Book II: 14-16 Amador Green

2008-02-08T02:12:00.000-08:00

There is something about all this hatred of John McCain from the reactionary, Attila the DittoHead wing of the Republican Party that can remind one of nothing other than the kind of extreme venom that came from the Pro-Abortion Left over the desire of a Republican governor to save the life of Terry Schiavo. What makes both controversies identical in tone and vehemence of passion is that the disagreement between the two factions is about passion, about something subjective and personal for which reason no speech of a reasonable, rational, coldly objective character can be expressed on the subject.

An article from the Weekly Standard quoted at the blog, "Atlas Shrugs" has this to say concerning the scuttlebutt going 'round as of today at the CPAC conference: "There's at least one McCain opponent here at Blogger's Corner who confessed that the speech didn't matter; he just hates McCain." Atlas Shrugs

Nothing McCain has to say can make a difference. It's passion over reason. Why?

What manner of thing could engender an emotion no less than pure hatred between people on the same side of the political spectrum--would it be a candidate's position on immigration, on pork, fiscal responsibility, campaign finance regulation, the war in Iraq? No. People can get tolerably exercised on such issues and still manage to disagree reasonably without hating the other fellow for his position. And this is because on such issues as these, reason, matters of law and politics are what the disagreement is about so that hatred does not have to arise as the only argument.

But what about McCain's position on water-boarding and torture? What if you are the sort of Republican (I won't say 'conservative') who would not be moved to condemn water-boarding as torture, or who on the other hand will concede that torture is precisely what it is and yet be in favor of it nonetheless?

What you have at loggerheads here is two completely different kinds of people who are in opposition over an issue not of politics but of ethics, morality. When John McCain expresses the view that such practices are reprehensible, inhumane and characterizes them as the tactics of totalitarian thugs of fascists and communists, this is hardly going to endear him to the sort of fellow Republicans whose 'conservatism' is thus being brought into question, or what's more, being identified as nothing less than reaction and no proper conservatism at all. If you don't agree with McCain on this controversy about torture--YOU are a reactionary and there are no two ways about it.

You are apt to hate a man for that.

2001-08-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

Preceding Chapters . . .
Installments 1-13
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Installment 14
--California Guys

Ceiling fans whirred over the lobby. Tall windows admitted a wan, worn out, wasted quality of light. The regime of darkness that dwelt within could not be dispelled. It was an ever-present pathos, this impotency of daylight to send shadows laughing into ecstatic non-existence among the deep vaulted spaces. The windows rose from floor to ceiling, they were many, extending entirely the length of two adjacent street facing walls but the light just didn't get in, it looked listless, as if only peering inward at the windows, it stayed out like a vagrant or a fugitive weakened by fatigue in flight, having been defeated even before it ever got there to languish like a beggar in its plight at the windows of Hotel Anaconda; just so it lay without, in the street depleted by a futility, having come from a lusty, flagrant, furtive, alas frustrated thrust toward penetration of a virginal vastness, an immense darkness that steamed in fertile fragrance out there beneath a high flung garment of emerald: ever whirling, the blades overhead kept turning, creaking, chattering with a beat ever merging into the pulse of the many-hearted jungle.

Massive blocks of sandstone were these walls, a cargo once hauled by barge up the Amazon during the hey-day of the Rubber Barons; richly coral-hued, blood-bought monoliths were these, which upon the piling of stone upon stone cost many a man his limb or very life as now they enclosed a reprise in ghostly echoes of dying wails and wavering squeals that haunted the formerly chandeliered space above the many belt-driven twirling blades as they vibrated against their mounts in a syncopated tempo so perfectly Latin that the *samba batucada* guitarist near a far window with leg draped over the arm of a leather chair as he strummed, was not wanting for accompaniment: the moans of kalimba were right there in the air around him, along with a shaking of maracas and caxixis, a thrumming of congas, all gratis of ghosts in the fans.

The furnishings overall were little changed since the day the once elegant manor had first opened doors to its outrageously affluent clientele except that now the settees and chairs were worn, sunken and marred, redolent of straw dust; a bitter-sweet rotting scent of tannin from antique Moroccan leather graced the air; there was hardly a square inch on the glossy surface of the heavy Brazilian rosewood coffee table that was not without cigar or cigarette burns, yet this seemed handsome in its own way, as it served to distinguish, to lend a patina to the overall decor that would not let the eye ignore that this plushly, albeit dustily draped, vaulted chamber had formerly served as public drawing room to that great and bloody, upwardly mobile class of rubber rich, self-made, man-enslaving mestizo Seringueros.

Antulio, a rebel grandson of that heritage, sat in a chair next Alex on one side of the table while Marty and one of the great grand daughters, Violetta, sat opposite on an ornately framed leather divan; another man, unknown to the boys sat in a straight-back chair at Antulio's end of the table, nearest the side toward the revolving doors at the hotel entrance which stood across the lobby from the desk. The stranger was clad in slacks of coral seersucker, a lavender short-sleeved shirt and black Ecuadorian "Panama" hat, pleat-banded in a shade to match the slacks. He looked like easy money; he bore a thin, razor-trimmed mustache to further augment the angular, gaunt character of his face; he was smoking a Delicado Ovalado cigarette; he had been introduced merely as "Carlos", and he had said nothing since a mutter of "Buenos Dias."

The eyes of Antulio followed the progress of a bellhop making his way from butt to shoe-crushed butt, over the polished, colorful mosaic tiles of the floor as he deftly worked a long handled dust pan and small brush broom. When the man was safely 20 feet across the lobby, Antulio leaned a bit over the table to resume speaking in lowered tones:

"You don't understand, Alejandro, but only because you refuse to think the thought I am giving you, an idea of which your friend Martin is already convinced, following his long talks with this, his very special new friend Violetta." Vaguely smiling, and having cast an eye between the two, he sat back; he looked at the tip of his cigar, then to Alex. "Perhaps it is for your friend to succeed where we have failed?"

Violetta nudged Marty. "Go ahead, Martin."

Marty looked at Alex some moments. "Okay, Toker, the thing is that this Brenson chick is totally, like, between Lake Titicaca and a cold place, and so . . . no, wait a minute. Let's see . . . " He looked to Violetta for support.

Antulio shot her a glance, and nodded.

She rolled her eyes. She sighed. "Alejandro, try to envision a very simple thing. It is not for an act of your highly esteemed non-violent resistance that this woman is where she is, and no matter what her involvement with us has been, knowing or unknowing, or how free of violence her own acts were; it makes no difference because nothing but violence has become her fate or her only possible salvation; she is now locked in a place to which only violence holds the key, a hell on earth set aside for the most militant of all revolutionaries--our dying compatriots!" Like a man having taken a hard spit toward dust, she paused, virtually wiping her chin as she waited for her words to find some effect with Alex. "You see, people such as Antulio . . . " she shot her eyes to him and then toward the stranger, ". . . Carlos and I . . . " she leaned further forward to lower her tones, ". . . we are willing to use any means necessary to achieve our ends, whether those are for revolution . . . " her glance shot to Carlos, ". . . or whatever else."

Antulio grinned a little. "Even if it is true that this Gringa was so naive as not to fully realize what we, her distant associates were . . . shall we say, 'busy with' around here and in Peru--let us take her at her word, and say it is true, that she had no idea: it doesn't matter, because her conviction is for collaboration with so-called 'violent terrorists'." He shrugged, blew some smoke upward toward the fan.

Violetta fell back to the soft leather. Alex stared at her. "Okay, let me see if I follow you guys."

Violetta snorted. "Guys?" She looked around. "Am I the 'guys'?"

"Oh, no! Uh, that's just, well . . . " he looked to his pal.

Marty grinned. "Yeah, it's a California thing; anybody can be a 'guy', or whatever, in California."

Carlos shared a sardonic glance with Antulio who smiled. "I think we have heard this about California." Now, all were laughing except Alex and Marty.

Alex looked across the table. "What did we say?"

"Please!" Antulio raised a hand. "You were going to describe your understanding of this thing."

Alex nodded. "It's karma, man; karma is what you're talking about. Yeah, I'm hip now."

"Is this some California word I have never heard?" Carlos looked to Antulio.

"Sanskrit," said Violetta. "It's the right word. It can mean that one is prisoner of one's own actions, even when the author of those actions is blissfully ignorant of any negative effects. The karma will take hold, nevertheless."

"Good one," said Alex.

"Cause and effect." She paused, she glanced at Carlos. He nodded. She turned back to Alex. "So, whether she knew anything about it, or not, that's no excuse because one is meant to suffer for one's own ignorance, and ignorance is in any case the cause of all suffering in the first place, is this not the teaching?"

Alex smiled. "Right on. You got it. "

"Ah. So this is what you call 'karma'," said Antulio savoring the word with a puff of cigar smoke. "I like it."

"Yeah," said Alex, "and it's like . . . okay, I can see where you're coming from about how it is violence that put her there, whether she knew she was responsible for it or not, and so that's the only thing that can get her out, because like . . . Okay, I can't really say it, but . . ."

Antulio raised a hand. "If you have a person who is locked up in iron chains, then there are no nice, soft little knots for your hands to untie to set her free."

Violetta arched a brow. "It would take a blow torch."

Marty looked straight at his friend.

Alex sighed. "Then there is nothing we can do for her."

"Not without that blow torch."

"But, Marty, that's not our thing."

"Sometimes, maybe karma changes a person's thing, Dude."

"Oh, man." Alex shook his head.

"Where there's a will, there's a way." Marty smiled. "That's what we always say, Toker. And you are the guy who is always going, like, okay, when it comes to the really important stuff, nothing is impossible unless we refuse to look for the way."

Violetta cocked her head to the side, looking at Alex. "Are you going to refuse that way, against your best principles?"

"But non-violence is our best principle." He looked at Marty. "Or, always has been, before now."

Antulio blew a thin stream of smoke toward that 'best principle' where it still hung in the air over Alex. "It does not contradict your basic commitment to non-violence to make an exception where no other course, due to the violent inception of circumstances, is an option. Will your commitment to non-violence be the cause of not heeding a call to your compassion?"

Violetta looked directly at Alex. "Had you been old enough when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, would you have put your ideals in a drawer and answered your call to duty?"

Alex nodded. "Well . . . see, my non-violence, as my old man taught it to me, is just like, you never take the first punch, but when the other guy does, you push him away. You get hold of him, you wrestle him down, you stop him."

"Just as we saw you do out there?" Antulio raised a brow as he motioned toward the outdoor cantina."

Alex shrugged. "Like my old man said, in his book, okay and not necessarily anybody else's, all right, non-violence is an art of self-defense, and a commitment where you are never the aggressor but only the defender of yourself and others who are victims of some damn fool's violence. That is a person's duty as a human being."

"Duty calls." said Violetta. "This woman against whom this violence has come is your Gringa sister in a big jam, but whose fate is being ignored by your government. Your duty calls when they do not do theirs."

Alex said nothing. He stood. "I'm gonna think about all this, talk it over with Marty here, and I'll have an answer for you tomorrow."

Marty blinked. Violetta's hand was in his as he raised it. "But tomorrow is when you are flying out with Sydney."

"Tonight then."

"Out on the verandah at nine o'clock?" Antulio looked at him.

"That's cool. So, Marty?"

"Yeah, dude."

"Let's have us a walk down by the river, talk this over."

"Oh no," Violetta pulled his hand to her bare thigh. "No talks with Martin today, he has plans for the afternoon."

Marty shrugged, with a smile. "I guess it's up to you to make up your own mind, Dude."

"Well, shitfeathers!" His eyes widened. "Uh . . . " He opened his arms in futility, and then dropping them, he bit back his rage against this so sudden commandeering of all his best buddy's attentions. "Okay. I got some work to do for Sydney. Later." The others watched him turn and walk away, his footfall echoing as he approached the revolving doors at the far end of the lobby.
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2001-08-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

Installment #15
--Skipping Stones

Just as Alex was going out the revolving door, Sidney was coming in, but Alex didn't notice him and as he came out the door, he turned to head down the street. The door kept turning and out again came Sidney. "Alex! Wait!" Alex looked around and stopped. Sidney came up before him removing his wide-brimmed straw hat. "Where are you going?" He pulled a hanky to wipe his brow. "You were supposed to meet me in the lobby."

"Right." Alex looked furtively around. "But everything's all screwed up in there now. I was coming to find you."

"Marty?"

"Yeah. He's really stuck on that chick, and she won't cut him loose even for a minute. There's no talking to him."

Sydney donned his hat; he wiped the mist of persperation from his glasses; pocketing the hanky, he put them on. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know; need time to think."

"Talking is just as good. I'm here."

Alex looked at the man. "Didn't you have some plant drying or something you wanted us to do? I mean, Marty's out of it now, but . . . "

"It'll keep for an hour or two."

Sydney's Land Rover was parked under shade of tall trees in a deserted boat landing a few miles from town at the river's edge, and the two stood where the brown water lapped the sandy shore as they looked out over the broad sweep of that Amazon. Alex had filled Sydney in, as they drove, on all the details of the dilemma that had been discussed in the lobby of the hotel. Sydney's hands were pressed into his back pockets as his eyes searched the horizon of jungle and of thought. "It really comes down to that business about whether you'd sacrifice your ideals for an act of compassion, as they put it. Eh?"

Alex was silent and then after a little he said, "That's a real sonofabitch, ain't it?"

"Oh, not really."

"Why not?"

He turned to Alex. "First, I don't want you to think that it's my own interest coming in to bias my view."

"Okay."

Sydney nodded. His hand came to a buttoned khaki shirt pocket. "The thing about putting your ideals in a drawer until the war is over makes sense when it truly is a case of duty in view of an international emergency, when it makes all the difference as to who will be running the world, whether Hitler or the rest of us." He pulled a pipe from beneath the flap of his pocket. "Now whether that has to do with 'compassion' or not is another thing." From his other pocket he removed a pouch.

"Well, all that is pretty complicated for me."

Sidney dug the bowl of his pipe in the open foil pouch. "It's complicated for anyone, but maybe we can simplify it: do you feel a personal duty toward Marissa Brenson?"

"Well, like, 'duty'? I don't know. I feel more like it's really a drag, what that chick is having to face and all."

Sydney nodded as he tamped the tobacco down. "Of course, other people are facing the same thing, in many other countries around the world, even in your own, in China, everywhere. Is it your duty to rescue them all?"

"Well, no, but I guess you do what you can."

Sydney cupped a hand over his flame, as he puffed; he clapped the lighter shut. "Doing what you can, can come in many forms, but consider this: why should Marissa Brenson be singled out in your favor for rescue?"

Alex shrugged. "Like they say, she's a fellow Gringo and all, a homegirl, a sister, man."

"That may seem like a laudable reason, very patriotic, but what does it have to do with compassion; real compassion?"

"Not sure what you mean."

"Someone might say that true compassion knows no connections of nation or family, and that for you to single out this American girl for your interest is not based on compassion but upon something more like possession. You call her your homegirl, your sister, 'your' this, 'your' that, and someone else might say you only care for her because she is yours, but what about all these people that are mine, and all the others that belong to neither of us? So why do you favor one person over others, simply because of a shared flag or piece of land?"

"That's not easy for me to dig." Alex stood up and threw the flat stone he'd picked up out over the water.

Sydney shifted his pipe to his other hand. "I want you to think about what a true compassion could do for Marissa Brenson and all the other people in her shoes out there in this world ruled by cruel closet fascists."

"Yeah?"

"Any ideas?"

"Are you kiddin'?"

"All right, set that aside for a moment. Have you stopped to think that maybe if someone is calling upon you to do something that runs contrary to your most sacred principles, that just maybe that should be a big sign that is saying to you, 'Stop'?"

"Okay. That I have thought about."

"Fine. Now once you have heeded that warning, and you have stopped, then you have taken an opportunity to think, to come back to the question of what truly is within your power of compassion to do."

"Okay."

"Some people might go back to California and join an organization that would already be active in addressing these issues, as you would try to work for all people who are under the hammer of such cruel aggression against humanity."

"Well, I'm already a member of Greenspeak."

"Good. Maybe you could find an environmental angle in her favor. I'm sure that she was justifying her own activism according to the same rhetoric as Antulio and his organization. They are against the loggers and the oilmen and the gold miners. They attack them, kidnap them, bomb their mines and installations."

"They do?"

"Of course. These are the people Marissa Brenson was living with in that house she rented for them."

"Well, I don't know about all that kind of stuff. Me 'n' Marty might be hip to busting a few chains, nailing some trees here and there but bombs and guns and kidnapping? We ain't into that."

"That is why Marissa Brenson is where she is. She chose those people for her comrades."

"Still, you gotta feel sorry for her."

"Sure you do, but will you add your own ignorance to hers and take a chance on winding up in the same place where you can do nothing for her, for yourself or anyone else?"

"Whew! Man, you got a point there, Sydney."

"Perhaps the brunt of your compassion, for right now, should be directed toward Marty before it's too late for your best friend in the world."

Alex nodded his head. "Hell yes. Yeah, even if it's just some kind of jive possessive need to keep a buddy and not the true compassion and all, you can damn well know that I care about my friend."

"Of course you do. And yet, I think that in this case, the fact that Marty is your friend is only as the first biologist in the world, Aristotle would say, an 'accidental' circumstance, whereas the essential matter is that he is a human being who is about to go off on the wrong path and so your compassion would be there to try and save anyone from doing that."

"Okay."

"So sometimes when it comes to doing the right thing in this world, and I mean for the good of the world, it means looking so close to home as you can, because then you are not blindly seeking for avenues of endeavor, you are finding them in the people you know who you really can help."

"All right."

"And when you have done that you have strengthened your own base of operations. You have kept your friend who is your compadre, your comrade in the good fight, without whom you can do nothing, you see? Without that person next to you, you can do nothing because that person next to you is next to the next person and so on all around the world."

"Gotcha!"

"Good." Sydney walked over to a tree and knocked the bowl of his pipe against it. He crushed the ash into the dirt, burying that with the toe of his boot. "Let's go save Marty."

"Right on!" Alex jumped into the passenger seat of the Land Rover. Sydney started it up and made a big U-turn in the soft red silt, plowing it up into clouds as the vehicle sped back down the road toward Leticia.
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2001-08-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

Installment #16
--The Scar and the Mustache

Their plates were empty before them, and a bottle of red Argentine wine was in the hand of Sydney as he leaned forward to pour. The candle ensconced in frosted glass with images of the Virgin of Guadalupe threw a circle of light on the side of the man's face.

Alex tilted his head. "What's that scar on your cheek from, Sydney?"

After serving himself, Sydney set the bottle down. Momentarily letting a hand stray to his cheek, he smiled. An abrupt "hm!" of amusement came as he took a moment to savor the bouquet of his wine. He looked over the crystal, the crimson surface. "It happened when I was a boy, eight years old." He pursed his lips after a sip. "I was with my father at a cabaña hotel on the beach in Rio, and . . . "

"So, that was like, what? In the fifties?"

"Nineteen forty."

"Nah! You can't be that old?"

Sydney laughed.

"Well, I don't mean . . . "

"I know."

"Man. It's just like, your hair is still black and you just don't look more 'n about ten years older than me."

"It's this healthy life of a biologist, plenty of exercise, medicinal plants, good air and sunshine . . ."

"I guess."

"Did I tell you my father was an expatriate American?"

"No. Huh-uh."

"My Portuguese blood is from Mother."

"So, your dad was a Gringo like me. No wonder your English is so good."

Sydney shrugged, looked at the wine in his glass. "There were a lot of Germans staying in Rio at that time, men and women . . . "

"What, like, Nazis?"

"Maybe. If they weren't, they might as well have been so far as their attitudes went. Some, I imagine were party members."

"Uniforms?"

"No. But, in a sense yes. They swaggered, clicked their heels, greeted one another with 'Heil Hitler', acted like they ruled the world; all of them arrogant. Oh, they bullied everyone. You didn't need to speak any German to catch the drift of their racism as they showed their conceit to anyone of a darker skin serving them. Believe me, they were hated."

"I guess."

"Well, one night we were down for dinner in an open cafe like this, that looked out over the sea, and because my mother is of Mestizo blood, she is of course much darker than father. These Germans were sitting at a table near us and it was clear from the way they were looking over at us that we were the subject of a lot of very ill-mannered talk."

"Bastards."

"Finally, one of the men rose up from that table and came over to ours. My father was a peaceful man but he was not ignoring what these people were on about. He'd been sitting there just staring back at them with his fist closing and opening on the table. I can tell you that I would not want anyone to be looking at me, the way my father had been looking at them."

"Yeah."

"Well, the man apparently wanted to know what Father was looking at, the usual sort of bullying talk of that sort anywhere on earth."

"Right. The old stupid 'what are you looking at' jazz."

"My father told the man that he would have to speak English, and so the German did. He said, 'Oh, I see that you are Jewish? Well, I don't speak Yiddish.'"

"What?"

Sydney shrugged. "That's the way they were. Roosevelt was Dutch but those Germans insisted that his was a Jewish name. Any American under Roosevelt was Jewish by virtue of being subject to Jewish power and influence as they saw it." Sydney offered some more wine. Alex pushed his glass over, smiled, nodded his appreciation. "So, Father who is of French blood, for some reason decided to tell the German that yes, he was Jewish."

Alex laughed. "Oh, man."

"Then the German said that he should come over to Germany with his nice Indian wife and little Jewish boy, and they would know how to take care of us over there."

"Hoo boy."

Sydney shook his head. "As I say, my father was a peaceable man, but that French blood in us is hot. He looked down on me, to my mother, just sort of giving slow consideration to the depth of the insult, with its implied threat, and then very calmly he looked back up to the German standing there, and he said, 'If I was to take you up on that invitation mein Herr, the first thing I would do, is I would take a bottle like this . . . '" Sydney illustrated by taking the bottle up off the table. "'. . . and I would jam it so far up your fool Fuhrer's ass, that look right here . . .'" Sydney pointed to the lip of the bottle, his finger moving over it. "'. . . you would see a funny little Charlie Chaplin mustache right there.'"

"Oh, shit!" Alex laughed. He looked at Sydney who was just shaking his head. "Good one! What happened then Sydney?"

"Nothing for a while. The German couldn't believe his ears."

"I guess not!"

"He just stared at Father for a long time. The other Germans almost seemed frightened by it, either that or they hadn't heard or understood. They didn't leave their table. All the while, this German just stood there with his face reddening."

"Damn."

"Then, it came like lightening. The German jerked the bottle out of Father's hand and smashed it on the edge of that wrought iron table, and . . . "

"Oh no."

Sydney nodded. "He cut me on the cheek with it. I didn't even have time to see it coming. 'That's what your little Yid brat would have waiting for him in the Third Reich!'"

"Oh, Jesus."

"My mother came around and grabbed me. Father kicked over the table to put that between himself and the German. But nobody in that hotel, especially the waiters liked those Germans, so . . ."

"What happened?"

"Four or five of the waiters and bus boys came to Father's side and soon the manager came out with a pistol to hold that fool until the police arrived."

"Boy." Alex rested his eyes on Sydney's face as he shook his head. "That scar must really give you something to think about, when you're shaving or whatever."

"Yes, indeed, it's never not there, you know, and I'm glad."

"Really!"

"Oh yes. But, of course, you would have had to see the look on that Nazi's face to know why." Sydney's eyes swept to the ceiling as he thought of it. "The idiot really thought that he was hearing this from a Jew."

"Right."

"It took quite a while for it to register. Here was the unthinkable. A Jew is supposed to be docile, a Jew will always accept his punishment. But here was a Jew who was not subject to that regime of power; a Jew who could spit in the eye of it."

"Yeah! But, then he wasn't a Jew."

"Yes, he was."

"Oh, a French Jew?"

"No. I mean that anybody can be a Jew. It's not a race, unless you want to consider the Semitic tribes, including both Jews and Arabs a race, but we don't. We say they are Caucasians, like us. Any North or South American Jew could have done the same thing, no different than my father or the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto; the Jews in the German Underground"

"Guess you're right, Sydney."

"I can't tell you how long he stood there trying to put his mental apparatus back in order."

"Okay!"

"Well, in fact he couldn't do it. His embarrassment was . . . "

Alex clenched and shook a fist. "Yes!"

"Oh, his face was so red. I tell you that had he been ten years older the man would have died from a heart attack. His mind could not cope He went insane, and struck at the closest thing to him, me." He flicked a finger over the scar, which faint as it was, and regular in it's shape, was just a short curved line that followed the contour of the cheek in a smooth arc, a handsome characteristic in its own way. "I just love to think that because of this scar, one brainwashed social robot, one arrogant, bullying dupe went to jail and got beaten within an inch of his life for it."

"Beat up, eh?"

"Indeed. And that was for the crime of not having a mind of his own."

Alex laughed. "Yes, yes."

"Oh, the word of what had happened went to jail with him. The waiters told those Mestizo policemen about the insults to themselves, to my mother . . . "

"Look out."

"That man carries many more scars than I to remind him of how he had no mind during his Nazi days."

"Hey homeboy!" Alex looked to his left to see Marty coming up, arm in arm with Violetta, Antulio and Carlos just behind.
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Following Chapters . . .
Installments 17-20
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