Hoist a few (poems), Part 1

 

February 6, 2010

 

Nor craven nor cowardly

I wish myself to be –

You will act as judge,

I trust,

If one you happen to see

 

 

There once was a man

From the sky,

Who had moons and clouds in his eye;

He ate lots of pickles,

Spent lots of nickels,

Happy in the grave by and by

 

 

My first step into darkness

Was during a bone-drenching chill;

My love of life came in question,

As well my will

 

 

Now, Darkness,

Come over my soul;

Deliver me from the light;

I turn at last to you, Shadows,

For the truth to come in sight

 

 

The gloom covers all light,

And my flagging spirit

Descends a-down

The spiral staircase into

Ever-abiding Midnight

 

 

The dark waves tumble

Towards the shore,

White curls rolling now,

Just as they did

The while I slept;

And even still

Hope recedes from my heart

Like the shallow waves

From the sloping shore

 

 

A gray morning sky blurs

A foggy horizon, but

another ocean looms there, too,

Its rumbling, implacable old

Foe, heaving with waves

 

 

Little hawk, infant life,

Fledgling tries

The sky of strife;

Trembling voice,

Wings aflutter,

Oh! was ever a purer stutter?

 

 

Why I’m Not an Islamist

   
 

February 5, 2010

   
 

__________________________________________

   
 

Why I’m Not

An

islamist

____________________________________________________________________________________ 

   
 

   
 

The most precious possession of a sickly

human heart is its self-deception.

Prejudice against Jews, such as that

harbored by the Muslim Establishment in

the form of Saudi Wahabism, is just so —

for Muslims such as these to recognize

Israel’s right to exist, they would be

required to leave self-deception behind.

But they’d rather justify and fund

suicide bombings and murders than

to unburden themselves of their

anti-Semitism and their anti-Zionism.

____________________________________________________

Why I’m not a Marxist

 
 

 
 

February 5, 2010
 

 
 

____________________________

 
 

Why I’m Not

A Marxist

_________________________________________________________

   
 

 

Consent of the governed is not present in a Marxist state. The people are not asked to vote, they are not asked what they think — only the out-of-touch bureaucrats decide things (incompetently). There may be sham elections, but those are obviously irrelevant.  

 

Private life is gone — you are a servant of the state in a Marxist society. The pursuit of happiness doesn’t exist anymore — your job is to serve Marxism and the furtherance of the cause. Selfishness is even viewed as an evil thing, though in reality it’s the basis of all achievement. Since private life is gone, individualistic competition is gone, too — you can’t profit from your own accomplishments any longer. Collectivization is now the law — you work for an abstract principle, if not for the bureaucratic elite sitting on their tushes.  

 

As an economic system, it’s unproductive. Since it abolishes individualism and personal initiative and private property, it can then only produce empty shelves in the stores. It is only competition, with its possibility of failure and with its Invisible Hand of prosperity, that produces a marketplace, an emporium, full of desirable products.  

 

As a system for domestic governance, it breeds passivity and dependence: your life is supposedly guaranteed, on the one hand, and personal initiative is outlawed culturally, on the other, so why bother being dynamic? Only through samizdat, the underground, forbidden literature, can one find a life with an open avenue. Furthermore, Marxism breeds a sense of entitlement, such that people expect more and more from a government that has taken everything away.  

 

Marxism encourages a quasi-religious fervor that ossifies into intolerance. It causes people to turn away from civilization and from a traditional moral compass and towards a depraved, corroded soul, demanding more and more. It makes one turn away from one’s friends and family, it makes one spit in the face of all that others hold dear, out of jealousy that one has lost that capacity oneself. Marxism rejects everything that life has been heretofore.

 

  Marxism brings about an alienation from reality in the mind of the believer. The Marxist believes he knows the meaning of history itself, and can bring history to its final destination. Anyone that resists this idea is vilified and considered an enemy. But, in objective reality, without blinders on, without the pseudoscience of Marxism distorting the vision, it is clear that no one knows the meaning of history or knows history’s destination, most probably because those things don’t exist. There is only past experience to guide us, there is no pie-in-the-sky train depot waiting for us to arrive. There is only the individual, in whatever century, in whatever corner of the Earth, trying to live his very average life, in spite of what he believes about himself. He tries to live this life with some measure of freedom, especially if he’s American, and tries to live apart from the theories that distort his life and which interpret it as part of a cosmic scenario.

Haiku 14-24

 

February 3, 2010

Haiku 14-24

 

 

 

 

Haiku 14

 

Rumbling, shadowy

Contours of the mountain ridge

Are etched ‘gainst the night

 

 

 

 

Haiku 15

 

I wait the rise of

The sun at morn and breathe, for

It is life to me

 

 

 

 

Haiku 16

 

Wan blue sky of noon,

Inexpungible light of

Life – shine, Candle Beams!

 

 

 

 

Haiku 17

 

Wild, like the red bark

Manzanita that grows in

The bright, taintless woods

 

Haiku 18

 

I wish to return

To the Earth, and sow my bones

With the soil of Sleep

 

Haiku 19

 

Darkness falls upon

My soul, like night falling from

The smoldering sky

 

Haiku 20

 

Happiness, ye slim

Wisp of ether, why do you

Shun my entreaties?

 

 

 

 

Haiku 21

 

My darkest paths loom

At dusk, all pale stars in

Moonless, eerie seas

 

 

 

 

Haiku 22

 

The holy stillness in the air

Assures me of a quiet heart

Yet possible for troubled souls

 

 

 

 

Haiku 23

 

Swollen waves troll o’er

The rolling sea, and the tide

Breaks on lonesome shores

 

 

 

 

Haiku 24

 

Yon pole north is yours,

Seeker, I’d fain glimpse of the

Vast Antarctica

 

 

 

 

Haiku 13

February 2, 2010

 

 

 

 

Mid-winter meadow –

Green shoots of grass emerge so

Shyly ‘neath the snow

 

Haiku 12

February 1, 2010

 

 

Broken hearted, I trudge

Forth, stunned and alone, to the

Frosty summit’s ridge

 

One Reason Not to Vote for Obama in 2012

 

January 30, 2010

 

 

 In a word, Ukraine. Post-Soviet Russia wants its empire back — Putin believes the demise of the Soviet Union was actually a calamity — and Ukraine is the Jewel in the Crown. If Ukraine falls back into Russia’s grasp, it’s all over: the Empire strikes back. But first Moscow is working around the edges, picking up the easy stuff, like five easy pieces of Georgia. We know that former Soviet republics like Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Baltics want to preserve their hard-won freedom and independence. One way some of them have is oil and gas reserves beneath the surface, to enrich themselves sufficiently to build a military for self-defense against Moscow’s planned depredations, and also so as to integrate their economies with Europe. But Russia is like a spurned spouse that won’t let the former lover move on to other people. So those former republics need safeguarded pipelines, built by western companies, if they’re finally going to achieve that new life. Now just guess where the pipelines are in Georgia? In Abkhazia and South Ossetia! Moscow is engaged in a plan to regain just about all it lost, Ukraine included as the last chapter, the coup de grace.
 

Is Obama up to speed on this? Is he working to keep Ukraine free, along with the other, western-looking former republics and Eastern Europe? Well, he went to Cairo, one of the global citadels of anti-American hate, to whom we give $5 billion annually to subsidize that hate, and he…..apologized for America. Then he goes to Istanbul and does the same. Then he scraps the finished plans for missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic that would have provided a small measure of protection for Eastern Europe against Moscow. Obama apparently doesn’t wish to offend Putin and Medvedev. Heaven forbid. Obama then pressures Israel to make the usual concessions, while demanding nothing of the Marxist buffoons and phonies in Gaza, Venezuela, and Honduras. He finally gives some belated support to the protesters in Iran, but makes sure not to offend Ahmadinejad overmuch. The latter understands we have to say something, but he’ll let it go if we make concessions (in other words, do nothing about it) on the nuclear program. In short, America’s international relations under Obama evince a self-absorbed narcissism. There is a refusal to question one’s own assumptions, to check things out, to be curious about the wider world. The result is that America’s geostrategic position is in jeopardy now even more than usual. Obama’s foreign policy is so inexpressibly milk toast, he practically outdoes everybody, a new high-water mark. He is the pinnacle of America’s false foreign policy philosophy that began fatefully with Woodrow Wilson. The inane philosophical underpinning of Obama’s international relations, to the effect that History must be “corrected,” that it’s all been a mistake up until him, is destructive in the extreme to the self-interest of America. Under Obama, we’re playing Softball with a World that will not hesitate to play Hardball with us. If Ukraine falls, it’s back to square one — the Soviet Union will be back, just called “Russia” this time.

Haiku 11

 

January 30, 2010

 
 

 
 

 

 

 

Conceived in summer,

Born in winter, I am

The groundhog ‘neath your feet

 

  

Haiku 10

 

January 29, 2010

 

 

The dead come to mind

Just as the living, but with

Great weight on the soul

 

 

 

Haiku 9

 

January 28, 2010

 

 

 

I fall asleep in

Love with you, thinking of you,

And dreaming of you

 

Book Review: Why Are Jews Liberals? By Norman Podhoretz

   
 

 
 

January 21, 2010

   
 

 
 

Why are Jews liberals?

   
 

 
 

By Norman Podhoretz

   
 

 
 

Podhoretz attempts to explain in this book why Jews adhere to what has been called “the Torah of Liberalism,” against what he sees as their own self-interest. Today’s Jews, he asserts, have transferred the religious fervor that premodern Jews possessed for the Torah of Judaism to secular, leftist politics, with the attendant affirmative action, anti-Americanism, sexual promiscuity, and end of merit-based policies thereof. Approval of none of these things would be expected from traditional Jewish values, but it has happened. Why should this be so?

 
 

Podhoretz starts from Christianity, showing how the early Church became an enemy of the Jews, and thus how Christian anti-Semitism came into being. That is, when Christianity emerged from Judaism, no longer as merely a minority sect but as a religion in its own right, it proclaimed its book — the New Testament – as the Word of God, and proclaimed its people — the Christians — as the Chosen People of God. Sound familiar? Indeed, big, historical problem: the Jews did not convert to Christianity, nor did they feel that they, or their book, the Hebrew Bible, had been superseded as the Chosen People and Word of God. Hence, from this situation anti-Semitism arose in the Church, and the Jews likewise came to feel that the Medieval Church was their most implacable enemy.

 
 

Next, Podhoretz takes us to the French Revolution, which famously introduced the terms “right” and “left” into political discourse. Now, the problem here for the Jews was that both sides in the conflict were anti-Semitic: the old order of Kings and Queens, the ancien regime, as well as the new order of Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood, were thoroughly steeped in traditional Christian anti-Semitism. This, then, was a primordial moment for the Jews, this choice of an ally in the modern world that still determines their political loyalty to this day. They chose the Left, again famously, because the Left in France at this time, for its own reasons, was in favor of full civil rights for Jews. That is, the Enlightenment figures who led the way here, such as Voltaire, wanted these civil rights for Jews only because they believed it would make the Jews into assimilated Europeans, thereby relieving Christian Europe in general of the “Jewishness” of the Jews. And the Jews simply swept the anti-Semitism of these Enlightenment figures under the rug.

 
 

Many Jews then became secularized, and came to embrace Marxism in the nineteenth century as if it were a religion. Here we see that transference of the religious fervor mentioned above from the Torah of Judaism to liberal politics, to the supposedly rationalistic science of social justice. But the problem for Podhoretz is that Jews today remain loyal to a liberalism that is hostile to Jews, and that is not the liberalism of decades ago. In other words, radicals took over the banner of liberal politics in the 1960s, and turned liberalism into the marginal stance it is today, with its anti-Zionism and all the rest. Before this happened, however, liberalism was not hostile to Israel, as it is today, with its veiled anti-Semitism in the charge that Israel is an apartheid state.

 
 

So, surprisingly, it is actually the conservatives of today who are by far the more sympathetic ones to Israel, turning the tables on political history. For Podhoretz, the Christian Church has freed itself of anti-Semitism, and so has the broader conservative political culture in America. And not for their own reasons, either: Christians value Israel as the Holy Land and as the rightful, historical home of the Jews, and political conservatives value it as a bastion of democracy in a region of tyranny. Both these see Israel also as a necessary response to the Holocaust and to anti-Semitism.

 
 

But why, then, Podhoretz asks, do Jews remain paradoxically liberal? We know, of course, how they became liberal and leftist: first Medieval Church persecution and then the alliance of that Church with the rightist ancient regime against the French Revolution. But Podhoretz wants to know why do not Jews today “break free of their political delusion?” He explains that we must return for the answer to the forebears of today’s Jews, to the premodern Jews for whom the Torah of Judaism was an all-abiding faith. Those Jews of long-ago gave “steadfast devotion and scrupulous obedience” to their Torah. And likewise, today’s Jews, the “supposed secularists,” that is, the liberals, socialists, Marxists, and radicals populating their number, have similarly given an obedience to the “Torah of Liberalism” of today, like Abraham obeying God’s order to kill his son, Isaac. We see here that transference of fervor and that proclivity to obey an infallible book which have kept modern Jews in the leftist camp. But Podhoretz believes this obedience to the new Torah of Liberalism is “at variance with the most basic of all Jewish interests – the survival of the Jewish people.”

 
 

Fast Food Restaurants vs. Haute Cuisine Restaurants

 

January 19, 2010

 

In what way is a fast food restaurant superior to an haute cuisine restaurant? At least in a fast food place, the employees don’t start clearing the table while you’re
still at the table! They leave you blessedly alone. But in a pretentious, tacky, haute cuisine place, they’re all, “Can I take this plate? Can I take that plate? Can I take this fork?” (Good Lord, would you just go!!!)

 

 

 

Haiku 8

January 17, 2010

 
 

 
 

 
 

 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 

 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

Blue clouds make mountains,

Not thinking, not dreaming, nay,

Just evanescent

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Ashley

(tomorrow, that is)

 
 

 
 

 
 

Haiku 7

January 16, 2010

     
 

     
 

   I won’t fall out of

Love with you. How could Spring not

Be born of Winter?

 
 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       
 

 
 

       
 

       
 

Haiku 6

January 16, 2010

 
 

 
 

  All I wish is to

Love you, like the sky surrounds

The circle of Earth

 

 

Haiku 5

January 15, 2010

 

 

When I see you, my

Heartbeat remains ever in

Thrall to your beauty

 

Haiku 4

 

January 15, 2010

 

 

 

My mother’s old wrist

So fragile now, she put her

Hand in mine at last

 

 

 

 

Haiku 3

 

January 14, 2010

 

 

 

Deeper than deep the

Heart hurts, higher than high it

Climbs to cold refuge

 

 

Haiku 2

January 13, 2010

 

 

 

 

Extinguished flame cold

And dark, your eyes no longer

In love, nor shining

 

 

 

 

 

 

Movie Reviews: Sherlock Holmes v. Avatar

                                                             

                                                      January 9, 2010

 

 

in re: Sherlock Holmes v. Avatar

 
 

 

I preferred Sherlock Holmes. Both these movies are tremendous, painstaking works, but Holmes is easier to take in that it’s far more lighthearted and cheerful as against the grim, irritable humorlessness and embarrassing preachiness of Avatar. Additionally, Holmes is activated by a more traditional moral compass (more reassuring to me in this) as against the radically PC and gullible moral compass of Avatar. Both these movies degenerate into a pretty gratuitous fight at the end, with good (according to the respective scripts) pitted against evil.

 

In Holmes, civilization, settled history, and tradition are the bases of decency, and the villain Blackwood is brought to grief eventually for his transgressions after an extended battle royal. But in Avatar, on the other hand, civilization and its drill sergeant, American capitalism, are the enemies of decency. This is the chief difference between the two, and after the dust settles, thus I cannot prefer Avatar.
 

Now, it was a great idea to jazz things up a bit in Holmes from the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories, in much the same way Star Trek was jazzed up in 2009. It was fully justified to rock the boat in both these movies. Good idea. And in general, this boat-rocking does not get out of control in Holmes, to its credit. The familiar theme of one man determined at all personal cost to go up against evil on behalf of good is intact. That’s the whole point, for me, of mystery stories: that someone would do something noble, unasked. This cinematic Holmes is true to the spirit of the original stories, and is very well-read in the stories. It’s a fantastic movie.
 

But I have one small criticism of this movie, though. There is an entirely unnecessary scene in which Holmes and Watson are bickering about “our dog, our rooms,” etc. I didn’t mind the bickering, but merely that Watson was made effeminate. He plays the wife to Holmes’ husband. But Dr. Watson of the original stories is in no way effeminate — he is, rather, the precise opposite. Fortunately, this unfortunate scene is mercifully short. The end of the movie leaves things open for a sequel, which I would await enthusiastically. Keep all the good (talking to Guy Ritchie now, our director) and just jettison that one stupid, disrespectful mistake.
 

 

Avatar is a mixed package. It’s the problem child. On the one hand, there is an extremely moving love story as a subtext to the main plot, and I admit freely I got choked-up all through the movie, so evocative it was at times. This is really a tear-jerker, no kidding. Also, there is an exhortation running throughout this work to “become who you are,” and this exhortation emerges as the main strain or theme of the film. This exhortation, too, is extremely moving and inspiring. You have to be a block of wood not to be affected by it.
 

The problem here, though, is that you have to take sides against civilization in order to find that true self of yours. Writer, director, producer James Cameron gives us a completely over-the-top caricature of American capitalism and its depredations so as to justify his surprisingly radical agenda of absolutely shredding anything that isn’t completely of nature. The result is that the protagonist, Jake Sully, a former marine now working for the Company, starts shooting and killing his former coworkers in the last half-hour of mayhem the movie descends into. The momentum of all that went before sort of dictates this. But I felt considerably disconcerted that the script here equates becoming who you really are, that is, finding your true self, with a rabid, blood-thirsty, anti-Americanism. Isn’t there any other way to nail it? I think Cameron is taking the hyperbolic rhetoric of the environmental movement a tad too seriously.
 

 

Another concern I have with Avatar is the encouragement it provides to develop a victim-based identity. The movie is relentlessly telling you that you are a victim, your true self has been stolen from you through brain-washing and profit-motive, and that you must get it back through the exhilarating, stirring acts of courage that are your natural lot in life. This movie clearly seeks to persuade the heart rather than to convince the mind. And fair enough, nothing wrong with that a priori. But the disingenuousness, the appeal to gullibility, is definitely culpable. At times this film appeals to the base instincts of revenge and petulance.
 

Avatar reminds one, naturally enough, of Dances With Wolves, given the get-back-to-nature motif. But Avatar is far more virulent in its irritability and irascibility. The occasional humor, the life-loving heart in spite of it all of Dances, is completely gone by the time we get to Avatar. Also, that scene in Dances With Wolves towards the end, where Kevin Costner is slowly riding away with his wife up the mountain trail, a man who is a double exile now from nation and tribe, is unbelievably moving, and Avatar does not ever rise that high. In that scene, the Indian brave, who previously had given Costner’s character a lot of trouble, is now yelling up at him as he goes: “Dances With Wolves! Do you know that you are my friend? Do you know that we are brothers? Do you know…..” I couldn’t hold back the waterworks watching that scene if I tried. As a get-back-to-homeboy movie, Avatar is not the equal of Dances With Wolves.

Ironic, too, that this movie, Avatar, which harnesses the most spectacular technology in movie history, actually has the nerve to advance an anti-technology message. Huh? We’re all grown-ups now, though. We all know that there are many movies with an anti-American bias. This one is just one more, and I can easily live with it. I’ll pull through. But, in the end, to be sure, Avatar certainly captures the imagination, certainly stirs the blood and the circulation, certainly causes the yearning heart to soar, and surely dreams a beautiful dream of a perfect world. I’ll just remember those parts and simply forget the remaining nihilism.  
 

Haiku 1

January 4, 2010

 

 

 

 

Hibernal sunrise

Ignites flames in the rose clouds

Only to perish

 

 

The Fear of Writing

                                                                       January 2, 2010

The Fear of Writing

 

Is it possible to write without being

disingenuous? Sometimes I think it almost

isn’t possible when I read over my own old,

dismal stuff. But some of it does actually seem less insincere than the rest of it. It shines like a penny in the trash. Of course, you could just write like a newspaper, and just report, but that’s a limited way of expressing yourself. To be able to translate what you feel, without phoniness, into the words that bring it out into the world, is the goal of writing.
 

It’s a process of becoming less and less phony over time – when you write something, sometimes you don’t know it’s insincere until later. You are dissatisfied with it only after getting some distance from it. The thing to do is start this process and keep it going until it has momentum (which will take a long time with me).

There’s some permanent taste master

inside that will say whether what you’ve

written is crap or good.

If you’re not completely comfortable with it, then it’s not you. I’m looking to write what makes me feel totally comfortable in saying, ‘yeah, I wrote it.’ The rest of it you can just skip. You’ve got to do something with the writing, though. You can’t just put words on paper that mean nothing, and say you’ve written without disingenuousness. You’ve got to accept the challenge of success vs. failure in trying to write something evocative, that captures the imagination, and that is not superfluous.

Course, you could always just write to entertain others, which is fine. In that case, you have another set of rules: how to write something not superfluous using a superfluous form. But what is it that I’m afraid of in writing sincerely? Fear of exposing my true self, and fear of being rejected for it? Or fear of accidently thinking I’ve written my true self when I haven’t? It’s a fear maybe of going deep within the heart.

We hide our fear in complaints – it’s easy

to do: just posit perfection as what should be,

and you’ll have an infinite variety of complaints on offer. But we have a need for the transcendent, that’s why we write, and so the fear is worth facing. But our fear is the most important thing in the world to us and has more power to determine our actions than anything.

Merry Christmas

December 26, 2009

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

 

The early bird flies

Into the morning,

Breaking the silence

With its wings.

 

 

 

Happy New Year

from

Tony Downing

 

See you

in

2010

Marxism in America and in the Eastern bloc

   
 

   
 

December 18, 2009

   
 

   
 

Marxism in America

and

In the Eastern Bloc

 
 

 
 

I know a man who

grew up in an

Eastern bloc country

during Soviet rule.

He lived there until

he was about 35, and then

he came to America.

He states that no one

in his country actually believed in communism or in Marxism, it was all just a joke to everyone. They ridiculed communism, everyone. I asked him if he thought communism had also been a joke to the people in Russia during Soviet rule, and he said he thought it most probably was. He also said that when he came to the U.S., he was surprised to find so many people here who indeed believed in Marxism and communism. The conclusion one can make here then is that the prerequisite for believing in Marxism is that one must first live and thrive in a prosperous, capitalist country with a market economy. One is then free, if one so wishes, to indulge in the ignorant fantasy that America is the world’s biggest problem, not its greatest hope.  

 
 

The prevailing view

in Euro-American culture

at large, and in many

influential minds

among the academic, judicial,

and media elite, is that

Obama’s foreign policy

is doing well, that he is

ushering in an age of

peace after the so-called

depredations of the previous

administration. But this is not so. Obama’s foreign apologies, appeasement, and accommodationist-based policies will surely generate a global power shift in geopolitical influence towards the likes of Russia, Syria, Venezuela, Iran, Burma, North Korea, and China. These nations form a loose, ad hoc coalition of anti-Americanism, and they will fight tooth and nail against freedom and democracy.  

 
 

The unfortunate precedent

here is, as always,

Jimmy Carter’s administration.

On his watch, the Soviet Union

increased its geopolitical

standing, to the detriment

of freedom-loving people

everywhere, by ramping-up its presence in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and in South Asia. Everywhere, in short. It’s happening again, under Obama, because of the mistaken philosophical underpinning of a good part of America’s thinkers. That is, the ignorant and self-seeking anti-Americanism of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and William Appleman Williams, to name a few. The real tragedy is that Americans are unaware of how noble their own country is, how worthy it is of their admiration and gratitude, and choose instead to take a bizarre refuge in a fashionable, deleterious, and even despicable condemnation of the world’s beacon of fairness.

The Taciturn Hottie: Part Five (finale)

 
 

December 16, 2009

 
 

This here be a

 

A Joe Downing Mystery

 

What means the following

 

Be only fiction

 

The

 Taciturn

Hottie

 

 

Part Five

 
 

 

I wish that I may never consider the smiles of the great and powerful sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty.

–David Ricardo

 
 

 
 

THE PICO/UNION DISTRICT OF L.A. IS NOT for the squeamish. Aggressive, dishevelled types beseech you for money, lying through their teeth, or fangs, ridiculing you, unbelievably, if you give them money, and making the sign of the cross at you if you don’t. Dirty, stained sidewalks, once, briefly, pristine white, stretch out meaninglessly before the eye, sprawling forth into the urban malaise. Beat-up cars, so many chitty-chitty bang-bangs, chug past, smoking, and wild-eyed, smelly people look daggers and mad dog at you for existing. Dingy storefronts look out past the wide sidewalks onto four lanes of loosely-organized mayhem. Welcome to the show, take your seat.

 

Well, it was still hot, and it was still L.A., with the asphalt busily shimmering waves of rage up into the darkening, silky ether of early evening. The sky tonight was a precise cobalt blue, one iridescent and evanescent at once, of breathtaking beauty, and the scrawny, motley trees sprouting out of the cement were set sharply in intaglio against the gradient hue rising heavenward. So ugly below, so gorgeous above.
 

Ingrid had given me Pancho’s address. I pulled up to a nondescript, bland place, an apartment building, set back from Olympic Boulevard a few dozen yards down a residential street. Pancho had his mitts into the endowment money to the tune of hundreds of thousands per year, so why does he live in a cockroach dump like this? Maybe he owns this outhouse, who knows. It reminded me of my neighborhood back in Gorge — many, many decent people lived here among the others. Some short little creep, about early thirties, sat on the stoop, eyeing me as I approached on the quiet sidewalk. Keep that in the singular, too — one of his eyes didn’t look too good, guys. He had the manner of a wounded animal about to come out of its corner and attack. Looking just barely over five feet tall, with black, unruly hair, gnarled fingers, and old, dirty clothes defying description, he sported ugly teeth and parted lips, those perpetually parted lips, to let you know he disapproved of you. Well! Hello there…..

 

“Pancho around?” I asked. This Napoleon looked at me as if to say, ‘you dare speak?!’ but he remained silent.
 

“I wanna do some biz,” I continued. Nap just stared, his fingers loosely interlaced, his forearms resting comfortably on his thighs. He sat on the top step, the third step up. He was the picture of calm, like the koi. His tanned, slender neck tilted up at just the right angle: he couldn’t believe this. A sneer formed and glistened in the vicinity of his nostrils and mouth, like he had a summer cold, or maybe like he was really a dog, disguised as a human.
 

 

“I heard this asshole has something big to sell, and I wanna fuckin’ buy it. Get it? I ain’t got no time to fuck with you! Where is he?” Nap stood up slowly, arms to his sides. He came down the three steps serenely, regally, and got in my face. I could smell him. I mean it. He glared, unspeaking. For him to speak now would be an error, a nuclear error — it would show capitulation, a desire to negotiate at all costs. Silent staring would do all the rectifying. I scowled back at him easily, I knew I had time, that I was still under budget. I scowled at him like he was an annoying office secretary preventing me from seeing Mr. Biggie. I relented a little, playing the drama out, to show I understood his language and the coin of street cred. Just a little.
 

“I need to see him, little homie. Now why don’t you just run along and go find him for me?” Nap sighed some, like a headmaster with a truculent pupil. He looked down, then up. Finally, he spoke:
 

“Pancho’s gone, bro. So why don’t you just run along now and leave like a good little whiteboy mouse? You’re all insulting and shit.” We stood about two feet apart. I towered over him by at least one of those feet, too, and he did his level best to look up at me, eye-to eye. He looked me up and down.
 

 

“All right, homeboy, sir. I got a little, tiny bit insulting. But I’m on the edge, bro. Where is he? He knows me. I’m Bobby D. Where the fuck is he?” I put my hands out, palms up.
 

“I can’t tell you.”
 

 

“Did he leave the country? Is he in Guatemala?” Napoleon looked at me in amazement. Maybe this guy does know him. He considered. He contemplated. He decided. Abruptly, he says:
 

“Come with me.” We went back over to Olympic, waited for a break in traffic, then crossed gravely over, diagonal to the left. Some cars had headlights on by now, and Napoleon was illuminated in their beams eerily as he strode across. Sort of a ghost. Street lights were just coming into play, making everything look yellow, like that disease. Napoleon looked like the idea of a man, not really flesh and blood. We turned left on arriving at the sidewalk, and rambled a few, about a click. We came to a ramshackle place, a small shop, called The Donut Dungeon. Preteen Latino kids looked at us as we came in, bell ringing hideously, and they got out of our way, quick. Wide-eyed, astonished stares were glued on me. I was He-of-the-Other-Land, or something like that. A glass case before me was full of donuts: the maple ones, the sprinkly ones, the puffy, glazed ones — yummytown, all the way, I think I just might indulge my—
 

 

“Who the fuck is he?” A burly, hairy man was on the other side, the proprietor side, of the case of donuts. About fifty years old, experienced. His black hair leapt in a suicidal crescendo down onto his forehead, and his dark eyes, well, yes, they were full of malice. His hirsute forearms worked a white towel, wiping his hands. The sugar glaze, no doubt. He wore a very dark blue polo shirt, short-sleeved, and unimaginative white stripes made their boring way along his broad chest. I couldn’t see any more than that. Napoleon broke the silence and indicated me with a thumb.
 

“He knows Chi Chi.” I looked up from the pecan bars, smirking infuriatingly, or so I hoped. The Donut Man stared me in the eye, skeptical, not speaking. Letting me know who had the reins of power at his disposal. It ain’t you. He took his time. It was his shop.
 

 

“Bullshit. This motherfucker is a cop, undercover. Are you fuckin’ stupid, or just plain dumb, Sleepy? He knows Chi Chi?! Are you serious?” 

“He knows him. Bobby D.” Sleepy opened his hand, waving at me, like he was imploring Donut Man, like he was defending his proposition now.
 

 

“How come I never seen you before?” the proprietor asked, adding, “I know everybody Chi Chi knows,” as he sized me up.
 

“I’m his boy in the Rockies,” I replied.
 

“On the Rockies? The baseball team?” Maple Donut looked uncertain now, the confidence wavering.
 

“No, in the mountains. The Rocky Mountain distribution area,” I clarified. The Donut regained confidence now:
 

 

“Prove it, motherfucker. And be a nice motherfucker.” I then proceeded to slowly pull the medallion and chain out of my holy jeans.
 

“I’m kinda religious,” I joked, feigning the feigning of sheepishness, as I passed a hand over the holes in the fabric. No reaction from the Jelly Donut or from Sleepy. They both gazed at the medallion and at the chain in my mitts. I passed them from hand to hand, methodically, as if that were some necessary, clued-in procedure of proper handling.
 

 

“What’s that?” Sleepy queried me.
 

“It belongs to your boy,” I said, “I gotta see him. I gotta give it back to him.”

 

“Just give it to me,” the donut meister said, reasonably. But I then stepped back suddenly a few steps into the corner of the little shop, my feet swishing past those donut wrapper things, and I simultaneously pulled a Sig Sauer pistol from out my crotch. I stopped smirking. I spoke in a guttural tone now as they raised their hands slightly. 

“Come get your rent, asshole,” I said. The kids were scattered all around the shop, but as far from me as they could get. Donut and Sleepy were open-mouthed, and couldn’t keep the spontaneous anxiety off their faces.
 

 

“Chill, bro. Put the gun down.” Sleepy talked in a hushed voice, with a nuance of cinnamon. (He had been to Starbuck’s without asking, I just knew it.)
 

“Look, take it easy, man. There’s no need for that. There’s kids here. Relax. Your name’s Bobby D.?” Donut talked like a father-figure now, soothingly and rationally, his hands extended in supplication.

“I am relaxed. So just tell me where Chi Chi is so I can give him his fuckin’ property back and so I can buy his goddamn fuckin’ atomic train!” Sleepy and Donut stole a glance at each other, incredulous. There was a pause. Cars went by on Olympic, heedless. No one passed on the sidewalk. Time was on their side, time was on my side. They didn’t speak. I came around the end of the display case and got a donut.
 

“Call him,” I said, eating. They didn’t move.

“Call him!” I repeated. Donut at last moved and fumbled with his Blackberry, scrolling for Pancho. He finally managed to dial. He surveyed me with the phone to his ear.
 

“It’s ringing,” he said sparingly. A few more seconds of silence among seven people, six of them fixing their shining, gleaming eyes on me. Then Maple Donut spoke into the phone:
 

“Chi Chi, it’s me…..got a guy here says he knows you. He’s got some sort of chain and locket he says is yours. Whattya want me to do with him?” A voice in reply could be discerned on the other end, but not the words. Donut looked down, concentrating on his instructions. It seemed he was also waiting for a conversation behind the scenes to finish. At a certain point he gazed at me and said into the phone:
 

“He’s about six feet, I guess, wearing faded jeans with holes and a white tee-shirt.” He then leaned to the side a bit, turned his gaze down at my feet, and continued, “Black tennis shoes, or sneakers, whatever. Those Converse Chuck ones. Pretty old and beat-up, too. This guy doesn’t dress too good.” There was more talk in that other conversation waiting in the wings. He looked over at me again and asked,

“Are you Joe Downing?” 

“Fuckin’ A, motherfucker,” I replied, deadpan. He turned back.

“Yeah, it’s gotta be him. The same little shit you’re talking about.” Donut listened into the line some more, his eyes darting around. I could see everyone’s hands from here. Everyone was poised as if someone had yelled, ‘Stop!’ Jelly Donut pointed his chin at me, relaying a question. 
 

“What’s written on the peace sign?” he asked me. Without averting my eyes from him, I said smoothly, without stuttering,
 

“‘From IMB, con amor, to PR. ELD 4eva.’” Sprinkly Donut started to repeat this into the phone, but was stopped by an irritable voice. He listened, then spoke into the phone,
 

“Okay, yeah…..I will. Right now. It’s okay. Yes! I will! I said I would! Damn! This shit is crazy!” Donut signed off, put the phone in his Dickies pocket. He took a deep breath, composing himself. He smirked at me now. Slowly, unctously, he says to me,

“Chi Chi wants you to come on down. He wants to see you, home, real bad.” A badass grin played over Jelly Donut’s face, like a rattlesnake emerging fom hungry hibernation. He liked this outcome. He continued speedily:
 

“I’ll write the address for you, bro. Guatemala City, Guatemala, motherfucker.” He extended it over to me, after having bent over the opposite counter with a pad and pen. I motioned with the Sig to the top of the glass case. He complied. He stepped back suavely, watching me like I was the end of a good movie. I moved in for the long slip of cream-colored paper, aware of Nappy over there. I checked the note to see if I could read the handwriting:

 

  

Hotel Caribbeano

303 Avenida Bernal Diaz

G.C., Gua.  Room #101

 

  

I looked up, satisfied.

 

“Okay…..I’m leaving now. Don’t fuckin’ move.” I came back around to the middle of the shop, brandishing my Sig with a warning face, eyes alert like a merciless hawk. I reached without looking into the pocket of my glorious jeans, got a dollar bill out, glanced it, then tossed it, spiral fashion, onto the floor among the wrappers. We all stood there motionless in the lurid light one final moment.

“Good donut, man.”
 
   

************************************************

 
 
 

 
 

I WAS DISTRACTED ON THE PLANE DOWN TO GUATEMALA CITY, or Guate, as they called it. I shoulda been thinking about the task at hand, though: get Ingrid. Get her lazy tush back to L.A. Reggie was unable to go with me, since the LAPD had named him as a ‘person of interest’ in the Gomez assasination. The part about the endowment money was gonna come out now. Reggie, it turned out, had been given 10k annually by Pancho to zip it. Now he was gonna unzip it. He arranged Mrs. Biddleman’s funeral, but I had to miss it. I didn’t want Pancho to have time to get any readier than he was already gonna be. No gun, since the Tom Bradley Terminal at LAX had dissuaded me from that idea. I was walking into a buzzsaw.

 

Now, Guatemala City sits in the Valle de la Ermita, underneath a haze of smog generated by millions of cars and the tropical humidity. I had come in from the noisy, chaotic airport into the gargantuan Main Square, with the National Palace bordering it. A street kid with a baseball cap in the plaza sold me bananas. There were lots of these entrepeneurial kids. They were sleepy-eyed, though, as if on something. It was morning.

The square was huge, as stated, a city in itself, including an enormous, elaborate fountain, and rose and black-colored smooth stone pavement creating wide walking lanes of perpendicular geometric patterns. It was like a giant, teeming open-air market, if you could walk that far. Mestizo families avoided the European-descended.
The Avenida Bernal Diaz, on the other hand, had no lane markers, no white or yellow lines, just dusty asphalt in between dilapidated housing. This last was hastily put together, sorta gray, with basically patchworks of tin for roofs. Off in the distance, nevertheless, more presentable high-rises soared like beehives into a glowering sky of purple-dark clouds. The temperature was pleasant, but those clouds looked about to pour.

I found myself in a rattling taxi shuddering through noisy, perilous streets. I came to number 303, the Hotel Caribbeano. I paid the silent, gruff taxi driver, who glanced back with a scowl, I took my small bag with me, and the taxi unceremoniously took off flying. I was left standing solo in front of this thing, more like a deli than a hotel. I went in through the glass doors, and was approached immediately by several men with handguns. Glocks. They stood all around me. They all wore white, brushed denim jeans. Snazzy. They had on various short-sleeved, floral pattern shirts, and I felt underdressed.
 

“Hi. I’m Joe. Chi Chi called me in for a meeting. Yo soy Joe,” I said, ridiculously. One of them motioned, and they walked with me without reacting much through the uncarpeted stone lobby to a flight of stairs. The boys led me up a lazily curving staircase to Room 101. One of the guys knocked a couple of times, footsteps approached, and I was in.

I walked into a large room, with white, plush carpeting underfoot. It was pretty soiled from lots of shoes and not much cleaning. There were several black leather couches up against the walls, and a large picture window looking out onto the mountains. All eyes on me, they gave me a minute to take it all in, curious about me. Long, narrow glass tables sat in front of each of the couches, white powder piled high and messy.
A lean, young, crisp-looking dark man in a skin-tight, clean black tank top, those white jeans, and white leather loafers without socks, sat regarding me steadily from the corner of one of the couches. He was about early 30’s. His legs were crossed comfortably, not with his leg directly across the other thigh, but that cosmo way men used to do in the 40’s. His ankles were as slender as a woman’s. The long, slender fingers of his left hand held a cigarette, the smoke rising calmly into the humid air. His moderate-length black hair, splashing down just right onto his ears and neck, had a studied casualness, an accidently-on-purpose look. His sharp, classic facial features were bemused. He did not in the least appear violent. “ELD” was tatooed smartly and competently on the side of his long neck, in thin green letters that just barely stood out from his smooth, brown skin. He nodded curtly to his men, and they all sat. His brown eyes blinked languidly as he raised his cigarette for a long, glamorous draw. I had to think that this was surely Pancho ‘Chi Chi’ Rodriguez.

Ingrid sat next to him, ignoring me but still sneering hatred at me. She had seen me before I saw her. Was I in the wrong for doing this? She leaned over defiantly to the table, and inhaled prodigiously, a mother lode of her white medicine. She appeared as a corpse would, escaped from the coffin. She sat back, and shook her dark hair.
 

“Hi, Ingrid,” I said.

“Fuck you,” she replied.
 

“What’s wrong now? I’ve just come to take you home,” I said in rejoinder.

“Go fuck yourself,” she said.
 

“Your mother’s dead, and the funeral’s in a couple days. She died in her sleep two days ago. Thought you’d like a ride back. Aly needs you, Reggie needs you, your father needs you — you’re the head of the household now. It’s time to go.”

“Give it a rest. I live here now. And Reggie’s a bigger idiot than even you,” she responded.
 

“Your mother really is dead, I’m not lying,” I persisted. Ingrid reached for a pack of cigarettes, some mysterious brand I didn’t know. She lit one with shaking hands. A Vespa or something hummed by outside. There was some pushing and shoving in front of the hotel. One of the guards went over to look.

“Silencio!” he shouted, “silencio ahora!” It grew quiet outside. It was about noon. Ingrid crossed her legs like Pancho, who still hadn’t spoken. He looked down into his lap, smiling enigmatically and benevolently. Ingrid didn’t inquire about her mother or about anyone at all. She just stared at me briefly, then looked away, dismissing me. Pancho understood her, and then spoke to the entire room in a low, breathy voice:
 

“Our work with the Mestizo children is urgent. They face a crisis. The construction of the school is underway, and the education of these children is in our hands. We have set-up temporary housing and classrooms, and Ingrid is indispensable to the administration of our Institution. She cannot possibly return to Los Angeles.” He finished his speech.

“Her mother is dead. Ingrid is needed back at home. In Pasadena, not L.A.,” I corrected him. Pancho countered thus: 

“Pasadena is where Ingrid was dying. Can’t you see that? Mr. Downing, Joe, if I may, perhaps you would like to join our little community. Hmm? We’d be delighted to have you. Maybe a man of your caliber can see the good we’re doing, and will continue to do, and would like to be a part of history changing.”

“No thanks, Chi Chi, I’ve got a date with reality.” Pancho smiled at me pityingly, pursing his lips. He would indulge me this far at least. A wave of anxiety then swept over me. What if I was wrong? Ingrid was twenty-eight, it was her life. My original client was now dead. Who am I to be doing this? Pancho droned on:
 

“Social justice depends on leaders. It depends on sacrifice. If we are not willing to step forward into the coalition of the willing in order to bring change, that change will never materialize. The white man has taken as he pleased, and now we must put it back right. Ingrid understands that. I’m surprised you do not seem to get it — a man of your ability. Joe, please. Join us. Help us bring change to these people.” I sighed. I was getting tired of being on my feet. Pancho added, smiling cattily:

“I’m sure you could also find a beautiful wife here. I understand you’re single.”
 

“Yeah, I’m single, but I got a girlfriend back in Gorge.” Ingrid glanced up at me, surprised. This loozer has a girlfriend? I chuckled, and so did Pancho. She glared at him, incensed, upbraiding him for turncoat behavior.

“Joe,” he continued, extending a hand in a friendly way, “let me show you something.” He walked with me over to the glass doors looking out onto the long, uniform range of mountains ruminating in the smoggy distance, below the moody clouds. He avoided getting too close to the middle of the wide window, though, keeping to the periphery. We stood at the corner of the glass doors. He motioned to one of his men and said,
 

“Apra la ventana, por favor. Apra las puertas.” A man with teardrop tatoos the size of a quarter under each eye, and a big “ELD” fashioned similarly on his forehead, threw open the doors onto a little balcony. He stepped out, looked down and all around, then stepped back, nodding.

“Muy bien,” quoth Chi Chi. Pancho and me went out onto the balcony. I was less than a foot away from him, this whacker of Gomez and this leader of the supply for a good part of the western U.S.
 

“You see those mountains, Joe,” he began, turning to me, “my people come from them. But I myself, on the other hand, come from the barrio in East Los, and you know that, I’m sure. And as hard as we had it in the barrios, in Wilmas, in Lomas, in Harbor City, or in East Los itself, with the poverty and the racism and the discrimination, those people up there, Joe, they’ve got it worse. I want to help them. I want to educate them, to feed them, to clothe them. It’s my mission in life now, as one of those more fortunate.” He lowered his hand to his side. I started in, irritated:

“Those aren’t your people, Chi Chi, those are Indians. Those are Mestizo. You’re European, man.” Pancho shook his head sadly, pretending shock, and turned heavily back into the room. He was disappointed in me. I gambled:
 

“What’s the name of those mountains, Chi Chi?” He shot a look at me, open-mouthed, a little vulnerable. It happened so fast, maybe it didn’t happen. He grinned sheepishly, and said,

“A rose by any other name, Joe,” recovering quite nicely. I didn’t push my luck. I didn’t need no confirmation any more: he was a fraud and I knew it. I smirked again, like in The Donut Dungeon, infuriatingly. Ingrid then said to me angrily,
 

“You think you’re a genius just because things pop into your head?” I responded by changing the subject: 

“I saw your yearbook picture the other day. Nice picture, too. Pasadena High, yes, sir!”

“What?! Are you stalking me? Asshole! You pervert! Get outta here! How dare you!”
 

“Aly showed it to me, I’m not stalking you.”

“Well, then I’m gonna have to take that little bitch over my knee. You’re scum, Joe!”
 

“I’m trying to help you. If I’m scum, then how come Chi Chi Rodriguez over there wants me on his little golf team?” Ingrid looked over at Pancho, wondering the same. Pancho gazed down, smiling that enigmatic smile. Finally he turned his gaze up at me and spoke in a huskier tone, not so effeminate as before:

“You know I’ll never let you leave here, Joe. You’re mine now. You belong to me. I need a man of your skills to adminster this enterprise, and I’m not giving you away just so you can rat me out to the LAPD. The Diablos are absorbing Saliciamon now, and we need new, capable people,” he averred, and stared at me darkly: “like you!”
 

“Where’s my peace sign?” Ingrid demanded. Distracted, I slowly pulled the medallion and chain out of my pants pocket, and tossed them to her. I hadn’t yet given them to the fuzz. She dropped them, picked them up finally, and fawned over them.

“Let’s take a drive. I want you to meet them,” Pancho said.
 

“I did meet them in that big plaza,” I retorted.

“Not the ones I’m talking about, Joe. Or Bobby D., whichever is your name,” he said. (I had that one coming, I guess.) He went on, “let me show you the real ones. Let me show you how full their lives are, and how full mine is in helping them.”
 

“I never doubted their lives were full, it just seems to me that you’re just full of complaints. I don’t care about your ego — your ego pretending to be justice. Same old, same old.” Pancho gave me a look. 

“I’m going, too,” Ingrid declared loudly.
 

“No, baby, you stay here. It’s best. I want you safe here. I love you so much I want you safe at all times. There could be trouble with those outsiders.” Pancho then looked gravely at Teardrop, and so long, and so steadily, it was unnerving. Teardrop nodded finally. My blood ran cold at the thought of what had just been communicated, and I shuddered at the thought. A double whacking? Me in the mountains and Ingrid in the hotel? Why give the command in front of me? Is he showing off, incompetent, or giving in to a fit of emotion? Ingrid’s response at least started quietly:

“I’m going with you. I don’t want this Downing spreading lies about me. I’M GOING WITH YOU!” she shouted. Pancho winced.
 

“It’s okay with me if Ingrid goes,” I intervened, “the more the merrier. I’d like to see her touch with ‘the people.’ Prove to me you’re on the level and maybe I’ll forgive the past, and join your circus down here in banana country. I won’t rat you out to the brass boys in El Norte. If all goes well, that is.” I spoke in a warning tone, but I was acting. Pancho considered, looking at me hard. He glanced over at the wreck on the couch named Ingrid, and he saw, as I did, traces of the former magnificent beauty he had ruined. He turned back to me, pensively. He paced leisurely and at length around the dirty white carpeting, keeping everyone waiting in the silence. He was calculating the proposed changes to the jigsaw puzzle of business, seeing if it would all work. At last he came back to us from his reverie, all eyes on his face.

“All right,” he began, “Ingrid can go. But you’re on a short leash, Joe. You’re my dog. Just watch and listen and learn. Learn, Joe, learn about the people you ignore. Learn about their lives, learn about their grievances. Like in U.S. History class, right? Except there will be no lies from the teacher this time.” He was imploring me now, leaning forward from the waist.
 

“I am so Ready Freddy,” I replied.

“Good.” We then descended the curving staircase of the Hotel Caribbeano noisily. We passed through the lobby. It was good to be going outside again, although for what purpose, I was uneasy. There were about eight of us in this motley entourage plodding forward, and I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do: kidnapped, basically. Outside, we piled into three white Beamers, with some more guys standing by, not going with us. I was in a car separate from Pancho and Ingrid. They were the lead car, I was in the middle car.
 

Our driver started up our engine, and pulled up a few feet on the dusty way close behind them. They got in, Pancho behind the wheel and Ingrid next to him, adoringly. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Our driver playfully honked the horn at them, as of to say, ‘c’mon, man, vamonos, baby!’ I wasn’t the only one glad to be outside again. Pancho put his shades on, reached for a pack of cigarettes, and glanced back in the rearview mirror. He turned the key. The car promptly exploded into a ferocious fireball, and shot twenty feet straight up into the air like a helicopter. The car became a furious blast and inferno, with flames and propulsion engulfing the entire vehicle. The car bounced, finally, after an eternity aloft in the air, back onto the pavement in a horrific and cacaphonous heap. It had twisted 180 degrees in the air, since the placement of the force had been just so, and it landed partly on the hood of our car, as if to look at us.

Our windshield shattered in all this, spraying glass, flame, and hot smoke at our faces. Our heads bounced savagely against the ceiling of the car. We exited the car in a messy panic, my right arm on fire, my face and lungs burned and filled with glass shards. I hobbled out, and went over to Ingrid. She was dead, long past saving, and cradling the peace sign in her fingers. Both Ingrid and Pancho were shattered, motionless, and overtaken utterly. They lay limp on the tan seats of the Beamer, their shoulders pressed together, their bodies aflame. Ingrid clung to external things, it seemed, like that peace sign, as talismans against the brutal harshness of reality, but it sure hadn’t worked.

I was desperately trying to figure out how to retrieve Ingrid’s body or how to put out the fire somehow, and so I moved around the car, circling, when a mighty hand grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, took hold of my neck, and shoved me hard to the ground, away from the car.
“Chinga tu madre! Fuera, puto, fuera! Yanqui, fuera! Kaiyete! Son muertos! Y tu tambien! Fuera! Via!” There was then a wall of guys blocking me from the car, their Glocks out and pointed at my torso. After I hobbled to my feet, I just kept going. The case was over. Nothing more I could do here, except get myself off’d. I took off, reluctantly relinquishing Ingrid’s body. They let me go. I was irrelevant. I started to run after awhile, more dead then alive, my heart beating wildly, my spirit sick with anguish, and feeling sorry for myself, back to that big crazy plaza where the kid sold bananas. Behind me, the billowing smoke cloud langourously weaved and meandered its way toward the green foothills of the lush mountains we never made it to. The smoke mingled sensuously with the purple rainclouds and was absorbed therein.
Me, Pancho, and Ingrid had been in so far over our heads we had no idea. Dazed and disillusioned, I saw now who had had the real power all along, and what had taken place. Gomez, probably discredited down here for some botched job and unwanted any longer, and therefore ripe for discarding, had been set-up as a sacrificial lamb for Pancho, to get Pancho mad enough to leave his perch and expose himself. Pancho had walked into their snares, totally fooled. He had thought he was taking over, but he was actually being summoned for a whacking. He had been played. The consolidation of the East Los Diablos within Saliciamon was now complete. 
 

 
 

*******************************************************************

 
 

 

  

Aly stayed with friends, at least avoiding the fate of most orphans. As the years went by, she attended Pasadena High, excelled at volleyball like her older sister, and generally got along. In a deeper sense, though, she was an indifferent, troubled student. She shunned the limelight. The other kids liked her, and Aly could even be described as popular, but there was an omnipresent something at the edge of her sensibility, a presence of some sort on the periphery of her psychological vision. It could be that a permanent sadness, an hibernal frost, had taken root in her soul. She smiled, she laughed, she liked boys, but there was an unconscious roadblock to happiness that her experiences had put up.

She got married at nineteen to a decent guy (she had grown into a ravishing physical beauty), but the marriage had its trouble spots. Aly’s mental scars, seared into her mind with a hot brand, precluded her from trusting even the most trustworthy.  Her natural courage was what she drew upon to give life a whirl, in spite of it all, but she had really lost everything already to Pancho’s world and that white powder, which lay like a voracious, remorseless spider at the center of its web, waiting with infinite patience for its guileless prey. That goddamn white powder and its inevitable consequences, even though Aly herself did not partake, were the real reasons that Aly had become known behind her back as “The Taciturn Hottie.” 
 
 

 
 

THE END