Kerry Kelly showed up with his duffle bag and said, “I’m heading down to the valley for a few weeks, cat. I want to tear open a fresh grapefruit with my hands and eat it in the middle of the road. I want fresh tortillas, maybe head over to South Padre or down to Matamoras, get me a few cold ones with fresh lime squeezed right into the bottle.”
Kerry Kelly always talked like that before he borrowed money off of me. I was able to imagine eating grapefruits in the middle of a Rio Grand Valley road, "the place where they grow them."
After listening to him describe all that the way he did, I wanted to eat grapefruits in the middle of the road too so I packed my bags right then and there.
We never did eat a single grapefruit. . .But we crossed the border into Matamoras and headed straight for the pulqueria.
Kerry Kelly and I had just returned from a three day trip across the Gold Coast with Ginger Rose, the waitress from Tyler’s Beer Garden. We took Ginger’s little blue hatch back, bought three cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon on lower St. Charles and stayed drunk the whole time. I drove the car back from Pascagoula, nodding off and on, waking up every few seconds while the other two slept, running the car off the road and so forth. Once back in New Orleans, we went to a place on Lower Magazine and had shots of Schnapps.
When I got back to my rooming house, it was so hot, I slept with my window fan on the bed beside me.
Right before Kerry Kelly showed up with his duffle bag, Ginger Rose had climbed up the rooming house drain pipe. I thought it was a raccoon at first so I treid to get back to sleep. But then there was an even bigger racket, like tin been ripped to shreds and I watched Ginger Rose pull herself in through my window and flop down onto the bed. She said she had continued to party since our trip.
I wasn't feeling good, having been up most of the night vomiting when the racket outside started.
Ginger Rose gripped the top of the window sill and yelled out: “Hey, it’s me, man! It's Ginger. Help me, goddammit.”
Ginger Rose lifted one leg up over the sill, grunting. She had big boobs and freckles.
Her breath smelled sweet and she was slurring her speech.
“I've been drinking all night long and took some valiums, man. I’m not feeling good but I knew I had to see yew.”
Ginger climbed onto the bed and started snoring.
I wanted the whole bed to myself was the problem. The sheets were already soaking wet and the fan wasn't helping so I tried to push then pull Ginger Rose but she was so limp and heavy, I couldn't budge her. I moved over to the chair.
Ginger Rose was still sleeping in the bed when Kerry Kelly came that morning. I went downstairs to see what he wanted. That's when he told me about eating grapefruit in the middle of the road.
“I thought you might want to come along," he said. "I used to work for the railroad in Harlingen. I may try to get my old job back. I want my boy to come live with me.”
Kerry Kelly had big plans and often spoke to me of his boy who lived in Houston. Kerry Kelly did so much cocaine in the past that his parents had to take his boy to raise.
Kerry Kelly said, "My boy looks just like me."
I had to tell the landlady I was leaving a week early and wouldn’t be coming back. The land lady always spoke to me very slowly and asked me questions behind the screen door with both of her hands up and pressed against it. I was sorry to leave because the landlady reached up through the floorboards every night and cradled my balls. I don't know how she knew how to do that but she did. She lived in the cool basement surrounded by crystals. When she showed me the room that first day, she moved really slowly up the stairs and pulled her skirt up so I cold see her calves and thighs. At the top she turned and without me asking said, "I used to be a dancer."
Kerry Kelly and I got down to Harlingen and walked from the Greyhound station all the way out of town on a dirt highway to a trailer park where we rented a small blue one. I took the living room couch and Kerry Kelly took the back bed room. There were black widow spiders in the corner by the couch and in the closet. They gave me the heebie jeebies and I didn't sleep much worrying about where they were.
Kerry Kelly said, "Don't use the closet, those are black widows in there."
I knew that.
One day we road the bus down to Brownsville and walked across the border into Matamoras. Kerry Kelly told me about Boys Town but we didn't have enough money to take a taxi so Kerry Kelly said, "Let's get us a cold one."
We walked around and after a while, saw a sign. Kerry Kelly said, "They drink Pulque in there. It's an old Mexican drink, cat. It's from Agave. It looks like coconut water and goes back to the Aztec days, cat."
Three old men sat at the bar drinking water glasses full of milky white pulque. They didn't turn and look at us when we sat down. The bar tender had a pencil thin mustache, one big ear and red leathery skin. The bottles on the shelves were unusually shaped and had been there a long time.
When we sat, I heard a sound and looked down. Water ran through a porcelain trough at our feet from one end of the bar to the other. In a few minutes, one of the old men took out his penis and urinated. He splashed a little urine on the wood of the bar.
We each ordered one glass of pulque each and since it tasted so bitter, switched to cerveza. When I gagged on the pulque, the old men laughed. We ordered lime with our beer and squeezed it into the top of the chilled bottles.
In a few minutes a man pulled up a stool and sat down between Kerry Kelly and I, his shoulders touching ours. He turned and looked at me, grinning. Actually he didn't grin, he grimaced. The man wore a double breasted sport shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. His hair was combed straight back and black with axle grease. He spoke to me in Spanish and I said, "Yo hablo solo poquito espanol."
The man grinned again and said, "Oh? Poquito espanol?" He continued to speak quickly in Spanish, however. I looked at Kerry Kelly on the other side of the man. He shook his head and said quietly, "Sometimes its better not to say anything, cat."
The man paused when Kerry Kelly spoke then continued in Spanish, nodding. He took out his wallet and removed an identification card. The card said Policia. I heard the man say "Federale." He poked at his chest with one finger. He had bags under his eyes and scars from acne.
The man then removed a black forty five caliber revolver from under his shirt and held it in the air. In English, he said, "I am a good shot. I can blow a man's head off if he is running past me fifty feet away."
I looked past the man. Kerry Kelly was shaking his head back and forth. Kerry Kelly had spoken of the Federales on the bus coming down the Brownsville. He said some oil field friends were arrested and driven around in police cars until money could be wired from the States.
I told the Federale, "I believe you."
The Federale placed his forty five on the bar and asked, "What is your business in Matamoras? Where are you going? In which direction are you travelling?"
I said, "No, we came across to walk around and saw the Pulqueria."
He said, "Yes, but what are you doing in Mexico? What is your destination?"
I said, "We wanted to get Mexican cerveza as it is the best. Do you like cerveza?"
He said, "I like Tequila."
I signaled for the bartender, "Una Tequila, por favor."
In the course of the next two tequilas, the man appeared sullen and kept insisting that Kerry Kelly and myself were travelling south and wanted to know where. He refused to speak to Kerry Kelly because he saw Kerry Kelly had biker tattoos, orange hair and a Texas belt buckle and he said he didn't trust that. As I had three Mexican cold ones in me by that time, I laughed and said, "No, Kerry Kelly is good people. We really did just walk across the bridge from Brownsville to have a few cold ones in Matamoras. We don't have enough money to travel. Mexican cerveza is the best cerveza in the world and that's why we're here. The Pulque is too strong. I tried it but am not used to the taste," I said. "I'm having another cerveza. Do you want tequila?"
At that moment I actually did believe that Mexican beer was the best beer in the world. The Federale told the rest of the bar something about the American not being able to drink pulque. The old men laughed and so did the bartender.
The Federale put his gun back in the holster underneath his shirt and told me how careful I had to be in Mexico. Then he unzipped his fly and peed into the trough. In a few minutes, I unzipped my fly and peed tambien! I splashed a little on the bar in the process. Kerry Kelly peed into the trough a little later.
After his fifth tequila, the man shook hands with us and said, "Enjoy Mexico but be very careful going home."
He said if we are stopped to mention Ray Jay, that you know Ray Jay, Policia.
It was dark when we left the pulqueria. The old men and the bar tender nodded. When we walked across the bridge we had just enough money left for the bus ride back to Harlingen. We had spent it all on Pulque, tequila and cervezas.
