The dog days of summer are upon us. Every year it is our turn to deal with a catastrophic hurricane. In the late 1960's Camille blew my father's fruit stand past King Ranch. Dad paid more in insurance than he cleared each month because he wanted to be prepared for every contingency. You put enough money on the table and you're bound to hit a number. With Camille he hit the jackpot and took the third little pig's advice: He constructed a building that not even a wolf of mythological proportions could have blown down. I've lived through several scares that were exciting from a news angle. Reporters from all the major Texas newspapers would descend upon Brownsville with a whiskey in one hand and a joint in the other as we braved the elements. I don't own anything. I'm renting a house and I couldn't give a damn if it collapsed as long as the family and I weren't under it, but the excitement of a hurricane no longer intrigues me. I'm not interested in the inconvenience of a hurricane--no electricity, no water, no gas, downed trees, debris everywhere and a complaining wife and kids. In the words of a blues singer: "I've had my fun." I do admire the hurricane skies when they turn gray and angry. Rain falls in the afternoons and Brownsville has a brief feel of the tropics. I sit by a window, toke on a joint and watch the water cascade off the roof. In the wake of the deluge, the scorched earth bursts into a verdant meadow. Let it rain! Let it rain! Let it rain! But it's not going to rain today. The sky--a dull, oppressive blue--is hazy with heat. The air is thick with the poisons the manufacturers discharge. And the humidity is thicker than the contamination. The mini-buses speed by packed with passengers fanning themselves. I need to eat. I stop at a kiosk and purchase Excelsior, which arrives before noon. There was a decade when I spent many months in Mexico City. My closest friends for a time lived in the capital and I took advantage of every opportunity to visit them. I met them at the mall in Brownsville. I was sitting in the breezeway when I spotted a young mother and her infant child buying ice cream. I stared at her ass in a matter-of-fact way because I assumed that I would never see her again. She walked away and someone else replaced her. Suddenly I found myself face to face with an angry man about my age with a Mexico City accent. He demanded an explanation for the disrespect I had shown his wife. I had no idea what he was talking about. "You don't remember the woman with the baby who was buying ice cream?" he asked. I shrugged my shoulders. "That was my wife. She told me that you were staring at her." "Listen, amigo, I just finished a joint and I've been sitting here spacing-out." His expression changed. "Good stuff on the border?" "Consistent." "I haven't smoked a joint since Mexico City. Maybe that's why I'm uptight. Could you spare a joint?" "Sure." Nor would it be the last time that Cristina demanded that Manuel defend her honor. There was an incident in which I was tardy leaving my seat because I was finishing my beer, thus missing a melee at the bullring precipitated when Cristina accused an aficionado of pinching her on the ass, requiring Manuel to punch the culprit in the face, the blow inciting a small riot. The next confrontation I couldn't escape. We were in La Zona Rosa strolling through the streets after eating dinner. Franco, Manuel's compadre, and his wife were walking with us. Manuel and Franco had gone into a store to buy cigarettes and I was standing with Cristina and Julia chatting when two vagrants leered at the girls as they passed. I didn't find their behavior insulting since I witnessed it a dozen times every day on the subway, but Cristina exploded in a rage as if one of her breasts had been touched. She was stamping her feet waiting for Manuel to exit. When he rejoined her, she screamed that her honor had been tarnished and pointed to the two degenerates disappearing in the distance. Manuel took off in pursuit. I didn't wish to fight, but I would lose their respect if I didn't accompany Manuel into battle. Against my better judgement, I followed Manuel into the fray. At one of the most popular intersections in La Zona Rosa with a mime entertaining a large crowd, we squared off against the two renegades. We stood frozen, unsure about our next move when a crazy war whoop sounded behind us. Franco, his overweight but powerful body roaring toward us like a runaway train, was screaming like a Comanche crazed by fire water. Unlike Custer's troops who dug in and fought, these two street soldiers turned and ran. One, however, couldn't elude us and the ensuing massacre had me paging through the back pages of Excelsior searching for a buried article about three assailants beating a man to death. Franco's momentum carried him past us. The enemy split in two directions. Franco selected his prey, jumped on the hood of a car before pouncing on the victim, the two tumbling to the hard pavement. Manuel unleashed a flurry of punches while Franco pummeled the foe with his fists. I lent my effort to the onslaught by kicking the supine victim in the head. By the time we stopped from exhaustion, the unconscious individual lay in a pool of blood. The mime and his audience applauded our performance; the streets of Mexico City were populated with riff-raff for whom nobody had any sympathy. There were many memorable moments I shared with Manuel and Cristina. And there was no end to the generosity and hospitality as they were ardent advocates of the philosophy that "mi casa es tu casa." Iliana ended our relationship when she insulted Cristina in a manner that left Manuel helpless to respond in his accustomed fashion. They came to visit shortly after César's birth. We received them with the usual affection. I had no idea that Iliana was laying the foundation to sever my ties with the past and would honor no limitations in her ruthless endeavor to destroy those bonds. Cristina handed Iliana a meticulously wrapped package with a large bow. Rather than slowly peeling back the paper as she would normally do when opening a gift, she ripped off the covering, flung the ribbon to the floor and yanked open the box. Extracting a pair of pajamas by the shoulders while the emptied contents fell at her feet in a heap, Iliana dangled the outfit before us like a criminal hanging from the gallows. Taking her time for maximum impact and exploiting the pregnant moment for all its worth, she imparted with a cold and unforgiving voice: "He'll never wear these."
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