Charles Portis - Gringos
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- Publisher:Overlook Press
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- Year:2000
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Following the enormous success of the reissues of Charles Portiss first three novels--The Dog of the South, Norwood, and Masters of Atlantis--comes the reissue of a fourth truly brilliant, wonderfully bizarre novel by one of our great American novelists.Jimmy Burns is an expatriate American living in Mexico who has an uncommonly astute eye for the absurd little details that comprise your average American. For a time, Jimmy spent his days unearthing pre-Colombian artifacts. Now he makes a living doing small trucking jobs and helping out with the occasional missing person situation--whatever it takes to remain the very picture of an American idler in Mexico, right down to the grass-green golfing trousers. But when Jimmys laid-back lifestyle is seriously imposed upon by a ninety-pound stalker called Louise, a sudden wave of hippies (led by a murderous ex-con guru) in search of psychic happenings, and a group of archaeologists who are unearthing (illegally) Mayan tombs, his simple South-of-the-Border existence faces a clear and present danger.
Charles Portis: author's other books
Who wrote Gringos? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Charles Reinhart
Charles Philip Fox
Flandrau Charles Macomb
Tom Hauser
Charles Portis
John L. Sinclair
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Table of Contents
BOOKS BY CHARLES PORTIS
Norwood
True Grit
The Dog of the South
Masters of Atlantis
True Grit
The Dog of the South
Masters of Atlantis
CHRISTMAS AGAIN in Yucatn. Another year gone and I was still scratching around on this limestone peninsula. I woke at eight, late for me, wondering where I might find something to eat. Once again there had been no scramble among the hostesses of Mrida to see who could get me for Christmas dinner. Would the Astro Caf be open? The Cocina Econmica? The Express? I couldnt remember from one holiday to the next about these things. A wasp, I saw, was building a nest under my window sill. It was a gray blossom on a stem. Go off for a few days and nature starts creeping back into your little clearing.
I bathed and dressed and went downstairs to the lobby. Frau Kobold hadnt opened her door yet. She had a room on the ground floor and by this time she was usually sitting in her doorway. She parked there in her high-back wickerwork wheelchair and read paperback mysteries and watched the comings and goings. Fausto himself was at the desk. Beatriz, poor girl, finally had a day off. Fausto saw me but kept his head down, pretending to be absorbed in some billing calculation.
Well, Fausto, Im back. Feliz Navidad.
... das, he muttered. He was annoyed with me because I had paid him two months rent some weeks back. Now he had spent the money, and I was staying free in his hotel, or so he viewed it. He disliked these anticipo payments. Much better that I should get behind in the rent, like everybody else, and be beholden to him. I had arrived in the night, too late to check my mail, and he handed me a letter and a long note, in a flash of fingernails. Not otherwise odd in appearance, Fausto made a show of his high-gloss nails. They were painted with clear lacquer, to indicate, I think, that he was of that class of men who did not have to grub in the earth with their hands.
Gracias.
Joor welcome.
The letter was from my unknown enemy who signed himself Ah Kin this time. He also called himself Mr. Rose and Alvarado. Or was it a woman? The letter was postmarked here in Mrida, and it read, without date or salutation, Well, Mr. Jimmy Burns, I saw your foolish red face in the market again today. Why dont you go back where you belong and stay there? Ah Kin (He of the Sun) used a Spanish typewriter, with all the tildes and accent marks, but I had the feeling he was a gringo. The note was a long telephone message, taken down by Beatriz. A hauling job in Chiapas.
I went outside and smoked a cigarette, looking this way and that, the very picture of an American idler in Mexico, right down to the grass-green golfing trousers. They had looked all right on the old man from Dallas but they made me feel like a clown. They were hot and sticky, too, made of some petroleum-based fiber, with hardly any cotton content. The town was quiet, no street cries, very little traffic. Christmas is subdued in Mrida. Easter is the big festival. Holy Week, when all the fasting and penitence is coming to an end, I could sense nothing in the air. Art and Mike had told me that something was stirring. What? Just somethingcoming. They couldnt say what. We would see. It was old President Daz who said that nothing ever happens in Mexico until it happens. Things rock along from day to day, and then all at once you are caught up in a rush of unforeseen events.
The street frontage of the Posada Fausto was not very wide. There was a single doorway at sidewalk level, and beside it a small display window, like a jewelers window, backed by a velvet curtain. A blue placard behind the glass read SE VENDE. Strangers paused to look but found nothing on display other than dead beetles. What was for sale? The nearsighted drew closer. Finally they realized it was the hotel itself that was being offered. Faustos hope was that one day some strolling investor or whimsical rich man would stop dead in his tracks there and throw up his hands and cry out, Just the thing! A narrow hotel on Calle 55! Between El Globo Shoe Repairs and a dark little bodega! The sign had been there for years, along with the same bugs.
My truck was parked across the street in an enclosed lot. The watchman, old Paco, was asleep in his sentry box, and the wooden gates were secured in exaggerated fashion, like some Houdini contraption, with great looping chains and huge flat padlocks shaped like hearts, and long-loop bicycle locks. It was all a bluff, and if you knew where to look there was a snap link that undid the whole business. There it was in the corner, my white Chevrolet with a camper shell. The old truck was sagging a bit, getting a bit nose-heavy with age. A film of red dust had settled over it. The engine fired up first shot.
I had decided to drive over to one of the tourist hotels on the Paseo Montejo. Their dining rooms would be open. A big gringo breakfast there would be expensive but would hold me for the rest of the day, what with a few supplementary rolls stuffed in my pockets. Then I would go out to the zoo for a few minutes and look over the fine new jaguar.
Paco jumped up in his box and waved me on through, as though he had been on top of things all along. As I was going around the zcalo, the central plaza, a girl flagged me down and jumped in beside me without invitation. It was Louise Kurle, the ninety-pound woman, in her tennis cap with the long visor, with her mesh bag and her tape recorder.
She said, Say, where have you been anyway?
Dallas.
Ive been looking for you. I need a ride. Can you take me out to Emmetts place? You need some white shoes and a white belt to go with those pants.
Wheres your car? Wheres your strange husband?
Hes out of town.
Where?
Im not supposed to say.
Ah.
You know how Rudy is.
I do, yes.
But first I want to go to church. Come and go with me.
All right.
Look what Ive got.
She had a package of Fud bacon, a good brand, already limp from the heat, and a small bottle of imitation maple flavoring. She and Emmett were to have a bacon and pancake feed. I was invited.
She wanted to go to the cathedral, but I thought that was too grand for us and I drove instead to a lesser church beside a small park. Everyone was moving inside at that Indio quickstep, the men doffing their straw hats and the women pulling up their rebozos over their heads. Louise and I composed ourselves for public worship and entered the dark vault. Not being a Roman Catholic, I took up the position of respectful observer, at the very back, from which point I could just make out flickering candles and the movement of a young priest in white. I sat alone in a pew and recited the Lords Prayer, the King James version from Matthew, asking forgiveness of debts instead of trespasses. I carried on my business largely in Spanish but I still prayed in English. Louise had to be in the thick of things. She wasnt a catlica either but she went all the way up front to get in on the ceremony and the wafers. I could see her white cap bobbing up and down, all bill. What was she doing now? Recording people at prayer?
Children stopped to stare at my green trousers, better suited for the links. Off to my left in an alcove there was a gray marble figure, a barefooted man, some medieval figure in short belted coat and flat Columbus hat, shedding two marble tears. He was about three-quarters life size, standing on a pedestal, the whole thing fenced off with a low wooden rail. There was a gate and a contribution box, with people standing in line, each waiting his turn to approach the statue and give thanks or ask for something. Surely that was a graven image. It always took me by surprise to find these secondary activities going on during a mass. I knew the woman at the end of the line. Lucia something. She worked at a juice bar, cashier now, up from squeezer. Then I saw Doc Flandin holding the marble feet. He had a fierce grip on them with both hands and he appeared to be demanding something, not begging, though its hard to tell with that kind of anguish. I hadnt seen him since his wife died.
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