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I was lying on my back, my right hand was loose in a puddle of mud, and I was staring up at a wall
that held a bullfight poster. I saw the colors, and the word ARRUZA, and then read the sign very
carefully three times before I fainted again.
When I came up the second time, someone was going through my pockets. I didn't stop him. Not even
when he pulled my watch off my wrist. I went under again, and when I came back the third time I
was very cold, and shivering. I tried to get up, let my legs slide down the wall, where they rose
above my head lying in the dirt, and tried to gain purchase on the brick wall. It turned to rubber
and peanut butter.
I kept at it, and finally got to my feet.
The world was nowhere to be seen.
Then I realized both my eyes had swollen almost completely shut. I stumbled forward, my hands out
before me like a blind man, and came out of the alley into the street. It was noisy and full of
people. The lights hurt my eyes. I stared up, and caught a vista of the town, and it was an eye-
numbing horizon of neon. I groaned.
A pair of overweight Mexican girls swinging huge purses went by, and tittered to each other,
saying something gutty but soft in Spanish. I called them whores, putas!
I walked the streets for hours, seeing nothing, only feeling a pain far worse than the ache that
threatened to split my head open. I must have looked hideous, because I came around a corner
suddenly, and came face to face with a heavyset Mexican whose eyes opened wide in amazement. He
got a sick look and walked around me. I didn't turn to see if he was still watching.
My pockets were empty, of course. All I knew was that I had to have a drink. My mouth was sandy
and my stomach ached. Not entirely from the stomping I'd gotten. Oh, Jenny, oh, Fran!
I wandered into the Blue Fox, and there was a naked girl doing a nautch dance on the bar. Sailors
in civvies were trying to grab her crotch. She kept twisting away from them. Then someone
announced dinner was served and three broads came out, undressed, and lay down on the bar. Hors
d'oeuvres. Three sickies jumped off their bar stools and went to fall down on the goodies. A
bouncer tapped me on the shoulder and I left. I was sick.
I went into an alley and puked. Twice. When I was as empty as I was ever going to be, I tried to
straighten myself up. I brushed off my clothes, raked my hair back out of my face with a hand, and
went in search of a job.
There was a hustler looking for handbill boys at the Rancho Grande, a spieler for one nightclub
told me, and I went over there. Three dollars and fifty cents for two hours' work handing out
handbills, putting them under the windshield wipers of parked cars. I asked for a half dollar
advance and was handed a stack of handbills instead. I went off down the street like a trained
monkey, handing pieces of paper to people, pressing them into the hands of strangers. I was giving
of myself. It felt wonderful. I wanted to puke again, but that was ridiculous. I knew I was empty.
Finally, all the handbills were gone, and I went back to get paid. The man was gone, and the
people at the club didn't know where he could be found. I went looking for him. It took a long
time, but I found another handbill-giver, a kid with wide, dark eyes, and told him the man was
gone. He told me that was only because I was gringo. He grinned and told me where to find the man.
I went to the Bum-Bum and there he was, hiring more boys in the service of his cause. I approached
him and said pay me. He looked like he didn't want to do it, but I started to make sandpaper
noises and my hands became claws and l swear I'd have killed him right then if he'd refused. He'd
have gone to his grave with my teeth in his throat. I was more than a little mad.
He pulled out a wad and started to peel off three singles. I reached in and took a ten, and walked
away. He started to follow, and started to motion to another man, but I turned my bloody face to
stare at them, and he shrugged.
I took the ten and went drinking. I bought a bottle of tequila. It seemed only fitting to drink
the wine of the land. I finished the bottle almost by myself. The last dregs were taken by an old
Mexican woman sitting in a doorway. She had her legs tied under her so she looked crippled, and
her five-year-old son was selling pencils and switchblade knives just down the street while she
begged. At one point a well-built but slovenly fifteen-year-old girl came hipping by, and the old
woman told me in broken English that it was her pride, her daughter. "She make doce, twelf, doce
doe-lahr night," she beamed. They lived good. I shared some chili beans with her, and went away.
I was in another place, I think. It was a club. There was a fight and sirens and I ran away. Then
I was in the Mambo Rock, and someone was yelling FIRE FIRE FIRE and I turned to see the whole wall
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blazing. An electrical short, and the whole block was in flames. Twelve feet in the air the flames
ate the night sky, and I was helping a shopkeeper pull his bongos and wooden statues of Don
Quixote and bead-shirts and serapes out into the street, and then there was a Mexican soldier, a
member of the National Guard, a rurale, something... and he was spinning me around telling me to
go away. They'd called in the army and half the town was on fire, and I was pulling a woman out of
the flames, and her dress was on fire, and I gave her a feel as I beat out the flames with my bare
hands. And then they were taking me to the infirmary, and swabbing my hands with cool, moist
salve.
Then another place, and I was very drunk and sick and very tired. I walked up Avenida Constitución
and saw 287 HOTEL CORREO DEL NORTE and bought a pack of Delicados for seven cents in the booth on
the corner, and went back to the hotel.
My room was seventy-five cents for the night. The walls were plywood till they reached five feet,
then chicken-wire to the ceiling. I slept with my shoelaces knotted together, so my shoes wouldn't
get stolen. I'd have put them under the end-legs of the bed, but I was so tired I knew the bed
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