(looking for an ending)    " Bindal Unfinished "



     Bindal was looking at his 50th birthday, living in a large shithole Mexican city with his Indian wife, teary eyed from slinging and eating hot peppers and her 20 year old daughter. The girl could type and text like a fiend to her friends, giggle and garble MTV music videos in English at the top of her lungs. But she couldn’t read a book, wash a dish or intelligently answer a question to save her useless, indolent existence. This broken team and situation didn’t bother Bindal in the least.
     From his youth he was as uncomfortable in his own skin as he was in the presence of others. Early on he had masked this discomfort with a master’s skill at chess and a low but machine gun like guffaw until it became almost a trademark of his demeanor, unremarkable-simply Bindal’s way of expression- the cackle of a mad man or neurotic.
     Most agree that while at the top of his game, somewhere between the ages of 32 and 35, he lost it. In demand and earning big time for his complex computer programs and systems, he rebelled, shut down, refused his work, lifestyle and pretty much all normal social encounters. Never very good at the latter and fed up with the former two, he sold, gave away, or simply abandoned all credit cards, bank accounts, collected art, cases of wine, his home and headed south of the border.
     It wasn’t an epiphany or sudden overnight shift. His crumbling was in stages, jumping with dissatisfaction between government and corporate work, relocating with each project, as many as 3 times a year in 4 different states. And his female companionship changed with even greater frequency. Bindal had quirky social skills but he pulled the ladies and while most were comely they were loonier than he.  Kleptomaniacs, strippers, neurotics, ex-mental patients, run away Mormons, they only exacerbated his dissolution. And beyond sexual misadventures, expanded drug use stirred things to a heady peak. Because his experimentation was broad and varied, it was not addictive but certainly sent the gyres widening. Suicidal episodes, premeditated and beyond reckless driving, began to occur. The specific incident is unknown but one run-in with the law and probable jail time cemented his decision to escape to foreign climes. He crossed the border at Tijajuanna with a jeep full of fishing gear and his family didn’t hear from him for at least 5 or 6 years.  The troubled son’s troubles disappeared with him and they were unburdened.
     Cliché’ as it might seem, Bindal met Consuela in a cantina in a dusty little town when he was behind almost a full bottle of mescal. With drunken bluster and feeble Spanish, he’d deeply insulted a fat whore- something about one eyebrow and a mustache, so she pulled a razor. Consuela had been eyeing the gringo since he entered, watched him descend into his cups and couldn’t help but smell what was coming. She threw a barstool under the whore’s legs before blood could be drawn and jerked the stumbling Bindal away and outside, the shouting and laughter stayed inside and didn’t follow them into the



street dust and blinding sun of the afternoon. He introduced her to his hyena laugh. Then he puked.
     When he woke it wasn’t Consuela he saw but the looming, pimpled face of her daughter, Rosarely, then 14 years old. He pulled himself onto his elbows and looked about- a shabby but clean, sparsely furnished room, retablo covered walls, a hard mattress under him, and Indian pattered wool blanket over his nakedness. At his side on the edge of the bed Rosarely sat. She hadn’t blinked.
     After a moment Bindal said,”Uh, Oh”.     
     “Mi mama dijo si te dispiertas (sp. Despertarse), tengo que pedir- Guar are ju car?” she asked.
     “Huh?”
     “Gwhere are ju car?”
     “Shit”, he mumbled, a hand across his aching head. He wiped some crust from the corners of his mouth and made a hand signal for something to drink. She fetched a cup, passed it to him and he wet his parched tongue with flat coca cola.
     “Agua?”
     “Si”, she went through a curtained doorway. He cast about for his clothes, found only his jeans and slipped them on quickly. She returned with a gourd that he tossed down without his usual concern for amoebae or E. coli count.
     “Gwhere are ju car”, she tried again.
     “No entiendo”.
     “Gwhere are ju car?”, this time holding up his car keys.
     “Where am I? he said as his hands shot through empty pockets,”Who the fuck are you?”.
     What sounded to be a metal gate slammed and their heads snapped in its direction.
     “Mi mama viene”.
     Consuela entered with a woven shopping bag in one hand, a twine and parchment wrapped parcel in the other. They looked at each other and she tossed the parcel on the bed next to him- his laundered clothes. Something familiar about her and then it was coming back to him. His head under cold water at a side street fountain, kids with fireworks and more drinks with her into the evening. Beyond that curtain in this room, the large metal tub where she bathed, herself first, then him, dark skin and dark hair. Licorice eyes in the tamped down light of a Coleman lamp. She had a great body and finely shaped hands. She wasn’t beautiful or even pretty but something quietly noble.
     She turned her back and at a small table in the corner of the room began to unpack the bag, tamales, coke and beer, an aspirin packet, chilies, some flowers and herbs, a cheese wrapped in cloth. Rosarely at her side, bubbled when Consuela handed her a pack of fresh batteries and her daughter rushed off through the curtain snatching some earphones on the way.  Consuela opened the aspirin packet and a can of beer, brought them over and sat next to him. She reached up to a shelf over the bed and pulled down a small clay pot. In it was his wallet, coin, some crumpled papers, phone numbers he’d never call, the little reefer left in his stash and some rolling papers.
     “Connie”, he said,”Ah,,,Consuela.”
     She lit 2 cigarettes from a pack in her apron and gave him one. “Coney es O.K. Tome los”, she said pushing the aspirin at him. He did. After, she took a sip of his beer, she gave it back and with a smile passed her can cooled palm over his forehead.
     “Quere comer?”
     “Suppose I should…uh…si, I can eat, yeah”. She walked to the table, took down a cutting board and an ancient blade, began cutting an onion. From behind her she heard Bindal rustle his clothes from the wrapping saying,”Ah…Connie, about my car…”
     “Ahhheee, su coche!” she cried followed by a rapid torrent of Spanish he couldn’t catch as she dropped her knife, called for Rosarely and the keys, kicked his shoes toward him and hustled him out the door.  At the front gate he stumbled, tried to correct the folded back heal of his shoe and surmised she was trying to remember where they’d left the car. He understood only “car” and “bad neighborhood”. They began to retrace the evening. She seemed to understand everything he tried to impart, he very little of her lingo. This undid him even more and their search involved stops at several cantinas, took the edge off. They found his ride wedged on a tree stump, minus the battery. So haggling with some neighbors, then some cousins down the block and after overpaying for an old battery and hands to free it from the stump, the jeep fired up and they headed back. She directed him.
     “So…Connie…the girl?”.
     “Ah…mi hija. Tengo una otra, mas joven, pero ella esta con la abuela”.
     He caught the two daughters part and became nervous,”Your husband?”.
     Muerto”.
     They were passing some small boys with firecrackers. One flew into the back of the jeep and went off. After the shock she giggled. They said no more.
     Bindal didn’t move on right away so the days and empty bottles mounted. Consuela cooked and washed. In trade for some work on a V.W. engine he got 5 gallons of garish rose colored paint and redid the walls of the two room shack, added to the garden, rigged the tub with a drain and overhead shower.  Rosarely flitted in and out, jabbering nonsense and flipping through teenage magazines with bad fashion and lame gossip. She ate the most and didn’t lift a finger.
     “She go to school?, he finally asked.
     “Escuela? NO”.
     “She have a job?”
     “No, no trabajo, hay muy poco opportunidad aqui.”
     “Then she should go where there’s one or the other”. Then for the first time she shot him a look of venom and he didn’t know what to do with it. She turned to walk out but he stayed her and with a venomous look of his own shouted, “No! Me voy”, and he left. The gate’s slam triggered her sobs. He came back a day and a half later, staggeringly drunk, but he came back. A week later Consuela had put aside enough money for Rosarely’s bus fare to the grandmother’s house 200 miles north, With her daughter gone a certain delight had left her eyes and an Indian resignation set in as deeply as her absence had enlivened his. Upon this plateau they decided to travel.
     Bindal had cash secreted in compartments of his jeep. Taking the last of it and trading the vehicle for a V.W. van, they headed south into the Central American isthmus. Most roads were back roads and if they found a highway they took it only until they found a back road. They dawdled, didn’t rush, spending at times, weeks in villages where Bindal was the only gringo, perhaps the first ever seen. They were always welcomed except when they needed to stop in a city where they were looked upon with distain- a gringo with his Indian whore from another tribe. Or simply the white devil again, using “our” women.  The cities and larger pueblos were their place for a hot shower and shave, to restock for the road and check in on the larger world at internet cafes. Bindal usually found he was missing a world of shit and was glad of it. In the tourist traps and surfer resorts Consuela sold fabrics, beads and amber she purchased from the mountain villages.
She would double the price and fill the gas tank. Bindal hooked up with the backpack crowd, Aussies and Canadians on holiday. Girls were young, dread-locked, bikinied, bronzed and beautiful. Beach bond fires and drum circles went all night with booze, reefer and coke. When he often didn’t return to the van or camp they’d set up, Consuela launched into bitter tirades and fights became physical. After her first black eye she didn’t protest the next infidelity but waited till he slept.  Then she attacked him with a stick and served him the same.  He’d repent, things would cool for a while until his cloven hooves would sprout at the next debauchery and he’d be off again. He tried to explain his behavior as a bi-polar condition. Consuela saw it only as betrayal. By the time they had reached Panama they both knew it was desperation. There was no consensus on what he was desperate for. So they turned to journey north again.
     The capital of the state that bordered Guatemala was where they settled. It had been an agricultural center for the conquistadors, later turned to industrial endeavor and finally a crowded shithole noisy city of 500,000 people. Bindal knocked about with the local degenerates, taught computer science for free rent in several digs and continued twisting in the wind until Consuela put the hammer down and refused to debauch with him. Rather than lose her, wild ways were dropped, a firm apartment and teaching position obtained. Earnings were meager but turmoil found it’s pan and their lives settled to a gentle trundle with only minor flares.
     But her daughter returned. The situation between grandma and Rosarely went south and so did she. Rosarely, now 19 going on 20, showed up at Bindal and Connie’s door one very windy day in April. He took it in stride, Consuela took it with guilt of abandonment, and Rosarely used those positions to advantage and wedged herself back into the cracked picture of Bindal’s life. His apartment was small and cramped- a dusty cluttered mess, but only two blocks from his work. Consuela found a position as a receptionist for an insurance agency across town. The bus cost pennies and she found her daughter a job at record store nearby so their routine was established. Rosarely immediately began stealing CDs. Their music library grew rapidly but Bindal listened to little of it. He played chess on the computer with people around the world while Consuela prepared cheap meals aflame with hot peppers. With no friends in the city, Rosarely glued her face to the television and MTV, texting wildly to amigos left behind up north.  She typed so hard and fast that Bindal had to spring for a new keypad one month after her arrival. They all slept in one room. Seems they were back where they started.
     An old man tended to the chores and minor maintenance of Bindal’s building- lived rent-free in a tiny ground floor room in the alley near the rubbish bins. His name was Michaga; he wore an obvious and usually poorly donned wig and fancied himself the “concierge” of the building. No one knew how long he’d been there nor from where he’d come. But while personable and in fact quite well read, he was considered no more than a janitor hanging on to a free room by a thread. No one knew how many times he had  proved so much more than that nor did the current inhabitants sense his depth perception of situations, of the profundity of minor moments or the elegance of certain types of failure. But Bindal did. Bindal lived with that perception.They didn’t speak much and they didn’t speak of this, but when their eyes engaged the entire saying of it was there....

                                                         St. Jose’s Float

     Jose sold fruit. The “King Solomon of Judea” fruit and vegetable stand was on a  dirt roadside pitted and barely passable during the rainy season. His small hut was in back. Biblical quotations adorned the stand as they did his bicycle delivery cart. It was really tricked out. He also repaired bicycles. He normally sported an Aussie style hat, cargo shorts, sandals, a Clark Gable moustache, and glasses, thick like the bottom of a bottle. Below the moustache was always a smile of big horsy teeth. He was lithe and tall but if stouter and with more meat to his bones one might see the flair of Teddy Roosevelt.  Jose was very religious, very Christian. He also wore a belt packing a pistol, a sizable, razor sharp hunting knife, mace spray and had a sheathed machete strapped to his bike.
     Between his hut and the village cemetery was a mucky swamp. He hated mosquitoes and as such smelled of a blue mosquito repellant, cheap and ubiquitous to the area. He’d recently acquired a new gig- security guard at the pueblo’s sole liquor store, just opened by a pompous gringo proprietor. Until those doors opened, folks bought half pints from the only village bar or filled their own bottles with “contrabanda”, local home brew, Jose was a teetotaler. Jose added a nightstick and camouflage britches to his arsenal. He had badges from who knows what country’s military. Though saying nothing, it was obvious that he was especially proud of his shiny new handcuffs, nor was it just a murmur in the pueblo that no keys to those cuffs existed. “Where did he get this stuff?!?” The locals just smiled and shrugged.
     After a month or so of brisk business the gringo owner moved on the dilapidated structure next to his fine establishment. The adjacent building, roof falling in, roots sprouting through the floor, he’d purchased for a song, paid off the right folks in the local municipality and opened a bar next to the store.  Jose got a pair of para-military boots. His promotion to bouncer also included a trivial raise and several inspirational religious cassettes. His shack had no electricity and the short life of batteries plagued him. When the word of god slowed and thickened to what sounded like Satan he’d shut off his player and look across the small swamp at the light over the cemetery. But his night shift was lengthy and it wasn’t long before the current was cut and dawn cut the night. A quick nap and he had vegetable and fruit to deliver. With luck, a few bike flats to fix and some chain repairs for extra change and he would have some time in his hammock before he had to mount up again for security shift at the liquor store and bouncing the new bar. He lamented how much this schedule cut into his ministry.
     But the bar was thriving and on top of his pay increase the owner traded in Jose’ ancient revolver for an automatic with 2 full new clips even though there’d been no serious altercations. A drunken scuffle or the occasional tug of war over a woman was dispelled by the nightstick, Jose’ grin and a biblical parable or two. But the gringo owner took pains to instruct Jose how to disarm the safety on the 9mm. in case of a robbery. The two of them had spent a day of target practice at the beach firing at driftwood and horsy teeth gleamed behind the flash and smoke of the barrel as demon knots of logs splintered and shattered. Afterward the boss wanted to show Jose how to clean the weapon but instead his security guard showed the gringo some maintenance pointers. It wasn’t easy. Suggestions percolating up from below weren’t gingerly accepted in gringo hierarchy. Jose sat oblivious in the pick up on the ride home but his employer was unnerved and assured both by his employee’s knowledge and ease with the new weapon. Jose was compliant and undemanding in his required tasks but paid no obcience nor showed the least deference toward his “patron”. And the patron, more and more frequently felt that this nerdy, quirky and perhaps dangerous peon might orbit out of his influence, his gravity and muss things up. A close eye would need be kept.
     Unaware of any “big brother colonial” thinking, Jose peddled into his yard after the shooting match at the beach. His chickens flapped their attempt at heaven and found their low roosts as his genetic mess of a dog, “Wilma”, dashed out to greet him. Her tail a wagging blur, she barked but little happy hellos, bright brown eyes with dark tears stains, flies evident, and fleas hidden.  Conchita was a neighbor, an old farmer woman who’d come through on a mad promise of some turkey meat in exchange for “King Solomon of Judea” papayas.  “The small ones”, She insisted,” I don’t want that iron taste, that caca flavor!” They exchanged bags. Jose looked at the contents and asked,” Is this from that old tom, the one who had his foot eaten off by the snapping turtle?” The widow Conchita gave a cursory glance to her bag and fled. It was indeed the old tom that she didn’t want to kill but had to and the bag had mostly nasty bits, ugly end cuts and murky distensions.  But Jose found a modest edible portion for himself and Wilma was of course delighted with the dreck. It was his night off and their eyes shown like their greasy lips in the candlelight, man and dog, quiet and content. He was out of batteries.
     In the night it began to rain. It grew stronger and the downpour carried on until morning. Dawn saw rivers where streets were. The sun peeked over the mountain but overhead clouds still gathered and loomed. While Jose’ hovel was upon a mound, the water rose up and into the shack. Drippy eyed Wilma was already off the floor and up on the bed. As he collected perishables from the floor Jose mumbled passages from Noah’s biblical experience, but all words were drown out by the unrelenting rain drumming his rusty metal roof. He moved potatoes, onions and chayote onto high shelves and tried to pack squishy mangoes and papayas on top of them. The last few heads of wilted lettuce he bundled into his fishing net and nailed it to a ceiling rafter. The water was at his shin so he tossed his bedding up in the net too. Wilma looked at him and he to her when he heard an explosion. The transformer in front of the soccer field had shorted out and blown. Jose strapped on his gear, threw Wilma on top of the bedding in the net and splashed out to his bicycle. He had to reach under the water to disconnect the vegetable cart and he set off peddleling cruelly through the downpour toward the pueblo. Chain and pedals churned the waters whose rushing force sent pebbles and branches in his path and against the bike. He passed evacuating neighbors with bundles on their heads, inhabitants of lower dwellings already waist deep. As he approached the village, above the noise of the pounding rain, he heard the sound of human turmoil, shouts, banging and breaking glass. He gave up the Herculean effort of peddling through the flow and tried to sprint. He didn’t neglect to grab the fastened machete, but the sprint immediately became a slog. The sun hadn’t survived the clouds and still it came down, darker and more and Jose pushed on.
     A riot greeted Jose as he sloshed into town. The old folks and the god fearing were in exodus but the young vagos, putas and old borrachos were having at the bar and liquor store. The bar doors and store windows had been somewhat breeched and bottles were being passed out, contents now tippled with the rain and general mayhem. Five or six strong young boys still labored at the bars on the store window. Jose was aghast.  A life size effigy of  top hated Mr. Peanut from the bar, bobbed past his knees in the water.
     Elbows leveled with his shoulders, Jose plunged full force into the melee, freeing his Billy club, swinging wildly. The vandals dodged, laughed and mocked him. They spit biblical flood verses at him and the rain came harder. Flailing, dizzy and gulping rain soaked air, Jose was overwhelmed but could not stem this Gomorrah and Sodom so he reached for the automatic and discharged the safety. As he did so a shot rang out, he spun blinded by the rain on his thick glasses and fired. The water blurred detail but the top of someone’s head was gone and another shot rang out and then the rain and rage and bewilderment controlled the trigger finger of Jose.  The crowd didn’t so much run as dive and swim to escape. Screaming Armageddon at the top of his lungs not one of Jose’ bullets missed a mark and when the clip was spent someone came at him from behind and hit him with the cane broken off the Mr. Peanut statue. He collapsed mercifully above the water on a stone bench in front of his former employ.
     He couldn’t have been unconscious for long but when he roused himself, the liquor store had been opened and emptied, his gun, knife, Billy club and handcuffs were gone. He felt the lump on his head, took a step and realized the mob had also stolen his shoes. It was raining still and the water almost waist high was moving through town like a tide. A rather long piece of cable snaked in its wake and Jose snatched it, looped it up and put it over his shoulder. With aching head and great effort he pushed off, not toward his home but toward some modest hills and knolls just outside of town. The water’s force was stronger still and higher ground might mean survival. A small creek, suddenly now raging needed to passed and Jose was doing well until a thrashing burro caught in it’s torrent slammed into him and the two of them tumbled wildly until the cable round his shoulder snagged Jose upon a branch and he watched the animal swirl and squeal away.

He hung, bobbing there for some moments catching his air between raindrops and spray. A cow passed him, unable to mewl any longer but eyes still wide in fear, white all around. Just a moment or much longer, he couldn’t tell, but he dragged himself to the opposite bank. There was only one foot of water there and swirl as it might he could rest.
     
He caught his breath and tried to look up for Yaway, Jehova, Jesus. Now was a good time to pray. He removed his glasses and squeezed the water from his eyelashes. Above him on a tree branch was his gringo boss, almost naked and white knuckled, clinging to the trunk. He was scratched, bruised and bleeding from a gash in his foot. “Aieee, senior, the hand of god has turned into a fist. Can you get down? Wait, I’ll come up and help you”, said Jose putting on his glasses again and looking quickly for a foot hold.  But his former employer tore some twigs from in front of him and threw them at Jose screaming, “NO,NO,NO, get away!”.  He responded to none of Jose’ pleas and the proprietor of “King Solomon of Judea” so washed and battered, couldn’t help the proprietor of a bashed and looted store and bar, who hung in a tree, naked and in shock. And just as Jose’ mind was rolling over the balance of power that god might be demonstrating with this flood, there before him tumbled the drown little body of Wilma. He grabbed at the soaked and broken dog but missed and as he reached again a great rush of water, foam and branches tumbled the dog, Jose and the world into a tumult, another tumult and finally darkness.
     Consciousness was coming but Jose didn’t open his eyes. He still wanted the truths of his bible and felt himself gently rocked. But when he opened his eyes they were filled by some turquoise globe and the lip of a small boat.  Jose’ bewildered head lay in the lap of a pregnant Indian girl in a shredded turquoise dress and they tossed lazily in frothy brown water under a forgiving and slight drizzle. Without oars, their vessel moseyed with the flow, bumping occasionally against a rooftop or the odd bloated and floating livestock. He wanted to ask what happened. Where are we? Who are you? Am I still alive? He could see! He still had his glasses! Then he knew he was alive and ventured his first question…”What…?” He was unsure of her tribe or dialect but she unleashed a torrent of Indian explanation in it, obviously recounting losses, struggles and her twisting path to this savior rowboat. Her eyes finally met his and he knew her last sentence explained his presence in their float. Finally she pointed to her chest and said, “Esperanza”.  “Jose”, he said, hand on his heart.
     Nothing was said between them for a moment and it had almost stopped to rain at all. Jose’ horsy teeth were out next to her belly and Esperanza was ready to smile also. Then came a new sound. Different from drips or flashing waters. It was a thumping, chopping sound that deepened as it seemed nearer and Jose recognized the helicopters of the savior arriving. He lifted his head and the pregnant Indian girl didn’t stop him. Waving frantically as 3 army copters passed closely overhead he said, “Think they saw us?”. Esperanza didn’t get up but her eyes asked the same.
     Then they waited. They waited some more; the waters pushed them, pushed them some more and then began to rush them. The rain had stopped, it was still cloudy but the sun was setting. It was getting dark and they were on the move. Jose saw fit to tie off. He lassoed a mangrove branch with the cable that had saved him before and listened for the chop of the savior. Esperanza moaned softly in the belly of their rowboat. Yahweh didn’t announce himself to Jose; there were no helicopter rescues, no dry lands, no roads. And the Indian girl didn’t look so good. She was big- not too big, but big enough. And then another sound approached- not the hoped for helicopter, but the now familiar sound of oncoming deluge- new water.
     Jose dove for the cable that moored them and freed it in time for the new rush. Flailing and bailing and smashing between trees, they managed not to tip or sink. When this last inundation found it’s pan and their boat swirled gently again, they collapsed, huffing and began to laugh. And the laughter became unstoppable like the waters. Tears wiped from their eyes no longer had rain but the salt of silliness, of laughter.

     But the Indian girl burped, stopped laughing and the water came again. This time from her loins and Jose stopped laughing too. His sister’s child had pushed out water to enter the world. Jose knew nothing of Poseidon or Neptune but surely thought this child would be an angel (if not a god) of the sea or raging water. There was only one god really but this head baring itself between this Indian woman’s legs could be a representative of that god. “Like the giant tears we now float in” Jose thought.  The woman moaned then screamed in pain. Jose reached for his knife and found emptiness. It was gone in the plaza melee. She moaned again but he envisioned only the image of “Mr. Peanut” floating by, the top hat and ocular battered but in place.
     This well prepared man felt helpless. Night had fallen and they WERE adrift. He’d seen his house flooded, his work place looted, his employer in a tree, his dog dead and washing by and found himself in a boat with a woman ready to give birth. Then Jose
realized that he still had his glasses and could see, really see. His Jesus, his savior had gifted him this and he would answer the call, continue to help as he might. Of course he’d never mid-wifed nor even witnessed, but Jose listened to the Indian babbled speech and cries intently. He thought he knew what to do but she made him feel what was correct and that’s what he did. And as the skies cleared for dawn, tiny male cries burst with the sunrise in a battered and bloodied boat. He wondered what this child of the water might be called. Jose couldn’t understand, just used his horsy smile. In her language she was saying, “He shall be called Float”.