Osprey - 12-30-2012 at 05:19 PM
My wife played cards today with "The Ladies" and left me alone in the house to listen to the rain and write little fiction pieces.
Real Estate
Baja Style
Refugio’s kids were almost adults when I got here so that was never the real problem. What kept us from being good neighbors was his drinking, the
music and the tractor. The two or three times I went over there, walked across the street to his wire fence, yelled at the top of my lungs for him to
“Turn down that flocking radio” I was pretty much smashed myself.
His little truck farm is a mere half kilometer from his house so why the hell does he bother to drive that tractor to work, while it’s still dark and
bring it back when he’s through tilling? Silvestre on the adjacent farm property could watch it, he can lock it up so it won’t move, what’s he afraid
will happen to the damn thing? Nobody can sleep when he starts that thing up.
Doesn’t matter much now. He’s been dead eight, ten years now. The little Mexican house is gone and there now stands an almost mansion for this little
town; Dennis Worthen bought the lot, bulldozed down Refugio’s little house and built a tribute to gringo opulence up here on the bluff with the killer
view of the sea.
I saw all of that happen from my patio. I stopped drinking altogether there for awhile but now that I’ve got back into it, leveled off, I’m beginning
to ask myself some questions about how it all went down. I love a mystery.
For me the mystery all began when I saw our local police jefe¸ Raul Ojeda, stopping by a few times in his police truck at Refugio’s place just after
the farmer was buried. Then my interest piqued when he stopped by with Dennis – at the time I only knew he had a gringo with him and a couple of
times, the gringa.
Refugio’s daughter Claudia had stayed in the old place after her mother and Refugio died. Pedro and Chaya, her brother and sister and their kids were
busy with their own places but stopped by now and then and even stayed a few nights at times. Perhaps Pedro still made enough money from tomatoes and
basil on the family farm to support all of them but that was none of my business and I spent no time thinking about that.
I just wondered about the visits by Raul and the gringo. Raul had been after Claudia and the homestead for years and everybody in the village knew
about that. It heated up after Raul’s wife left him and went back to Mexico to live with her family in Tepic.
One winter day Leonardo and I caught nine big sierra by the rocks at Punta Colorado and while I was cleaning them back at my place I saw Raul and the
gringo, Dennis, walking around Refugio’s place taking pictures, pacing off the perimeter. My dog Storm almost knocked the cleaning table over to get
at the scraps and when I screamed at him, at his clumsiness, as I looked up the two men stopped in their tracks, put the tapes away and withdrew to
the truck.
I thought “For me? What are they hiding?”.
The next thing that rocked my little world happened after sunset. I usually go to bed when the sun sets but I stayed up for the Redsocks - Yankees
game on television. I had the volume turned down so Lynda could read or sleep and heard some screaming from Claudia. It was not screaming from trauma
at first, only unbridled anger screaming from a woman with a strong voice. Then there was the sound real violence makes, things thrown about, people
pushed and tossed and punched. She screamed, shouted him back into his police vehicle and he raised the dust in front of her gate. I’ll never forget
what I saw and heard that night; can’t even remember who won the ball game.
You will by now forgive me for being attentive when I saw Raul’s truck at the house. I didn’t count the times. They were mostly at night, three,
four, maybe a lot more when I was asleep. I saw Raul arrive twice with Claudia’s brother Pedro but the brother only stayed a few minutes and Raul was
once again chased from the house with curses I couldn’t make any sense of – the usual P-nche cabron, vete kinds of things you hear when Mexicans
disagree.
I couldn’t help but think, because the way this was going down, with Dennis, with her brother, this wasn’t a man-woman thing, a scorned suitor thing.
It was about the house, the lot. Had to be. The gringo wanted to buy the whole spread and Claudia just didn’t want to let it go. Pedro must have been
there for support but maybe that only made it worse.
Then came June 6th just at dusk. I’ll never forget it. Raul pulled up as usual in his cop truck and went in. There was the usual noise of calamity
for part of a minute then I saw him carrying Claudia out of the house in his arms. He put her on the passenger side of the vehicle where I really
couldn’t see her, just knew it was her, couldn’t tell if she was conscious, hurt, couldn’t tell a thing in that gloom.
Never laid eyes on the woman again, ever. Pedro and his wife and kids moved in on the 8th for a week or so. In that week they spent all the daylight
and part of the night lugging everything out of the house and the bodega and hauling it away. They took the doors, the windows, the ones they could
salvage, even the tin roof on the bodega. Then the place just sat there like an old abandoned eyesore for almost a month.
Then, just after first light Dennis showed up with his wife, two official looking dudes and here came Urbanito with his big front end loader to take
the place apart. What a mess. But I’ll say this, Urbanito didn’t waste any time and in a little over three days the whole big lot was clear and open
and level, ready for anything.
One day in August, Ponchito, the postman, came by with a stack of mail for some gringo to ask me if I knew the guy. We had a beer in the shade while
we talked over the construction noise across the street and it was only then that I learned Claudia had died. When I asked Ponchito how come nobody
seemed to know it, he said the burial was in Miraflores and there was no mass for her. I asked him when that was. He said it was around the first week
in June.
Couple of days after that Dennis saw me out watering, came across the street to make my acquaintance. We just chatted through my gate, he told me a
little about himself, where he was from, I told him a little about me and Lynda. It was all very nice, very casual.
“Well George, Jorge, I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other when Lidia and I move down here for good. It’s been a long time coming. I’ve had my
eye on this place for a long, long time.”
I said “So have I Dennis, so have I.”
[Edited on 12-31-2012 by Osprey]
[Edited on 1-1-2013 by Osprey]
Bruce R Leech - 12-30-2012 at 05:33 PM
good story thanks
DENNIS - 12-30-2012 at 06:01 PM
Thanks Jorge. KInda depressing, but well written....as usual.
Maybe later you can pen a story about Jefe Raul choking to death while eating a plate of dog crap. You're the great wielder of justice and
righteousness here, Jorge, and you owe it to Claudia.
Osprey - 12-30-2012 at 06:07 PM
Watchit, now watchit. I could fit a Dennis into his little tale with just 6 touches on the keyboard.
Tomorrow, or the next day I'm gonna reveal what all this mean in The Google World and you are all gonna be amazed. I am and you will be too.
Osprey - 12-30-2012 at 06:16 PM
In the blink of an eye, you are the subject of Baja fiction for good or for bad.
Read it again.