From The Going To The Jungle Series-For Juana Wherever She Is

From The Going To The Jungle Series-For Juana Wherever She Is

“United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ 1950s Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and no longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.

Fritz thought again, this time with breathing easier, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell, one month R&R included, a month in Hawaii where he thought he must have set the world record for boozing, mostly scotch, low-shelf scotch to make his dough last, dope-sniffing from opium to cocaine to brother and sister, reefer was the least of it, whoring, some paid, some free what did it matter when a man had  his wanting habits on, whoring running through the Kama Sutra and a couple of other tricks not listed in that volume that one of the girls, a white girl too from respectable parents back on the mainland who was looking for kicks, odd-ball kicks and found a partner, for a while, willing to indulge her, Angelina her name, ask her how she got that tattoo on her upper inner thigh and why, if you ever run across her in Lima, Ohio. Except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad as ‘Nam, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.

Yah, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick, delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. And then he graduated to girl, cousin cocaine when that became the drug of choice and then mainly cheaper that high-grade reefer.

Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell, minus one, the boozing, doping, whoring one. Or just maybe reaching down deep it was the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.

But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song, some old time cowboy song, on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was ever going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about easy street, not only was it to get some dope to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every woman-loving guy, every honest woman-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman.

Not always about a woman named Juana though, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City when she disappeared before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should have been a little less forgiving. Yah, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy out for kicks.

Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance Juana always wore which drove him crazy as a loon, that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, yah, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.

Yah, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the “world” and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.

See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep her in style. He never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by him but Juana was also “connected,” connected through some cousin, to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Panama Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night.

Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Yah, it was the Panama Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got “religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.

To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tree leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tree leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But by then he had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.

And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the big bad ass guys of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies, like Juana, and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk. And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for chrissakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.

This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. He didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine, a habit he learned in ‘Nam and that saved him more than once. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right that minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.

And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, first Mexico City where he had met her to make connections further south, and then back to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And there he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh hotel soap. As Fritz got off though he staggered for a minute when his feet hit the ground, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled,” smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. He said to himself, yah, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you read this and are down Sonora way and see her tell her Fritz said “hello.”