Authors: Juan Pastor
"What are the scars?" She asks me.
"It's a bullet wound." I tell her.
She doesn't ask me any more questions about the
scars,
but she is now nicer to me. Her name tag says Blanca.
I ask her "Do I have a chance here?"
"I'd say you have a better chance than most." Blanca
says.
"You certainly have a better reason than most."
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
<>{}<>‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
But back to my story about how my Papa Azucar is
helping
me pay for Med School.
He goes into a gas station, and says he wants to buy a
Power
Ball ticket. The jackpot is over 425 million dollars. Of
course, if the jackpot is $425 million, each person has a better
chance of winning the Best Actor Academy Award, or a
Superbowl as an NFL quarterback, than winning this prize. But
this gas station no longer sells the tickets over the counter.
The clerk points to a machine, and tells Sin he will have to buy
the ticket there. He goes over to the machine, reads the
directions. The smallest bill he has is a ten dollar bill. He inserts
it. He pushes the Power Ball $2 purchase button. A light comes
on saying "Printing Ticket". Then the ticket is dispensed. Sin
pulls it from the dispensing slot. Another light comes on
saying "$8 credit". Sin looks for a button to push to get his $8
dollars change, but finds none. So he goes up to the clerk, tells
her what has happened, and asks if she can give him the $8
change back. She says she can't.
Power
Ball tickets?"
She says "I guess you'll have to." And she laughs.
That is on a Monday night. On Wednesday night the
numbers
are drawn. Sin doesn't check the numbers until
Friday night. He is still angry that he had to buy five tickets. He
starts with the one on top, the fifth one he had to buy, and
compares it with the winning numbers. 1, his first number is 1.
27, his second number is 27. 31, his third number is 31. 45, his
fourth number is 45. 48, his fifth number is 48. PowerBall 18,
his sixth number is 18. He goes through the sequence again. 1‐
27‐31‐45‐48‐then 18.
The jackpot has grown to $505 million that night.
Sin finds himself shaking uncontrollably. Being rich is
much
more terrifying than being poor. But Sin already learned
this, fortunately, long before he won the Lottery.
Crazy white people.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐<>{}<>‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
That is one of his stories. Here is another. He tells me about a
particular trip to what he calls Angel City. He says there is a lot
of treasure there, and the treasure has been collected by a
dragon named Smog. He says there is also another kind of
smog there, but he’s not talking about that kind of smog right
now. He says the treasure was collected by Smog through his
involvement in, and eventual control of drugs, gambling,
prostitution.
He says Smog was very adept at economics, and had
developed what he called the “trickle up” theory. The fools at
the bottom believed in working hard to earn their money and
making a living honestly. That’s why they never had any
money, and that’s why they had, barely, what could be called
lives. One step above these people were the people who
provided diversion in the form of entertainment of one type or
another. What type of entertainment was offered depended
on what type of entertainment one could afford. A step above
the people in the diversion industry where the facilitators.
“Once you get really good at cheating”, The facilitators
would say, “it’s not like you really need any other skill.” So the
facilitators were pretty much the people who were the liars,
cheats, thieves, extortionists. Most of them used other titles,
and I’ll leave it to you to plug in the title depending on what
type of facilitator you’ve dealt with.
There were other levels still much higher, but one had
to be very deceitful to get there, and it was very hard to stay
there because there was always someone more deceitful
trying to knock you off of the top of Deceitful Mountain. Smog
was smart in that he never tried to get to the top of that
mountain. He preferred to live in a cave deep inside the base
of the mountain.
So Sin says he and a bunch of associates he called the
Dirty 13, most of the group being made up of what Sin called
“dwarves” and “elves”, decided to set up a sting on Smog
who kept all his wealth in a safe bunker deep in the mountain.
“If he keeps all his wealth at the base of the mountain,
why is this called “trickle up” economics?” I once asked.
“Because it’s trickle up in theory.” He said. “But it’s
trickle down in reality.”
“Or vice versa.” I remember saying to him.
Sin says that this is a period in his live he isn’t proud of.
He went by the name Dildo Daggins. He said he had to work
his way through all the dark alleys of Angel City that no‐one
ever talks about, but he, and his Dirty 13 did eventually get to
the treasure. He said there was so much of it there, they still
haven’t got it all out yet. He says he only goes there when he,
or the elves, or the dwarves, need more, which isn’t often
these days.
When I asked him what happened to Smog, he never
told me. Sin was pretty drunk when he told me this story. And
I’m very sure he plagiarized parts of it from other stories. But
then, he was drunk when he told me about winning the lottery
too.
Believe what you want.
weeks
now. Part of another stepped‐up campaign, or surge,
on the War on Drugs. At least that's what Sin had said. I
insisted it was the war on illegal drugs. Sin insisted that any
drug was illegal for which the proper payments by the proper
people to the proper interests for the proper right to
distribute said drug had not been paid.
This
drone and others, including Predators, had been
"ordinanced up" as Sin put it, meaning they were equipped
with either guns, missiles, or bombs. None of the ordinance
had been delivered yet. At least not to us.
"There are so many ways this is a bad idea." Sin says
when I tell him about my idea for a free clinic in Mexico, right
at the border, right where Rosaria had been killed. "Why don't
you just practice at one of the Clinics in Phoenix or Tucson?
Christ, you could have had your medical degree paid for if
you'd just signed up with one of them ahead of time. But even
so, you do have it now."
But too late. I am here now. It is here now. Right where
Rosaria had said she wanted it, during one of her visits to me
after she had died.
Sin is working on the tubes in the shop behind the
Clinic.
"You ever read the book
Grouse Shooting in New
England
?" He asks. "I'm pretty sure you haven't, but I just
thought I'd ask."
"I've never even heard of it." I say.
"It's one of my favorite books." Sin says. "It's written
by William Harnden Foster. It was first published in 1942. It's
about grouse hunting, but it's mostly about a way of life that is
now gone. Of course, I kind of like
Grouse Feathers
by Burton
Spiller. And I also like
More Grouse Feathers
."
"Let me guess." I say. "Also by Burton Spiller?"
"How'd you guess?" Sin asks. "I'd read these books
over and over every year til I got to the point I could have
recited each book word for word without even needing to
refer to the book. But it's funny how we change over the
years. It starts occurring to the reader, at least it did to me,
that each author and his friends killed thousands of grouse in
their lifetimes. Have you ever eaten a grouse? Of course you
haven't. You're not from New England. They're good. But
they're gamey. You have to learn to enjoy the taste. But no
matter how much you learn to like them, and no matter how
many ways you cook them, there is no way you are going to
want to eat thousands of them. Makes you wonder, doesn't
it?"
"What's a grouse?" I ask.
"It's proper name is ruffed grouse. It's a little like a
partridge." Sin says. "In fact, New Englanders call them 'pats',
shortened from 'pa'tridges'. They're also a little like pheasant,
and a little like quail."
"Like a Gambel's quail?" I ask.
"Yeah." Sin says. "A little. But a grouse is smarter than
a quail. It's a whole hell of a lot smarter than anything,
including a wild turkey. It's clever, it's cunning. It makes an
awful racket when it takes off. And it flies very erratically,
putting every obstacle it can between itself and anything
trying to hit it, like a hunter, or catch it, like a raptor, in flight."
"Why are they called ruffled grouse? I ask.
"It's ruffed grouse." Sin says. "Not ruffled grouse. A lot
of people do call them ruffled grouse, probably because
they're thinking of ruffled feathers or something. But a ruffed
grouse actually has a ruff, which is an arrangement of feathers
on each side of its head and neck, that it can make stand out
when it is about to fight, or when it is trying to impress a
female. When extended, it makes a male grouse look larger
and more impressive, I guess. But then, the females have them
also. Of course, both sexes have feather crests on their heads,
like bluejays, and both sexes fan their tales like a turkey. When
you remember that birds really descended from reptiles, these
display mechanisms make sense. There were grouse when
there were still dinosaurs on earth."