me the sonofabitch and tell him to shove this piece of broken Jap junk up his overpriced greaser ass!"
"Well, drop the dog and me off at the Blums' first, then, if you're going to – if we get close."
She didn't say If you're going to make a scene. There was steam and furor enough.
The Tranny Man missed the before-siesta mail out and he's promised himself to get a letter to his sister finished to take down to the post office when it opens after siesta. He's at the Blums' rented villa, alone except for Chief. The dog is stretched on a woven mat, tongue out and eyes open. Wally Blum's at the beach surfcasting. The Tranny Man doesn't know where Betty Blum and his wife have gone.
The Blums' hacienda is not down in Gringo Gulch but up on the town's residential slopes. The yard of a shack across the canyon-of-a-street is level with his window, and three little girls smile at him across the narrow chasm. They keep calling Hay-lo mee-ster, then ducking back out of sight in the foliage of a mango tree and giggling.
That tree is the whole neighborhood's social center. Kids play in its shade. Birds fly in and out of its branches. Two pigs and a lot of chickens prowl the leafy rubble at its roots. All kinds of chickens – chickens scrawny and chickens bald, chickens cautious and chickens bold. The only thing the chickens seem to have in common is freedom and worthlessness.
The Tranny Man watches the chickens with a welcome disdain. What good can they be, too sick to lay, too skinny to eat? What possible good? Inspired by the inefficiency, he launches into his letter:
"Dear Sis: Gawd, wot a country! It is too poor to know it's ignorant and too ignorant to know it's poor. If I was Mexico you know what I would do? I would attack the U.S. just to qualify for foreign aid when we whup 'em (ha ha). Seriously, it sure isn't what I had hoped, I can tell you that."
A green mango bounces off the grill of his window. More giggles. He reads the last line with a sigh and lays down his ballpoint.
Wish you were here, Sissy, with all my heart. He drains his Seven-and-Seven and feels a kind of delicious depression sweep over him. A poignancy.
An accordion in one of the shacks begins practicing a familiar tune, a song popular back home a couple years back. What was it? Went la la la laa la la; we'd fight and neh-ver win… That was it! Those were the days, my friend; those were the days…
The poignancy becomes melancholy, then runs straight on through sentiment to nostalgia. It stops just short of maudlin. With another sigh he picks his pen up and resumes the letter:
"I think of you often on this trip, Old Pal. Do you remember the year Father drove us to Yellowstone Park and how great it was? How wonderful and bright everything looked? How proud we felt? We were the first kids coming out of the Depression whose Father could afford to take his family on such a trip. Well let me tell you, things are not bright anymore and not very likely to get so. Ferinstance, let me tell you about visiting Darold, in 'Berserkly.' That about says it. You simply cannot believe the condition that nice college town has allowed itself to get into since we were there in '62 for the Russian-American track meet -"
He stops again. He hears a strange clucking voice: "Qué? Qué?" In the yard across the way he sees a very old woman. She appears to be swaying her way along a clothesline with an odd, weightless motion. Her face is vacant of teeth or expression. She seems unreal, a trick of the heat, swaying along, clucking "Qué? Qué? Qué?" She sways along until she reaches a frayed white sheet. She gathers it from the line and starts feeling her way back to her shack. "Qué? Qué? Qué Qué?"
"Blind," says the Tranny Man, and rises to check Wally's cupboards. He's bound to have something to pick up where the Seventy-seven left off, something stronger if possible: eighty-eight… ninety-nine! He bobs this way and that around the strange kitchen, awash with sweat, rendered rudderless by the jagged apparition of the blind crone. He is drifting fast now toward the reefs.
The Tranny Man's wife arrives half an hour later with Wally Blum's wife, Betty, in Wally's nice little Mexican-built Volkswagen jeep loaded with gifts for the gals back home. She has barely begun telling Betty Blum how grateful she is for the ride not to mention the company when she is pulled about by her elbow and scolded so loudly for going off without taking the mail – so unfairly -- that the world is suddenly billowing silent about her, all the street sounds ceasing, the hens not clucking, the kids not chattering on the rooftop, the mariachi not pumping his accordion… even the river half a mile down the hill, stopping its sparkle around the rocks. The kneeling girls are raised from their wash to listen: how will the gringa señora take it, this machismo browbeating?
"Understand?" the Tranny Man demands in closing. "Sabe?"
The evening leans forward from its many seats. Betty Blum begins to take blame and croon apologies in the familiar catty pussyfooting of one browbeaten señora coming to the defense of another. The unseen audience starts to sigh, disappointed. But before the Tranny Man can begin his grumpy forgiving, the Tranny Man's wife hears herself speaking in a voice stiff with care at the delivery of each syllable, telling her husband to let go of her arm, to lower his shouting, and to never treat her as though she were drawing a wage from him – never again speak to her like she was one of his broken machines.
"If you do I swear I'll kill you, and if I can get to him I'll kill Donald, and if I can get to them before I'm stopped I'll kill Terry and the grandchildren and then myself, I swear it before God!"
Both her husband and Betty stare dumbstruck at this outburst. Then the two of them exchange quick small nods: shoulda seen something like this coming… woman this age… all those rum-and-Cokes. The Tranny Man's wife is no longer paying attention. She knows she has been effective. For a moment she feels as though the intensity of this effect will set her aflame, that her flesh will melt and run off her bones.