Chapter Three
The night’s usual battle ended with no hard feelings between the two. Juan and Willy slumped in the back booth of Bess Tacos, the restaurant owned by Jipson Verdugo, Juan’s cousin, and in this booth they noticed the effects of the wild weather that night, a mysterious, muddy alphabet smeared on the linoleum floor, the musty scent on the wind of the millions of wet creosote bushes evenly spaced across the southern swath of Arizona.
At the end of work, with Jipson’s okay, Juan and Willy usually shared a couple of free beers together because they felt dragged out and wet. When they finished spraying plates the tops of their pants and the bottoms of their T-shirts, right through the apron, got drenched from squeezing the sprayer and opening and closing the dishwasher. They had learn how to time the opening of the dishwasher so that they pulled up the doors (both sides went up at the same time with one handle) just as the washer quit and they could reach in even though the hot water was still falling and pull out the tray of plates from one side and slide in another. They got wet doing that and they got wet from spraying fast, but they had to do it to be done before closing and in Juan and Willy’s case they hurried to have a fight (sometimes it was funny) and then get to sit and have a free beer. The booth Juan and Willy sat in was near the kitchen, way in the back corner of Bess Tacos, where they could hear a lot of kitchen noise and no customers ever wanted to sit because they could not concentrate enough to read the writing on the sugar packets, should they happen to want to do such a silly thing.
Willy was noticing the effects of the storm, but Juan was not thinking of the weather. Juan could only focus on a certain gold mine he needed to find.
“Whaddup, ese,” said Juan, as they sunk down on their tailbones across from each other.
“Nada,” said Willy. “E tu?”
“Hmmm… I been thinkin of stuff. I heard this DJ Josue Josue on Loco Sono yesterday tellin’ something. It was about the price of gold being sixteen-hundred and four dollars an ounce. It made me remember this gold mine that I never actually told you about. Forget about the Santa Claus Mine, cuz this one is los mejor, kick ass, no mierda.”
Willy nearly always ended his work in the kitchen at Bess Taco like a zombie because his arms were so tired from spraying plates, but the sound of Juan’s voice discussing gold made Willy wake up and try to listen. Willy glanced in the mirror that ran along beside the booth and he noticed that Juan was still the same big man, young in his face and with too much wavy hair. Willy noticed he still wore the hair net that was starting to make his brown hair flatten down always. The rest of him was tall, and pale, with smoky rings around his eyes. Not a bad looking guy, some said, except for the acne scars which women could hardly see in a dark bar, not that they could ever go to any of those bars because they were working almost every night at Bess Tacos. He decided his was probably the kind of face that deserved to discover a gold mine. “Oye, sixteen hundred and four dollars an ounce? That sounds kickass. Orale, that’s better than breaking my back cleaning the steam table, and listening to Otis say, ‘you better get every little crack clean,’ that’s such incredible mierda.”
“No shit,” said Juan. Fondly, Juan thought of how he had found out about the fabulous mine he was thinking about. It had happened when a yellowed page of onion-skin paper that was sort of torn up had fallen out of the center of a teeny blue book on his mother’s shelf several weeks earlier, and he could still see the type-written words of a dying padre, which he had read by starlight until his mother had stopped him and took the book away. “Oye, I haven’t told you, homeboy, I found the directions to anutter mine,” said Juan, beginning to talk a second time after clearing his throat. “Something interesting. The story of an old padre. Some called him the babbling padre, but I think that was probably sinful or something to call him that.”
Suddenly, rain blew in at the door, and someone came stumbling in, ducking and diving.
Willy leaned around the side of the booth and looked toward the front of the restaurant to see who had showed up, to see what other interesting things were going on, but not many other things were going on in Bess Tacos. It had its usual assortment of criminals and baked wackos–Jipson didn’t get a lot of nice people wanting to eat at his place.
Willy told Juan it was just old Frank the Fart and he turned back. Gold being sixteen hundred and four bucks interested Willy all right and he wanted to know all about this mine Juan had an idea about. Willy took a sip of beer and held it in his mouth and then swallowed it. It felt cool on his hot throat. He asked Juan about the mine.
Before Juan could answer, Frank the Fart spoke.
“Pouring down like we’s under a tipped-over aquarium,” said Frank loudly. He was wiping his feet on the rubber mat spread in front of the cigarette machine. “Feels good. Don’t think I can take much more of one hundred de-grease.” Frank stumbled down the counter toward the booth where Juan and Willy slouched.
Willy turned his attention back to Juan who was telling more about mine. “The mine still has placers,” Juan said. “Placers right on the surface.”
“Placers?” asked Willy in disbelief.
“Placers as thick as a man’s wrist. Silver and gold placers.”
“Whooo-e,” Willy said, whistling loudly and long at the idea.
“Ain’t it blowin? Whooo. Whooo!” Frank imitated what he thought had been the wind. “I ain’t heard it that bad since nineteen sixty-three, I think, in the summer when the roof blowed off Consolidated and a plane crashed into a big adobe on 39th. Hurt the plane moren adobe.”
A young dude they didn’t know with tattoos up his arms and spiky hair that he’d died black and pink was hunched over his plate of tacos and he snorted when Frank passed behind him.
“Your parking lot is nothin but mud,” said Frank to Jipson. Jipson was tallying money with his phone. He nodded.
“Your brain is mud,” muttered the taco eater.
“Heard that,” said Frank as he gripped the counter with two messed-up hands and slipped the seat of his worn jeans—and the caved in place where his ass should have been—onto a stool at the counter. Damn, Willy thought, he had chosen a stool right across from Juan and him. “Disrespecting elders. It’s sign of the coming Pock-o-lisp.”
The taco eater snickered kind of evilly to himself and ended by wiping his mouth with a squeezed-up napkin while he studied the ceiling. Jipson’s ceiling had warped and the paint was peeling.
“Do you believe in the comin Pock-o-lisp?” asked the old man loudly. He swung around on his stool toward Juan and Willy. His face was a creepy collection of brown spots, scabs and wrinkles. In the middle of all that horror he had two bright blue eyes. It was a horrible spectacle, that face of his.
“Shit, no,” Willy said.
“Then it’s comin. Another sign is nobody believes. Hurricanes and nobody believes. Two signs. Wait, three signs, hurricanes, nobody believes, and disrespecting elders.”
Juan and Willy sighed. They’d wanted to have a conversation together in privacy, and now they had to have that old creepy guy looking right at them, listening in with an alert expression on his shrunken face and with his eyes peering at them like he was seeking out a gem in their every word.
“I tell you,” said Juan in a lowered voice, “there is so much lost gold in the mountains and the canyons of Arizona that you could be rich working them for no more than ten Sunday afternoons. Less, make that three. Three Sundays. Lazy work, too.”
“Sonia, git me number three,” shouted the old man over his shoulder. He was so wrapped up in what they was saying that he didn’t want to take his eyes off of them long enough to turn around.
“And a diet?” asked Sonia. Sonia’s waitress outfit, which was a black top and black slacks, was so tight that it showed every roll of her flesh. She was starting a ticket at the back counter under this blue light Jipson had, and before she could start the ticket she was shaking the charms on her charm bracelet because they were always getting in the way of laying her wrist down.
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“Diet, too,” agreed the old coot.
“Why don’t you ever get regular? You ain’t fat like me,” said Sonia.
“Remember, you can never be too rich or too thin,” said the old man.
Juan and Willy looked at him as though they had not wanted to hear that.
They watched the old man for signs of more strange conversation bubbling out of him, Pock-o-lisps and such, and then, when the coast seemed clear, they began again, hoping their conversation would not include the crazy old man on the stool. “All you have to do, Wilhelmo, is find a teeny sliver of gold no wider than the itty, bitty end of a prong on this fork every day, no, I’m wrong, every other day, and you got your wages for the month taken care of, but I don’t got a truck to get us there anywho.”
Their wages from spraying plates were pretty low. There was some truth to Juan’s words, however Willy suddenly felt he had to object to this suggestion of his friend’s (that they get back into mining) on account of the many practical difficulties. He could sense them without actually naming them.
“Juanie, amigo of mine,” he replied after taking a drink of his beer and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You are so full of it. Sorry to say, any placers there were left in this state are gone now, man. That is the way it is. That is the way it is always gonna be. There are forces out there looking for riches who are already richer and powerfuller than we, hombre. You gotcher Asarci, your Morenci, your Cocomenci, your Demenci and your Gilamenci mines. And a bunch of other mencis I didn’t mention in order not to discourage you. All those I named are big operations of cor-por-a-tions. A lot of them are Canadian, too. And you know no Canadian gives a rat’s ass about no American in A-rid-zon-a. So what if the price of gold is sixteen hundred bucks? The price of copper is three times higher than last year, you know the big mining operations will be out there looking for copper. What are you thinking we could do? You can’t just go out and dip your hands in them placers you are talking about. And if you mess around on some little guy’s property and try to look for gold where he has staked a claim you could get a bullet in you because the price of lead is still pretty low.”
“Oye, ese, you don’t know everything,” said Juan right away. “You have no hope in you, that is the problem as I see it. I still have hope. I can see a better day coming for me. Someday I will own a fully chromed-over motorcycle and I will take it to Puerto Pensca and ride around in real style on a vacation, which will be my first one of those fuckin things, my bruder, you know it. I will stay in a kickass hotel and order kickass foods. I know what is kickass to order, believe me. I can’t wait for that day to show you how wrong you’ve been. I don’t know if I’ll give you a ride on my fully chromed-over motorcycle, though, or even take you with me. Anyway, I know a place you don’t know about. And that is a gold mine.” He had this wise/stupid look on his face that Willy noticed he got sometimes. It was really irritating to Willy to look at someone making a face like that, but Willy was one person who could control his temper.
“No one owns this place anymore,” Juan continued, “and no one is ever out there so you can do what you like.”
“Are you two talking about mining?” asked the old coot, breaking in.
“No, old timer,” said Juan sternly. “If he comes over here it will suck balls,” Juan said to Willy under his breath.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Oh, shit, no,” Willy said, but Old Frank the Fart toppled off his stool and lurched over to their table.
He slid in beside Juan. “Nice of you boys to let me eat with you. Jest git off work?”
“Yes,” they said. Their moods sunk.
“Bring my diet here, Sonia,” said the old man loudly when Sonia came to the counter and found him gone. “I’m eating with these kind boys. Go on, boys, what you were saying bout the price of gold? That was real interesting. It’s sixteen hundred an ounce? I hadn’t seen that in the papers. It’s another sign of the Pock-o-lisp. What does that make—three so far? Go on about the mines.”
“Salsa, chips and a diet,” said Sonia, putting the cola down in front of the old man along with an open saucer of salsa and a small bowl of chips. “The taco plate is on its way.”
“Thank you. Go on boys, tell about the mines,” he said happily.
They studied the table. Things were getting pretty sour because of him butting in.
“Go on,” he told them. “Don’t mind me.”
“You won’t get shot at the place I’m thinking of,” Juan said finally.
“Shot?” said Frank, “I been shot seven times and stabbed five and struck by lightning. Once, only struck by lightning once. I still got the scars from the lightning strike. What a terrible day that were.” Old Frank the Fart stretched the side of his face and pointed to a teeny scratch that was invisible in all the other old age crap that was spreading all over his skin. “Look what it did to me!”
“Ah,” Willy said politely to Frank. “That musta hurt. Okay, so what’s this place?” he asked Juan.
“Yeah. Tell me, too. Oh, I sorry, boys,” said Frank.
“Why should I tell you, you don’t believe me,” Juan said with his jaw sticking out the way it did when he got fed up with Willy.
“One taco plate,” said Sonia, swinging the plate in front of Frank.
“Thank you, Sonia.”
“Okay, forget it,” Willy snapped.
“Typical miners. The battles begin. Heh, heh.” Frank’s laughing mouth cracked one of the taco shells and he coughed a wheezy snort.
Willy drank his beer and waited to see if Juan was going to talk some more about this mine that he had almost told about. Willy was feeling better because really he was also thinking about finding some way out of spraying plates and sixteen hundred bucks an ounce for gold sounded pretty good to him compared to carrying heavy stacks of plates around the kitchen and putting his hands in boiling water and slamming the doors of the washer down over and over until his shoulders practically snapped off at his spine.
“Are you talking about that Santa Claus Mine again?” Willy said awhile later after he decided Juan had clammed up due to the presence of the aggravating old man and Willy’s remarks. Any mention of the Santa Claus mine was a sore point between them because Juan had told Willy before about this Santa Claus mine that nobody had never found and going there had damaged his older brother’s truck. He didn’t even know why he brought it up unless it was to aggravate Juan, which he later admitted was pretty damn stupid.
“Santa Claus Mine?” piped up the old timer again. “Did you fall for that one? I thought nobody would ever fall for that one again. Heh, heh.” The last of the taco he had started to eat fell apart in the old timer’s mouth and hands, and parts of it dropped and spat on his plate and on the space in front of him. “Oh, sorry,” said Frank and more taco fell out of his mouth.
Juan and Willy threw their hands up in disgust. Juan snatched a napkin from the dispenser and dropped it from on high on top of a blob of salsa that had fallen from Frank’s mouth.
“No, Wilhelmo,” Juan said, “this is anutter mine.”
The old man picked up the napkin. “Thank you.”
Not wanting to offend Juan, Willy still went on because the old timer was staring at him and grinning. “Because I didn’t like looking for the Santa Claus mine. I felt real bad about what we did to my brother’s truck and he won’t lend us his old Dodge ever again, by the way, if you were hinting about us borrowing his truck to go looking for another mine.” They had punched a hole in the oil pan and Willy’s brother had to pay for the tow back from the Wild Ass Mountains, which was more than two hundred dollars, and then he had to buy a new oil pan and have it fitted, which cost six hundred in labor alone. “How many mines do you know about anyway?”
Juan seemed to be brooding over Willy’s suggestion that he wanted to wreck another truck. “Not that many.”
“Bet you don’t know about the Keystroke Mine?” said old Frank.
“Butt out
,” said Juan.
“Okay, sure. You don’t want a fortune. That’s okay by me. Pock-o-lisp will probably git both of yous before you can spend all the money you’d git from the Keystroke. Anyway, I’ll eat my tacos.”
“It just seems like you know an awful lot of mines,” Willy said.
“A man’s mind is full of mines when he gits the fever,” said Frank.
Juan and Willy glared at the old man.
“Oh, sorry boys. Said I’d butt out.”
“I don’t know that many mines,” Juan said bitterly. “But maybe I know enough mines to get us out of washing dishes, my bruder,” he added.