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All Right

"You ask me if I'm all right. Huh. Tough one. Good one, but a tough one. Am I supposed to be all right? What is all right? I don't know. But I guess you're tired of seeing my sour puss in here, night after night. Got no where else to go, though, so I guess you're stuck with me as long as I don't break the law, right? Hey, don't give me that look. I'm just kidding. I ain't going to cause any trouble. I'm never any trouble. Hell, that may be part of the problem. Too damn quiet by far. Seems to make people think that I'm cooking up something. Hell, if you ask me, people have placed way too much stock in that 'still waters run deep' horseshit. Some still waters are just still cause there ain't nothing going on under there. But I guess people don't want to accept that. Makes things far too simple. Hell, look what a hero they turned DiMaggio into just cause he kept his mouth shut and acted like a gentlemen. And he was a right scumbag too, by the looks of what's come out recently, with that new book and all. But hell, who in the hell am I to judge? We've all been scumbags from what I can tell, and some a lot scummier than others. Unfortunately I think I'd put myself in the category of the latter. But you don't want to hear about all that, do you? Naw. Or maybe you do? Is that why you asked me if I was all right after you already asked me how I was? Or am I just delving into semantics, or over-analysis of a situation, which I am prone to do...

"What? Oh, yeah, another cup, please. Sure. That's why I'm here, friend. Damn fine coffee. Even that's getting hard to find these days. A good cup of coffee for less that two dollars. Two dollars for coffee! There'll be hell to pay about that sort of shit, I tell you, if something ain't done about it soon. And when the revolution comes, I'll be the one wearing Wellingtons! Ha!

"What's that? Oh, Wellingtons are a sort of boot that farmers wear, you know—oh hell. Forget it. It's not even funny. Don't know why I said it. Must be I have a subconscious thing about blood maybe. That's what I was getting at, see. I figure when the revolution comes, there'll be so much blood in the streets a man would need Wellingtons, which is a sort of waterproof boot to avoid mussing up his regular shoes.

"What revolution? Jesus! The revolution. There ain't no other way to explain it. Hell, aren't they teaching you kids nothing these days at school? What revolution?! No wonder there ain't any revolution. Guess I'll go good and gray if I'm waiting around for the likes of you to be starting any revolution. Maybe that tells you why I don't talk too much when I'm in here! Awful hard getting a two-way conversation going if the subject ain't the Rangers' shitty defense or something. Anyway.

"Yeah, I did see the game last night. Awful. Bloody awful. That Richter...but now you're making me lose my train of thought. I was talking about the revolution, wasn't I? But even though things are going all sorts of dot-com and Starbucks crazy right before our eyes I don't think the people will get clued in until it's too late. And then it'll be—guess what? Too late! Ha! But to hell with revolution I suppose. And to hell with the blood. I guess I've come across far too much of that mess in my time. So that's why I come in here, Gino. To lap up some luscious coffee and listen to you and your chums drone on about hockey while the ESPN hums away in the corner. Quite soothing actually. But now you've gotten me started. I suppose you're sorry now, aren't you? Something in the way you asked me if I was all right got me. Just something about the way you said 'all right,' perhaps. No one's asked me if I was all right in a while. It's always, 'How are you?' or 'How's it going?' or 'How's things?' Or even better, 'How's tricks?' Though that is still far and away better than that other local and rather colorful expression, 'How's it hanging?' I never did hear that one till I moved here. But there's worse things to say to a person, I suppose. No, I don't suppose. There certainly are worse things to say, and do, to a person. We all know that, don't we? Yep.

"Ah, no, I'd rather not go into where I'm from. Doesn't really matter. A dingy town someplace where I no longer got no one so it doesn't really matter. Left that place right after I finished high school and have been all over since. And this here town ain't the best I've seen neither. Though it ain't the worst. Not the worst by far. I've been in worse places. Hell of a lot worse. Places so bad you felt like you were paying for your sins just by being there. Not that I'm a big believer in god and the religious idea of sin, but some situations make you wonder. That's for sure.

"Well, just makes you wonder, that's all. Maybe he's there and maybe he ain't. Seems foolish to me to get all worked up about it one way or the other. Plenty other tangible stuff that people should pay more mind to, if you ask me. Like frigging two-dollar cups of coffee. Highway fucking robbery, that is. The people who are charging such prices for the coffee ought to go and live a few months with the poor fuckers who are actually picking the stuff. Then they'll either bring the prices down, or try and make sure that some of that money goes to the right people. Oh, for Christ's sakes, who am I kidding? They'd do no such thing, and there's no point in me going on about it like some tired old half-red history professor or something. But it's just that I actually have spent some time down in them countries where they actually grow the coffee. And maybe that's what I've been getting at all this time. I guess.

"Hmm? Oh, just thinking, that's all. Remembering. Remembering and wondering. Memory can be a damn nuisance. Not that that's an original line of thinking, but hell, I can't think of nothing more to say about it. It's just a plain old nuisance to an old sod like me. Maybe that's why I don't drink anymore. I'd get a beer or two in me and all the shyte of all the years would come flowing up in me and I could almost hardly stand to be in my own skin. So you know what I would do? I'd drink ten more beers and that'd set me straight! Ha! Yeah, well. There's things all people have to wade through. All sorts of realizations and rationalizations and shattered ideals. And then how you adjust to it is what dictates who you are. And that's pretty much it, I think. That's the whole kit and caboodle, which is why I think it's so damn easy to live a life and not even notice it. Just kind of glide right on through and then you're sour and contorted with memories that you have no use for. They're just nasty old rusty pins jabbing you in the ass when all you want to do is get comfortable in your big ole Lazy-ee Boy for the big game. Oh, Christ. Whatever. Think I'm even losing myself now. Christ, Tuesdays are slow in here, aren't they? But I guess you don't need to hear that from me, do you? So where was I? Oh yeah, me and the coffee pickers. Me down in lovely Latin America with the poor oppressed coffee-picking folks. Though I suppose I shouldn't let the current rage for cynicism color my comments here and now on this subject. Wouldn't want to diminish what it was some of my friends down there went through. Would be a disservice to them and myself, I guess. Rightly so.

"Oh, I went down to Mexico back in 1972, I guess it was. I was a little foolish, I guess, and full of more than a little shit. But I had good intentions. We all have good intentions, though, don't we? The best of intentions. Anyway, I was twenty-five and had some notions of becoming a painter. Had no money and no sense. No nothing really, except some feeling that in Mexico I could find the something that I needed to become a grand painter. I was gonna be the next Diego Rivera, I suppose. A madman for the people, painting powerful and moving murals of 'the struggle.' That was about it in a nutshell. Except I didn't know how to paint, and like I said, I had no money. Didn't even have money for bread, never mind for paint supplies and such. Oh well. So it got off to a rocky enough start, I guess. I was working in a factory in some town I no longer even remember the name of. Making some sort of damn silly plastic toys. I didn't even deserve to get that though, seeing how there were plenty of Mexicans themselves that needed the work, but the manager wanted to improve his English, so every day during what was supposed to be my lunch hour I read and explained articles from American newspapers to him. But anyway, all that was a long time ago, and it was boring then and it's boring now. To make a long story short I spent about seven or eight months in Mexico before I ambled on down to Nicaragua.

"I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, but I still had the notion that that the farther away I was from home, the better off I'd be. And then I started to cultivate some sort of romantic feelings about the equator. There's no need to go into that either. But don't the idea of the equator give you some sort of feeling? Some sort of hope in the power of the rational? Nope? Come on! That's the dead center of the earth we're talking about, pal. Yeah, roll your eyes. Whatever. Let's just say I never made it the storied equator, so whether or not the healing powers I endowed it with are real or not, is still open to speculation. Not that you care.

"Naw, I never made it farther south than Nicaragua. That was as far down as I wanted to go, it turned out. Anyhow, I found myself in a town that was surrounded by coffee plantations. Juigalpa, it was called. And there I was. I sure as hell wanted to work on one of them coffee plantations. I thought that was romantic as well, the notion of being on a plantation. Now, you've got no imagination at all if that word don't conjure some sort of image for you. Whether you're talking about a rubber plantation, tobacco plantation, or of course, cotton, that there is a loaded word. Lots of meaning and feeling in that word. I soon learned that it wasn't very romantic, though it still is a powerful word. But I suppose saying it's romantic or not romantic all depends on your notion of romance. Mine sure has changed since then. Or maybe it's just disappeared. I don't really have any idea of what romance is at all anymore. But again, I digress. I'm trying to get around to the coffee beans. The harvesting of them and all. So anyhow, I found myself at this coffee plantation. I figured I'd try to get a job there, to add to my life experience, if you will. Silly me didn't realize that the crop had just been harvested. So I just kind of floated around the town. It was a fair sized town, I'd say, though I never did have much of a good head for estimating numbers. There were maybe 10 or 15,000 people in it, I guess. Which is big enough for Nicaragua. Besides the plantations there were a few old factories in the place, making god knew what. Anyway, I just got myself a room over a tavern for as cheap as can be and I proceeded to sit around drawing pencil pictures in the plaza in an old sketchbook and waiting for something to happen, I guess. I don't know why I stopped there. Equator sure as hell doesn't run through Nicaragua. I just did, is all. If I had more sense I probably wouldn't have. See, things down there weren't so good at the time. Hell, when have things in Nicaragua been good? Anyway, Somoza was still the big boy back then, and there were lots of people displeased with their lot in life, shall we say. And me being me, I sort of fell in with these folk. It was odd, but nobody had any particular fear or dislike of me, being a Yankee and all. Apparently some Peace Corps kids had worked in the area the previous year, and had made a generally favorable impression on most of the people. Not so with the police, mind you, but the American kids were well liked by the people for the most part. By the peasants, I guess. Now how is that for a word? I don't know about you, but I can't say 'peasant' without feeling a charge go through me. Maybe that would explain some things. Dunno. But if I think about it, it don't really make much sense. None of my folk worked the land for as far back as I know. I guess it's just one of those things. But anyhow, there I was, bearded and long haired and ragged, sitting in the central plaza of tired ole Juigalpa drawing pictures of chickens and such and chatting with the locals in my rotten Spanish. Somehow, in the course of things, it turned out that inadvertently, or intentionally, I still don't rightly know, it came to be that I was feeding their nascent sense of Socialist outrage about the disparity between the plantation jefe's lot in life and their own. It just came about that some of the folk down there started to listen to me. They trusted me; maybe they even thought I was with the Peace Corps. I looked the bit, I suppose. And I certainly was into it, I guess, back then. I would get fired up and spout out whatever Marxist jargon I could recall from the times I hung around with some old reds back in the States. That's a whole 'nother story that I won't go into now. That sort of thing is all over and done with, or so they say. But anyway, we started having meetings every Sunday afternoon, after Mass, mind you. And I and Ronaldo would go on about the injustices of the capitalist system. Ronaldo was the only fellow around there who spoke any English. He would translate for me when I got in over my head in the Spanish, which was often, mind you, and we actually became good friends. We'd sit and drink after the meetings and more often than not I'd go to his place for some supper.

"Anyway, I seem to be getting ahead of myself or behind myself or something. How in the hell did I get started on this? Yeah, ha, you don't want to remind me. Right. But I guess I ought to finish the story though, seeing how I've gone on so long anyhow. But there's not much to the story. The same old story, in fact. Perhaps it's the only story, but then that may be just jaded old me talking. But getting back to Nicaragua, Ronaldo and me became decent enough friends. He was a quiet but amiable sort of fellow, and we got along good. We were actually pretty good friends, I'd say. He even told me that if I could hang around for another month or so he would be able to get me a job. Doing what he never explained, but I was of the mind frame at that time that a job's a job. But then one day we ran into a bit of trouble. Well, more than a bit for Ronaldo, I guess. And it really seemed to come out of nowhere. Or at least it seemed that way to me. No way of knowing how well Ronaldo knew what was brewing. Anyway, like I was saying, one day Ronaldo and I ran into trouble. We were leaving the cantina after one of the Sunday afternoon meetings, and were on our way to his house for some grub. We were just ambling along the broken old sidewalk when five fellas stepped out of a different cantina, and before I could say 'boo,' two of them had me by the arms and the other three just went absolutely ape shit on Ronaldo. He was on the ground in no time at all and they just laid into him with their boots. None of them said a word. It was just the thud, thud, thud, of their boots ramming into his haunches and guts as he tried to ball himself up. They didn't do nothing to me. The other two guys just held onto me, and I could feel the sweat and hair of their arms pressing into mine. Felt like I was in a fucking movie. It was about 6:00, and the sun was damn bright, but already fading. I remember that. Damn stupid things a person remembers. I also remember when one of them boys caught Ronaldo's chin with a kick. The sound would make you cry. His mouth just kind of imploded and exploded at once, and the blood absolutely shot out of his mouth. Teeth and blood and what damn near looked like guts splashed out of his mouth and out across three, four feet of the pavement. They kept going at him for another two or three minutes or so, but that kick to his chin had just about done him in. I just stared at the red splash of blood on the pavement, so fucking bright you wouldn't believe it. And then they were done. They threw me into the wall with a good crash, for good measure I guess, and I sort of fell down on top of Ronaldo. He was all sorts of mashed up, just a fucking absolute mess. At that point some people started to gather around. I didn't know what the hell to do. From what I'd seen in movies I guess I was supposed to holler for a doctor, but I didn't. I did kind of cradle his bashed-in face in my arms though. Seems now like that that was also sort of a Hollywood thing to do, but what else could I do? I held his face and looked at him. I didn't say nothing. Not a word. And then he looked at me. He could open one of his eyes, you see, and he looked at me. He was in bad shape. He could really barely speak. But he did speak, and you know what he said to me, or rather, asked? He asked me if I was all right. And that was when I started bawling. And I think that's also when I realized I had pissed my pants. But I still didn't say anything to him. I just sort of nodded. And before I knew it his wife was there and some neighbors and such and amid all sorts of screaming and shouting and commotion they hauled him off to the doctor.

"Yeah. 'Some story,' may be one way of putting it. But the real kicker, you know, pardoning the god awful pun, is what I did next. What do you suppose I did? Naw, don't answer that. Maybe it's not a fair question. Anyway, after I made it back to my room and put on a fresh pair of pants, I moseyed on over to the bus station and bought a ticket for the 8:30 bus to Managua. I high-tailed it the fuck out of there. Forty-eight hours later I was in Houston, working as a dishwasher, doing what I do best, I guess. And I've never been further south than the Rio Grande since. What do you think about that? And I never made any attempt to find out what happened to Ronaldo. Though in my defense, I do suppose that he survived that attack. But all the shit since? Who knows? I don't. So I don't know, Gino. What do you think? You think I'm all right? I don't know. Who the hell knows?"

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