*bob in mexico*
Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 | otherStuff
*bob in mexico*
bob woke up & reached up for his hat, then looked for his gun belt
…there it was; right where he’d left it
…his hat had fallen off some time while he’d slept
…after stretching, he put on his hat, & rubbed his eyes
…he had been sleeping in a hammock slung low in some trees by the side of the road
…bob put his bare feet over the sides of the hammock & found his jungle boots w/his toes
…he bent down & picked them up, held them upside down, & tapped them together & shook them vigorously
…no scorpions fell out
…’that’s nice’, thought bob, ‘that seems like a good sign’
…then he thought again; ‘i sure hope it wasn’t an RPG’
…bob tied on his boots & stood up, unhooked the gun belt from the end of the hammock, strapped it around his waist, & clipped the holster around his right thigh
…then bob drew the heavy, dull, black .45 from the holster, pulled the slide back far enuff to see a round in the chamber, engaged the safety, & re-holstered the weapon
…he reached under the hammock & picked up a sheath-shaped bag made of heavy black ballistic nylon that contained a12ga. pump shotgun w/a SWAT-style pistol grip stock
…sliding it out of the bag, bob pointed the weapon up in the air & touched the ‘release’, the fore-grip fell back smoothly about 2 inches & revealed a chambered round thru the port
…bob slid the port closed, checked the safety, & slung the weapon over his left shoulder, barrel down
…he folded the gun bag & stowed it in a small back pack hung in a tree
…then he took down the hammock, rolled it into a small bundle, & stowed it in a pocket on the pack
…he then took a swig of water from a canteen attached to the pack
…bob looked at the clear early dawn sky thru the trees & almost smiled
…he thought he smelled chocolate
…walking towards the road, he found oscar, squatting on his haunches, wrapped in a camouflage poncho
…oscar was a hard-looking dark brown man w/a tattoo on the left side of his neck under his ear that said; ‘el indio’
…he wore a sleeveless black concert tour t-shirt for some band that bob did not recognize
…oscar had taken the midnite-to-dawn watch, & bob was sure that he’d been awake the whole time, squatting in the brush as he was doing now, watching the road & the empty field beyond
…oscar was also armed w/a heavy pistol & a shot gun
…he was eating some chocolate, he wordlessly offered some to bob who took a small piece, nodding thanks
…”donde est’ el perrito?”, asked bob
…”he is in the truck”, answered oscar
…”i’ll go wake him up” said bob w/a wink
…oscar’s eyes smiled, but he still looked scary
…bob walked away from the road, back towards where his hammock had been strung up
…a few yards further into the tree line, in some denser foliage, was a well camouflaged medium-sized stake truck
…it had a 4ft tall fence built around its flat bed & the entire rear of the vehicle was packed full of mature agave plants, 3, maybe 4 dozen
…there was a heavy oil-cloth tarp over the plants & the whole vehicle was under a large camo netting
…bob looked at the few spikes that stuck out from the rails of the fence on the back of the truck, they looked like tendrils of some sea creature, reaching
…in the cab of the truck a young man in his early 20s lay sleeping
…his right leg was propped up on the dashboard, an area of the shin just below the knee was punctured & swollen to about the size of a baseball …the agave came from a place nearby in the eastern highlands of jalisco
…they were ‘arandas mano larga’, ‘long hand’ agave plants, grown privately, all 6 to 8yrs old, w/broad blue-ish leaves that ended in spikes
…this truckload had not yet been officially appraised, but these plants were rare lately & their value rose everyday
…bob could only shrug his shoulders when he considered this, as he was not a big tequila drinker
…this particular truckload was a sample being sent to a large distillery, & so it’s worth in potential business for the grower was nigh-on inestimable
…bob knew that when he looked at the truck he was looking at more $$ potential than he would ever realize personally in this life-time
…bob wasn’t the type of guy that described things as ‘absurd’, he was more apt to use the term; ’stupid’
…he thought that the circumstances that had brought him here to mexico to baby-sit a bunch of aloe plants were ‘pretty stupid’, especially & including how much certain individuals would pay for these plants
…’aren’t there people starving here for crissakes?’, he thought
…this made bob think about how he rarely he got to work for people he respected
…his current employer had listened to his every recommendation, save one, & that was about the best you could hope for
…the distillery, in light of the current market conditions, [that is; the rarity of mature agave that had driven the price of tequila up thru the roofs of taverns all over the world], had hired bob to make sure this shipment would make it to where it was going safe & sound
…because the last shipment had not
…no one was sure what had happened to the last truck, because no one had survived the ‘hi-jacking’, & so little of the truck itself had been found
…bob was pretty sure it had been an RPG round, but then he had only seen some photos from a newspaper
…it didn’t make any sense; ‘who would shoot an RPG at a truck that was full of priceless plants that they wanted to steal?’, he thought
…’or had they stopped the truck, off-loaded the plants, then blown it up?’
…’why would you do that? what’s the point? just to watch the explosion? what a waste of an expensive piece of ordinance’
…either way it all seemed pretty stupid, & now there was no way to know for sure
…’I hope it wasn’t an RPG’, thought bob, he didnt like to think about stupid people w/RPG launchers
…especially if they were looking for him, or for someone like him
…bob walked up to the cab of the stake truck & slapped the driver’s side door as loudly as he dared w/his palm
…’iy perrito’, he called
…’fukk you, dog’, hissed the young man inside
…oscar had started calling the kid ‘perrito’, becuz he kept calling them ‘dog’
…the kid was somebody’s cousin from the wilds of east l.a., & was on a working vacation of sorts
…he’d earned a reputation as a wheel man after leading the LAPD on a high-speed chase that encompassed three freeways & ended up in his own neighborhood
…he had been on TV almost the whole while, as the chase had been followed by news helicopter, & broadcasted live
…his homies had it on video, & referred to it as ‘his reel’
…there he was on channel 9, waving his set sign from behind the wheel of the car to his friends on the sidewalks, 4 black&whites trailing behind him
…the kid eventually pulled the car over to the curbside after executing a text-book bootleg turn, got out of the car & shrugged at the officers all pointing their weapons at him
…he raised his hands casually to the back of his head, fingers laced & they tackled his ass
…the kid was out in 72hrs
…& he went down to mexico ‘to visit his abuelitia’ 48hrs later, taking the gig driving the truck as a favor to some distant relatives
…he had his rep to uphold
…”it seemed like the thing to do”, the kid had told bob
…”how’s the leg?” said bob thru the window
…”its fukked up dog, check it out”, came the unsteady answer from the young man
…bob stepped up & poked his head into the cab to look at the kid’s leg
…the kid was holding a very short, pistol grip shotgun, one that would have easily fit under a coat & was quite well suited to the close-quarters environs of a truck’s cab
…bob flashed for a second how loud it would seem if a shotgun was fired in the cab of a truck
…he wondered if the kid had ever fired a weapon from a vehicle, he figured he had
…”you know, maybe its not an allergic reaction?”, said bob, trying to sound okie or southern or something, “maybe it was some kinda poisonous spider lives down ’round these parts?”
…the kid squinted at him
…”you been to mexico afore?”, he said, pushing it, laying on the twang
…”yeah, tijaunna, dog”, the kid said, w/an uncertain look in his eye
…”you ARE mexican, aintcha?”, he asked, sounding like yosiminite sam
…”yeah, fukk you dog”, said the kid finally
…”yeah”, said bob w/out the corn, “just keep that muthafukkin leg up …didjoo take those pills?”
…”yeah, no, man, i d’int wanna fall asleep”
…”dude, you coulda slept”, said bob
…”i d’int wanna man” said the kid scowling, looking out the front window, “i kept thinking i could hear engines, but when i listened i cou’nt hear anything”
…”well, take one of ‘em now anyhow”, said bob, “you pissin’ clear?”, he asked, he had noticed a case of liters of bottled water on the floor of the cab
…”yeah, fukk you man”
…”no, serious; you pissin’ clear?” asked bob again
…”i dunno, yeah”, said the kid quietly, he was sweating & pale
…”okayden”, said bob, & he walked back towards oscar
…’fukk nature’, thought bob, ‘turn your back on the bytch & she’ll kill you in a second’
…he did not look back at the kid in the truck watching him walk away, but walked back to oscar near the side of the road
…oscar did not look at him when he came up
…”it’s okay”, offered bob sitting down near by
…”i know that”, said oscar
…”he didnt take the pills”, said bob
…”fukk him & the pills”, said oscar
…oscar looked across the road at the empty field in front of them, the sunlight seemed to chase the blue mist
…bob looked too
…’we should hear the helicopter coming soon’, he thought, ’sure hope it wasn’t an RPG’
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