Call me Frank. I think.

Some stories about neighbors

A different story today. This is something I started working on when I got here 3 years ago. The characters I meet on a daily are now just neighbors. Still cartoon characters but less remarkable. I think it’s time to repost some of these notes and introductions to people who float around this vortex before I forget. This is from early 2022 about a dark and shady stranger named Frank. My landlord said he carried a machete and to watch out for him, but I gave him mangoes from my tree. I suspected he was schizophrenic. If nothing else Americans can spot a DSM-5 classification.

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On August 12, Francisco Lawrence Castillo Moreno woke up in a ditch in San Diego. On August 15, at 845am he was in the trunk of a bronze Toyota Celica. It was 112 degrees F in the desert on Hwy 6. He could see out of one eye. Duct tape mummified his head, he could taste it through a tiny spit hole he made with his tongue. Hwy 9 goes in Mexico past Ensenada, crosses eastbound into Sonora. Down the Sea of Cortez and past the tourist destinations where red faced alcoholics from Phoenix owned condos in Puerto Penasco. They stopped at mile marker 187.

"Leave him here", said Pecho from the passenger seat, "this is 4 hours from anything both ways".

ChacoChaco pulled over. After 5 hours of a two lane highway with Saguaro cactus in animated poses and twisters of beige sand, they popped the hatch, picked up the body like a bag of golf clubs and hauled it 50 feet from the road behind a boulder.

"Cut the bag open so the vultures eat him," said Pecho.

"They won't eat him if he's not dead."

"Shut the fuck up, Chaco. You got a cuchillo?"

"They're carrions. Mostly scavengers. An eagle is a predator as well as a Carrion, but the Turkey Vulture for sure only eats dead stuff. Their head is featherless so they can stick it up the rectum and eat them from the inside out. Ever see them just hanging out on a line? They're waiting for shit to die. The coyotes will get him first. Maybe even a mountain lion. It's a very diverse eco system out here. At night especially. In about 4 hours shit comes out of the ground, man. Have you ever tried the Bufo Alvarius toad venom? My tio smoked that in Puerto Lobo and tripped for 3 days. He's in a monastery now. A real epiphany." 

Chaco got a box cutter out of his pocket and cut open the bag. He nicked the legs a bit and his sweat dripped into the bag. The salt felt like acid everything was so amplified. Echoes doubled the conversation. Efficient but sloppy kidnappers they had hit him over the head with a tequila bottle at a party--- just enough to knock him out and muddy his hearing. 

Frank could hear parts of the conversation but the duct tape covered his ears. He kept his one eye shut. They wrapped him before checking vitals. Pendejos. The trash bags made a sauna. They sliced it open to pull one foot out for coyotes and he could feel the breeze on his balls.

A SAG card blew out of the hatchback with a fistfull of pesos. Pecho tossed the wallet on the other side of the highway. Stitched in colored thread, THE DONKEY SHOW. 

They drove off. The car was a distant fart can muffler. Beaners love the noise, he thought. The first vulture landed nearby and with his wingspan cast a welcome shadow. A tarantula walked across his eye. 

At mile marker 45 Pecho sliced the carotid artery of Jose Jumillo "Chaco" Fausto Garcia with the box cutter and left him in a hole he had dug 2 days before. The sun had set and the desert was coming alive in the shift change of the nocturnal. The Toyota rattled into Tijuana. Pecho grabbed a duffel bag with $234,000 usd from under the spare tire and walked over the border to San Diego. 

Frank didn’t die in that plastic bag. He freed himself that night and scared off the coyotes and started limping south. He found some agriculture corral and took a bath in the water barrel. He looked rough but the blood was washing out. A lot of people on this part of the Devil’s Highway look like this and worse. The bulls stared at him without concern. He hitched a ride on a flatbed full of watermelon and went to sleep. They turned off at an arrow barely visible on the highway, Puerto Libertad read the handmade sign. Best tacos de cabeza!

It was the first sign of life they’d seen in 5 hours. It’s a desert where they grow asparagus oddly. All you’ll see are Saguaro cactus and pickers from Chiapas. Even these Mexicans don’t pull their own produce. This place on the Sea of Cortez has ratty fishing boats, stores that are never open and 386 stray dogs.

Adonde vas? Frank couldn’t answer where he was going or where he’d been to the truck driver. Still drugged, dehydrated, blurry. Underneath though he looks like a soap opera star who’s been put through the spin cycle. His hair sticks up in quadrants, his eyes are light, his hair black, he has dimples and a great smile and a very expressive angry resting face. A range of characters from the Villian to Clown. Fit and ropey thin.

When he stops to talk to people to ask for food, he is in a constant state of searching for his plot. Where was I? He never finds it and keeps walking. He is terrified by dogs and yells at the street mongrels like he’s got a specific beef with each of them. No one in town has any information on him. Some think he’s been here 15 years, others say he just arrived. He’s around and then he disappears for weeks. He demands food from vendors and kindly residents and has an endless array of hand me down clothing from an unknown source. He’s been in DKNY blouses and Celtic basketball jerseys to YouTube tank tops and stripey holiday sweaters. He doesn’t know where he gets them, he says. And he lives, over there. No matter where he’s standing he will point somewhere and say…that side. He speaks Spanish until you talk to him and then he’ll speak English until you respond in English and then he just stands there.

That’s Frank.

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Last year someone (his mom, allegedly) showed up and asked around town for Frank. He needed medication and was in an asylum in Chihuahua she said. We never saw Frank again.

For more info on Lola’s Dog Rescue and to sponsor a StreetSpay or buy a Tshirt to support my work here go to linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue