Immediately when they were home they phoned Jipson, who was angry that they were several days late, but he told them to come in at their regular hours the next day. He was mad at them, but willing to let them continue washing dishes for him.
Otis slammed pots around the first night they worked, but Jipson told them Otis hadn’t liked the other kitchen help any better. At the end of their shift, they sat in their usual booth with their usual beers.
“Howdy, boys,” said a voice.
“Frank the Fart,” said Willy, looking around the side of the booth at the old geezer as he came their way.
“I heard you was back. How did the mining go? Is the two of you still buddies or did it spit you apart?”
“We’re still buddies. We didn’t find nothing,” said Juan. Willy told Frank about having their truck stolen and being left out in the desert and they said they were never going searching for gold again.
“Well, it don’t matter. Gold isn’t what you need. You need family and…hey, while you was gone I up and found my brother,” said Frank.
“You did?” asked Spigot right away, for this was news to him and he was coming up to say hi to Juan and Willy, “Is he secretly a billionaire? Is your long lost brother going to help you out with all your problems with the sagging walls of your adobe that used to be a candy store? Or is he going to give Juan and Willy a living for life? And sponsor Sonia her own restaurant because she’s your big brother’s favorite waitress? And get Bess Tacos back on its feet where his little brother ate all the time and help me, Spigot, cause I’m so good looking?”
“Naw. None of that. He’s in the Florence pen,” said Frank. His bleary eyes stared forward blankly, but happily.
The Florence pen was the Arizona State Penitentiary. That news was met with stony silence.
“It don’t matter,” said Frank impulsively, breaking in on their shock. “I don’t want his money! And he hasn’t got none. I want my brother. Before I die I wanna go up and see his face every week and I’m going to do it, too. Warts an all. Wherever man is, there is love...pure love. Who-ee for man! I’m the number one cheerleader of man. He makes dynamite and outta that—pure love. This is his noble nature. You can see this everywhere. The Old West is gone but the struggle for tomorrow continues. You hafta give it to man. Don’t he mean something? The Pock-o-lisp may come, but he means something. He may sully this world and worlds to come, but he has rise up for good. He can do good, he can do bad. That’s two sides of the same coin...two sides of the...ah...hey? Where was I at?”
“You seem to be lost, old timer,” said Spigot.
“But I want to hear about you boys getting lost and robbed. I’m glad you found your truck, so you didn’t starve out there,” said Frank, focusing his blue eyes on them.
“Shit, we wasn’t in danger of starving out here,” Willy said. “We remembered this tailings pond and came back to it to drink the water. We didn’t know it had fish in it. We thought that was gas bubbles coming up,” Willy said, looking over at Juan who was shrugging. “But then we saw the fish. Boy, they were good eating.” Willy patted his stomach. “We brought a few back, too. I got one in my freezer still.”
“And they was easy to catch because they was kind of disabled like,” added Juan.
“What! I should say they would be disabled, boys. Are you telling me you drank water and ate fish out of a tailings pond?” said Frank. “You ain’t gonna live to see the Pock-o-lisp! People practically die from eating fish out of a tailings pond. The Arizona fish in a tailing pond are mostly poisoned! They’re bound to be full of mobibleums and trifibulums, you know,” Frank explained.
“Mobibleums? Poison! You can practically die from eating them?” said Juan. He was already feeling faint.
“That’s what I said. A tailings pond is a dangerous thing. Anybody knows that. You boys better bring what remains of that fish to a doctor, pronto. If I was you two, I’d stop by the emergency ward tonight on the way home.”
Juan insisted they leave their beers on the table and drive to the hospital emergency waiting room, swinging by to get that frozen fish sample.
It turned out those fish they had eaten were full of so many different toxins, heavy metals, and known cancer-causing agents that those fish were walking time bombs as far as eating them goes, so said the people who tested the flesh of the fish. They said it was the most contaminated food product ever tested in their laboratory and they notified the EPA and state officials so that something could be done immediately for Juan and Willy who had consumed the fish and to get those fish out of the food chain as soon as possible. Juan and Willy were given a course of expensive drugs to take in order to clean their livers from the poisons and they were called into a state health office to answer all sorts of questions about where those fish came from. They told the authorities all about the tailings pond and how to find it.
After the officials interviewed Juan and Willy, the state sent a team down there to Depredation Gulch. They went in and killed every last fish in the pond so that no one else could get poisoned from eating them. Then the whole place was fenced off with a chicken wire topped with razor wire and warning signs in English and Spanish were placed on the fence every few feet saying that the pond was very dangerous and not to drink or bathe in the water. The state planned to clean the pond up completely, sucking up the horrible liquid and carting away the polluted soil to some safe place or other, but the money ran out for that kind of operation.
The first day off, Juan and Willy tried to take their crappy mining equipment back to Mr. Franklin to get some money back, but his shop was empty and there was a ‘For Rent’ sign in the window. Because of all their health expenses and the money they had spent on mining, Juan’s finances failed and he decided to move in with his mother and Beto who was really hard on his uncle nonstop and kept saying he could read better than Juan and stuff. As soon as he worked a few more months, Juan was sure he’d probably be able to get his own apartment again and Willy said he could give Juan a loan.
Juan was happy with the way Willy took him to the emergency ward right away. In hard times, Juan said, Anglos and Mexicans could get along. According to Juan they had a long history together in Arizona and they had put up with a lot of nonsense and hot days with each other and that was a bond. Their cultures weren’t that different. It’s like that with most people—you can find more in common with them than you ever think when you first meet them. And when you have to share a really hard time together, when you’ve both been poisoned, it pulls you together.
“Whaddup ese?” Juan asked Willy one day when they were out of the hospital and back working at Bess Tacos. They had several weeks of pills ahead to see if they could rid their livers of the poisons they had in them and both of them were hanging out together at Juan’s mother’s place watching scary movies.
“This morning was so weird. I woke up on the couch and I was naked and there was a taco and a drink sitting right in front of me,” Willy said to Juan.
“Is that so? Where do you suppose they came from?” Juan said in a sort of lazy voice that did not tell Willy anything. “Did you meet a kickass girl, maybe?”
“Don’t know. Thought you might know if I did. You were with me last night.”
“No, I do not know nothing.”
Willy was pretty sure Juan did know, but he was fooling him. He just seemed bound and determined to spend his time fooling Willy.
Later, after the movie was over and they were bored, Juan’s mother came home from work at the ballpark and found them arguing about what had happened with the mine. They were both so sick from the poisoned fish and so tired from work that they didn't have the energy to fight a proper fight, not even for old time’s sake.
“Mijo, you boys should stop fighting and stick together,” said Juan’s mother, “I don’t like to see you disagreeing. After all, remember, you two knew each other even at Pueblo High School and that’s a long time already.”
Aw, fuck! Willy thought, looking toward Juan who was smili
ng as broad as he pleased, Juan had fooled him again.
“What in the fuck?” Willy exclaimed, “Juan, why did you say all that crap about future Mexicans and past Mexicans and keeping them in perspective? You were cold!”
“Oh, there you go, Anglo, getting all butt-hurt,” said Juan, sniggering softly.
Being fooled felt awful, but not awful enough for Willy to abandon his friendship with Juan. Being poisoned felt awful, too, but apparently not awful enough, because even after their failure finding the Santa Claus Mine and the Babbling Padre Mine, Juan and Willy had not completely abandoned their dreams of picking up gold in the desert.
And after a few weeks of being Otis and Jipson’s bitches at Bess Tacos, they found themselves wishing that they had come across their own riches. They vowed that when their livers got completely better they were going to quiz Frank the Fart some quiet night and ask him for the details of that Keystroke Mine of his.
###
THE END
MEET THE AUTHOR
Lorraine Ray is an avid reader and writer. She lives in an adobe home in the center of Tucson, Arizona with her husband and daughter.
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