The Hot Sauces of Magda

Girls You Remember won't molest. You put them from mind when you need the room.

Girls you forget can hold to you tight. Set up a noise of housekeeping in your head. Rattle pots and pans of guilt through your head.

I will illustrate. . . .

One time I had to run. I was working then in Indio, above the Salton Sea. I asked myself which way to run the cops won't expect.

Cops think everybody thinks in straight lines. Expect a Mexican in running mood to run straight south, to Mexico. The cops would look for me around border towns, Nogales, Mexicali, Tijuana. I fashioned a route all ways but south.

By Greyhounds I traveled east to Blythe and Yuma; back west to El Centro; north via Seeley, Brawley and Westmoreland there by the Superstition Mountains; east some more through Calipatria and Niland; north for a distance to the unhurried shirt-sleeve town, below Frink, close to the Salton Sea, called Vaverdy.

I found a fraying motel, adobe cabins with gardens of cacti and succulents between the spokes of wagon wheels. Yanks like to plant old wheels. This motel was close to Vaverdy's preliminary of a downtown, my innocence of automobile would not cause talk.

I registered as P. Armendariz. My room was adequate, though the air conditioner gave me a crick in the neck and I missed sweating. For two days and nights, while ordering my thoughts as to how a future can be planned on $400, I sat and watched television.

On the third day I felt easy enough in mind to go out. By a main intersection in the hint of a downtown, a surprise was waiting.

As I passed the Western Union, a woman emerged at high speed, calling my name.

Had she shouted, "Hey, P. Armendariz," that in itself would have been thought-provoking. What she was shouting was, "Hey, hey there, Manolo, Manolo Ruiz, stop, I know you!" With the air of total conviction, even endorsement. In Spanish.

She was on the whole young, maybe 27, Mexican, worth second looks in any situation not cobbled with danger. Fine amplitudes, finely distributed.

My calculation had been to leave the name of Manolo Ruiz behind in Indio, a buried wheel.

• • •

I said, "Did I have the distinction to be addressed by you, miss?"

She said, "I'm sending a money order to La Paz, and I look up and there's Manolo Ruiz going down the street grand as a mayor! A shining face I never expected to see again in this life! Imagine! Here, in Vaverdy!"

"My face would consider itself in the privileged classes to be seen by you at any time, miss," I said. "But I don't recall having the honor----"

She was researching me from a number of angles, me and several matters left-handedly related to me.

She seemed to make a quick, possibly historical, decision.

She said, "You had all the honors, Manolito! In La Paz, in the summer of 1956, you spend nights in my bed, you were honored to the full, now don't you deny it, you tease!"

I did quick figuring. Where did I pass the summer of 1956? In La Paz, correct. But in her bed? The summer of 1956 was when I discovered tequila. It was in the summer of 1957 I discovered girls. I'm the type who does one thing at a time, which made me think I couldn't have been in this girl's or any girl's bed in La Paz in the summer of 1956. Maybe she had her dates mixed up? Maybe she meant 1957. when I was busy with girls? But in 1957 I was nowhere near La Paz.

"It's surely too much to hope for that you were in this bed at this time?" I said.

"You're insulting."

"No. trying to refresh memory."

"The insult isn't in your suggesting a joint occupancy, it's in your not remembering the jointness. You climbed a tall eucalyptus and scaled two dangerous walls to get to my room. knowing my father would shoot if he heard, now you can't recall any honors whatsoever. Was I so displeasing to you? You said otherwise."

"Miss," I said, "I was drunk the summer of 1956, also. I've traveled widely since, so if my mind's vague----"

"Manolito Ruiz!" she said. "You're the nephew of Emiliano Ruiz who charters fishing boats in La Paz, do I have these facts straight? When you were a braying burro of age fifteen, with some components bigger and more active than your pea pod of a memory, you came to La Paz for the summer to work on your uncle's boats, isn't that so? The person addressing you at this moment is Magda Vallejo! Precisely, Magda, whose poppa, Porfirio, rented out fishing gear! That busy summer in our town you did a damn lot of fishing, some in waters not indicated by your uncle, and now you ask, please, were there one or two in that overpopulated bed!"

"You were right to get sore," I said. "I remember now, the eucalyptus, the walls, more particularly the bed, populated just right for a growing boy. My memory failed me because I'm far from home; also, I'm worried, at the moment I'm running from certain situations. All my apologies, Magda. What do you hear from your dear poppa and momma?"

"Nothing," she said, "they're dead. That's why I'm here in Vaverdy; my brothers in La Paz need support from me; I work as nurse and tutor for a rich planter. What are you doing around here, Manolo? The last I heard you were starting in the university."

"I went till the money ran out, then worked around home in Mexicali, odd jobs. This year I got picked for bracero work near Indio, that's where I've been, on the date ranches."

"Manolo Ruiz a bracero," she said, shaking her head. "A stooper and climber, a bright kid like you. I thought by now you'd be doctor or lawyer or something with your name on a door."

"I gave up thoughts of the high professions," I said. "My plan is. was, to save my wages, then learn some trade like television repairs. Certain detour situations have come up."

"You talk of Indio, but you're in Vaverdy," she said. "You define yourself as fieldworker, then remark you're on the run, which excludes fieldwork. What's the nature of your worries? Can I help?"

• • •

How much to tell? Helping me from one species of jail, could she land me in another?

She made no secret that she endorsed all my components, except, as noted, my memory. If asked, I would have endorsed hers, with the one exception of memory. Hers were in fact memorable, full where fullness is valued, trim where we look for economy. Had I encountered these bloomings and slimmings before, and closer, in puppy youth, in adult years, in La Paz, in a rowboat, I should have remembered.

Unless, as I've stated, I was drunk.

But, as also stated, I'm single-minded; when I drink. I drink exclusively.

I decided to unfold my story by stages, noting her reactions.

"I ran into trouble in Indio," I said. "You know what my job was in the date groves? I climbed trees to impregnate them with pollens."

"You shouldn't have had trouble in that job," she said. "You were a distinguished climber from the first."

"Maybe you've heard how bashful date trees are," I said. "They don't make good pollination arrangements by themselves: third parties have to handle the matter for them."

"No third parties had to make arrangements for you at age fifteen," she said. "If you want my opinion, the launching of your tree career was in La Paz."

"The end was in Indio," I said. "In Indio I was doing fine until V. J., Vernace Joe Prodger, came."

"The preacher who says God made man to make strikes?"

"Some say V. J. thinks God made him to make man make strikes. V. J. calls himself a migrant minister. He says this is the Christian way of ministry, to go along the roads waking people up, that Jesus was the first migrant minister."

"Not with picket signs, however."

"V. J. says the first Gospels were written on varieties of picket signs but churches want to forget it. Anyhow, V. J. began preaching on the roadside. We came down from the trees and listened. Soon we were boycotting the trees and walking up and down with signs for better wages and conditions."

"It's funny." she said. "In our country church people tell workers not to get mad at bosses: here you see church people stirring up workers against bosses."

"I've thought about this," I said. "It makes me wonder if some trained people shouldn't investigate if there aren't two Gods. If you say one and the same God stirs workers against bosses and protects bosses against workers, this means God contradicts himself and must be foolish."

"On the other hand," she said, "if God is everywhere as holy writings say, maybe he has to be on both sides of the class struggle, with both classes."

"I don't think so." I said. "Maybe, as they claim, God made the opposites of men and women so they could get together, but if he made the different economic classes for the same blending purposes, the classes haven't heard about it. Anyhow, the ranchers brought in some truckloads of hill and woods people from Texas to strikebreak. Their leader was a man of brutish looks named Bleggs. This ugly one always yelled insults when they drove through our picket lines. One morning Bleggs yelled to me from his truck, you drink your mother's urine straight from the breast."

"Americans always insult the mother," she said.

"He was saying certain things over and above the custom." I said. "First, that I still take food from a breast, so I'm a sucking baby, not a man. Second, that my mother's no ordinary woman, instead of milk she's full of waste products, so many that they can't get out by the usual paths and emerge through the breasts. There's a third point, that my palate is so low-grade it can't distinguish between normal, healthy, clean milk and urine. I wanted to show Bleggs ideologies are one subject and mothers are another and shouldn't be mixed, id we're going to keep issues clear. So I went to confront him in the dormitory for fieldworkers."

"And you broke the law?"

"No, his jaw. His way of debate was to approach with a crowbar. Naturally, I had to take this away from him. Not to load you down with details, this is what I did, by means of hitting him repeatedly, for the most part in the jaw, which broke. We can consider this definite, because the last time I hit the jaw I felt it displace measurably to one side while the rest of his face didn't move. As a result, I left immediately. This was eight days ago."

"Manolo! What's there to run from? You were only defending yourself!"

"True, but the strikebreakers explained it to the cops another way: they said I crept into the dormitory with this crowbar to kill Bleggs. Soon the sheriff was looking for me with a warrant, so I told Vernace Joe I'd better go away, not to harm his drive for better wages and conditions for migrants. So here's the result, that I'm entirely migrant, traveling in circles because the cops are no doubt looking for me in straight lines. What do you make of my story. Magda, anything?"

After some thought she answered. "I make this of it, Manolo, that you're some tree climber, and this time you've climbed yourself up a very bad tree."

• • •

By now we were sitting on a bench in Vaverdy's embryo of a central square.

Magda said finally, with a martyring look, "I hate to lose you the minute I find you, but shouldn't you hurry up back to Mexico?"

"What's in Mexico?" I said. "Rotten wages, few chances for schooling? I told you I want to better myself."

"To become unseen to looking cops is a betterment."

"No, in no case do I go home. I wasn't planning to, even if the Bleggs situation hadn't come up. My plan was to sneak from the bracero camps and disappear into some city where I could find a job and start my television studies."

She sat up. She considered me. Her face began to lighten.

"Well, how much is changed?" she said. "Before Bleggs' jaw you planned to be fugitive, now you're fugitive. Essentially you have what you planned, though ahead of schedule. Tell me, you've saved some money?"

"About four hundred dollars and some change."

"Good, fine. What you'll need is a good selection of I. D.s--work permit, birth certificate and such. No problem; I know a man in Chula Vista who makes superior papers, I'll telephone him. if I ask he'll service you for about one hundred dollars, which isn't much over cost."

A source of papers was my first goal.

Here was a source, on cost-plus terms.

"You vouch for the quality of his work?"

"He has many satisfied customers. If he could advertise, he'd have a big population (continued on page 188)Hot Sauces of Magda(continued from page 90) of sponsors and endorsers. It'll work out line. Manolo! You go down there and become a new man then come back to Vaverdy and we'll get you set up, don't worry! It'll be good for you and will benefit me too, a lot!"

"I'd better think up a name." I said.

"Think along these lines." she said. "I live on my employer's property in a nice cottage away from the ranch house. You should stay with me, it's a good hiding place, very isolated. For you to share quarters with me you should be some relative, no?"

"That's logical," I said. "All right. I'll come back a Vallejo, say Jaime Vallejo, how's that?"

Her brow made knots of contrariness.

"That won't do," she said. "See, I've told my employers all about my family; they know the only Vallejos left outside of myself are my three small brothers in La Paz so a whole new Vallejo can't show up out of thin air." Her features warmed again. "Here's an available name. Javier Campos."

"There's a Javier Campos in your family?"

"There was, but he was killed in Cuba and nobody remembers him but me. I could make up a story for my employers to explain your turning up. Yes, that's a good name for you, fine, perfect!" She mussed my hair in what had the appearance of an affectionate move. "You're sent to me from heaven. Manolito, I mean. Javier! Though where you came from that other time. I don't know, some hot place probably!"

"One thing, Magda," I said, "in reference to your statement that this plan will benefit you as well as me, would you care to make that clearer?"

"Details later! Right now let's put you on the road to Chula Vista and good papers!" And she mussed my hair again, in a definitely familial way.

We talked for a time more, for we had to agree on my story, and my story had to agree with my circumstances, and the forthcoming papers had to agree with all parties and factors. Then I took the Greyhound to the Chula Vista merchant of cost-plus identities.

Over the palpitant bus tires my thoughts, too, palpitated as I considered the considerable puzzle of Magda Vallejo.

True, there'd been a Porfirio Vallejo in La Paz. I remembered. True, he'd had a seam-straining daughter just above my age bracket. I vaguely remembered.

This was all I remembered.

• • •

Any wetback dispatched from Miss Magda this papermaker was ready to dry off thoroughly. In addition to major documents, manufactured with care, he threw in a massage-college diploma plus a library card, at no extra charge.

The minute I got back to Vaverdy, I called the number Magda had given me. A woman's voice answered, not Magda's.

"Hello, is it possible I could speak with Miss Vallejo, please?" I said in my most precised English.

"Miss who?" the voice said.

"Magda Vallejo, please. Javier Campos calling."

"Oh, you want Magda Campos. Hold on a minute. Mr. Campos, I'll get her." I heard this voice calling. "Magda, for you, your long-lost husband, you lucky girl." and Magda's voice answering from far. "Thanks, Mrs. Bassing, I'll take it in the pantry."

Pretty soon Magda came on the phone saying with energy. "I told you specifically, when you call ask for Magda, that's all, just Magda, no further names."

It was so. She'd said to avoid last names, made a point of it. I'd forgotten.

"What, no further names? I just heard further names. For you, Campos, For me, husband. Can names get further? My God."

"Well, listen, the plan was to introduce you as relative. I couldn't just say, Javier Campos, a relative."

"Listen, you could have made me something minor! There're nephews, you ever hear of them? You ever hear of second cousins?"

"Well, listen, after thinking it over. I saw that if you're going to share quarters with me, the best kind of relative would be husband, you see."

"Listen, that woman referred to you as Magda Campos, meaning, wife to Javier Campos, who's me! How come you're suddenly a Campos and I'm the source of this Campos, my God!"

"Get hold of yourself. There are deep reasons. I can't go into it on the phone."

"My God, I start as lost friend and go away to become second cousin or something minor and come back one hundred percent husband! My God, what's going on! This you call saving me from jail! Listen, do me a favor, don't ever save me from stampeding elephants!"

"Calm yourself, man, try. I'll explain everything. Let's meet at the abandoned quarry, that's three miles, you take the highway south----"

"A horrible thing! Calamity! To go away fugitive and come back prisoner----"

"I'll explain the whole thing, have faith, quarry, sundown----"

She'd said this arrangement would benefit her as well as me.

My God, my God, The world's whole elephant population coming my way.

• • •

Santee Limestone and Gravel Workings, the silvered, slivered sign said. Off highway, down rippled tar of diminishing side road, I went, into zinc sands of semidesert under zinc moon. One Mexican nailing another Mexican to cross for the fun of carpentry. Family patches of agave and kalanchoe with arrowed leaves. Rotted wheelbarrows. Stepping slantways on erupted slabs of old tar. One Mexican making noose for another Mexican out of fondness for rope tricks. Mule skull's vacated eye sockets quizzing some worn truck tires. One Mexican mortising coffin for another Mexican and for what. Toaster winds from cook pit of Coachella desert trying to crisp the skin. Stands of pinons to crosshatch the ashy air. Mountain face shaved clean by barbering of pneumatic drills. Mammoth mouth of gravel pit dentured with ledges of limestone, Black waters filling pit with lapping black. One Mexican double-dealing another Mexican for the plain hell of it. Something splashing in the waters. One Mexican knifing another. Somebody's body silvering ass up through black waters. One Mexican knifing another up the back and down again. Body in rise from waters to ledge reddening from silver to bronze. Wiping long black moon-glassed hair with towel. Humming some Argentine tango to audience of pines and leather-hatted yuccas. One Mexican knifing another but no knife visible in either hand. Breasts two dunes of arrogant copper. Haunches high, wide and handsome, made to replete hands. Black, black moss of pubis glassed with wet and widening as legs spread to towel. No knives in these hands spreading jumbo thighs. Yet I felt knifed in many places up and down the spine as naked Magda toweled between legs, throating wordless tangos. "Hello, hello. You're late. Oh, a hot night."

• • •

This was her story. Minute she laid eyes on me, wild about me. Minute I laid hands on her, wilder. I was, though drunk, the first, remained to this day the best. Yet I left La Paz and never came back nor wrote. Not her place to send coy, probing letters. Had to put me from her mind and get on with life. When parents died got her first job, in Galveston. Here met Javier Campos, ex-sailor from Tampico working as stevedore on the docks, looked to be steady type. Javier simply not fit for obligations of a shared life. Marriage the signal for him to stop work and start drink. She pressed him hard. To escape. Javier ran to join Castro in the Sierra Maestra, there was shot dead, leaving no family but her. She'd never said much about the no-good, so the Bassings did not know the facts about the worthless. The name was unoccupied, thus available to me for a lifetime. Who'd be the wiser? So long as outside the house I was husband, inside I could be second cousin, great-grandfather, as minorly related as suited my tastes, yet would have nice roof over-head, good meals, some job on the ranch, permission to drive a ranch jeep over to Brawley or El Centro to attend night classes in television repairs. Where was the calamity? Was it calamity to be handed back your future with velvet ribbons on it?

"Get your clothes on and we'll discuss different brands of calamity."

"Oh, it's the first time I've been cool in days."

"If we're going to talk sense, you cover up."

"I can talk with more sense if I'm not melting away with the hellish heat. Besides, you've seen me naked before.

"Magda, whether it's nakedness number two or nakedness number one isn't the question. I'm trying to arrange conditions for serious talk."

"Well, here, if the sight of me offends you so much, I'll wrap this towel around. All right?"

"One more thing, be so kind as to cross your legs, that's a very short towel. Good. Now you listen to me. You explain who Javier Campos is or was. You omit any reasons why I'm tricked into taking his central place. Magda. that towel's not doing much good when it's down to your navel."

"Sorry, towels are hard to keep high with structures like mine. You haven't been tricked. No tricks whatsoever here. I simply asked myself what connection could we have that would give the most basis for being under one roof."

"Magda, I ask you again, please don't uncross your legs, and stop lying."

"Sorry, truly, when I try to take care of one end I forget the other end. All right. I'll tell you the rest. I'm in a delicate situation at the Bassings. Mr. Bassing is young and energied and with a very roving eye. So far I've been able to hold him off, but lately he's after me hard. When you showed up I thought, well, if you're just a cousin or something nonsexual, how much will that help? A hotblood isn't deterred by a second cousin or nephew. With a husband at my side, though, he'd have second thoughts and wouldn't be always trying to catch me in barns or on the back roads, you see? This is the benefit I hoped for from reconstituting a husband, one, anyhow, but does this in any way diminish the benefits to you? Which can, I give you this assurance, be as numerous as you wish?"

I tried not to look at the slipping towel. I did my best not to take note of the constantly shifting thighs. No doubt about it, this one was well made, and to replete hands. There was one single reason I couldn't reach for her, that she was abruptly, vagrantly, nonconsultingly, irreversibly, my wife.

"All right," I said. "Finally you let me in on the true story. A little late, but. I'm not indifferent to your problems. I want that clear, but I've got to think of my own first."

"Your thoughts haven't caught up with your circumstances," she said. "Yesterday, when cops were chasing you, you had problems. Today, having found a perfect hideout, you're in the clear. Try to see currently, Javier."

"Currently I'm an unplanned bridegroom, I call that a problem." I said. "How to put this? Any marrying I do, if and when, will be the result of my choosing, no other party's. I didn't do two cents' worth of choosing here. That fact rasps in my thoughts and will continue so to rasp."

"You did the choosing once," she said. "In La Paz. You don't have to do new choosing, just reactivate the old."

"If I did in fact shinny up that eucalyptus." I said, "if I did, the choices were for a night, not a lifetime. Also, bear in mind that if there were such happenings in La Paz, if there were, I was drunk, and here in Vaverdy I'm sober and not in the mood to climb trees, especially one-way trees. Too many tricks, my girl. Listen, tell me true now, did I really do that climbing in La Paz?"

"More insults? You've forgotten again? Yesterday you remembered."

"I was forcing the memory in a non-marital situation, for social politeness. Now that we're without warning husband and wife, it's again hard to remember. Is this on the level. Magda, I spent nights with you in La Paz?"

"Insults, insults. This is what comes from being nice to a staggering drunk. Look, you want to make sure? There's a way. You're a family man, if it's to your taste you can have your family rights. Try, and see if it doesn't remind you of nights long ago. This is about the only suggestion I can make, if you've got such a leaky memory, due to your youthful drinking. For my part, I remember perfectly. If you wish to remember, I'll certainly help."

Generous invitation, made more so by the steady slippage of towel and restlessness of most solid thighs. It would have been no hardship to accept, whether it proved something about earlier fusions or not. It was hardship not to accept, to keep hands at sides.

But I had abruptly married without so much as proposing, only by taking bus to Chula Vista, a bus picked and urged by her. This is not the way to the highest maritality.

I got to my feet. She looked up, towel slipping, legs rubbing, all abundances lively.

"Want to go home?" she said. "I've got the jeep here, I could make you some chiles rellenos with my special sauce in no time at all."

"Too much married too fast and too unwarned. Magda. I need to go somewhere and get as drunk as I have the talent for."

"All right," she said. "Maybe if you get drunk enough, you'll remember what you did in La Paz some nights when you got drunk and get interested in doing it again. If so, you come right home, you hear? I know your talents when drunk."

• • •

On the highway I found a cantina where Mex farm hands were playing pool and drinking beer. Here I started to drink, too, tequila after tequila. trying to sort out in my spinning head the many ways in which I'd been encroached upon: Hard, they overlapped.

Noise of demon sweeping in my head from Mrs. Campos' last brooms. Banging of various kettles of guilt. Mrs. Campos the chief banger.

In my rotating, reverberating head, with an imaginary pen dipped in real tequila. I wrote a letter:

Most Esteemed Mrs. Campos:

It is very important that you stop this lying.

I have the sensation of being robbed and will tell you why.

Allow the hypothesis that in the distant past I had intimate dealings with you. All right. This scares me from top to bottom. The absolutely first girl I had in body and lost from mind. I feel robbed.

I have not been loose with girls as some. Had girls, enough, but with no thought to championships. The pleasuring for me was to know a particular girl in depth, not many girls in generical width, so to speak.

It terrified me, the having of many samples from the ocean of girls, so all samples mix in the mind to become one sample.

All right. If certain events did in fact transpire in La Paz as you say, then for the first time I have had a total intimacy followed by a total oblivion. This makes me feel robbed. I am no longer in possession of my personal happenings, my only belongings.

Listen, can a man say fairly he has had a girl if he doesn't hold her in mind? This is not a true having, it's a sight-seeing.

Also, I feel guilty. Why? Because the way you show respect for human beings you've had major dealings with, including girls, is to remember them.

This, my dear Mrs. Campos, is why I say girls you forget can molest. Mrs. Campos, from you I feel a molestation.

This is not an ordinary domestic arrangement you ivite me into. Mrs. Campos. I hear accusatory brooms in the moleste'l spaces of my brain. Loud pots and pans of peccability.

All this, of course, Mrs. Campos, on the hypothesis that you're telling some semblance of truth.

If you're lying, Mrs. Campos, schemer, falsifier of my drunken hours, thimble-fanged bitch of the universe, rider of needling brooms through my head, mixer of witch's brews under the name of chiles rellenos with special sauce, oh, if you're lying. . . .

This letter I had been mailing to the tequila bottle line by line. Now my special-delivering eyes went from this bottle to the newspaper on the next table. Some field hands had been drinking there. Left behind this Spanish weekly published for the Mex population in and around Los Angeles. Headline said, "Prodger Urges Militant Street Demonstrations in East Los Angeles."

I leaned over to see. From the text my eye picked out phrases: ". . . Fresh from successes in organizing the date-grove workers of Indio. . . . . Addressed massive outdoor rally. . . . Urging barrios rise up against the new smothering bureaucracy of Poverty War Administrations. . . . . Attacked bossism as the rot in all areas of life. . . . Humanism the total and permanent war against bossism. . . . 'All men have two tendencies.' Prodger said, 'to rise up against bosses, to become bosses.' . . . Nature of the human animal. . . . No sense wasting tears over. . . . Fan the first, make trouble for the second. . . ."

Vernace Joe's home was in Los Angeles. Vernace Joe was now, it appeared, in Los Angeles. Vernace Joe was a fighter. I had a mammoth fight on my hands. Against the sirens with relleno sauces. What I needed was Vernace Joe to inject maximum fight in me. La huelga. The strike against the worst bosses with their accusatory brooms and frying pans. La huelga. Emergency call to the chief strategist of la huelga, mastermind of antibossism. Vernace Joe.

I shook off as many of the tequila fumes as would be shaken and hurried to the phone.

• • •

"Viva la huelga, Manny!"

"Viva la huelga, V. J."

He said "Long live strike" in place of hello and goodbye, he promulgated strike as others talk of weather and stock-market reports and how are the kids. All in his orbit fell into this propagandistic chitchat.

"Looking all over hell and gone for you. Manny. Sent word through the grapevine. Through the grape pickers. Organizing them now. Never mind, just a joke----"

"I better come up and talk. V. J. I'm in worse trouble than before."

I detailed this revolting plot to bury all my wheels. He listened, making sounds of surprise, significance and other comments in his nose.

I could see him as he sat making footnotes in the nose. Looking like deck hand, hobo, boxer, skid-row bum, all things he'd been in early days. Coming from gutters and alleys, he could ministrate with convincing migrancy to gutter and alley people.

He was silent after I ended my story, except for sounds of hum and hah.

I said, "Isn't it a disaster?"

He said, "Why, is she ugly?"

I said, "No, quite pretty. What's that got to do with it?"

He said, "She was lying about her chiles rellenos? You tasted her chiles, they were lousy?"

I said, "I never went near them, how would I know? V. J.. how does this relate?"

"Manny, a pretty girl opens her bed to you, and offers to cook for you, and you ask what's her looks and sauces got to do with it? There's disaster here, boy, inside your head."

"Arrangements were made by her, all. The man takes initiative, the woman says yes or no, that's how I was raised. V. J."

"Lowered, that's the way we're all lowered. Listen, Manny, the women call the shots in these transactions, who opens the mouth first's a formality."

You could depend on V. J. to put forth his own angle. Interesting, if around the back and up the sides, piece of logic.

"Also. V. J.. if she's telling the truth about La Paz, if I had her below and don't hold her above, she right away has an advantage----

"Let's see. Suppose you restored the below arrangements. Wouldn't the above problems more or less go away?"

Around the back and up the sides, nevertheless a stimulating piece of logic.

"Yes, but suppose she made the whole thing up, wouldn't that indicate a terrible crookedness of mind?"

"Singleness of mind. I'd say. Listen, if she tricked you, what's she after? Your money? Your social standing? And what's the essence of the trick? To offer you bed, board and a list of advantages! OK, trick her back! Take the bed, board and advantages! That'll teach her! Serve her right!"

"V. J.. I always prided myself on neatness. I thought neat. One project at a time. When I drank. I drank, when craved, craved."

"I've known neat guys drink to get sloppy. Maybe the drinking was to get you sloppy enough to go up eucalyptuses."

"But suppose I didn't, and she knows I was so drunk I don't remember what I did, so she says----"

"Manny! Quit that, boy! Did I, didn't I, was it, wasn't it, that's a faster's game to keep you dangling! You want to dangle and fast, when there're maybe great chiles down below?"

He did have his own sledge way to put things, this harping, hammering man. Yet and still. I was asking him to fan up my fighting spirits and he was pounding at me for total bending, total collapse. This is not the service was expect from foremost troublemakers. I can arrange my own drubbings. In vanquishments of myself I don't need collaborators.

"Where's the famous militancy?" I said. "This woman's manipulating me in every part. You're supposed to be against bossism."

"In class struggles," he said, "the guy who kisses and fondles the boss is a piggish sellout. In sex struggles the way to soften the bosses and get all your demands is to put your arms around them and smooch them up a lot."

"All right, I see it." I said. "Under the front of big fists and strong fight, you're a defeatist. Your advice is, fold up, throw in the sponge, you can't win in the foremost battle of all."

"Oh, sure, you can win if you want to. Manny," he said, making more sarcastic noises in his nose. "You can beat down this woman all you want to. Just remember, each time you win with a woman, the woman loses. What respect can you have for a mate who's a loser? Take that a step further. How much respect can you have for yourself if you're tied to a woman who's a loser? I call it the worst vanquishment, to be married to a loser. All the more so because her cooking's got to suffer."

He could twist things, all right, twist, and make little known knots. My head was totally trampled from the runaway gallop of his logic.

"I better hang up now." I said, "Viva la huelga. V. J.. in case you've got any left."

"Viva la huelga. Manny, provided you don't take it home with you." he said. "Oh, by the way, the reason I was looking for you, there's some news. One of those Texas scabs spilled the beans about Bleggs. This guy found Bleggs lifting a five-dollar bill from his locker and got so sore, he told the cops the truth about that crowbar. The cops aren't after you, Manny. Any time you want, you can go back to being Manny Ruiz, you're a free agent with the little lady, how you approach her sauces is a matter of your interest in and evaluation of her sauces pure and simple. Listen, stay Javier, change back to Manny, that's up to you. Under any name, you're needed back in Indio. We won the strike, you know. We're going to the bargaining table in two, three weeks, and you've got to be on the negotiating committee. . . ."

• • •

Up and down Vaverdy's inkling of a downtown. Back and forth in this innuendo of a downtown. Consulted with feed and grain store. Quizzed supermarkets and delicatessens. Took counsel of saddle maker's shop, sought expert opinion from live-and-dime, held open forum with miniature golf course. This insinuation of a downtown and I were in perfect accord. Vernace Joe Prodger, all parties agreed, was a sellout. No doubt this fire-eater in the streets and public buildings was henpecked by his little woman at home and was whitewashing his lack of spine at home, his reduction to jelly at home, with theories about throwing collaborationist kisses to the boss at home. This big militant in the streets and bowl of mush at home was overlooking basic truths about my impasse with this Magda Campos. If tricking me, forever after she would know me as trick-prone. If telling truth, she would thereafter know me as vulnerable to other ruses, other pressurings. In neither case could I hope for anything from this woman but tricks and pressurings. Vaverdy's implication of a downtown and myself were eye to eye as regarded the impossibility of a viable life with this Magda Campos.

Two dozen storefronts confirmed this analysis and prognosis, at the same time, for vividness, presenting to me close-ups in full color of Magda Campos dressed in nothing but towel and the towel dislodging. Driving home, of course, the wide range of her tricks.

Finding a city-wide unanimity of opinion for my findings, plus a city-wide population of detoweling Magdas. I went to the phone booth outside a gas station and dialed.

"Hello." I said. "Many apologies for the lateness of the hour, but would it be convenient to call Mrs. Campos to the phone? This is Mr. Campos again."

I waited for a time, watching Magda's body on the glass door as the towel slipped from its outstanding upper portions. Still more out they stood, in the hunt for hands.

I heard her voice at about the time the towel reached her toes. My tree hand was reaching for repletion, to find solely cold glass.

I said, "It's me."

She said. "Ah."

I said. "Emergency. Just talked on the phone with V. J. He says the search for me is wider and more energetic than I'd thought. practically a dragnet."

She said. "Oh?"

I said. "V. J. says I better stay put around here, it's off the beaten track, you know, also, the papers make a good cover."

She said. "That certainly sounds logical. There's no sense running all over California calling attention to yourself."

I said. "That's the way V. J. put it, practically word for word." It was interesting, how fast she was moving toward me on the glass door, now that she was without covering. Her thighs were very full and very active against each other: I watched this closely, both hands itching and twitching. After a moment I said, "Can I ask you something? Is the relleno sauce on your chiles everything you say it is?"

She said. "I've got a big pot of it on the stove right now. Let me put it this way. If it falls short of my claims in any way, you can stay in this house as my great-grandfather for fifty years."

I said. "If I'm going to be constantly on the alert, always watching out for cops, that takes a lot out of a man. I'll have to eat well to keep my strength and nerves up. It just to happens, chiles rellenos are a favorite dish of mine."

She said. "If we're going to get you fed right, we ought to start as soon as possible. As I say, I've got a big batch on the stove. Can I ask you one question? Have you had much to drink tonight?"

I observed this about myself, that I had been drinking, now I was craving, definitely, insofar as this had any bearing on my general tidiness in projects.

I said. "Enough."

She said. "You better hurry up home."

• • •

So I left the name of Manolo Ruiz back in Indio, a buried wheel. With this wheel was all my rolling equipment.

One night I got back from television-repair school in Brawley and settled down as usual for a late snack.

Certain questions still nudged, not hard, around the thought edges.

"Listen." I said, "about Mr. Bassing."

"You're not happy with the clerk job in the sheds?" Magda said. "I thought it was generous of him to give you a nice, clean, white-collar job, also, to let you use the jeep nights."

"I wasn't thinking of his sheds and jeeps." I said, "but more of his age. You called him young. He looks to me close to sixty."

"True." she said, "he's been showing his age lately. I'm worried about him."

"Also, you described him as energied. He seems to me to be using the wheel-chair more and more."

"I would agree. He's very mechanically minded. I think he enjoys the motor and steering apparatus in this new chair."

"Regarding any chasing he might do, it's my feeling he'd have to do it slow motion, with such a bad leg and using a cane."

"Yes. I've noticed this, too. It's frightening, to see him go into decline like this, without warning."

"When would you say this aging and declining set in. Magda, at any particular point?"

"Oh, sure, a general weakening could be noticed from about the time you showed up, Javier, from just about the time I told him my husband had come back. You see, it's as I said, my acquiring a husband was very effective, it calmed him down as I predicted."

"Also. I've noticed he's very devoted to his wife, he's always patting her and kissing her hand."

"This is accurate, your coming has had a very good effect on their relations, too, he's really turned back to her. I'm happy to see this. Mrs. Bassing is a fine woman."

About the La Paz matter. I'd been working on a different approach to it. I had it formulated after some weeks of work. This night I decided to pass it along, to get us on a new plane.

I said. "You know, Magda, my mind's finally at rest about what happened and didn't happen down in La Paz in '56. I'm happy to tell you the whole thing came back to me. I remember in detail."

Naturally, I was watching her reactions closely. She seemed, essentially, not to have any, outside of a slow, not too full-bodied smile.

"You remember?" she said. "Javier, you're an amazing fellow."

"Why amazing? Is there any reason I shouldn't remember?"

"Well, stop and think, it was so long ago, and as you've often pointed out, you were so drunk the whole summer. But, listen, if it seems clear in your head now, fine."

"Magda, you talk as if you don't remember."

"I'll confess something. Javier. I think that between us you'd like the plain truth. The plain truth is, that whole business is getting very, very dim in my head. I'll tell you why, if it interests you. I think currently, it makes life simpler. When you have enough current events, they block out history and ancient things."

"Magda, are you telling me that now you don't really remember the details of summer 1956?"

"I'll tell you this, it's so vague in my head today. I couldn't give you a true yes or no about any detail anymore. To my way of thinking. Javier, when today's menu is rich, you don't have to write a history of all the meals you had in your life."

"I'm asking, Magda, do you remember 1956 or don't you?"

"I'll put it to you this way, Javier. I remember as well as you do, that I'm sure of. Come, sit, have another serving, did you notice I used more cilantro in the sauce today?"

I had noticed. I was he best relleno sauce ever, it made the memory of past sauces very hard.

A tricky one, this Magda. Were she not so satisfactory to share quarters with. I'd leave immediately. As it is, there's no rush. The table for bargaining back there in Indio won't be ready for two or three weeks, and the table here is a bargain.