The manhole cover shot up. Trash spewed out. There were bottles, toilet paper, and cigarette packages. It all came up. The water rose to my thighs. Then everything that had come up started going down. Round and round, the water just began turning and turning. The sewer guzzled down the contents of the street. For a moment I felt hypnotized by the open sewer hole. It was like a great navel, a link to another world. Even the heavy manhole cover was caught in the maelstrom.
The water tugged at my knees. It was hard to keep going. I lost my footing and fell. I tried to stand up. Then the whirlpool grabbed me and shoved me sideways, toward the sewer hole.
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. For some strange reason I was very careful to hold the little flea out of the water. I slid toward the hole again. I was heading for it and I knew if I went down the sewer I would drown.
What saved me at that moment was that I fell into a pothole. I sat on the muddy bottom of it. The pull of the water jammed me against the lip of the crater. But I wasn't safe. If I didn't go down the sewer, I was still sitting in the middle of the street and there was a real danger that I would be run over by a car.
I thought I would call out to someone. But there was no one to call to. I sat there without moving. There were things floating by. The fruit from a barrel cactus bobbed past looking exactly like a tiny yellow pineapple.
And that was when I saw him. He came down from the hills somewhere above the border, wading through water that was moving so swiftly I could have sworn he was walking down the crest of a waterfall. He wore a long brown cape like a musketeer or a monk or something. The cape dragged the surface of the water. His hair was all matted, dark underneath and light on top. But it was his face that was so unforgettable. He had such a long face. With heavy eyelids and such a grim expression. As he walked he dropped his head forward as though he had looked at the ground so long he could never look up again.
When he came near, I smelled a foul mixture of urine and garbage. The closer he came the more it seemed he was looking down at me. Nothing about my plight seemed to register with him, though, and he didn't speak. Then he stopped. He came near me and leaned down. I shielded my face, thinking he was going to strike me. Instead, his hands slipped under my arms and he lifted me up. Mud and water slid off my legs. He began carrying me. For a moment I thought he might take me to the sewer hole and drop me in. But no. He took me up the street. Near The Red Horse. He set me on the curb. Drenched. My patent leather shoes filled with mud. Grass and twigs. A chewing gum wrapper. Mud in my shorts and grit in my shoes. I washed them. I washed them off, I was thinking, "dip them in the water at the edge of the curb."
I found out he was well-known in Nogales. He was born into a very wealthy family, but he chose to live on the streets. They called him Las Cuerdas Marrones, Brown Strings, after his stringy brown hair and brown ripped cloak.
He was completely sane. It was tragic love that made him behave that way as he had a romance with a girl who rejected him and that drove him to the streets to wander around, dirty and alone. He lived in one of the mines east of the border crossing.