…a rubber sandal in the street, a sandal decorated with red white and blue, just one rubber sandal.
…the United States, with three wars and a bought Congress and bought state legislatures …still the hope, the option, the latitude, even with the limitations …. I like July Fourth.
…two kids jump off an earthmover, a machine that’s been using the Stimulus money to break ground for sewer lines. The kids run away. I wave. They wave. Maybe they will drive earthmovers, maybe ….
…the dog is Sky. But I call her Coyote. The guard’s kids named her. He guards a 4,000-square-foot home in progress, seven nights a week, from sunset to sunrise, and the dog runs around. “No gun. I’m not real security,” he says. “I just watch things for the owner. I know him.”
…the Mexican Army has had some Matamoros shoot-outs lately, one that saw a priest die in a crossfire, with many hoping he’d made his peace before death.
…and his last words, “Oops, sorry, I forgot to pray this morning.” See, even in grim moments, humor, even if ill ….
…the Balkans, no Mexico. The soldiers sleep in armored vehicles and pickups. I startle one. He lifts his rifle, and then lets me pass on when I ask – down a vehicle-less street, a street blocked by the sturdy green tank-looking armored vehicle. The Balkans, no Mexico.
…back to the soldiers, sprawled in their warm green, black weapons by their sides, back hair, brown faces, sleepless, stubbled ….Just what are they being asked to do? They are alive, and also near dead ….Tired, irritable, tired irritable, and around them Sunday church, shopping, traffic ….
…steam rises from the kitchen. The eggs are being fried, tortillas warmed, steam into the restaurant’s warmth, before the AC kicks in ….
…and she tells me that her husband and his girlfriend, a girlfriend he met when his friend introduced them, took a lot of clothes, a stove and shoes from her home when she was away getting her US immigration papers in order …. Now, minus many things, she is working on her divorce, about six hundred dollars ….
…lines and lines at the bridges, two-hour waits. I accidentally clip off a plastic wing on the front of a pickup. The guy wants twenty dollars. I tell him that I do not have it. He tells me to be careful. Black pickup, AC on, engine growling.
…along the line, a woman with a baby carrier bumps into me. She says she sorry. Edgy, edgy. Warm, warm.
…tropical, indeed, with piled gray clouds, piled white clouds, moisture, fetid, fecund, rich, earthy, rotting ….
…back to the Balkans, no Mexico. Dance, music, food in the plaza, families, lovers, drunks, shoeshine men, dead crickets from a cricket farm in Oaxaca, ready for salsa, so dark brown, so heaped , almost writhing ….
