This may not be a timely message, with the summer cookout scene all but over. Seeing how I revealed my Texas heritage last week, I figured this was the time to get a few things off my chest. Don’t worry, while I am a Dallas Cowboys fan, I won’t subject you to any of the bizarre and politicized mayhem of the current National Football League. Not this week, anyhow.
Mainly, these are educational tips that will help you navigate our strange world a little more effectively (especially when you encounter the oft-misunderstood Texan in the wild).
First off…I’m just gonna come out and say it…grilling meat does not a BBQ make. Come on now. BBQ is not a catch all term for anything you cook on a grill. A hamburger is not BBQ! (Not even if you put BBQ sauce on it.) A hotdog, for the love of god, is not BBQ. I’m not gonna go into the nuances or regional arguments about what constitutes good barbecue. I’ll simply say, at the most basic level, it’s a cooking method. BBQ and grilling are DIFFERENT cooking methods.
All of this is for your own benefit. If you invite a Texan (or just about any Southerner) over to your house for BBQ, and then heaven forbid you offer said individual a grilled beef patty, that person will have no choice but to lump you into the category of people not to take seriously in matters pertaining to the culinary arts, outdoor survival, pro or college sports, and beard maintenance.
You may think this leap-to-conclusions be unfair, but it is what it is. While the grilling/BBQ faux pas is the worst that can be made, I’ll mention a couple more briefly. Don’t mispronounce words like fajita, tortilla, and jalapeño…unless you’re a native to Texas or Mexico (or maybe some place like New Mexico that might make good Mexican food as well). If you are eating something with strips of meat in it, and you pronounce it similarly to the word “vagina” that’s an appetite killer.
Along those same lines, don’t confuse Mexican food with Tex-Mex, or worse yet, Cali-Mex. These are by no means the same thing. Tex-Mex has no room for fish tacos. They are an abomination. If the word “fresh” is in the name of the restaurant, you can be damn sure it ain’t Tex-Mex. If there is a vegetable in my Mexican food, and it ain’t pickled, I ain’t interested. (I don’t consider shredded iceberg lettuce, peppers, onions or tomatoes to be vegetables.)
Last but not least, no matter how you feel about Taco Bell, please reserve a separate category for such establishments. Taco Bell should not be considered Mexican food any more than Pizza Hut should be considered Italian. If you take the above advice into consideration, along with wearing welding gloves, you should be just fine if/when you deem it necessary to relate with Texans.
At the Desk This Week
Nothing to see here. Move along. It’s virtual fall break for my kids partially virtual schooling. On top of that, I’m helping some friends paint the interior of their house… after they evicted some renters. Enough said about that.
It’s been an odd stay-cation sort of week. Back to the writing routines next week!
Anticlimax, Scene 6 - Road to Revolution, Scene 2
[Start with the introduction to the series.]
Chancho begged the horizon to swallow him, but with each rise it retreated further into the distance. So his life lengthened rise after rise by no doing of his own. He held the throttle as open as the rutted roads allowed, working his way southward like a dog dumped hundreds of miles from home—the scent etched into his awareness.
Burning feelings of betrayal and loss unraveled the edges of his conscious thought. Only instinct remained. Something in him, despite the sting of self-loathing coating his soul like tar, demanded that life continue. The rhythm of the road beneath him and mesquite trees blurring past him kept him breathing—not dreaming.
He’d given up dreaming two years ago. Despite recent efforts to think otherwise, he’d always believed a man without dreams was walking only. Living without being alive. As a youth, his dreams had been enough for twenty men. Yet they had dug the chasm that swallowed him. Even now his past dreams devoured him as he rode beneath a September sun. Hadn’t all of this been his fault?
Voices returned, those he had known, those who had known him. They accused him of lacking love, lacking understanding. He agreed with them all, and one by one he detached his umbilical cord from their nourishing. He separated himself from human relationship in his mind, removing his parasitic existence from the lives of those he’d bled dry.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he turned onto a paved state highway—no more tedious bumps hindering him. Shifting gears, he accelerated the Harley to 80 mph. The wind rustled his hair, and for several miles he wondered where his lost sombrero had ended up. It didn’t matter. One less burden to remove, one less receptacle for collecting shattered dreams.
Eventually the highway veered off course, and instincts drew him away from its smooth surface back onto rutted paths—heading south, heading home. The jarring left him without peace. With no one else left to frustrate his thoughts, he had only himself. In a thunderclap of discovery Chancho realized the person with which he had grown most tired was himself.
In a panic, he remembered what Muddy had said outside of Brackettville. “As long as the three of us are together the present guards you from the past.” Now nothing could protect him.
His balance on the bike began to waver. He pulled over, lowered the kickstand, and stumbled onto hands and knees. A quavering overtook him. Rolling in the dirt like a dog inflicted by a skunk, he clenched every muscle against the sting and the stench. Nothing would remove it. No amount of self-debasement, no simple crust of earth, no scouring rock.
He shook from head to foot until cramps shot his legs and arms out straight, causing his back to arch and lift from the ground. For a full minute his body rolled with a rigid physical pain, racking his muscles with cramps. Finally the process finished with him, leaving him limp and exhausted. As the sun crept low in the west, he lifted his head from its wallow and forced his mind to assess its surroundings. Instincts true, he’d reached the Catholic Hills.
He cut cross-country toward their last campsite, stopping for a drink along the way. Unconscious of his expectations, he simply had to stand in the last place he’d know as home. When he did, disappointment crushed him. Somehow, he’d hoped it would restore what he had lost the moment he’d lost Nena and Muddy.
With utter finality his broken heart burst and spilled its grief into the soil of the Catholic Hills. Not wanting to die anywhere else, its fraying strings had drawn him to its last remembered place of joy. Now that his heart was free to grieve its loss, all the distance Chancho had put between himself and those he loved recoiled into a suffocating proximity. And he cried. Finally he cried. Eventually he cried, not for himself or his loss, but for his friends.
He awoke to darkness, a crescent moon falling in the night sky. The cloak of night lessened the edge of his grief, and he rose to walk the perimeter of his old camp. Four days since they’d left. A week ago, they had lived here in peace. He had dreamed of dreaming again.
He scrambled to the top of the rock outcropping. Below him sat their windrows of retting hemp, unmolested. The only thing they’d left behind was now the only thing that remained.
He was a coward and an ass. It had cost him the simple life, the good life that God had given him. He could not change—always self-centered. By running from his past, he’d endangered the people who trusted him. A light breeze rustled the fabric of his shirt. He looked up, expecting to see goats nipping at green buds of cáñamo. The memory faded like a mirage among rippling heat waves.
First he had embraced revolution, then run from it. He knew now that there was no outward revolution. The only revolution occurred inside the heart of a person—small and quiet yet equally as powerful. His was over now. Choosing selfishness over service, he’d come out on the losing side.
The thought settled over him both slowly and yet startlingly sudden, like autumn leaves after a hard freeze. The revolution was over. Finally. Over. All his adult life he had been captured by the concept. Revolucion. That everything wrong could change in a cataclysmic instant for the better. That the poor, the weak, the many could come together and win victory over the corrupt, greedy, and unjust. That the land and its people could win their liberty from their oppressors. These had been his guiding forces in life, whether pursuing them or fleeing them.
Now more than ever, he acknowledged that change for the worse came in sudden storms. But good change…he shook his head.
Once there had been dreaming. Then there had been Muddy and Nena, raising goats, stories around the fire, good coffee, and good friends. Only one thing remained. He’d always said when the revolution was over he’d use the gold to do some good. For once, while he still had the chance, he’d do something for someone other than himself.
Jumping down from the cab, Chancho slapped the side of the Jeffrey Quad truck that had brought him the last fifty miles. With a final wave, the driver rumbled around the bend of the rutted road. Chancho craned his stiff neck. The Sabinas Mountains encased him on three sides.
Stashing the motorcycle and swimming across the Río Bravo del Norte under the cover of night had been easy enough. Finding a ride into the remote area near the orphanage of Mt. Sabinas had been more difficult. But on the third day after leaving the Catholic Hills, he stood only two miles from the place of his upbringing.
From the river, and then back and forth across it. What had started as a journey of conquest and self-discovery ended in surrender and loss. At least hope remained that his last gesture of selflessness could bring some level of purpose to the emptiness he felt. And it would be nice to see the Sisters. Like the undeserving prodigal, they would welcome him, even after he abandoned them without explanation or goodbye.
The vigor of the uphill hike countered the cooler mountain temperatures. Still, the chill crept through his tattered serape and thin peasant’s shirt as he ascended into the dampness of low hanging clouds. He sniffed his armpit, causing himself to quiver. So much for making a good impression. He smiled at the thought of old Espanoza’s remarks. Topping the final ridge to behold the stone orphanage, his face fell suddenly slack.
The wooden gates had been splintered and cast aside. Gaping wounds in the stone walls revealed a charred inner courtyard. Chancho, drenched in a cold sweat, scrambled over the broken gates before tripping and falling to his knees fifty meters from the main building. Skeletal remains of the twin pinyon pines on either side of the path stood as impotent sentinels—watching over the flame-gutted ruins of Mt. Sabinas Orphanage.
The wooden timbers that had supported the thatched adobe roof littered the interior of the building’s stone shell like spent matchsticks. Wisps of cloud and fog replaced vibrant frescos of cherubim, seraphim, and a depiction of the Last Supper. Chancho gasped for breath, seizing at the thin air as frantically as he clutched at his faith in a fallen God.
Crawling on hands and knees for several meters, he finally lifted himself against the hull of a pinyon and stumbled to the blackened doorframe of the only home he’d known for the first twenty years of his life. Gone. It was all gone. The long rows of benches, the office, the kitchen, the Sisters’ quarters. The Sisters. Panic overcame shock, and Chancho heaved himself through the rubble toward the remains of the sleeping quarters. Terrified of what he might discover, he had to know.
Buried under heaps of debris and a thick slurry of ashen mud, all that remained were haunting fragments of the lives he’d left behind four years earlier…until he reached the far end of the building. Streaked with soot and tears, Chancho clambered over one last pile of debris, to the spot that had once been his own. He heaved aside the remains of a heavy timber door. Composed as a twisted lullaby, the scorched springs of a twin mattress created the final resting place of a tiny human figure.
Leathery sinew and cracked bones had cooked into the metal springs, their final moments becoming a single nightmare. Remembering Primitivo’s words about burying charred corpses, Chancho knew now that the bastard had already burned them before Del Rio. Everything was his fault.
Chancho lurched against the stone wall and splattered bile for several feet. He hunched his shoulders and heaved until a thin trail of blood dangled from his lips. Then, clawing at the crumbling plaster with bloody fingers, he smashed clump after clump of it—chucking them into the remnants of the stone wall until exhaustion encompassed him like a skeletal womb.
Hours later, Chancho emerged from the wreckage as the sun set. The clouds having burned off, a sliver of orange light glinted off the remaining lime-washed plaster walls. Numb with grief, all Chancho knew to do was return to the hole in the outer wall where he had once kept his childhood treasures, and where he’d more recently stashed the revolutionary gold that had brought him nothing but terrors.
His heart already spilt, his mind already spent, nothing remained but his soul. And he felt it nearly lost. How could a loving God sleep while the wicked burned the world down? Chancho swallowed hard. But it had been his fault the orphanage… he clutched his throat. He needed to breach the surface before he drowned.
Chancho emerging from a stand of fir trees. Soot and tears encrusted his eyes, and the light was failing. He felt his way forward blindly. The cliff trail, positioned several hundred meters above Valle de la Serenidad, had been strictly forbidden for the orphans to use. Thus it had served as Chancho’s private escape and fortress. With nothing but a steep stone wall on his left and a sheer cliff on his right, Chancho stumbled along the familiar trail daring death to take him.
But it was not yet his time, and he reached the cleft without misstep. Flicking his pocket knife open, he located the one stone out of the thousands that concealed a hollow in the wall—the spot where he’d always kept his hopes and dreams. Shimming the rock until it fell outward, he laid it aside and slipped in his hand. Seconds later, he withdrew a tattered burlap sack, decayed yet intact.
He dropped the sack in his lap with a muted jingle. He breathed deeply and stared across the valley at the sun setting opposite him. It was the same sun he’d watched rise a week ago. He was a different man watching it.
A Bible story struck him, one about a servant who’d been given talents of gold to invest for his master. Two other servants had taken their gold coins and profited with them, earning their master’s approval. But the third man had buried his gold, afraid to incur his master’s wrath upon losing the money. He figured as long as he didn’t lose it…well, it went badly for the man.
Chancho hefted the sack of gold coins—both his and Ah Puch’s share of the unimaginable fortune they’d liberated from Carranza and Obregon. He removed one of the two fine silk bags from the burlap. He wrapped the remaining silk bag with the burlap and placed it securely back in the hollow of the wall.
Ah Puch had dreamed to purchase the hacienda where his parents had been worked to death so it could be divided among the remaining peons. Chancho had gotten his friend killed before it could happen. Ah Puch, I’m sorry. Chancho spit in his hand and rubbed it on his boot, clearing a tiny spot of soot and ash.
Remembering the note explaining what to do with Ah Puch’s share, Chancho shot his hand back inside the hollow until he found it. The metal tin was still sealed with wax, so he returned it. “Maybe God will see fit to fulfill your dream after I’m gone.”
God had planted the money in infertile soil. Unfaithful, Chancho had buried it. Now the orphanage was gone, the orphans most likely dead, and Chancho’s dream dead along with them. Chancho’s revolution was over, too late for everyone he’d thought he loved. He slid a single coin from the bag and hefted it in the palm of his hand. Others would be more faithful. He’d complete the liberation of the gold and let others succeed where he’d failed.
Wanted both south and north of the border, Chancho had no hope of a future. He had more debt than even the gold could repay. But the coins would do more good in Texas. Anyone caught with one in Mexico would be apprehended and questioned by the Carranza led government. He would slip north of the border and put his selfish and destructive dream of revolution to death for good by doing one selfless thing with his life.
He poured the remainder of the coins in his lap. He ran his fingers over the raised surface of each twenty-peso gold coin, trying to feel the words and symbols with more than his fingers. “Estados Unidos Mexicanos, United Mexican States.” He no longer believed in the words, nor that they would ever be true. The eagle clutching the snake had been a powerful image for him once, indicating that the noble people of Mexico would dispatch the unjust.
He counted the coins by laying them on a flat rock—one hundred twenty-peso pieces. It amounted to three times what a peon could dream of earning during an honest lifetime.
END of Episode Nine
Still dripping wet from his laborious swim across the river, Chancho had been grateful to find the Harley where he’d left it. He tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt and secured the bag of coins to the back of the bike. For the first time, he stood back to admire the machine. Brilliant in design, two cylinders fed constant power to the back wheel through a simple chain. Wide handlebars provided for easy balance.
Simple. Two cylinders, two wheels, and a few gallons of gasohol could carry him almost 200 miles in a single day. The thought of the places he had been over the previous week chilled him. This day, and how ever many days followed, would extend the distance between now and then.
Before he could go much further, he would need gas. Occupying his conscious thoughts with one task at a time, he divided his present from the future one gold coin at a time. Within the hour, he reached a paved road heading northwest of Del Rio. The Rio Bravo snaked back and forth just south of the road. Sputtering to a stop, Chancho pushed the bike a few miles before a passing motorist pulled over.
“Outta gas?”
“Yessir. Still getting used to the machine.” Chancho lowered the stand and mopped the sweat from his brow.
“I know what you mean. Ain’t quite like riding a horse, is it?” A burly man reached into his back seat for a gas can. His untamed beard wore him rather than the other way around. “I always carry some spare.”
“Gracias, señor, but I don’t want you to run out a few miles down the road.”
“Nonsense. I got more than enough to get me to Langtry.” The man wore a wide-brimmed straw hat and overalls without a shirt. The hair spilling from his chest and shoulders had been rubbed bald by the straps. He hefted the can so that gas sloshed audibly. “Ain’t doing nothing in the can but sitting there.”
This reasoning resonated with Chancho and his new found mission. “I’d be much obliged.” The man approached while Chancho removed the gas cap on the bike.
“Never tried one of these two-wheelers myself. Adjusting to four was hard enough, but the missus never liked horses.” He leaned closer. “I think she don’t like the feeling of giving up control. Slow to trust, that one.” He finished tipping the can and removed it. “It ain’t a lot, but it should help you find more.”
“I’m grateful, señor.” The two men shook hands. The stranger’s grip was calloused and thick like a work glove. Chancho started to release, but the man continued the grip past comfortable convention. He looked back and forth between Chancho and the Harley with narrowed eyes before finally letting go.
Chancho smiled and opened the silk bag on the back of the bike without an attempt to hide what it contained. The man’s eyes widened further than Chancho would have thought possible as he flipped him a single gold coin.
“What’s this?” The man held it away from his body, inspecting it in his open palm.
Chancho rubbed the missing notch of his earlobe. “Something I’ve had for a while, but don’t have use for any longer.” He re-secured the bag. “Let’s just say, they ain’t doing nothing in the bag but sitting there.” Chancho mounted the bike. Before he could start it, a beefy hand rested on his shoulder.
“Mister,” the man looked Chancho in the eyes. “I reckon I’d stay off the main roads, if I were you. I think I’ve heard something about lawmen looking for a Mexican on a motorcycle. I’d hate for someone to mistake you for him.”
Chancho nodded. “Gracias, I think I will.” They shook again. “It was nice to meet you…”
“Grady.”
“Chancho. My friends call me Chancho.” He said the words by habit, but after they left his mouth he wished they hadn’t. “Or they did, anyway.” He kick started the bike and pulled away one coin lighter.
Chancho stuck close to the river for another hour, as if all of Mexico was a dying friend. Leaving hung in his throat like a final goodbye. Indeed his beloved Mexico gasped for its dying breath, unable to bare up any longer under the burden of cruel men. Finally, he pulled off the pavement, heading north along a substantial dirt road.
By noon his stomach growled as loudly as the Harley. Approaching a village named Santa Polco, he gauged stopping for supplies an acceptable risk. The town sprouted from its natural surroundings like a sand castle on the beach. The majority of the buildings were composed of mud and earth brick unadorned with color. Rough timbers and boards speckled the few retail buildings along both sides of the road.
A simple church occupied the most prominent position at the end of town. Wooden timbers jutted from the church’s adobe plastered walls. An ornamental second story narrowed to a parapet and a bell housing which was topped with a cross.
The square buildings and flat roofs of the town reminded him of childhood field trips from the orphanage to the nearest village market. He coasted to a stop in front of the only building resembling a café. A wooden sign hanging from the veranda read, “Tortilleria La Esperanza.”
Chancho saw no signs of electricity, telephones, or even autos. A few horses anchored to a hitching post swatted flies with twitching tails. As much as he loved machines and modern devices, the quiet that enveloped him as he cut the engine nourished his soul.
The surrounding hills winked back at him. Behind the hills to the west rose proud mountains, the beginning of the Davis range. Nothing like the Sabinas, still, they invited him. He stomped the feeling back into his feet while slapping dust from his back and shoulders. This was a good place. If he could quietly gather information about sources of water, he might roam the area for a while.
Before entering the cafe, he headed for the church instead. He opened the large wooden doors. His grandmother’s voice echoed in his thoughts, “Man cannot live on bread alone.” But the old woman was Muddy’s grandmother, not his own.
Kneeling at the back pew, Chancho cried out to God. He prayed his best friends were okay. He prayed he had not caused Muddy’s death or capture. He prayed God forgive his narrow vision and the selfishness that had caused so much suffering to those he’d claimed to love.
As his thoughts turned to Primitivo and then the rinche, the crunch of footsteps on the earthen floor aroused him. He turned to face a boy, no older than eleven, smiling down at him.
“I like your motorcycle.” Chancho stood, dusting off his knees. The boy continuing, “you should leave the dust, so that people will know you’ve been praying. It works with my mother.”
Chancho followed the natural course of introductions. “How’s that?”
“When I am supposed to come to church for morning prayers, I play outside instead. When I’m finished, I make sure my knees are dirty so that I don’t get in trouble.” The boy grinned proudly.
“That is very clever, but what excuse do you give God?”
The boy looked insulted. “God doesn’t need any excuses, he knows my heart.”
Bested, Chancho had to agree with the child’s logic. “You are very clever, indeed.”
Still grinning, the boy rocked onto his toes. “That’s what my mother says, but she doesn’t think it’s a good thing.”
Chancho tussled the boy’s dark hair. “Oh, it’s a good thing. Just make sure you remember, your mother will always be at least as clever as you.” He brushed the remaining dust from his knees. “She knows you play outside instead of praying in here.”
The boy was about to argue when Chancho cut him off. “Come. I’ll show you the motorcycle.” He pushed the hulking door open, letting the overexposed sunlight flood temporarily into the dim sanctuary. “My name is Chancho.”
The boy shook his outstretched hand. “I’m Pepe.” They walked hand in hand for the few blocks back to the cafe. “Chancho is a funny name.”
Chancho nodded. “I’m a funny man.”
After Chancho had explained the workings of the bike sufficiently to satisfy Pepe’s significant curiosity, and fended off several questions about what the silk bag contained, the two entered the cafe together. Noon had slid past by an hour. Chancho preferred not to ignore his grumbling stomach any longer.
“Pepe, where are the eggs?” A short, plentiful woman with the same smile as the boy spoke from behind a wooden counter. Upon turning she realized her son was not alone. “And who is this?”
“This is Chancho.” The boy beamed at his mother. “He drives a motorcycle.” She frowned. “And he prays!” This caused the adults to laugh.
“Is this true?” The woman asked.
Chancho raised his brows. “On both counts, but I don’t do either very often, I’m afraid. Chancho Villarreal.” Chancho extended his hand. The woman stood on tiptoes, resting her breasts on the counter, to shake Chancho’s hand. The view reminded him of God’s genius in creating woman. At the same time, he thought of Daisy and Chloe. He regretted how constantly shallow his view of women had been—typically regarding them as romantic fantasies.
“Esperanza.” She bowed slightly and fixed her apron. “Are you hungry, Mr. Villarreal? Because I can make you a wonderful black bean frittata with fresh tortillas, if my son would cross the street and get me a dozen eggs.” She glared at the boy who immediately darted out the door.
“I’m starving, and whatever it is, I’m sure a frittata would be great.” Chancho sat at the nearest table, stretching his legs out in front of him. The small cafe contained four or five small tables and a dozen handmade chairs.
“You’ve never had a frittata?” The woman plopped a scoop of lard into a frying pan.
“I’m not certain.”
“You will be when my son returns…if he returns.” She feigned exasperation while tucking a ringlet of loose hair behind her ear.
“He seems very bright.”
“Oh he is, but he can be a handful. And my hands are so small.” She held one up for Chancho to inspect.
“I see.” He paused, wondering if he was about to overstep polite conversation, but the intimacy of the village and his need for human connection drove him on. “And his father?”
She covered the tiny hitch in her voice, “No. No father to speak of.”
“Lo siento.”
“Don’t apologize. It seems like another life. I was a different person then.” With vigor and experience she diced a chile and several sprigs of cilantro. “Where is that silly boy?”
“I myself am in search of a different life. Is this a good place to find one?” Chancho watched her work behind the counter.
She turned to face him, still holding a knife in her right hand, and nodded. “It can be. Life is simple here.” She looked at him more closely than she had so far. “When you have little, there is little to be taken, and much to defend.”
Chancho took a moment to ponder her words. “Are there those who would take away the little that is so much?”
She turned up the heat under a pot of beans and stirred them slowly. “Some.”
Pepe burst through the front door and deposited the dozen eggs on the counter. “Mr. Gomez asked for two dozen tortillas at closing.”
“Bueno. Now get yourself washed up for supper.”
“Then can I play checkers with Chancho?” Pepe scooted around the counter to the sink.
“Mr. Villarreal,” she prompted.
“Can I play checkers with Mr. Villarreal?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
Pepe peeked over the counter.
“I would be honored to match wits over a game of checkers. Just take it easy on me.” Chancho smiled.
“No way. I like to win.” Pepe shook his hands off in the air.
Chancho stood. “But maybe I should wash my hands as well.”
“Please, help yourself.” Esperanza invited him around the counter to use the sink.
After losing a game of checkers to Pepe, dinner was ready. After another minute of debate, Chancho convinced Esperanza to join him and Pepe, and the three of them enjoyed the closest thing any of them had had to a family meal in a long while. They finished the frittata and a dozen homemade tortillas with mango for dessert. The food lifted Chancho’s spirits, as did the company. The boy so bright and unassuming, his mother such a tender spirit, bathed in the scents of butter and flour. Chancho was not worthy of their kindness.
“If you need a place to stay—”
“No,” Chancho shook his head. “I can’t stay. I shouldn’t.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean, I only meant that…” Chancho rested his hand over hers, a gesture that startled her with its intimacy.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I only meant that I have to keep moving. But I will need some camping supplies.”
Pepe piped in. “Mr. Gomez has everything. His store is right over there. I’ll show you.”
Chancho raised his eyebrows and looked at Esperanza, asking her permission.
“Go, go.” She shooed Pepe from the table. “But you have school work, so come right back.” She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chancho stood. “What do I owe you?”
“Honestly, we ate most of it.” Esperanza straightened her apron nervously.
“Hardly. I insist on paying, but I’ll have to get change from across the street.”
“Really, Mr. Villarreal—”
“That way I can make sure Pepe comes right back afterward.” Chancho stepped through the door as Pepe held it open. When they reached his bike, he convinced Pepe to wait for him across the street as he slipped two gold coins from the bag—one for Mr. Gomez and one for Esperanza and her son. Ninety-seven left.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read these scenes of Fistful of Reefer, Season 1 of The Lost DMB Files. I’ll be publishing FREE daily scenes from The Lost DMB Files until…I die…or something terrible happens. Seriously, I’ve got over 400 scenes written so far, and I’ll be writing more until the story reaches its natural ending. You are totally welcome to read the entire story for FREE! If at any point you decide you would rather finish the story in ebook or print format, just click the buttons below and you can do that as well. If you enjoy reading the serial releases, BUT you would also like to support me as a writer (my kids need wine!) please subscribe to my premium content for bonus scenes, exclusives, and insider access to my process. And of course, I’d be grateful if you would share this post with any of your reader friends who you think would enjoy The Lost DMB Files. Happy reading!