“Muchas cosas,” Carolina trailed off. She laughed and her high Yaqui cheekbones and broad smile with unprocelained teeth shine. “I eat one orange every day”, she says, to explain her beautiful skin, as she hoists later in life baby Rosalba on her hip. The oldest daughter is 18 and runs their fruit market at another pueblo down the highway. I had a brother who was 18 years older than me. He died 20 years ago. I miss him. Rosalba likes the dogs who wait for me outside. Rwar Rwar, she calls them.
Carolina lets me squeeze my own avocados. Uno para hoy, uno para mañana
She owns the tienda (with her husband) behind my house and I used to call it the Ugly Fruit Store because they kept produce way longer than they should. Now he has some pigs and land nearby so they get fed the fruit before it starts to liquefy on the display. He got a couple display cases a year ago and they’d stick meat in there but my nose said it was a pastry case and not a regulation meat cooler and until he brought that temp down, I shopped elsewhere.
He’s handy and has built his own walk in cooler over the years and a second story on the store where the family lives and he pirates electricity from nearby poles but I just walk the other way and don’t see anything.
Sunday, I notice a big black bloated dead animal across the road in a vacant lot. I walk over and it’s a dog…God put all the black dogs here in the hottest desert. Who is that? I say to Spaghetti, Calico, Pedro and Border. Is that Buddy? or Black Pittie? The bloat had disfigured the dog and all I could tell was that it was an intact male with a white square on his chest. Could be anyone. Everyone sniffed.
His tongue was hot pink like dragon fruit and hanging out the side of his mouth like a cartoon. Spaghetti’s last known pup was Buddy and it could be him. She has been sad lately and walking around solo. So maybe? I give her a hotdog out of my bag. He was surrounded by a bunch of watermelon rinds. Maybe someone spiked the melon and he died from booze? No one is talking. No one cares.
By yesterday someone had tossed lime powder over the dog. Right next to the fish taco place with all the pitbulls not in a fence, maybe they did it. The flies were out of control. They always are but fresh carcass really pulls them. Lime cuts down on vultures too, less gas, less stink. They’re not interested if there’s no stink.
I think back to one time long ago when I changed out all the dirt in some container gardens that a well meaning flower chick created at my bistro. Gorgeous vines and herbs and topped off with chicken manure, I went into a panic. Not at the entrance DOOR OF THE RESTAURANT???!!! Here people step over dead carcasses to pick up to go food all day long. I’ve definitely slipped into a different timeline.
I’m always the one pointing out the dead animal on the sidewalk, the half alive person face down at the shore, the overflowing water container that someone forgot in the desert town with no rain going on 485 days or more. Why can’t I not see all the dark shit?
Most people just shrug and go, “Sabes…” in a dismissive who knows lip pout that suggests that they’ve seen too much feo in their life to register another drunk pendejo or dead stray dog. In a state with many clandestine graves full of missing kids found by grieving mothers I try to keep my outrage for lousy curb appeal to a minimum.
The town is extra quiet for over a week now despite the Spring Break Easter Semana Santa dune buggy races and festivities because we’re out of gas. This has happened before but I notice now because I have that little car that I drive sometimes to haul a dog or a sack of kibble. I don’t go far. Mostly I don’t trust that car and I don’t trust other drivers and I probably waited too long after the accident to start driving again and so now I’m in the habit of not. And the car is unpredictable.
No one knows why there’s no gas. They don’t Google like we do. (Say: Goo-glee) I read about smugglers who had been caught at the border and so now there are Mexican Customs double checking for import tax paperwork and that’s slowing down land crossings. After a week, Hermosillo got gas and Caborca got gas but this little vortex that exists in purgatory? Nada. Why?
Falta muchas cosas, like Carolina said. (We’re missing a lot of stuff) but industrious types have filled up those big plastic pressure washing things and hauled gas back to town and are selling it at 50pesos/liter (double the normal price and about $8.75/gallon) and out of someone’s home. Enterprising. The complaints on WhatsApp community page are that it’s too expensive! That 8 hour round trip to resell twice smuggled gas? 50 pesos a liter is a bargain. Take it or leave it.
Thankfully most drive small motorcycles and the boats for fishing, of course. Things grind to a halt pretty fast in a place like this, but we sorta didn’t have much before so no one seems to care.
Speaking of gas, Mexico gets a lot of gas from the US as PEMEX can’t keep up. 1.2 million barrels a day from the US. Who knew? Also, it turns out they’ve been smuggling crude oil from PEMEX and hauling it up to Texas and just broke up a big ring run by some silver haired American pompadoured fellow right out of a Walton Goggins screen test. Can’t wait to see the series. This guy and his wife and their sons, named Maxwell Sterling and Zachary Golden were indicted in their $9million home in Utah. While everyone’s looking for sex and fentanyl traffickers they’re running $300mill in crude with the cartels. Name one thing they aren’t involved in. I’ll wait.
Muchas cosas.
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If you got this far, click a like! If you’d like more info on the dog rescue I run in this dust bowl little town based solely on donations from kind folks and my own stupidity check out linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue SHARE this please, I’ve been on a shoestring since 2021 and I’d love for more people to read about the dogs and this unplanned Mission from Dog. Thanks. Instagram updates daily @ lolasdogrescue
If this was a time before AI and social media and clickbait headlines and stupid little screens sucking our brains out, I'd beg you to send this off to a publisher. Unfortunately, it's 2025.
Reading good writing makes us better writers. So, thanks for that. I owe you. Your next unknowable styrofoam tray of food-like stuff is on me.
A day in he life. Right?