Caballero/Chops
Caballero's gut hung over his belt; he wore no buckle that could be seen. His black denims were clean and pressed; they weren't for working. His blue shirt was rolled to his elbows and before he sat on the bus he removed his straw hat and set it on the luggage rack above his seat. The hat was dirty from wear but, again, not from work. Specks of brown could be seen on the crown, right where his hand would hold it when removing or putting it on. His boots were new. Maybe Caballero didn't work. His hair was bald, for the most part. Gray and kinky from the heat and pressure of the hat and largely absent from the spots where most of us men will one day find our hair largely absent. His moustache, salt and pepper, handlebarred downward , thick as a thicket but halted not long past the camouflaged line of his mouth. I could respect a moustache like that. He sat toward the front of the bus and paid no one any mind.
No regrets, Caballero. Keep on moving.
He had come from somewhere. They had all come from somewhere. He had come from somewhere certain, and certain only to him. No one here would know, not even me, who could only guess and guess again. Maybe he had come from burying his wife. Dead wives happened early and they happened often for Caballero and his brothers. Their mother had died at a scandalously young age and perhaps from then on they were drawn to such girls, the ones with blue fire in their hearts. Caballero had seen the fire in his wife's heart and watched it whimper and fade at his touch. It flickered blue and quiet, destined to snuff out, but it was that helpless blue that Caballero loved so much, and what would draw him time and again. If he could see the color of the fire in his own heart perhaps things would have been different, but he could not.
He had come from somewhere, but he had not arrived at wherever he was headed. That's what I knew, but then again what do I know. Nothing. The only all-seeing eye is on the back of a dollar bill. That's what I thought. Caballero kept his hat clean and ready in anticipation. Anticipation. I wondered if he could sing, and then as if my thought had wafted through the recycled air of the bus he let out a phlegmatic shudder, as if to warn us all for the last time that he did not sing. His air was that of a good man, but one can never be too certain. Caballero perhaps carried someone else's life savings in his bag. Or maybe that was me.
No regrets, Caballero. Keep on moving.
**********
Chops was young and ugly. He hopped the bus young and ugly at a stop in some place called Jackson, Tennessee. The station had been left behind sometime in the last century, inconsiderately aged for our maximum discomfort. Chops, on the other hand, had been left behind from some other planet. He sat in the back and talked to no one in particular. His mouth was poorly toothed but his words were a rap that rapped at great and particular length, just like Muhammad Ali, his hero--but of course Ali should be the hero of every young man if he has fire in his heart.
Chops don't stop for nothing. Chops don't stop for nothing.
He was running from these women. These bitches would kill him if he let them, but he would never let them. His mother was a whore. His grandmother was a whore. He railed against them and their delinquent ways, for the contempt that a whore deserves wholly outstrips and overtakes any supposed implicit respect she might deserve as a mother. Right? Right? His argument was persuasive that night, though I couldn't buy it part and parcel. He stood in the back of the bus to howl at the storm and the ass-backwards way we were trained to look at things. He belonged in New York. His house weren't nothing, and if he never saw those women who had fucked him over so permanently ever again, then so goddamn be it. Chops was a fighter. He weren't no lover, so long as there weren't no love in this world. The things he said, I never asked him to explain. When he got off the bus he would pretend that someone might be waiting for him.
My clairvoyance got the best of me and I had no choice but to read his future like a ticker tape issuing from the nape of his neck. Stop. Chops found with blood on his clothes. Stop. Chops running smooth like velvet through the city streets. Stops. All the girls love Chops even though none of them should. Stop. Chops elected President. Stop.
Chops don't stop for nothing. Chops don't stop for nothing.
**********
We the three of us left our buses and sat in the stations and ate our meals. Together we the three of us yearned so desperately for those who once we lived for.