At the same time that they were fixing the truck, Juan and Willy started studying everything they could about mining and working out how they could buy the equipment they would need. They had to learn everything about prospecting as fast as they could.
They found a new shop in an abandoned quick market which was in the business of selling mining equipment. The proprietor, Mr. Franklin, started them looking at the various sluices and dry washers–those with hand crank bellows or a 12-volt motor–that he had in his shop. There were so many good things to buy and he told them about them and how useful they would be in the Arizona back country. Gold nugget suction wands sounded awfully good and he had a pile of those for a pretty reasonable price. Juan and Willy could imagine sucking up the gold with those things. Then he brought out the snipe scopes he had, which they were not sure what they were but they ordered one, just to be on the safe side. For a hundred dollar deposit, he gave them his best crack jack crevice buster, and an old air compressor to go with it.
They actually did refuse to buy a few things. For example, they thought they could live without Clay Free, the gold panning aid of experts, or the Mighty Joe Concentrator with its money–back promise and gift of a free ten-inch knife with any order. Mr. Franklin thought they might be making a mistake, but they held out against that. They did borrow a bunch of his DVDs like Modern Profitable Gold Mining. Then he sold them the Big Yellow Gold Magnet, as well as the Black Sand Magnet, because it seemed like if it came to gold magnets you probably couldn’t have too many of those, and Mr. Franklin cut the price for them. There were sluice carpet mats of ribbed vinyl, which they didn't need, and a Bedrock Gold Vacuum–12 volt rechargeable which he let them have for another hundred down. Finally he sold them a gas powered hi-banker which he wanted $700 for, but he took a three hundred dollar deposit and threw in a Gold Genie Spiral wheel, which they never did get to work but he told them there was something wrong with it. Willy thought they should have gotten the drywash which had a 12 volt motor. It was a lot larger than what they wanted and it cost $500 so Juan nixed the idea.
They spent an immense amount of money of the gold equipment. You could say Juan and Willy had gold fever but a better description was paralysis. They could not think of nothing else and they were hardly feeding their selves in the last days in town. But their idea of getting the minerals was really not clear, to put it in the best light, and they had not thought their search out. It don’t matter how much you think, when you’re imagining a gold find, your thinking is not worth an inch of piss in a tin pot.
Nevertheless, in two days, the truck’s tranny was repaired and they were able to start the engine after an hour’s effort. The gas tank and gasoline lines were not as plugged with old gasoline as they thought and they were able to drive the truck to Juan’s apartment. Then they were beginning to pack up for the mine! They had asked for a week off from work to go camping and Jipson had given it to them, while hinting that he might replace them and also reminding them that he was barely covering his ass.
The night before they planned to leave, Juan and Willy threw their gear together in a pile outside Juan’s apartment. They assembled a four man tent, food and water, sleeping bags, and all the gold mining equipment they had purchased from Mr. Franklin. They had begun loading it when they started a discussion about what they were about to do.
“Shouldn’t we tie this stuff down?” Willy asked Juan. “With some ropes or something?”
“Naw, this shit’s heavy, man. We don’t need to tie it down cause it’s gonna stay put on its own, mostly.”
“Okay,” Willy said. “Well, anyway, what we’ve got to do on this trip, Juan, if you’ll listen to me, is trust each other,” Willy said, chattering away happily as he slid their new mining equipment around in the truck bed. “That’s the most important thing when you’re mining with someone. If you don’t have trust, you are apt to attack each other when the ore is found. I’ve seen a lot of movies where that happened.”
“Well, I don’t trust any of you Anglos,” said Juan in a sort of off-hand way as though this were really nothing new and Willy probably ought to have known it already.
“What?” Willy said, stopping what he was doing to look at him. “Are you serious or are you playing with me again?” Juan liked to play with Willy’s head about how they were getting along.
“None of us do trust you Anglos.”
“Not your best friend? What is this shit? You don’t trust any of us?” Willy stood there looking at Juan with a sense of real disappointment.
“None of you.”
“That’s just sad. We went to high school together,” Willy reminded him. Willy shook his head and started walking out of the bed of the truck. “We went to high school, man.”
“I did not go to high school with you,” said Juan. He walked over to the big jumble of sleeping bags and tents and food and water, which they had made and he started tucking more stuff under each arm.
This put Willy in his place: Shockville, U.S.A.
“Huh?” Willy said, climbing down the tailgate. “Of course you did.”
“No, I did not.”
“You didn’t? You didn’t go to Pueblo High in 2004?”
“No sir. I was living in Mexico then, sir.”
What was he saying? Who had Willy gone to school with anyway? He felt his world spinning out of control.
“Oye, man, you Anglos. Just like a typical Anglo. You’re getting all butt-hurt about the truth. You can’t take anything. You got so scared by B. Body. It was funny,” said Juan, throwing his sleeping bag in the truck bed.
“What do you mean? You were running, too.”
“I was just trying to make you feel better about yourself. Like when I said it didn’t matter that you can’t pronounce my cousin Lucinda’s name right.”
“Well, thank you very much for nothing.” Willy could feel his eyes bugging out and the vein in his neck throbbing.
“Do you know your eyes are bugging out? And that vein in your neck, it’s throbbing,” said Juan. “That’s another thing that’s funny about you.”
“Thank you very much,” said Willy. “Did you know you are a fuckin hypochondriac, huh, man?”
Juan had no respect for Willy—that much was clear. Willy thought it was unfair of him to discuss his fear, making it out to be such a part of him. Why, Willy knew he wasn’t any more fearful of things than Juan was. Running from the man with the ax was simply a matter of self-preservation. And Juan had run as fast as Willy had. Willy had seen that clearly. Besides, Juan was a real hypochondriac and was super sensitive, always getting hives from every little thing. How many different times had Willy had to take Juan to the emergency ward, anyway?
“I’m disappointed in you, my friend,” Willy said after he had kept quiet for a while and gone on packing.
“I knew you would say something lame like that, man,” said Juan.
“Who was I friends with in high school anyway?”
“How should I know?”
“Remember when I met you–for the second time–at the dealership and I said ‘I wondered what happened to you after high school’ and you said, you said that you wondered the same thing!”
“Sure. I wondered what happened to you after high school,” said Juan in an off-hand, disinterested way.
“But that’s got to mean that you knew me in high school!” Willy exclaimed. He was feeling slightly hysterical at this point.
“No, Wilhelmo, it don’t. What it means is I just wondered what happened to you after high school. Only an insecure person like you are would think from me saying that that I would be saying that I knew you in high school.” Juan spoke all this in a matter-a-fact voice with his arms crossed on his chest.
“You mean by saying ‘I wondered what happened to you after high school’ you meant–hey, wait, you said ‘wondered!’ Now I know you’re full of it. How could you have wondered about me before you met me?”
Juan rolled his eyes. “Like this: ‘I wonder what hot chica I’m go
ing to meet next month and what they are doing now and what they did after high school.’”
“What! You wonder what a hot chick you haven’t met yet did after high school? Nobody thinks like that. Nobody thinks about the past of people they haven’t met yet!” Willy was completely frustrated by Juan’s weird arguments.
“They ought to, man. A Mexican would. A Mexican thinks about everybody. That’s the difference between us and everybody else. We think across time. All the time a Mexican is thinking across time.” Juan assumed a smug look after telling Willy this. He had all these theories of how Mexicans thought. Essentially, the Mexican world view was so different it involved a whole series of future Mexicans doing all sorts of things at any given moment in the future. This bunch of future Mexicans was the peculiar slant the Mexican had on all things, according to Juan.
“My friend, that is ridiculous.”
“What’s ridiculous? Your future friends are as important as your present and past friends. Keep things in balance, man, by thinking of them all.”
“I think you do not even remember where you went to high school,” Willy concluded with a lot of anger in his voice.
“It’s YOU who don't remember high school–you, you! You don’t know what your Mexican friend looked like! You don’t even recognize your friend, man.” Juan said this in a joking manner as though it was starting to make him laugh.
“I never knew that Juan well. I never went to his house. He was an acquaintance from school. I think you tried to be that friend to fool me,” Willy said. He felt the pain of rejection burning inside him, but he was trying not to let it get the better of him in front of Juan because he would just make fun of him for it.
“I felt a need in you, man. You thought what you wanted to. Take responsibility for yourself.”
“It’s all just crazy. Everything I thought was crazy.”
“You said it, man.”
So Willy was forced to realize that Juan was not the acquaintance from high school. Apparently, it was a completely different Juan that he had known back then.
Willy felt so defeated by this information that he couldn’t even get up any enthusiasm for an out-and-out fight with Juan.
He had a choice about how to react to this piece of information. He could make a big deal out of it and break off their friendship and get all butt-hurt over it, as Juan would say, or he could overcome the honest mistake and say to myself ‘Hell, this is a pretty nice Juan after all and I don’t need to take my disappointment with him serious.’ Disappointment, it’s part of life, he told himself.
Besides, Juan was right, Willy could hardly remember what he did in high school most of the time. He could have been all mixed up about Juan and not have known it. He only remembered that Juan a little since they were in auto mechanics his junior year together and they both flunked out pretty early and their low grades were about the same.
Come to think of it, Willy thought, Juan and him might have ditched school together one day and smoked a big fat doobie in an arroyo or a park or something. He never remembered that so well except that at one point in the day they were sitting on some hot concrete for a while and had to get up because someone said their butt was burning and then someone busted their balls trying to jump over a metal railing, which was a stupid stunt. Willy guessed that had to be him doing that. He was always doing stuff like that in high school.
But still, Willy was pretty sure he saw Juan and not some other person outside a basketball game against Cholla High once in January their senior year. It seemed almost certain that it was this Juan who was enrolled in the same PE class with him that year, with Coach Wilson, the baseball coach who had a messed up ear that looked like a little cut up cauliflower, but Juan mostly didn’t come to that class, or wait, Willy remembered, that was him.
Chapter Nine