The flow of Beauty and Blood

...I had almost dozed off while pressing tiny sugar ants into the soft road tar with a stick I still had in my hand from swatting flowers and weeds back along the back roads from where we had just walked these few endless miles in scorching heat. The ants had appeared out of nowhere like ants seem to do. Maybe a hundred or so of them passing in a single file, marching to get at the sweet Pepsi Cola I had spilled while pouring my peanuts into the bottle.

           
Billy Joe sat right beside me exhausted and day-dreaming. He stared dead-eye looking down at the ground, maybe a little too long and quiet for my own comfort. Feeling bugged, I reached over and nudged him, “You ready to go back?”, I said, knowing he was really just quiet, patiently waiting on me to be the one to bounce one way or the other. I watched him methodically wiping the salty sweat off his skin with his wet 'Nehi Grape' soda bottle. The salt stood out white and chalky on his dark skin. I leaned back once more against the rusty, red gas pump, and slowly stretched my tired aching legs preparing to get up from the cracked, and hard, concrete curb.

            The sun was just about in the day when it begins to turn the sky gold. It was uncomfortably still and silent unless you were listening for something in particular or hoping there was more than pure country silence itself.

           
           I watched Billy tilt his head to the side with the third or fourth crow of a rooster that was coming from somewhere back beyond the backside of the sad, old whisky bar next to us. I had also heard them just as many times. I could tell you, it was distinctly three completely different roosters out there, that is if you knew what you were listening to, and if you had a country ear like we did. I unfortunately had heard them myself quite a ways back on the road. I heard one screech after another and then over again, some were high and squawking, some low and guttural, that if a rooster could growl at all, that would be that sound. But as attuned as I was, I still pretended not to pay it any attention, though I knew, as did Billy, where they was squawking from. Clearly, this was not the normal  crowing sound you associate with a morning rooster. This sound was faster and more of a screech and cackle, which meant only one thing around these parts. This was a cock fight. There it went again louder than before. Billy, without another thought, jumped to his feet as if fired up and said,"come on lets go and check on ol’ Johnny."

            I knew way back on the road, with that first Rooster sound, we were going to follow it like a beacon.

            I slowly stood up and poured the rest of my peanuts in my mouth. I didn’t want it to look like I jumped every time Billy said so. I still kept thinking to myself, I shouldn’t have come up here in the first place, and Billy knew it too, he knew I didn't care much for being back this side of nowhere after the trouble we always find ourselves in going back there. He could feel my reluctance and that’s why he went on, decisively walking ahead before I changed my mind. He quipped and mumbled, walking away with his back to me, “Come on lets go, it will be fun and you can say hello to Katrina. she'll be back there”.

            Billy knew well enough I was going to follow him if I wanted to or not, even if he didn’t mention Katrina, but I guess the only reason I came at all in this heat was hoping I might see her even if at a distance. The thought of her alone was enough to take my mind off missing Serena and Cassidy, both of who just up and disappeared the last weeks of this summer.

         Katrina was as sheer opposite of Serena and Cassidy as milk and whiskey.  I loved being with Serena and Cassidy and would spend every day I could with them over anything, but when it came to Katrina, she was by far the hottest mean little Spanish firecracker you will ever come across in a lifetime, pouty and ferocious with the witchy soul of a little gypsy princess. She was without question, shockingly pretty, but also tough and dangerous as hunting rattlesnakes. Her full wine colored lips, as delicious as they may be, were usually engaged in a heated confrontation with someone, spitting out blistering insults of any and all kind. You just had to look at her wrong and she would lash out lightning fast, dismissing and diminishing you to next to nothing, while shutting down any type of advance you might be foolishly silly drunk to think about. I myself, like many, many others, was intimidated by her, and even more so because she was in fact Johnny’s little sister, who I dreaded to have to ever answer to. Everyone though, including him, knew me and her had a kind of thing for each other, although truthfully, as hard as I tried, I could never get anywhere with her, and I actually got the closest of anyone, for whatever that's worth. It was something akin to a cat and mouse game and had been that way since we first caught eyes day one on the school bus, and  from that day on, there was no turning away for me from that fiery presence of hers, especially knowing it was me she might have feelings for.  Her beauty was truly toxic. I shuddered every time seeing her gorgeous breathtaking sinewy figure and untouchable, dark, almond skin, that she tirelessly teased and tormented me and the world with. It was enough to lure anyone into a burning fire or off a cliff and why i came up here at all.  She was a mystery from every angle. Her temper was frustrating as it was confusing. Maybe she was just plain crazy, I can't say. Perhaps it was just that she was the youngest of nine kids that made her fighting mad or maybe she’s protecting her flowered innocence with that hard impenetrable tough exterior just to not go down the road of her older sisters. Whatever it was, it kept me coming back just to breathe the air she had just walked through.

 …I followed Billy behind the store, and after crossing through a hole in the fence, and ducking under some low hanging china-berry branches, we went traipsing single file down a foot path that wove through the backs of all the houses amongst the sharp mesquite trees.

            The path was trodden down and bare from mostly little skinny shirtless kids that would run back and forth, barefoot and surefooted between houses like little messenger ant soldiers. They were usually carrying something like a loaf of bread or soda-water that they were sent to the store for. Time seemed crucial for them as they darted unstopping as if anticipating a scolding. Their little bare feet navigated like wild lizards over the broken glass, crushed beer cans, and occasional car battery or bumper, that littered and lined the trail.

            I instinctively stepped cautiously clear of an old refrigerator laying on it’s side. I would have bet a million dollars a rattlesnake was hiding in it somewhere.

            The trail quickly came to a sharp end, and Billy and I stepped out from the deep shade of the mesquite, wincing into the blinding brightness of open air and the offensive sharp pungent odor that hung in the air like a fog, assaulting all you senses with a stinging offense. It was a sharp contrast to the cool welcoming shade and the sweet smell of Johnson grass and milkweed that edged the inside trail.

            I recognized the harsh smell of trash smoldering from rusty burning barrels that combined in the air with the oily stench of seasoned cow tripe, boiling in large pots of menudo, that were most likely on every stove in a mile radius. It was foul enough to make you annoyed and sick at the same time. I wished I had with me a bandana to cover my nose and mouth.  

             On Sunday, menudo and tamales are as holy as Guadalupe and St. Christopher around here with each recipe as guarded as the Holy Grail. I myself loved the taste of both, but I couldn’t stand the smell of the cow stomach, and hated walking into a kitchen to see a pig’s head staring up at you from a pot that was being boiled for the tamale meat.

Passing the familiar houses, I timidly waved at the old widow Luna through her open kitchen door.  I could tell by the motion in which her hands rolled together that she was kneading dough for tortillas. She didn’t return my greeting as I expected. She was just old evil-eye mean. Never got over moving here from Juarez and never tried or cared to learn English and probably wouldn't be surprised if she had killed her husband years back with voodoo and a cast iron frying pan.

We were heading in the direction where the faint sound of scratchy Tejano-am radio and drunken laughter was getting louder and closer.

A scraggly assemblage of spectator cheers could be heard up ahead over the music. They were sounds unmistakably distinct around here on a Sunday at sunset. As festive as it was all sounding, mixed emotions began to set in of both apprehension and excitement.

            Where there is this kind of loud macho laughter, obviously mixed with alcohol, instinctively it makes you put your guard up simply from past familiarity and experience. Even for people living here, including family members, the situation can be unpredictable. You could either have fun or fight and sometimes both, but rarely anything in between. It was like playing Russian roulette to salsa music. I had some of the best and worst times of my life here and sometimes both in the same day.

Every youth around here bragged and showed off scars from mostly knife wounds, or so they would say, that they wore like badges of honor or decorated and covered them with prison style, Indian ink tattoos, mostly Holy crosses and initials. I myself even had a cross on my forearm that came from being over here one night for just an hour too long. The next morning I tried to wash it off when I got home, but that only made it red and irritated. On another occasion, I got my ear pierced with a fat dull sewing machine needle. I was told to put fishing string through it to keep the hole open. When I did that, it got so infected within a few days that I thought my ear lobe would fall off. It could have been much worse though, my knuckles on both hands nearly read LOVE and HATE that was visible on quite few others around here including Johnny who got it the same time i got my cross.

      I spotted Johnny right away as we approached, but he was too engaged to come over to greet us. We nodded around to other familiar faces as we walked up, but overall we were ignored in the absorbed commotion. I didn’t have to hear the scared screech of a rooster more than once to be reminded of how much I hated it. I could never understand how someone doesn’t feel the pain and fear in an animal. It was another one of those situations of wondering how I got here. I wanted to be on that other train I could always see running parallel to the one I seemed destined to be on. My distaste was an opinion I could never voice and too often silently left me tortured in situations like this in which I would have to 'grin and bare it', along with my time, much like a prison sentence.

We had a hard time seeing the roosters through a bunch of scraggly drunk men holding their crumpled dollar bills in a make shift semi circle. They stood abreast and swayed like weeds with a frenzied cacophony of deafening chatter and frantic, disorderly, flying hand gestures. Everyone seemed so drunk, I couldn’t help but let out a laugh envisioning the comparison to peasant string puppets hanging in the border town curio shops. But other than that, none of this was going to be fun or funny to me. 

I tried to feebly busy myself in the general vicinity as if I was participating by picking out the lone and drunkest old man I could find and pretended to have small talk, like I even knew him. No one paid me much attention or could they hear me over the chaos. This one old man just stood there like stone, with his glazed cross eyed yellow cataract eyes staring with a frozen glare at nothing. I don’t even know if he spoke English. He was mumbling, but I don’t think it was me he was speaking to. I did whatever it took not to see the little black eyes of the roosters wide with terror about to be thrown at each other in the circle at our feet.

             Some of these guys took cock fighting pretty serious. You could tell which ones they were by the way they held their birds stroking them more gently and with more affection than they probably ever did with their own kids. 

            They can call it a tradition and an old art form all they want to, but this was no more than an angry blood sport to gamble on and nothing sacred to it as far as i was concerned. Perhaps in the overall picture, it was just a way to forget your poverty and life, if only for a day, but why not just watch football like the rest of the World?

  There was no big ancient secret to cock fighting at all. Truth is you can always get just about any rooster to fight. A rooster is a proud animal and not just the noisy barn bird you think it is. I would be pretty good at it myself. As much as I hated and was disgusted by it, I pretty much knew everything there was to know about cock fighting, although I couldn’t tell you why and not sure why myself, being I had only been to a few of them. It’s another circumstance where useless knowledge like that just kind of absorbs into you at times: Boring situations where you heard hours of drunks bragging, going on and on about this and that until you knew you had heard it all. Then you repeat it back yourself as if you yourself was an expert, although all of it was mostly half-truth at best. It reminds me of fishing in a way that even if you have never fished you somehow know how to. You know the difference of a bass and a perch and a catfish and what it takes to catch them from bait, to hooks and bobbers, and you will hear every kind of mumbo jumbo nonsense in every fish story.

Then on cue, I heard Carlos holler out to me to get over there, “How much do you want to put on Johnny’s red? Only evens though on his red...” was all he said without as much as a hello.

The best fighting roosters are hands down, Rhode Island Reds. It’s a big proud lean rooster with thick feathers that are hard to penetrate, long strong legs. Johnny had a red. I had no doubt he would win against the other white speckled Missouri he was about to square up to, even though the Missouri was twice its size. Big roosters are just too heavy to fight. The winners are usually good fliers that can pounce from high. What made these roosters dangerous though, were the silver spur knives the Mexicans called little machetes or kanetsune. These were two inch spiked razor knives that were attached with leather to the back of their legs where their natural fighting spur had been partially clipped off. You had to really pay attention to how you held the legs as not to stick yourself. If you let loose and they start kicking you could get sliced to the bone or a spike poked all the way through your palm. The easiest way though to spot a real sport rooster, even when they are just running around the yard or in a pen, is by looking at the red leather comb on top of their head that they usually would proudly wear like a crown while prancing and shaking it between pecking for bugs and feed. What you see on a fighting cock though, is a jagged nub where that crown was cut off at one time by a dull knife or razor and even some times by the edge of a torn in half beer can. It's what makes a rooster pure mean and vengeful. His manhood ripped off in a torturous manner to where now even the laying hens will peck at him.

I looked over at heads of both the roosters here that were about to fight. Johnny’s rooster still had its red leather crown intact. The other ones had been removed and was visibly scarred and jagged. Johnny’s older brother Raymond held the rooster for him. To Johnny, his rooster was more of a pet and didn’t want to be the one to actually fight him. Raymond knew he could make money with his rooster and there was nothing much Johnny could do but go along with it.

             The two men were holding their roosters with one hand by the legs between their fingers, with the spurs folded back against them while stroking the top feathers with the other hand.

 Every now and then they would rub their fingertips gently under the wings making them flinch and shudder like when you touch the flank of a horse. It made them jumpy and agitated. It was no different than slapping a heavy weight prizefighter before stepping into the ring.

            Both men then stepped a little closer to each other, now holding their roosters outstretched being even more careful of the razor spike that now pointed down with their legs hanging free.

Both Raymond and the man got about a foot apart and each started lowering their birds up and down real slow in a rhythmic pattern causing their heads and necks to bob up and down and sway back and forth. They would take turns moving closer speeding up the motion making the head lurch and stretch until the beaks finally clicked together. Then the other would do the same, trading dominance. The legs would begin to kick out and flail as the birds became more agitated and panicky from being restrained. After a few more head-butts they began to start to cackle and peck angrily. On either side, someone then poured a shot of whisky into the two men’s mouths and with a signaling glance and a nod to each other, they then lifted their roosters tail feathers and violently spit the whisky on the exposed tail flesh and then immediately flung their birds at each other into a mid air collision that exploded into a blind fury of crashing feathers and screeching calls. They both fell and hit the ground in a thud and angrily launched at each other again this time on their own momentum, with dust and feathers flying everywhere .     

A rooster doesn’t fight with its beak like a chicken. It flies up more like a kangaroo with its feet flying upward and outstretched causing the spurs point straight down like daggers, which you are hoping comes straight down and into the others chest or back. The most lethal is right at the base of the neck.

They flailed around in the air with this flipping action so fast you couldn’t make out what was happening. Twice the big speckled rooster tried to escape and was hurled back in by the tip of someone’s boot. Too often these fights ended with a rooster high tailing it into the cornfields.

Then I saw it happen as if in slow motion. There was sheer utter silence when Johnny’s rooster jumped straight up as high as our shoulders as if to take flight. His wings flew fully stretched wide and back touching their tips together. The powerful sinewy legs shot straight out and up while its fanned tail scooped under his belly, he then dropped down with a murderous force burying it's silver spur with fatal accuracy as if guided to the heartbeat.. I watched in shock as the blood came fast spurting in small beady streams. The crimson red stood out ghastly in shocking contrast on the white feathers. Johnny, immediately jumped in and picked up his bird as if swooping up a puppy while the defeated bird continued stumbling forward flapping its wings trying to balance itself. It was running in circles switching its failing legs while tipping onto its wing tips like a seesaw desperate to gain balance. The blood pumped from under the feathers and was dripping onto the dusty dirt floor leaving small puddles of red mud. It then stumbled rapidly forward, looking terrified in all directions before falling onto its neck. A thin cloud of dust and feathers still filled the air, falling slowly as the life was sadly fading. It stared wide eyed in terror overwhelmed and still surrounded by beastly men. It was alive and breathing hard. He desperately tried once more to get up. Blood started to bubble and drip from his beak and nostril with each rapid breath, and then within moments, the blood ran freely in a gentle glistening stream. He, for the first time, looked like he surrendered to defeat with more sadness than fear in his eyes, lying alone in dirt while pooling blood mixed with its urine and feces. The legs shook rapidly while the feathers heaved with a convulsing quiver that vibrated a whiffing sound almost like purr and then all stopped motionless. The eyes now stared lifeless frozen and gray in contrast to the vibrant black that moments before glistened of fear. It was over.

I felt myself involuntarily shaking throughout my whole body and was afraid I would lose control of my emotions and be left standing there in tears and shame, ridiculed and laughed at. I even tried to fake a laugh. No one noticed this except Katrina, who I hadn’t realized until that very moment, had been standing there staring at me this whole time from her porch, seeing right through my disguise. I stood holding her stare that gazed back with unreadable emotion, while my frail emotions, though silent, lay bare and exposed in front of her like the phony impostor I was. I couldn’t disguise the lie. All I could think was, I just wanted off this train….

Familiar places

...Like a mirage, the cars up ahead actually did kind of look like they separated and dissolved into the fuzzy heat waves on the horizon but they were still there and whole when we got up the hill. We had finally arrived at our destination. I was feeling beat down and a little worse for ware but nothing I couldn’t handle. I bent over for a minute with my hands on my knees, relieved to not have to walk anymore. The whole walk was only a few miles but when it’s 110* outside it might as well have been a hundred miles.

             I stood and stretched my back looking around and thought to myself, I hate this damn place more than anywhere,  but before I could let it get the better of me, I felt a little more optimistic at the possibility that at the least we might be able to get a ride later on downtown to auditorium shores for the last of Aqua-Fest. I was reminded of it as we heard the loud jet roar above us as the Air-Force Thunderbirds passed over us headed in that direction. I didn’t care too much to try and get down there to see them perform but hoped to make it in time to see Bubble Puppy at the 'battle of the bands', and then Willie on the big stage tonight, and then maybe we try to sneak into the Armadillo afterwards and see Commander Cody, although Billy will most likely rather hang in the front at Pops skating palace which i refused to go back to because the last time i was there, it was a Saturday night and i was the only white kid in there and Billy's older brother gave me a tiny 22 pistol to put in my back pocket. I thought he was joking. i went ahead and put it in my back pocket but wasn't scared of getting into any trouble but scared as hell of shooting myself in the ass if i fell. i was a good skater but not that good.

             Billy walked on past me and slapped me hard on the back laughing, “come on lets get something to drink, you look like you gonna cry”.

            I swung at him to hit his arm but I completely missed and he just laughed again,” come on, hurry up!”as he landed a punch square in the tender of my arm.

             It was so hot. I followed right on his heels and couldn’t get in that store fast enough. Maybe a soda water would put some gas back in my tank.

            Billy forcefully slid open the door in front of me and instantly I felt the blast of air rush around and through me. I sighed a moan of relief out loud and just stood there like a statue with my eyes closed and arms slightly lifted. I never wanted to move from that spot. The sweat on my neck felt like it turned to hot ice. I lifted my shirt and let it billow out off my back, cooling the beads of sweat rolling down my spine and just when I was about to take another sigh of relief, Mr. Marks hollered over with authority, “close that door behind yaw boys before you let all the cold out. - Will, ya?”

            “ Yes sir’ I replied automatically and sheepishly stepped on in.

            We knew Mr. Marks name, as did everyone, only because the store was 5M grocery for the five Marks brothers that owned it. Even though there were actually six brothers. More than a couple times I have heard my dad and his friends agreeing as to why it was called 5m and not 6 but never actually said what the reason was they were agreeing on. i don't think they really knew anyway.

            I went right to the back of the store where Billy was already standing with the coke box lid slid open. It was an old top end box cooler. I lifted the other side letting my arms hang and lay inside, against the cold aluminum sides for a moment before pulling out a tall Pepsi.

            I reached behind it and grabbed an extra long bag of peanuts off the rack and for a moment thought about a cinnamon bun, but they looked ‘day old’.

            Billy, as I figured would, got him a grape Nehi. He always got Nehi or Orange Crush and sometimes Root Beer but mostly grape. I watched him pocket a snickers from the shelf as he rounded the corner. I hoped Mr. marks didn’t see him take it. Even from where I stood, I could see down every isle through the big curved mirror hanging at the back of the store.

            Up at the counter, I kidded Billy about getting some pickled pigs feet and hard-boiled eggs that were sunk together in the same fat murky pickle jar, sitting on the counter next to the register.

            Hey Billy,” isn’t that what your people eat” I teased him poking at his belly.

He laughed and leaned back defensively shaking his head,” Oh hell no, I haven’t never ate that nasty country shit. I may be black but that's for that old negro blood." Then in a quick afterthought, laughing matter of factly, “My daddy loves it though. He will gnaw those pig knuckles to bare bone” That made me laugh so hard it almost sucked the wind out of me.

            Mr. Marks, not amused by our humor, broke up our little chuckle by dismissingly saying, “Billy tell your daddy hello for me.”

            “I will, said Billy, and will you just charge this on his bill?”

‘Sure thing if you say he's ok with that”, said Mr. Marks flipping through a brown paper notebook to write it down.

I was looking over Billy’s shoulder to see if he was going to also write down that snickers bar on the paper, but he didn’t.

            “Y’all stay out of trouble now”, he said, meaning it was time for us to get out.

Even though he knew most of Billy’s family, he still didn’t like kids hanging around too long in his store. We weren’t even kids anymore but I guess he figured if we stay long enough, we might just steal something although i suspect he knew about that one little candy bar.. I myself felt guilty and disappointed seeing Billy prove Mr. Marks suspicions right. Then again, I for some reason felt guilty about most everything these days...

Pretty Pool

A group of us had made our way down to ‘Pretty Pool', a secret little swimming hole on a lone stretch of Onion creek that ran through the back of someones overgrown, uninhabited, private property where we had long since ignored, or would have knocked down any 'No Trespassing' signs. We were never really sure who actually owned the place, most likely though, the property belonged to old man Wayne Riddell. Wayne seemed to own every piece of land you stuck your big toe on in this small county. It was a true hidden paradise at the back of San Leanna Estates, that was fed by crystal clear spring water, beautifully lined by bright limestone shelves and shadowed overhead by cliff walls that backed up against steep, dense oak, and cedar covered hills. It was our Summer's heaven where so many stories took place. It was where hearts were lost and found in the breaths of teenage desires and anxieties, curiosities and rebellion. A hideaway of sorts, a half kept secret.
     

We could be found there on any given day in the summer, and without a doubt always on weekends, especially knowing Cassidy and her sister would usually show up in the late afternoon with her usual group of pretty girlfriends that always stayed over their house on long slumber weekends. We made plans the night before to sneak down in the afternoon. Frank and I, along with Luis had already been down there a bit just listening to summer, while throwing rocks and passing cigarettes. And just like tambourine music they  appeared, dancing through the trees. You could hear their giggles echo off the limestone, which they skipped across like mischievous, pretty little hippie fairies, floating single file down the meandering puddle jumping trail. It was a refreshing delight of denim cutoffs, halter tops, sandals and flowing hair laced with wild honey-suckle, that excited our world and senses forever, or at least a few glorious hours on a hot summer day like today. No one had it better than us misfits, not anyone or anywhere in the world.

It was late in August, just two weeks before we would have to go back to school. we were looking for every and any way to stretch every minute of those last hot days.  This was the hottest Saturday yet, sweltering and bright. We barely made it halfway down the hill to the banks before Cassidy enthusiastically dared that we should all go ‘skinny dippin’. She called it, and it didn’t take much coaxing from us at all to get her to put up. Yep, Should have known better than to dare her. There was a slight pause, and a contemplating smirk as she panned around, squinting to each of us making her dominating, supreme and defeating eye contact with each of us one at a time. Then, without another word or thought, she was quick to be the first to take off all her clothes and jumped in so fast you barely had a moment in that blur to realize that she was even naked.

             Her devilish bold laugh had so much self-possessed confidence, that it left us no room to chicken out now. There was always a price to pay if you ever called Cassidy’s bluff. All bets were off and time to show our own hand.

           

 Serena on the other hand, was somewhat sweet and shy by comparison, and was always a little more reserved. She still went in the water anyway without hesitation, though clearly uncomfortable, her laugh more innocent and apprehensive, and unlike Cassidy’s audacious flair, Serena left her bottoms on and covered her chest with her arms until her body was completely submerged under the water.

            This left me with no other decision. I knew then I had to go in or face relentless humiliation for life and throughout the hallways. So with conviction, I walked in slow and deliberate, like James Dean would, like I had done it a hundred times before, which only I truthfully knew I hadn’t. I was shaking.

             I think we were all a little anxious, but before we could give it anger thought, we were all splashing around nervous and silly, staying beyond arms link, not really sure what we were supposed to do now. Kris and Charlotte went and sat crosslegged on the shallow limestone cliff while Karen leaned back taking in all the sun she could.

Yasmina Rossi

            

Cassidy though, giggling, would swim just close enough that I could see light rippling through the water, illuminating almost her entire body in vague flesh colored waves that stood out in bright contrast under the dark water. She circled and seductively teased until I would dive under towards her making her hysterically chuckle and scream while frantically kicking and playfully splashing to keep me away.

            It was all so wonderfully overwhelming and full with a free wild anxiety. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world at that moment, and could barely believe this was happening.while pretending to be way cooler than I was. this was one of those perfect days. all was innocent and never more beautiful than on this day, and here I was swimming naked under a Texas sky. Their olive skin was so shiny and tan that it was enough to make you crazy with heavenly disbelief.

            And it was a heavenly day and seemed like nothing could get any better or so I thought. Then something happened in an unsuspecting moment that I was not prepared nor would have imagined on such a silly day.

            

It happened when I casually had turned to see Serena quietly treading water alone at a distance. everyone else had drifted into their own little adventures. The vision of her caught me completely off guard. Instantly her stark vulnerable breathtaking beauty possessed me. Entranced and panicked, I cautiously let myself slowly drift closer. I quietly watched her as the light bounced off the water onto her wet shimmering hair and velvet skin, making her eyes sparkle like black-mirrored pearls on fire.  I got just close enough to see her purple full lips were quivering from the cold and her wet exposed skin was covered in tiny delicate goose bumps. I lost all focus of anything around me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of how pretty she really was.

             

Seems only moments before, we were all harmlessly splashing around having silly fun, and then in a split second it all changed as if shot through the heart. In such a brief and subtle unexpected moment, emotions overwhelmed and engulfed me like a tornado. I found myself lost in unknown insecure risky territory.

            I moved even closer, and Serena gazed back at me soft and angelic. In the silence, I was sure my rapid beating heart could be heard out loud. She timidly raised her large doe eyes with water droplets falling from the tips of her eyelashes and looked straight into me. Our eyes embraced, hers tearing from the dazzling glare, reflecting back her vulnerable innocence that was pulling me in as if we had been bound for centuries.

            She became shy and guarded closing her arms partially back around her. At that moment all I could imagine was kissing her beautiful mouth and warming her cold naked skin. Nervous, with doubt and uncertainty, I swam to her letting my fingers brush her skin causing her to shudder and quietly gasp. Her gentle brown eyes widened but before I could even reach out, her gentle locked gaze shifted with immediate and alarming force, breaking her away in a startled instance with her face frozen in bewildered shock clearly about to scream, she stared wide eyed while shouting an alarming protective scream, "LOOK OUT!" at the same time raising her arms to shield us both.

            In the blink of an eye, our shared intimate silence literally exploded right in front of us without warning as we were jolted by a loud crazed savage holler only to look up just in the nick of time to see a massive beast hurling in our general direction when my cousin Mike, who had followed us down here on his horse, plunged without warning, horse and all, launching from a three foot limestone ledge, wearing nothing more than his hat, when he ferociously landed in the water with an enormous mountainous splash, with such force, that it caused us to ride upward and back on an unimaginable wave, while water showered us like pouring rain and washed up and over the shore. we were all a little shocked as we were ready to cheer.

           

Mike then slid and pushed away from his horse, and without missing a single beat in his usual brazen glory, went right into a long armed rejoicing backstroke, obviously feeling no shame at all.           

            Dumfounded and stunned, I watched as his horse, in a confused fury scampered and flailed to get footing on a limestone shelf in the shallows before standing patiently and calm.            

            The precise timing though was surely the hand of God throwing us a thunderbolt. Stolen and shattered forever was a secret moment I will never get back. I was left wondering if it was even real or all just my imagination. I might never know. It was gone in a flash, what could have been forever, disappeared and faded as quick as a falling star, as fast as Summer ending. 

Like rain on the ocean

my bungalow

This is for Monica

Thailand:

Amongst the colorful batiks and scampering ceiling geckos I lay sheathed in a paper thin white cotton sheet, lying on a small bed just inches above the mat floor of my open-air bungalow, hearing only the sounds of the ocean palms blowing, and the sway of my hammock while I was painfully dying. 

Through the sweat and tears of my fevered mirage, I can now see life in its truth and purity, falling like rain on the ocean. I have in my time, traveled the entire world in search of the unattainable. I wanted it all, wanted it to be  all, I wanted to let it all be in me. Now that I will never know, I still wondered, could I, and or, could there be no more Michelangelo’s or another Camille Claudel, Balzac, or Thomas within me?

 I see so clearly now how we suffocate in a cocoon of fear shadowed by metallic intelligence where no blood flows or tears fall - especially for pain, wonderful pain.

Pain that is now to us shame - our life source - our gift of creative fire we are burning for whom? Our pain has given us eyes that can pierce rocks to see what freaks

of nature breathe in such solid empty spaces. I have seen more than I understand. I have seen God when looking up from Hell.

 In desperation we pull out snails from their shells and then curl our pinky finger around in the empty coil only to feel the texture of its feces left in the bottom. We are not intense, nor loud - We are only alive and spread through the Universe like a fungus of fools.

We die a thousand deaths a lifetime and are yin and yang circling the planet without a trail. All of man I see now, And as we sit on our doorsteps in China and smoke harsh tobacco, we stare through the smoke into Africa, Nepal, India,.. And have seen lepers and the crippled and dying that crawl to us and we stare in silence because it is so overwhelmingly, wonderfully, real. And then it is lost in falling tears while it stares back.

Gary and Monica

We lay in sickness, smelling our own rotting flesh and hallucinate and dream and tonight we dream again. Tomorrow we cry, we love, we kill and we die again.

We drink the ocean to see where the sun has set and scream in the streets in the faces of dead souls - we are that grateful dead and capable of witnessing our own birth. I felt my first fever in Bangladesh, that beats and cries in starvation -So much beautiful humanity –

the desire to touch it, to rub its dirt on our naked bodies. It's there, as is Calcutta, as is Heaven, Eternity and here - right here in this very spot i lay dying.

Where you bleed and roll around on the floor - scream for our mothers, scream because we are lonely, scream like we did in the womb. Our hands devour all to feel its texture, to slice the veins of stone and cut the hearts of trees and my body still withering, screaming in feverish agony on the shores of Thailand where I finally at one point bled into the sand.

 God has ripped me from the womb of Hell, I had though, and it sent an earthquake through your soul and made you my soul-mate. And tomorrow again we will walk the endless wheel, we will walk for days, for months, maybe years and more, and then we will again simply burst into flames and burn the forests, turn the sky red

and beat drums made of our own hides. Beat like the rhythm of our Souls, beat like time...we are alive, we

are alive, we are alive!. But for now it is time to die.

All my love, my blood, I say goodbye, Jimmy

Hot combs and Kool-Aid

        ... A restless tension had been building in us for days now and we knew we had to move one way or another to shake us out of this sulking state of intolerable, head pounding boredom that was getting to all of us. An old cliché of "the walls closing in on us", was becoming all too real.           

             No doubt, there unmistakably was a true heat wave upon us, unlike anything we had seen in the past. This was continuous 100 degree plus, record-breaking days, if not weeks of scorching unbearable misery, in which you just couldn’t for any cause or need, find much relief.

              We mostly spent days laid out flat in front of floor fans, with our faces exceptionally close, hearing only the droning hum of the plastic fan blades that we would every now and then, out of boredom, bravely stick one of our fingers through the small rectangle cracks to try and stop the blades from spinning. Other than that, we might reluctantly dawdle from room to room, several times over, in a useless attempt to find more to do as if something new would miraculously present itself out of nowhere but sadly we always found ourselves right back on the floor in the same place in front of the fans.            

Before long, mid day would creep up on us and soon enough with the sun straight up and even the fans would become as useless as everything else, only pushing hot air around. What seemed to help us stay cool the most was drinking jug after jug of red Kool-aide right out of the pitcher. Billy’s family loved Kool-aide of every color, each with heaping cups of sugar added to mask the bitter taste of chalky well water that ran out of the tap. I couldn’t tell you how many times a day I heard someone holler toward the kitchen, “y’all make some more Kool-aide in there!”

              I myself couldn’t stand being anywhere near that cramped little kitchen. Not only was it already hot enough as is, they kept the gas stove burners turned up full blast most of the day heating up hot combs. If and when you did happen in there for some reason, it was at your own risk. As soon as you walked through that door you were blasted with the awful searing smell of burnt hair and open tubs of ‘blue magic’ hair grease and then you had to somehow cautiously maneuver, squeezing and bending like a pretzel around the sweaty bodies of whoever was sitting stuffed together on rickety metal chairs getting their hair straightened, all the while you are hoping and praying you don’t bump into them as not to burn yourself or worse, cause them to be singed on the back of their necks with the blistering hot irons, which in turn would have gotten you a wallop on the back of the head. If you ever wondered what those little scars below the ear at the back of the neck were, or why you had to hold your ears back, you can be sure it was that hot-comb...

Beatnik

In the 80's i was obsessed with Jack Kerouac and The Beat Generation. By luck and circumstance, while living in Paris, i got to know several original, still living beatniks, especially the great jazz poet Ted Joans, who i met at Shakespeare book co. I somewhat adopted him and him me. He then "Teducated" me into the world of Beatniks. Through him, i got to meet Ferlinghetti, Peter Orlovsky, Ginsberg, Corso, Schnabel... and though most have all recently passed on, i will never forget when i moved to NY, and Ted was staying with me, i would be in awe to come home and find my answering machine  full with these guys voices leaving messages for Ted. Although all the talk ever revolved around was eating food and where to get food...nothing literary, artistic or Beat, or even interesting...just burgers or chicken...thats the extent of depth i ever got out of any encounters. but Ted was a true great friend and i recently came across a eulogy and poem of mine dedicated to his passing...(reminded by my friend Wolfgang)...so here is my beat style dedication to his death in 2003...

Ted Joans outside the strand 1995 

from "Ted Joans Lives"


The Beat Beat Beat...! Listen! can you hear it? i hear him now that old Ted Joans. i hear the beat, beat, beat,.. the beat of the heart. i hear the sound of all them hep-cats and hipsters hanging out under the big drunk sky, following that one way celestial highway, swaying to the dharma, the bum, the tenor sax and trumpet blowin blues with those big beautiful black lips, the bird flappin ol Charlie Parker on a cloud calling you home, the click click of the mimic and mockery of a generation. And there he goes leaving us his dreams, now revisited through the eyes of fallen angels and saints, now leaving us sad angels in search of our own eternal freedom and love. now leaving us lookin for home in the sweat stained cities on old earth, now "teducated" from NYC to Timbuktu. and there he goes that old Ted Joans, leaving this old earth and karma riding on the back of the great Rhino. there he goes 'on the road" down that Beat road...can you hear it, that beat beat beat???
                                                                   Jimmy Bruch

Me and Ted 12th st apt

last days of August

  It seemed there hadn’t been anything new to do for several days now and summer was almost over. Just the thought of the end of summer was hard to accept in itself. That thought was more than enough to make you agitated with a dreaded panic of time running out, There was no way to ignore the reality that it was now August, and not only did that mean the end of summer but it is the hottest time of year and Lord knows, around here, you can’t just beat out this heat with a stick. It will win every time.

            We were by no means lazy and it’s not like we didn’t already spend hours on end thinking long and hard about things to do, but by the days end, we still came up with next to nothing. Even the creeks had become too murky and dried up to swim in. And with little money, we were for the most part stuck inside.

              Most Summers, we could usually find an odd job here and there for pocket money, maybe a few quarters banging out tire rims at Crumley’s store but we knew the situation was nearing a dreadful dire state when even crazy old man Wayne, who every summer would pay us a lousy fifty cents a bail, split four ways, when bailing his lousy hay for him, even thought it was too damn hot to be outside, and God knows that old ‘coot’ would work a mule to death on any Sunday and Christmas even if lightning was striking down.

               I myself pretty much grew up with this heat and have as much respect for it as the next person but some people it affects a lot worse than others and that’s when this ruckus started that finally gave us the final jolt, causing us to get up and out of the house. It was clear that us leaving fore sure had less to do with our anxious boredom, but more likely it was the unforeseen mad commotion when Billy’s big sister took a loaded rifle and shot at her own relentless barking dog, right through the heart of the front screen door. Luckily she was half blind and missed the damn dog but the bullet left a perfect hole in the screen that Billy poked and twisted his finger in as we left nervously laughing and tripping over each other.            

            “Damn Janette, you are crazy girl!” chuckles Billy as he ducks while pushing me off the front porch spilling an entire full cup of kool-aid. I was clinched and tensed all the way down the gravel drive, weaving and giggling nervously until I was sure I was far enough away not to get shot in the ass. She would never actually shoot at us, (I don’t think), but my body still got all goosed up and jittery in anticipation anyway.

Menchaca Bar

      ...We went back outside and sat down against the gas pumps to get a little shade from the overhang. I took a big swig of my cold Pepsi to make some room for my peanuts. It burned nice and cold all the way down the back of my throat, and I could have drunk ten more of them.

            I poured the peanuts too fast into the bottle, causing it to foam and shoot up like a volcano, spilling most of it on the ground. I almost felt heartbroken watching it soak into the chalky dirt.

            I looked around again, mostly to confirm that it was Billy’s daddy’s truck that I saw when we first walked up. I could see it was still there, parked at the local dive bar across the way.

   We sat a while longer, and watched a stream of dusty beat up trucks slowly roll in, one after another. It was getting that time of day.  There were very few cars on the road, mostly trucks and nothing new except a big dually pickup, that must belong to one of the Reiner’s, who's family raised most of the rodeo stock around here. Before it even came to a full stop a couple of local alley whores appeared out of nowhere and made their way over to passenger window like hungry scavengers and beggars.

             Time was of it’s own essence, so it felt. It seemed not so much slowed or stopped but rather more warped in a strange and odd way as if this place revolved in it’s own universe where life moved too fast and the days too slow. I felt I was no part of it at all on most days and once again found myself sitting here feeling like I was watching a movie.

            Billy’s daddy had probably been here from just past noon for the sole reason that they won’t sell you liqueur until past then anyway on Sunday to keep anyone from showing up at church drunk.

            Never the less, looking across the street at the busted neon, I was thinking, It could be any damn time of day and I still wouldn’t understand why anyone ever wanted to go in that poor excuse for a bar especially in the daylight.

            This was a far cry from the Broken Spoke. It was less sturdy than a trailer house and was pretty much just four plywood walls on a concrete slab. There were clearly no windows except a cut out hole with a dripping noisy air conditioner sticking its rusty ass out of it. The ceilings were so low inside that you had to take your hat off to keep from knocking into the neon beer signs hanging everywhere. Most of the beat down vinyl tile floor was covered by a pool table that was tattered, torn and full of beer stains and cigarette burns. I can’t believe the place had never burned down, with the walls covered from floor to ceiling with these beer posters from the distributors. They piled up over the years in layers on the walls, sufficiently used as cheap insulation and a way to cover the mildew and brown asbestos water stains that were everywhere. It was dangerously one big fire hazard like being in a paper mache box with that yellow bug zapper in the back acting as a match almost torching the place every few seconds a bug flew at it....

Broken Spoke

FM 1626

....With no clouds anywhere in sight, our skin was now starting to bake and pulse under the glaring overhead sun. I was hoping for more cars to drive past. Cars, and especially trucks, would always fly by fast and so close to the shoulder, in a jolting blur, to stir up just enough of a breeze to give some relief to the sweltering heat radiating off the black asphalt on this lonely curving turn. I found myself constantly listening for the oncoming engines in the distant, most of which faded as they continued north or south on Interstate-35,  just a mile east from here.
Adapting to the heat by waiting and hoping for cars to pass for relief, was no more than a kind of evolution of survival in itself, but also made it easy to ignore the apposing paradox and the danger that came with this stretch of road and speeding vehicles, which became ever more present and clear all around us, especially when within every fifty yards or so, we would come upon a road kill on one side of road or the other on the gravel shoulder. We would know beforehand by the familiar stench that would intensify the closer we got, and with the sighting of one or more lazy turkey buzzards sitting up high on a telephone pole. Sure enough, when the smell couldn’t get any more ripe, we would look in the distance or ditches to see a portion of some hairy carcass, usually an opossum or bloated raccoon. The squirrels and frogs were always flattened right in the center lane like pieces of cardboard that we sometimes would fling in the air like a Frisbee. We actually saw one dead dog today with its collar still on. I didn’t recognize him, and couldn’t bring myself to go down through the long buggy weeds to read the tags. It’s sad seeing someone’s pet like that, but all too common. Nothing ever stood much of a chance crossing this soulless road. Cars raced as fast as they could along these stretches. Often at around midnight, on any given Friday, you could always see two or more fools drag racing this exact quarter mile of FM 1626, that went from the baseball ball fields, and down to the first turn in the road which was measured exactly to the sign that read, ‘San LeAnna, population 210’.

This day felt like it was not ending no time soon enough for any living thing, but you have to do what you gotta do to get to anywhere around here. It was becoming more still and silent along the road the further up we got except for the mesmerizing familiar sound of the summers end, echoing in the distant from the rarely seen cicadas that seemed to buzz and shrill from all directions in a synchronized harmony that, at times, escalated to a piercing level that eerily seemed to surround and follow us every step of the way. I found it amusing that I could momentarily silence them all at once for miles around with a single hollering yelp and loud clap. It was almost like magic, and I did this several times to be sure and convince myself I was the one controlling it....

        All along the way, I helped pass the time by swatting the flower tops off weeds with a long willow branch i picked up. I was so good at it, I could swing the stick with a precision slicing motion, lopping off just the tops, exploding apart their dusty yellow, and white balls of pollen, like bursting fireworks. Each time I did this, a dozen or more grasshoppers would always zip up in the air like little rockets flying in a zooming blur, with the buzz of their wings rapidly clicking and whistling in all directions. Meanwhile, Billy would momentarily stop and search for perfect rocks that he would throw half-heartily, trying to hit telephone poles or the butt of the unassuming, silent, cows, standing motionless just beyond the fences. After several lame misses, he would laugh hysterically when he finally hit anything, especially a cow. We both had reckoned that if Johnny would have been here with us, he would have hit everything he threw at, dead on, bulls eye, first throw, every time. I once saw Johnny hit a flying swallow out of the air, which is next to impossible to do, even with a shotgun. A gifted talent, that had more than one scout coming to our baseball games to see Johnny pitch with his crazy left handed side arm, that was the closest thing to being an underarm pitch that i had ever seen. You couldn't teach a pitch like that, and you damn sure couldn't fix it. Even crazier, is that Johnny also never had a right hand glove. He couldn't afford a new glove and no one had one to borrow, so he used a lefty with just his thumb and two fingers holding it on. Strange as it looked, it never once got in the way of stopping a hard hit ball. It really was a little sad and comical to watch, but also pretty amazing thing to witness.

 
We were heading over to see Johnny, if we ever get there. It seemed to be taking forever. it didn't take long before we had barely gotten out the door that we were already wishing we had ridden our bikes instead of walking in this heat, and we would have most likely been there by now, but of course they all had flats that no one took the time to fix for weeks now. We sometimes would ride our horses between houses, but it was way too hot to try and chase down any of Billy’s old stubborn ass horses, that were shading somewhere deep in the backfields, and besides, they were way too smart to come running to us for the old 'gravel in a bucket' trick, which left us in a situation that annoyed me now enough to try his patience by telling him,” I told you once before Billy, if we were at my house I could have simply whistled for my horse,  and she would come running and wagging, like I was calling my dog. We should send that old mare of yours to the glue factory."

  
About that same moment, before i could say anymore, from far across the field, i actually caught a glimpse of a lone figure on a horse, unlike either of ours. "Check it out Billy" Even at a distance, all I had to see was that beautiful dark wavy hair that flowed with the smooth timely gallop of her impressive pristine perfect horse to know it was one of the Carter sisters.
There was a freedom in their synchronized movement which begged not to be disturbed or halted.We were too far away to do either anyway. It didn't actually matter. She could have been just across the road and wouldn't have noticed us.
The Carter girls were not only a little older but way out of our league and from a world of a different class, or so they seemed. Perhaps they were not that at all but I envied them as if they were. For now they remained a mystery
     Even their Colonial country style house with towering eaves and hedged white picket fences, like those on polo fields, seemed remotely out of place although i think theirs was the oldest house around here.
      My family, though well enough off, were cut from such a broad liberal cloth bordering on being hippie civil rights activists and reformist intellectuals that demonized anyone believing in social ranking that instilled an insecurity that intimidated me in such a pesence.
The truth is I, or anyone else that I knew, had really no idea at all what the Carter family were about. To me, their untouchable nature seemed more alluring than arrogant, maybe even shy. They had a beautiful refined elegance about them, especially Sherry, who I could tell was riding now. I had seen her several times in the same way at a distance along these same roads on one of her quarterhorse thoroubreds. Once, by chance she had , most likely by accidental curiosity, ended up riding through our property where she passed me close enough on our road to relinquish only a simple apologetic smile and then road off in a hurry but her smile lingered long after she was gone. For now, they were still a mystery as I watched her again ride away, in the same way, disappearing in the tree line leaving me with overwhelmed curiosity...

Broken glass

...We watched amusingly as Billy Ray stumbled back and half spun around on his heals, and not so much from being hit square in the jaw, but more from being drunk on cheap Mexican wine we snuck out of Pop's truck. No one leaned in, we all knew Billy could take a punch like a bull, and could easily whip any one of us at anytime, and even all of us at the same time if he tried. Billy though didn't even pretend to try and fight back, he just closed his eyes and laughed looking up to the sun although he had just been punched square in the mouth. Blood trickled down his lip, crimson against his dark skin, and as he wobbled and teetered, keeping his balance by grabbing his knees and laughing from the belly. I felt he was downright feeling joy at that moment for some odd reason. He was clearly having fun. I felt it myself, and was smiling for him. Frank and Billy were just horsing around like we do every day, although Frank was obviously pulling no punches short. I'm not even sure how this one got started, but we seemed to end up in boxing matches all the time, at least whenever we were able to sneak off drinking whatever liquor we could get our hands on. I didn't care too much for fighting though, and didn't ever find fun in getting hit for no good reason. But today I kind of enjoyed seeing Billy feeling no pain, or whatever you want to call this horse sense of delightful madness he was dancing in, be it because he was drunk or not. I just leaned back on a fender and watched both perplexed and amused, like seeing a real life slapstick comedy with no idea of what was going to happen next. Nobody was going to get hurt, we really were a thick as thieves.

My sense of joy and amusement though withered in an instance as that dang rodent of a boy, Junebug and his stupid self, came over and crept up beside me and all in my space, carrying a damn rooster. He came up all fidgety and annoyed, stood there shuffling and pouting while stroking this ugly rooster he was holding. He started mumbling and complaining left and right, "Y'all come on now! Y'all all said we were gonna  fight roosters today! Y'all just left without telling me!"

It wasn't uncommon around here to have cock fights, but mostly on the weekend, late in the afternoons on Sunday.
June bug seemed to carry a rooster wherever he went, and for the life of me, it seems i can never shake this dumb kid. It never fails, he always shows up out of nowhere buzzing around like an ugly mosquito.

I looked over at him and winced at how pathetic he was, and the fact that he was standing way too close to me almost got my temper to flair. I didn't even answer, and just shook my head.

That scrawny bones and feathers of a rooster he was carrying wasn't even worth boiling. It was missing half it's feathers, and it's leathery red comb had been cut off probably with a rusty dull knife or broken tin can. One of its eyes was clearly infected and tearing up.  Junebug himself was just as pitifully sightful. I was close enough to see lice in his matted hair, snot dried and smeared across his face, spittle and skoal juice dripping from the corner of his mouth, and his own crusty pinkeye, which i would bet a dollar he got from that damn bird. He was all one big nasty sight. If you didn't know better, you could be sure he was dropped on his head or something. I was hoping at that moment for both Billy and Frank to spot him and come over and slap the tar out of him. I might have slapped him upside his head myself except for the crusty scab and wax in plain sight on his ear.

At that same moment, I heard a loud smack as Frank delivered a solid blow to Billy's right cheek. I turned just in time to see him fall in slow motion dropping to his knees while still gazing at the sun and smiling ear to ear as if seeing something pretty in a world of riches... Last he must have heard was,"come on now y'all! quit foolin around, lets fight these roosters!"...