He insists on paying for breakfast and I let him. Then he takes his water bottle and walks off to loll in the sand and sweat out the rest of the hangover. Pedro picks up my plate and wipes the bar.
– He was asking about you.
– What?
– Before you got here.
– What?
– How long have you lived here. Where do you come from. Do you work.
Little shit bastard.
– So?
– So?
– So what did you say?
He looks at me and snorts through his nose.
– Cabron. I kept my mouth shut.
– Sorry, sorry, man.
– I don’t talk about you with no pinche tourist.
– Mea culpa, Pedro, it’s cool, I know you wouldn’t say anything.
I stick out my hand and he takes it.
– Si, si, but you have to watch that shit. I never talk about you.
– Claro.
Shaking his head, he starts scraping the grill. He never scrapes the grill. I light a smoke. The only way I can make up for insulting him will be to stay up late into the night while he gets drunk and we sing songs together and repledge our friendship. No relationship, no number of psycho girlfriends, can prepare you for how easy it is to hurt the feelings of a Mexican man.
I’m worrying about how to make it up to him, along with the prospect of playing “Am I really a Russian gangster?” with Mickey on a three-hundred-mile drive, when the boat pops up on the horizon and Leo drives it right up on the beach so it will be easier to lift out the Cuban with the huge machete gash in his thigh.
IT’S NOT like Mexican immigration has to fight a pitched battle to keep illegals from flooding the country, but what Leo and Rolf are up to is against the law and it would be best to keep a low profile. Mickey is dozing on the sand down by his tent; other than that, no one is on the beach yet. Pedro drove the dune buggy home last night and brought it back this morning, but it’s a rocky mile to his place and the Cuban has been bounced around plenty in the boat.
We have him on the bar. The other Cuban is holding tight to the tourniquet they made out of a belt and put at the top of his friend’s thigh. The Cuban’s foot is ice cold from lack of circulation. Fuck, his whole body is cold and clammy from shock.
– My place.
Pedro stays to get the bar ready for business, and Rolf takes care of the boat while I help Leo and the other Cuban carry the injured guy to my bungalow. Leo was one of the guys that I hired to build the place, but he hasn’t been inside since. No one but Pedro has been inside.
Bud runs for cover when we bang through the door.
– The table.
We set him on the table.
– Leo, there’s a first aid kit under the bed.
He goes for it. The other Cuban is still clutching the tourniquet, staring at his friend’s face. I take hold of his fingers and pry them free. He looks at me. I nod my head.
– Tranquilo, tranquilo.
His eyes are bugging from his head.
– Toallas.
He shakes his head.
– Toallas. Bano.
I tilt my head toward the bathroom.
– Ahi. Muchas toallas. Si?
– Toallas, si.
He goes to the bathroom for the towels. Leo puts the big, green first aid kit on the table.
– How long you been in Mexico?
– Awhile.
– Your Spanish sucks.
– Fuck off, Leo. Hold this.
He takes the tourniquet from me while I open the kit, find some latex gloves and slip them on.
– OK.
I take the tourniquet back and start to loosen it.
– You might want to put on a pair of these. Last time I checked, AIDS was epidemic in the Caribbean.
– Puta madre.
He puts on the gloves. The other Cuban comes back with a stack of towels. I’m prying my fingers under the tourniquet where it’s dug into the guy’s skin. I pull it loose. Blood gushes onto my table. It’s not spraying, so the artery’s not severed. Then again, I’m working with a few classes I took about fifteen years ago for an EMT certificate I never got so what do I know? I cram a couple towels against the wound, take the other Cuban’s hand, put it on the towels, and press down. He gets the idea and holds the towels in place. I pull off my blood-slicked gloves, roll on a clean pair. Leo is just standing there.
– Massage the guy’s foot.
– Say what?
– Massage his foot.
– Por fucking que?
– I don’t know, maybe to get the circulation going so it doesn’t die and have to be cut off.
He starts a stream of curses under his breath and rubs the foot. I find the suture set. With my free hand I get the bottle of antiseptic, bite the cap off, pour some on the needle, then hold the bottle over the wound. The other Cuban guy pulls the towel away and I pour antiseptic into the wound. The guy on the table moans a little and his leg jerks. I empty about half the bottle, then use one of the towels to wipe some of the blood away. The gash is long, shallow at the top, cutting deeper as it gets closer to the knee. The blood is just oozing now; that first flood, a reservoir that had been held back by the tourniquet.
– OK, Leo, kind of hold the flesh together here.
His curses pick up in volume, but he puts his fingers on either side of the wound and pinches the edges together. Is this right? There are probably capillaries and shit in there that need to be put back together. Should I leave the wound open for a real doctor?
– So are you going to sew this shit up or what, man?
I sew the shit up.
– Who did it?
– He did.
Leo has his head inclined toward the other Cuban, who is sitting next to the table now, looking pale and ill.
– Why?
– We got out there, man, and find these two cabrones in a leaky raft with a couple bottles of rum, a sack of coconuts, and a machete. Fucking peons are hacking the tops off the coconuts and pouring in the rum. Drunk like American kids on spring break.
– That satellite TV is gonna ruin you.
– What the fuck, where do you think I learn the English? Maybe you should have watched MTV Latin before you came down here. Learn how to speak the language, man.
– So what happened, they get in a fight?
– We pull alongside and culo there stands up with a coconut and the machete so he can make us a
