She did not have much to make soup. She cut up some garlic and cooked it in oil with herbs. She added water and let it simmer for half an hour. That was her soup. She had some dough, so she tossed rubs of dough in her soup. She made dumplings. She coddled an egg in her soup. She had chickens. Yesterday, she had given her chicken mussel shells to eat. It started to rain. She had been bucket bathing for months. It started to rain, so she took off her clothes, stood in the rain, and soaped herself up. She expected it to stop raining when she was still soapy, but it rained and rained and gave her plenty of time to rinse. After the rain, she took her mussel shells to stomp on. After she stomped her mussels shell, she called to her chickens by calling churrras. Churrras. All the chickens came to her and started pecking at the shells. Two days ago, she had gotten drunk and had thrown a log at her chickens. She had only wanted to frighten one of them, but when she threw the log, she accidentally hurt one gravely. She had to kill it, even though she didn't want to kill it. To cut off its head, she slipped it into an orange traffic cone. The head of the chicken stuck out of the pointed end of the traffic cone. The chicken was easy to kill when it was in the cone. All she had to do was chop off its head with a hatchet. After chopping off the chicken's head, she submerged it in boiling water so that she'd be able to pull out its feathers. If she didn't keep it in the water long enough, then the feathers wouldn't come out easily. If she kept it in for too long, then skin would come off with feathers. There'd be a mess. She had to keep the chicken in the water for just the right amount of time.
The young people who got drunk in the square weren't too smart. The square was paved with rock. Under to rock, there were supposed to be many bodies. These were bodies of people who were buried with animals. Many people were buried with animals. They were dead, and then live animals were buried with them. In this square. The young people were nitwits. They were dolts. They were ignoramuses. They were simpletons. They were not too intelligent. They would buy a bottle of cheap cola, and they would buy a bottle of cheap port. Many times, I saw them pour out half the bottle of cola before they poured some port into that same bottle. Why don't you drink the cola, I thought. Why do you waste the cola? Why don't you have a third container? You have a third container to pour some cola and some port in. In which to pour. So they get drunk on their wine and cola. It's something to see them throw themselves around the square. To make money for more port, they sell postcards to tourists. They buy the postcards for one coin and sell them to tourists for two coins. Or, better yet, they steal the cards because the cards are so easy to steal. They steal them and sell them to tourists for two coins. They buy the port. They buy the cola. They mix the two and have a drink. They have drinks because they are on the square. They piss against rock walls in gold light at the end of the day.
She was in the doldrums. The dumps. She was told that she did not hit the ball right. She was dull. She was insipid. She was prosaic. She wanted to hit a cymbal with a sausage in order to hear if it would re-create the sound her grandfather made when he hit his head on a brass bannister. The empty and stupid box. The sadness at the end of Sunday. The excrement packed neatly away for later inspection. She got her comeuppance.
To honor the memory of her father, she tied a kite string around his grave. She held onto the other end. The other end was a yellow plastic spool with handles. She had to pay out the spool to go to other places. The one end was tied around her father's gravestone. The other end was a spool. She had to pay it out. She would get asked on dates, but she couldn't go anywhere on a motorcycle or a car because she wasn't able to pay out her kite string fast enough. "Leave the kite string," some guy told her. This guy told her earlier that he had to get all his fillings taken out of his teeth and replaced because they were telling his mind odd things. "There must be some off metal in them," he said, "because the metal gives me strange ideas." But, later, he told her to leave her kite string and the memory of her father. He wanted her to ride on the back of his motorcycle. He wanted her to lie on the road so that he could try to jump her. He wanted her to come with him to steal strawberries from an old farmer. The farmer did not have a shotgun. That's the old cliche. Instead, the farmer had an atl-atl with which he would launch spears. It was beautiful to see him launch a spear. Many strawberry thieves would pause to see him launch a spear at them. He had a jai-alai glove. My father had a jai-alai mitt. If I misbehaved, I was to put myself against the brick wall that separated our property from the property of my best friend's mother. My father would launch bitter mangoes at me. My friend and I tried to sell those mangoes, but they made so many people unhappy. Instead, we had to go into canals and steal mangoes that drooped over into the canal. We stole many mangoes, and each one sold for a dollar. My father used the jai-alai mitt to throw mangoes at me. They left bruises on me. One hit me on the back of my neck and stunned me. One hit me on my right side--right on my live--and put me on the ground. My father yelled at me that I was faking it. But I wasn't faking it. My friend and I would sneak onto a golf course at night. We would drench balls with glowing liquid and hit the balls.
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