By JUAN MO-TIME
Staff Writer
BROWNSVILLE, TX - The Boys in the cheap bar were talking. Anybody seen or heard from Pat, one asked out of the blue. The blue rain that was falling outside, I mean. It was a dark evening, and, well, I guess the rain was blue. It could've been light-blue or white-blue, or Columbia-blue, or almost-blue, or bluejay, or blue bayou. Whatever.
"Yeah," the female bartender chimed-in. "The mayor's been kinda too quiet, ain't he?"
"Not a peep," said a guy at the end of the bar in a voice that came from you and me. Next to him sat a big-breasted, middle-aged woman wearing a yellow sundress I thought was perhaps a safety thing. It was dark outside and I guessed that frickin' bright-yellow thing she wore likely glowed in the dark. Her shoes, pumps, shined a bright red, enough to light things up for a moving herd of cockroaches making it from the battered front door to the horrendous men's room. Sure, I was on 14th Street, sent here to look for the missing Blogger Juan Montoya, another absentee local celebrity some said had gone into hiding after something to do with the recent county elections. Not that I give a Pachuco damn about nobodies, but it's my job tonight.
In any case, the talk at the bar was about Mayor Pat Ahumada. It's been - what?! - almost a month since he was acquitted in that bizarre check-cashing scandal. He beat it, so who gives a shit about the details. I know, I know my editor will edit that word - shit! - out of this story. Patrick Alcatraz talks like a drunken sailor in the office, but he edits like he's the Pope. Ron Mexico hates Alcatraz more than he hates people like Juan Montoya, a Blogger Ron describes in words not fit for the dinner table.
Anyway, Ahumada has not been very visible and no one in this second-hand fern bar has heard a word out of him. This - this! - is the mayor Brownsville lists as its most controversial ever, a man who would rather defend a stray dog than spring for a round at, say, a bar like this one.
"So, where do you think he is?" I ask the well-hipped bartender with the raven eyes.
She stops pulling at the draft beer keg handle, looks up to me, and coos, "Hell, who knows with that wildman? He could be parked outside astride his motorcycle, wearing that shitty straw hat, and smiling like he's Billy Jack."
"Who's Billy Jack?" asks a frizzy-haired redhead sitting to my right. "That a drug cartel guy, or what? Huh?" Her lipstick is the color of pain. I look at her mouth and then turn to close my eyes for protection.
Ahumada was said to have been surprised the moment he heard the jury declare him not guilty, surprised at how the words from the jury foreman moved across the courtroom floor like thick pancake syrup - too slowly. Still, he walked out of the court looking like an anvil had been kicked off his shoulders, like he'd been gone a few weeks and come back to see that someone had bombed the Border Wall into oblivion and he hadn't been there for the press.
I called my newsroom, told them the mayor was who knows where. Alcatraz said, write it. I did and then I went home to watch Judge Judy and settle-in with a bottle of wine. If Pat Ahumada was next door, well, I didn't know it...and I didn't care anymore. Jesus, I felt like Juan Montoya...Dang. A song by Sting broke out of my CD player: "Aaaaaaaall this time, the river flowed...endlessly, to the sea..."
- 30 -
5 comments:
Bill Konoptick from Arizona is full of crap. Alabama has always had a large number of Afro-Americans, not too many hispanics in the 60's, pinche gringo panson, they think only their race matters. SOB's, they live of Mexican labor, and want to look so pure.
ANON: Well, you walked to the edge of the pier with that one. Pinche panson is about as far we go with comments of that sort. Your point is strong enough without it, however... - Editor
Ever since Obama got elected, bigotry was moved one notch, it is all the idiots on talk radio, like shawn hannity, a construction and car washer at one time, Bill Orielly, who settled a sexual harrassment law suit not to long ago, he use paint houses, and got into a fist fight with his father, because the old man wouldn't pay his college, then there is Greta V. a burger king lawyer, her interviews resemble depositions, and then there is Glen Beck, his show is nothing but make believe theories, he was a drug attic, and alcoholic.
Here in the Valley we have the klu Klux clan: kurv, speaking about garbage, that station belongs in the sewer, Anon, called gringos, I call them "bigots."
ANON: No question that some "Americans" resent our president simply because of the color of his skin. Nevermind that the last president, from their tent, was intellectually stupid (he could handle a fork and walk up the stairs of Air Force one) - now widely regarded as the Worst President in the history of the USA. That, however, was peachy, as my Brownsville galpal would say about here. The KURV thing amazes us. Here in the RGV, eh? How can that be?... - Editor
Mr. Editor, there are plenty of bigots here in the Valley, Raymonville and Harlingen, are the hot bed of racist, and then there is Rio Hondo they don't stay to far behind. And then you have the damn Oreos, Mexicans that act like white folks, because they have a mediocre job.
And then there is the Grand Dragon, kurv. That radio station belongs in Jasper Texas. Where there is nothing but white trash.
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