Homunculus

by Wintner, Robert;

  He nearly snoozes when little voices on little feet scamper in with two more beers slightly cooler than the shade. Two of Inez’s grandchildren with dark hair and eyes stare at the gringo who drinks all the beer. He drinks these too on the edge of the bed, lost in another still life: man in contemplation of what’s going on around him.

  It all ends in tears anyway—Kerouac wrote it, no big deal. He meant tears of sadness, because life passes surely as beer warms unless you drink it. Thoughts round the bend and go up and down like a road through the hills. He gets up, walks out to the courtyard where Inez and company work over some practicalities, more beans and a brand new goat’s head. He gives her a few grand and says he needs to see a man about some business.

  She knows that gringo men are different with their business and their manners, like offering explanation to a woman before leaving. She nods, accepting these things and knowing as well of gringo prospects; he might return, might not. Life will work itself out. They don’t discuss his going or his business. He leaves for La Mexa for drinks and counseling. Maybe he’s homesick.

  He heads down to Benito Juarez and sits on a bench then lays himself down until waking up in late afternoon to the soft calls of roosting egrets and the soft talk of Bobby and Earl a few benches off. Bobby makes a point, recognizing this on the one hand but that on the other. Earl nods, resting tattooed arms on his thighs. Maybe they review the relevancy of the nihilistic subtext in Nietzsche or disagree on whether Joe Montana could have played to forty-five with better protection from the front line. Earl raises a finger. But Bobby says, “No, no, no, I know what you’re gonna say,” and on he rattles until Earl nods again like Bobby guessed it right.

  Tony walks up to el jardin and sits another hour reading the gringo newspaper that lists restaurants and events. He reads that Mastercard and Visa are acceptable many places now, making the town accessible to visitors who don’t feel safe with all that cash.

  He reads the bulletin board at the coffee hole and says hello to a few familiar faces. Some ask if he’s been gone. Some asks if he’s back. “Not exactly,” is his answer.

  Near dusk he stops at La Mexa and finds it empty as the end of an era. Too much competition from chic and clever, he supposes, or maybe it’s just one of those days. Maybe everyone is hungover, home waiting for nature to work her magic one more time.

  He asks Pancho where he can find Cisco. Pancho shrugs, so he sits with a tequila. Awhile later Cisco steps up and sits beside him. “So?” Tony says. Cisco shrugs. They drink. To avoid what shapes up as nothing in common, Tony stands and says he has to go. Maybe Cisco is in a mood. Tony pats him on the back and says don’t be a stranger, come on out sometime. Cisco says yeah, yeah.

  He heads down the hill to the flats, to the cracked pavement and primitive hovel of Inez’s friends or family or whomever they are, to the pervasive dirt that covers the kids and chickens in equal measure. He knocks on the door and the chickens scatter, the children giggle and stare. A woman inside says Inez has gone. She shoos the air toward the ranch. He says thank you and goes the same way. He could go elsewhere, but this is the direction of his choosing and he feels farther along. He doesn’t know what to do but in the meantime feels most prudent with more of the antidote. Inez feels very prudent as well with two strong burros, replenished supplies and a rancho. What fool of a man or a woman would deny such a chance?

  In long strides he wants to catch up and soon sees a female ahead with two burros. He jogs but it’s some other grandmother or great-grandmother who says Inez is a half-mile up. Great-grandmother also knows the love story; he can tell. He wonders if women share the spirit of victory in all cultures. He wonders if Great-grandmother is on the guest list and he jogs a few more yards before the miles catch up and slow him down to the dusty shuffle common to this road. Great-grandmother calls, “Hola!” with a yip yip yip at the end that brings Taco back on the run for a jump and a quick sniff. They trod together up the road to Inez and the burros laden with beans, rice and corn, a week’s worth for less than one night’s bar tab.

  “Hola,” Inez says, head bowed in twilight. She looks up with two more twinkles and steps close and kisses him. She’s brushed and flossed and makes him think differences are for those who see them. She looks up in last light. He hasn’t flossed, brushed, bathed or looked in a mirror in a long time. What can she see? But her gaze feels surrounded by a softer light. They walk in the last of it on the road home, where they will bathe, eat, have sex and sleep well. And tomorrow … But isn’t that always the problem?

  Heidi’s truck sits in the driveway, monolith to the old order. “Oh,” Inez says. “La señora esta aquí.” They unpack the burros by the picnic table, and she leads them to their grazing area where she lingers, so re-entry can occur in phases of apparent practicality. From the kitchen he hears the shower running, so he sorts again, grains, legumes, love. Maybe Nurse Goode is down for a hose down and restock, beer and liquor, beans and cukes and some bug spray. Maybe she’ll head back up after a rest for more of the intensive care she longs for. He waits, contemplating primitive virtue.

  “Hi,” she chirps with no guile or doubt. Glancing here and there, preoccupied, she hurries as if the crazies might go crazier if she doesn’t get back in time. “I didn’t know if you were still here.” He feels her indifference. It’s easier now. He was a charity case who made her laugh, a man of mental stability, modest resource and abundant durability. He wonders if he can actually become a Mexican. He could get some job leads from Tomàs. Nevermind. He doesn’t care, not with Inez and beans and tortillas and the warmth. Heidi sees the new strength on him sure as a new shirt. “God, I can’t believe it.” He stands taller. “You … I swear, I’ll make it up to you.” She hurries back to her room and returns with half a million pesos and chucks it to the table. “How did you get this?” She means the groceries. The groceries are what she saw; groceries fill her eyes and heart.

  “In town. The burros.”

  “You went to town with the burros?”

  “Inez and I went to town with the burros.”

  She thinks it over, shaking her head; the crazy shit some guys get themselves into just to get laid. She smiles; she knows.

  Inez enters, head bowed. “Esta muy bueno. They need to work.”

  “We did too,” he says.

  Heidi is neither saddened nor amused but leans into the fifty-pound bags like a missionary exporting resources. He follows the lead of his peasant girlfriend, humping supplies into the truck, feeling secure in manual labor and injustice. He doesn’t mind that gringo excess instantly absorbs his toil, nor does he resent the gringa queen; she bought Inez for him, didn’t she? Besides, without the gringo excess, who would need laborers like himself? It’s working, he thinks, but the waste bothers him.

  Inez titters on the sly; the grain and produce ran three hundred, and Heidi just bought half for five. Inez is ready for another round trip and loves the atmosphere of crazy good fortune that surrounds gringos. Heidi looks less fortunate, thinner, paler, matted, stringy, bruised, scratched and stooped. They load. They rest.

  “It’s worse,” she says. Charles is less coherent, less rational. Jorge grunts and hand-jives Charles to a head of steam. Charles piles the trash. “That’s all he does.”

  “He should be getting fit,” Tony says. “Or finished. When does the show let out?”

  She says he cleared a swatch a hundred yards long, twenty yards wide. Then he built two palapas from debris. Jorge had him shape them into pyramids. Yesterday the old man climbed to the top and told Charles to pray, so Charles prayed. The old man came down and had Charles climb up. Then he prayed to Charles. He made her pray too. She did, because they were nuts. “It’s a game with Charles, but Jorge wants to kill him. If he says jump off the cliff and fly, Charles’ll step up and flap his wings.”

  “But if Charles jumps, Jorge loses his following.”

  “Charles is leaving him money.”

  “Charles wrote a will?”

&n
bsp; “Yeah. He says an inheritance to look forward to will help Jorge realize his potential.”

  “Now you’re saving Charles from murder?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t want Charles to die. That’s all. You think I like it up there?”

  “It must be entertaining.”

  She slumps onto a bench. “He won’t eat.”

  “Maybe he’s not hungry.”

  “Please.”

  “What do you eat?”

  “Jorge gets stuff at night, broccoli, carrots, corn. Mostly broccoli. Charles eats it raw by the pound and turns white and starts working on a rock or a bonfire. We have a bonfire every night. Jorge gets him going with fire and the eclipse …” She weakens, “He won’t talk to me.”

  “Jorge?”

  “No!” She sobs.

  Inez cradles her and says, “Otra vez Nanauatzin.”

  Heidi looks up. “Jorge says that.”

  Inez says Nanauatzin was the god who threw himself in the fire and made a new sun. Another god followed for a new moon. And now the old legend is a modern hustle. “Many men play Nanauatzin. You can make money near Mexico City. The legend is touristic. They come to look. They pay but not like before.” Inez grew up on the outskirts near Teotihuacan, near the ruins and souvenir stands. Her family is mixed and still practices the Toltec tradition of walking the Avenue of the Dead to the pyramids of the sun and moon on astral alignment, when a family can double its fortune with a little extra drama. “Ahora, el eclipse esta para los Cristos, màs o menos.” The big money now is in hand-carved crucifixes but hand-carved Nanauatzin sells a strong second.

  “So what?” he says.

  Nada mucho, Inez says, except that every shitbum beggar in the world comes in and ruins a decent tourist hustle, especially at eclipse time, and the old guy up the hill is doing it too. Tony shrugs. Heidi’s eyes implore.

  “I won’t play.” He steps away. “I don’t wish anything bad for Charles. I hope he gets through this thing he set up for himself, but the game ain’t mine. I care. But life and death are a game to him. I admire that in a man. But it’s not my game, not this round. I don’t think he’ll do himself anyway. He’ll be up there till he works a few kinks out.”

  He looks down. Heidi wants help. Inez wants a ranch of her own. He wants dinner and a nice fuck. Life converges on a moment from three directions and in the next moment goes in the three directions each moment potentially leads to. Heidi prepares to head up with a bitter smile. Inez steps back like a courtesan leaving a queen. He pours a drink so he can ditch all that crap—Charles isn’t crazy, just full of shit. He’ll turn himself to toast or he won’t; either way he’s a big boy who knows what happens when you play with matches.

  Heidi looks sad as a little girl who saw the Easter Bunny but nobody believes her. Charles is crazy, she insists. People that motivated ought to find fulfillment, Tony allows. But if Charles doesn’t kill himself, then this big, dumb game will be forgotten like the rest. If he does, momentum will be internal; Chuck won’t be pushed, except maybe by Jorge, unlikely straight man in the traveling Wannaspotec Show. “Charles can be remembered for his last production.”

  “Oh, you,” she utters in pitiable exit, chilling a recently happy homecoming, clouding it with dust and weighing it down with disappointment. At least day is done, a long one when you factor the gringo stuff. The peasant number is simpler, slower and smoother. Humping it to town with burros was a world away from the insanity ensemble up the hill. A new-found man and his woman Inez stocked up at a profit. So what does she want, that he’ll join her so a beggar can come back down and scratch grass from a few more cobblestones and a failed actor can continue where he left off with his old friend alcoholism on his quest for the perfect blueberry pussy? I doubt it.

  Tony D needs a drink. But a troubled mind soaking up liquor is troubled still. Maybe Charles is a goner with admirable commitment. Here, here. For he’s a jolly good fellow. People reach dead ends every day, good people, strong people and true. Tony Drury and Associates happen to be on a lovely boulevard for now, so the rescue will have to wait. If the odd couple still need help in springtime, then he’ll head on up with mercy and sharing and all that.

  Charles might not make it to springtime, but that’s all right, because sometimes you have to give a man his feet and let him walk. Because all these people grew up thinking drunk, stoned and horny are equal to freedom and anarchy. Viva la revolutión. If Charles burns, then good for him. He deserves a bravo from the rest, who only melt like figurines near the fire, stuck in poses of exquisite meaning, and don’t forget the art. Maybe it’s a good day after all, a welcome home, where you can hardly knock a guy for his career at the Gas Company, because we do what we do.

  The modern renegades in town survive their usefulness and take refuge in familiarity. Inez is a tawny Cinderella in glass harachis. She knows about heaven and gringo habitat. Maybe she spread her legs for the head honcho before. Now she’s mistress of the house, reclaiming the earth for those who still live with it, inviting him to join in. It’s not his house. It’s hers. He likes the arrangement; it’s so free of responsibility. He drinks and thinks. She stocks, arranging a productive cocina on a smooth running rancho, saying what can come of what they have and how he will love her cooking. He loves her cooking all right, listening with a patient erection to the Spanish and Indian recipes blended in her family. Some of her family live near town and will one day visit, maybe one day soon, maybe next week, or the week after. She knows he has friends in town. She wants to entertain. Because work is good and provides food and shelter and after security comes the gravy. He nods and shows her the turkey baster. She agrees and hikes her dress like she and Heidi went to the same finishing school. Dicing hormones in hardly a minute, she smiles over another simmering recipe, which is the memorable stew called today. Sex will not be rationed because it’s free for the taking; it’s the happiest work leading to babies and more of the wonderful days. Life is good, is it not? “We will celebrate, sí?”

  He considers a fiesta at Rancho Heidi but shakes his head. But she laughs at the gringo anxiety, knowing she can easily chase it away.

  Fuck it: Inez is planning a fête. What’s one more crazy idea on a day like today, along with love and simple living? Familiarity takes over; Inez gets better and better, rising to the situation, or maybe that’s him, since she’s been big-hearted all along. But what about money? What about her swelling belly? What about a place to live after Charles comes, down or goes up in smoke? What about purpose, liquor, food and shelter—what about peace of mind? She laughs again. He laughs too and wonders how long.

  XIII

  What Goes Up

  Loving Inez is different as peanut butter and jelly from enchiladas con salsa verde à la Tia Beatriz. It isn’t only spicy instead of sweet, it’s hot instead of placating, enriching instead of lumpy. She has more give than she lets on at the outset, maybe knowing a gringo should be brokein easy to muy picánte.

  Exotic cooking and feverish ficky fick get down to the obsession and jealousy made famous by hot bloods below the border. Laying claim to the soul of another like property, she watches his eyes like they’re calves, apt to stray. He doesn’t mind. He knows worldly, indifferent women whose chief concern is that a man be sensitive enough to make them come after he’s picked up the check. Inez deals with a different tab.

  He considers babies a bid for immortality, legacy of the flesh, another conspiracy of the media/medical/church complex that needs laborers, believers and parents to teach children what is right, what has to be worked toward, paid for, tithed, revered and continued. Chaos is the legacy, because children learn less and then become parents. He thinks his friends are smart to avoid that grind, every one childless, even those with children, because children grow up and go away to become strangers with busy lives. He sees no link to the future in a few more pounds of human flesh. Ninety-five million additional humans annually make the world terminal, more people making mor
e people, consuming more stuff, shit flowing faster than the race to make more baby humans, the only species to revere itself, to self-destruct, devoid of instinct.

  He fears that no one else sees. He fears fading contact with a dying world. He sees bombs, crashes and disease on the dish-fed tube and he hears the alarm: Twenty-four dead and more feared dead! The same voice announces with mild chagrin that another species or two is now extinct, what a pity, elephants were so sensitive, whales so big. He thinks a hundred million humans dead will make quite a stir on the dish-fed tube but the din will stabilize when decimation goes to a billion.

  Yet if a billion humans die, you’ll still get stuck in traffic or mugged or driven from home by the concrete and sheetmetal plague that will not slow one iota with a thousand million down. That’s one in six, or is it seven? No, a proper thinning calls for three in six to thin the crowds, dim the noise, let the green come back. Now who will agree? Charles will, but he’s a bonafide nut case. How does that make a man like Tony Drury feel, a man who at least knows how to behave in public? He knows as well why homosexuality got popular: it absorbs libido and makes no babies. Nature sends lemmings over the cliff so a few can survive; so too with males to males, females to females, because suicide will never catch on in the volume required, in a species with no instinct. AIDS is a cliff to jump over, and over they go for a little brown round.

  Needle junkies jump and so do heteros who fuck too many too fast and over they go. The Christians say it’s Jesus, pissed as ever, while homosexual Christians claim civil rights to the Heavenly Father and a little brown round. Nevermind; homosexuality can’t counterbalance the onrushing billions. Nature wants a solution, so men buttfuck like too many rats in a cage; women strap on dildos with battery-powered pulses that squirt some stuff. Lesbians on the dish-fed tube want artificial insemination to fulfill their female nature and prove that lesbians make good mothers. In a few years they’re back showing normal young Johnny or Jennifer, smart enough for a game show. Some humans merely dive into a bottle for a nice pickling.