Demon Box Read online

  She stops at the bank of the Rio Sancto and watches the water sparkle across the beach, rushing golden to the sea. Upriver a few dozen yards, women are among the big river stones washing laundry and hanging it on the bushes to dry. She watches them bending and stretching in their wet dresses, scampering over the rocks with great bundles balanced on their heads, light little prints spinning off their feet elegant as feathers, but she isn't thinking We're so misshapen and leprous that we have to drink more than is good for us to just have the courage to walk past. Not yet. She's only been in town since they were towed in this morning. Nor is she asking herself When did I forsake my chance at proportion? Was it when I sneaked to the fridge just like Pop, piled on more than a seven-year-old should carry? Was it after graduation when I had those two sound-though-crooked incisors replaced by these troublesome caps? Why did I join the mechanical lepers?

  Her ankles remind her of the distance she has walked. Far enough for a backache tonight. Looking down, her feet appear to her as dead creatures, drowned things washed in on the tide. She forces her eyes back up and watches the washwomen long enough not to appear coerced, then turns and starts back, thinking, Oh, by now he'll either be finished with the call or ready to call it off if I know him.

  But she isn't thinking, as she strides chin-raised and rummy along the golden border. They saw anyway. They know that we are The Unclean, allowed nowdays to wander among normal people because they have immunized themselves against us.

  "And if he's not ready I think I'll take a look around that other hotel." Meaning the bar. "See who's there."

  Meaning other Americans.

  HIS DOG

  The Tranny Man has to climb the hill into the hot steep thick of it, to find the man Wally Blum says will maybe work this weekend and pull the Tucson transmission. He has to take his dog. The dog's name is Chief and he's an ancient Dalmatian with lumbago. There was no way to leave him in the hotel room. Something about Mexico has had the same effect on old Chiefs bladder as on the Tranny Man's slow eye. Control has been shaken. In the familiar trailer-house Chief had been as scrupulous with his habits as back home, but as soon as they'd moved into the hotel it seemed the old dog just couldn't help but be lifting his leg every three steps. Scolding only makes it worse.

  "Poor old fella's nervous" - after Chief watered two pinatas his wife had purchased for the grandchildren this morning.

  "We never should have brought him," she said. "We should have put him in a boarding kennel."

  "I told you," the Tranny Man had answered. "The kids wouldn't keep him, I wasn't leaving him with strangers!"

  So Chief has to climb along.

  THE HOT STEEP THICK

  The map that Wally Blum scribbled leads the Tranny Man and his pet up narrow cobblestone thoroughfares where trucks lurch loud between chuckholes... up crooked cobblestone streets too narrow for anything but bikes... up even crookeder and narrower cobblestone canyons too steep for any wheel.

  Burros pick their way with loads of sand and cement for the clutter of construction going on antlike all over the mountainside. Workers sleep head uphill in the clutter; if they slept sideways they'd roll off.

  By the time the American and his dog reach the place on the map, the Tranny Man is seeing spots and old Chief is peeing dust. The Tranny Man wipes the sweat from under the sweatband of his fishing cap and enters a shady courtyard; it's shaded by rusty hoods and trunk lids welded haphazardly together and bolted atop palm-tree poles.

  EL MECANICO FANTASTICO

  In the center of a twelve-foot sod circle a sow reclines, big as a plaza fountain, giving suck to a litter large as she is. She rolls her head to look at the pair of visitors and gives a snort. Chief growls and stands his ground between the sow and his blinking master.

  There is movement behind the low vine-shrouded doorway of a shack so small that it could fit into the Dodge's mobile home and still have room for the sow. A man ducks out of the doorway, fanning himself with a dry tortilla. He is half the Tranny Man's size and half again his age, maybe more. He squints a moment against the glare, then uses the tortilla to shade his eyes. "Tardes," he says.

  "Buenas tardes," the Tranny Man answers, mopping his face. "Hot. Mucho color."

  "I spik Engliss a little," says El Mecanico Fantastico.

  The Tranny Man recalls reading somewhere how that was where the slur "Spik" came from. "Thank heaven for that," he says and launches into a description of his plight. The mechanic listens from beneath the tortilla. The sow watches old Chief with voluptuous scorn. Burros trudge past the yard. Small children drift into sight from El Mecanico Fantastico's shack; they cling to their father's legs as he listens to the Tranny Man's tale of mechanical betrayal.

  When the tale finally dribbles to an end, EMF asks, "What you want for me to do?"

  "To come down to that big garage where they towed it and take the danged transmission out so I can send it to Tucson. See?"

  "I see, si," says the mechanic. "Why you don't use the big garage mecanicos?"

  "They won't work on it until Monday is why."

  "Are you in such a hurry you cannot wait for Monday?"

  "I already called and told Tucson I was shipping the thing back to them by Monday. I like to get on these things while they're hot, you see."

  "Si, I see," says El Mecanico Fantastico, fanning himself with the tortilla again. "Hokay. I come down manana and take it out."

  "Can't we get on it now? I'd like to be sure of getting it on that train."

  "I see," says the Mexican. "Hokay. I get my tools and we rent a burro."

  "A burro?"

  "From Ernesto Diaz. To carry my tools. The big garage locks their tools in a iron box."

  "I see," says the Tranny Man, beginning to wonder how to pin down a reasonable estimate for labor, tools and a burro.

  Suddenly there is a big brodie of squeals and yelps in the dust. The sow's red-bristled boar friend has dropped in and caught Chief making eyes at his lady. By the time they are pulled apart Chief has one ear slashed and has lost both canines in the boar's brick hide.

  But that isn't the worst of it. Giving away all that weight has been too much for dog's aged hindquarters. Something is dislocated. He has to ride back down strapped atop a second burro. The ride pops the dislocation back in so he can walk again by evening, but he is never able afterward to lift a hind leg without falling over.

  HIM AND HIS WIFE AGAIN

  They've been there a week now. They are flat-tiring back from the beach to the south in a rented Toyota open-top. The left rear blew out miles back. There is no spare. And a ruptured radiator hose is spewing steam from under the dash so they can barely see the road ahead.

  Finally the wife asks, "You're going to just keep driving it?"

  "I'm going to drive the sonofabitch back to the sonofabitch that rented me the sonofabitch and tell him to shove this piece of broken Jap junk up his overpriced greaser ass!"

  "Well, drop the dog and me off at the Blums' first, then, if you're going to - if we get close."

  She didn't say If you're going to make a scene. There was steam and furor enough.

  HIS FRIENDS

  The Tranny Man missed the before-siesta mail out and he's promised himself to get a letter to his sister finished to take down to the post office when it opens after siesta. He's at the Blums' rented villa, alone except for Chief. The dog is stretched on a woven mat, tongue out and eyes open. Wally Blum's at the beach surfcasting. The Tranny Man doesn't know where Betty Blum and his wife have gone.

  The Blums' hacienda is not down in Gringo Gulch but up on the town's residential slopes. The yard of a shack across the canyon-of-a-street is level with his window, and three little girls smile at him across the narrow chasm. They keep calling Hay-lo mee-ster, then ducking back out of sight in the foliage of a mango tree and giggling.

  That tree is the whole neighborhood's social center. Kids play in its shade. Birds fly in and out of its branches. Two pigs and a lot of chickens prowl the leaf
y rubble at its roots. All kinds of chickens - chickens scrawny and chickens bald, chickens cautious and chickens bold. The only thing the chickens seem to have in common is freedom and worthlessness.

  The Tranny Man watches the chickens with a welcome disdain. What good can they be, too sick to lay, too skinny to eat? What possible good? Inspired by the inefficiency, he launches into his letter:

  "Dear Sis: Gawd, wot a country! It is too poor to know it's ignorant and too ignorant to know it's poor. If I was Mexico you know what I would do? I would attack the U.S. just to qualify for foreign aid when we whup 'em (ha ha). Seriously, it sure isn't what I had hoped, I can tell you that."

  A green mango bounces off the grill of his window. More giggles. He reads the last line with a sigh and lays down his ballpoint.

  Wish you were here, Sissy, with all my heart. He drains his Seven-and-Seven and feels a kind of delicious depression sweep over him. A poignancy.

  An accordion in one of the shacks begins practicing a familiar tune, a song popular back home a couple years back. What was it? Went la la la laa la la; we'd fight and neh-ver win... That was it! Those were the days, my friend; those were the days...

  The poignancy becomes melancholy, then runs straight on through sentiment to nostalgia. It stops just short of maudlin. With another sigh he picks his pen up and resumes the letter:

  "I think of you often on this trip, Old Pal. Do you remember the year Father drove us to Yellowstone Park and how great it was? How wonderful and bright everything looked? How proud we felt? We were the first kids coming out of the Depression whose Father could afford to take his family on such a trip. Well let me tell you, things are not bright anymore and not very likely to get so. Ferinstance, let me tell you about visiting Darold, in 'Berserkly.' That about says it. You simply cannot believe the condition that nice college town has allowed itself to get into since we were there in '62 for the Russian-American track meet -"

  He stops again. He hears a strange clucking voice: "Que? Que?" In the yard across the way he sees a very old woman. She appears to be swaying her way along a clothesline with an odd, weightless motion. Her face is vacant of teeth or expression. She seems unreal, a trick of the heat, swaying along, clucking "Que? Que? Que?" She sways along until she reaches a frayed white sheet. She gathers it from the line and starts feeling her way back to her shack. "Que? Que? Que Que?"

  "Blind," says the Tranny Man, and rises to check Wally's cupboards. He's bound to have something to pick up where the Seventy-seven left off, something stronger if possible: eighty-eight... ninety-nine! He bobs this way and that around the strange kitchen, awash with sweat, rendered rudderless by the jagged apparition of the blind crone. He is drifting fast now toward the reefs.

  THE FIRST CRACK

  The Tranny Man's wife arrives half an hour later with Wally Blum's wife, Betty, in Wally's nice little Mexican-built Volkswagen jeep loaded with gifts for the gals back home. She has barely begun telling Betty Blum how grateful she is for the ride not to mention the company when she is pulled about by her elbow and scolded so loudly for going off without taking the mail - so unfairly -- that the world is suddenly billowing silent about her, all the street sounds ceasing, the hens not clucking, the kids not chattering on the rooftop, the mariachi not pumping his accordion... even the river half a mile down the hill, stopping its sparkle around the rocks. The kneeling girls are raised from their wash to listen: how will the gringa senora take it, this machismo browbeating?

  "Understand?" the Tranny Man demands in closing. "Sabe?"

  The evening leans forward from its many seats. Betty Blum begins to take blame and croon apologies in the familiar catty pussyfooting of one browbeaten senora coming to the defense of another. The unseen audience starts to sigh, disappointed. But before the Tranny Man can begin his grumpy forgiving, the Tranny Man's wife hears herself speaking in a voice stiff with care at the delivery of each syllable, telling her husband to let go of her arm, to lower his shouting, and to never treat her as though she were drawing a wage from him - never again speak to her like she was one of his broken machines.

  "If you do I swear I'll kill you, and if I can get to him I'll kill Donald, and if I can get to them before I'm stopped I'll kill Terry and the grandchildren and then myself, I swear it before God!"

  Both her husband and Betty stare dumbstruck at this outburst. Then the two of them exchange quick small nods: shoulda seen something like this coming... woman this age... all those rum-and-Cokes. The Tranny Man's wife is no longer paying attention. She knows she has been effective. For a moment she feels as though the intensity of this effect will set her aflame, that her flesh will melt and run off her bones.

  Then the pulse of the street begins to rush again. The kids on the roof whisper excited reviews. The chickens gather in the lobby of shade under the mango branches. The accordionist doesn't resume his practicing, but, the Tranny Man's wife feels, this is out of a kind of consideration, as one musician in the twilight to another, not criticism.

  THE AFTERMATH

  The Tranny Man stalks back into the hacienda; Betty Blum gives his wife a ride back to the Hotel del Sol. When she returns she has a bottle of Seagram's, a pack of cold Seven-Up and a warm smile that hints she can be as sympathetic to misunderstood husbands as to browbeaten wives.

  Wally shows up with two yellowtail and the Tranny Man accepts their invitation for supper. After fish and white wine he borrows a pair of trunks from good ol' Wally and a safety pin from bountiful Betty to keep them from falling off his skinny ass, and they all go for a midnight swim. Then they come back and drink some more. He tells Wally it's always the kids that keep a marriage together, but with these kids these days! Is it worth it? Then he confides to Betty - who is still wearing the bikini that looks damned decent for a woman her age - how one thing the kids these days do have on the ball is getting rid of all those old-fashioned notions about sex being evil. It's natural! Betty could not agree more.

  When he figures it is late enough that his wife has been adequately disciplined, he borrows their car to drive back to the hotel with old Chief. "I bet she's there by now," he bets.

  He wins; she's asleep on the couch. It will be the last time he'd win such a bet.

  THE TRANNY MAN'S DREAM

  Things can be trusted. Things do not break. Things are not gyps. Pull chains on light switches are not manufactured to snap off inside the fixture just to force a poor sucker to shell out dinero for a complete new rig-up that isn't fair.

  HIS VIRILITY

  "Ten pesos for a rum-'n'-Coke? They only cost five pesos two blocks from here!"

  They have been drinking at the hotel all afternoon. "This is the beachfront," his wife reminds him. "Besides, these have straws."

  The waiter rewards her logic with a grand denture display. Betty and Wally order. The drinks arrive. Betty sips her margarita like a bee choosing a blossom from acres of clover.

  "Feh," she drawls. "Not great but feh-uh."

  "I love the way you Miami women talk, Betty." The Tranny Man is drunk. "In fact I love all women. From the young uns with papaya titties to the old uns with experience!" He spreads his arms. "I love all people, actually; from these -"

  He stops short. He has seen something that nips his declaration in the bud. The Tranny Man's wife follows her husband's gaze to see what has stymied this tribute. Across the beach she sees the reason in the shade of a canvas-covered icecream pushcart, wearing lime green barely to the crotch, as provocative as a Popsicle. Busted, her husband leaves it unfinished. He turns his scrutiny to the cover of the Mexican edition of Time that Wally has bought from a newsboy. There's a picture of Clifford Irving on the cover. He reads over Wally's shoulder, lips moving.

  His wife continues to stare at the young morsel at the icecream stand, not out of jealousy, as she knows Betty Blum is silently supposing, but with a sense of sweet wonder, as one stares at a pressed flower discovered in a school annual, wondering, What had it meant when it was fresh? Where did it go? Feeling her
self suddenly on the verge of finding some kind of answer she rises from the shaded table, no longer in the mood for oyster cocktail, and walks across the sand toward the surf.

  There is a silence as the Tranny Man frowns after her. When he looks back, Betty Blum extends him brown-eyed condolences over the salty rim of her margarita, as if to advise, Don't let her mess with your mind.

  "Time," declares Wally Blum, "is one of those things you can trust because you know just how much to allow for political bias."

  The Tranny Man regains himself with a robust "Right!"and turns back to the question of nevermind who's Clifford Irving who's Howard Hughes?

  The three of them walk back to the hotel restaurant and order Lobster Supreme, picking at the shells till nearly ten. Finally the Tranny Man yawns it's his bedtime and excuses himself, letting all present know by the twinkle in his roguish eye that he is far too much a man to let some menopausal bitch mess with his sleep let alone his mind! Over Wally's protests he peels two hundred-peso bills from his wallet and places them beside his plate. To Betty's request that they buy a bottle to drink up on his balcony he graciously explains that ordinarily he would be more than happy to oblige, but tomorrow is the day his new transmission should be coming in from the States, and he likes to get on these things while they're hot. Another time. He squeezes Betty's hand and turns and mounts the stairs, giving them his most erect exit.

  PUERTO SANCTO DARKNESS

  Here it comes again: the turmoil, the chaos, the hubbub and howls - the nightdogs again - the pre-dawn yapping that starts in the hills south and sweeps across the town, just when you were sure the sonofabitches had, at last, exhausted the shadows and were going to settle down and let you get some rest.

  Old Chief whimpers. The Tranny Man burrows under his pillow cursing the night, the dogs, the town, his crazy wife who had suggested in the first place coming to this thorny wilderness, goddamn her! Why here, he demands of the darkness, instead of Yosemite or Marineland or even the Shakespeare festival in Ashland? Why this goddamn anarchy of thorn and shadows?