TITANS OF SONORA

It was so hot that sweat emanated from the center of Falcón’s brain, presenting upon his brow. The clock on the wall ticked on but told the wrong time. All the windows were open, inviting a breeze to swing through, but it didn’t. Air conditioning wasn’t common in the State of Sonora, Mexico. People got by because they were meant to; because their ancestors lived in those lands, tamed those lands, and cultivated those lands. “And they didn’t need no stinkin’ air conditioning.”

Falcón startled himself. He was always getting on inside his head, and after he’d spent time in the desert with Don Juan, he occasioned to speak aloud from time to time. Falcón palmed the glass of tequila in his hands, rolling the last piece of ice left from the great ice melt of 1986 that occurred inside that glass of tequila. One last little island.

The old barkeep spoke in broken English. “A man alone on his island is not a man, Padre.” He slid Falcón another cardboard coaster and stuck his forefinger out like he was holding a gun, backed by a wink. Falcón didn’t like it, but he nodded anyway. Nothing else to do. Falcón looked around the old Cantina de Mendoza and found not a soul in sight. Not a soul in sight.

Falcón’s thoughts were interrupted by the slamming of the saloon doors against the cantina’s adobe wall.

“Oh! Sorry!” The man searched for the words and a way to fix what he’d done. There was nothing. The tall man with a baby face glanced at his hands and then searched for the eyes in the room. “Gentlemen, my apologies. Thought these things were a little heavier than they actually were.” Granger wiggled the saloon door back and forth. It creaked. No one said anything.

Falcón took another sip of his tequila but didn’t break eye contact with the creature who’d just arrived. “Name’s Hedwig. Granger Hedwig.” The sweaty man with his pants hanging too low in the back because he refused to wear a belt waddled his way across the cantina, trying to keep his pants falling down with his left hand and the widening of his knees alone, and shook the barkeep's hand with his right. The man aimed next for Falcón, who did nothing more than raise his eyebrows and his glass and turn his body to face forward, toward the bar, away from Granger.

Though Granger was shy of thirty, his greys had already started to sprout. His dimples would make a grown man in a judge’s robe blush, and his side smile could disarm even the witting observer. Granger was a lady killer, and he knew it, even in his disheveled state. Too bad there were no ladies around.

Granger, a Deep East Texas man, had just gotten himself out of a long relationship, and he was looking for some healing on the road. He sat three stools down from Falcón, on a stool that wobbled, a fault he chose to ignore. “Señor, I’d like a whiskey, neat.” Granger side-eyed Falcón. “Make that a double.”

Falcón felt Granger’s eyes on him. He would’ve felt them even if his senses weren’t heightened from the medicine of the desert. Falcón drew first. “Running from something?” Falcón’s accent was faint. Granger chuckled. “That’s a loaded question.” Granger believed that some people died in battle in their past lives, so they constantly sought out ways to recreate that scenario in their present life. It’s comfortable; the path of least resistance. Granger knew he was one of those people.

Granger mirrored Falcón and stared at the empty glasses behind the cantina. Granger sipped his whiskey. It was terrible. It lit his esophagus on fire. Granger began to heave, but he kept it inside, hoping no one noticed. They did.

“I suppose we’re all running from somethin’, aren’t we?” Falcón turned to Granger with his question. Falcón’s dark brown eyes could have cut through a steel door. Granger’s insides trembled at the force of energy from Falcón’s attention. But Granger was brave—stupid, and brave.

“What are you runnin’ from?” Granger’s blue-green eyes stared right back, but not with half the force of Falcón’s. Living was just a game for Granger now. He had no roots, no ties, no woman waiting for him at home, no kids, no pets. Falcón’s lasers took no break. Granger hadn’t yet reached the place in life where one becomes comfortable with silence, so he broke it. “A girl, man. It was a girl. The woman poisoned me. Had me drownin' in a constant supply of bourbon and marijuana. Didn't know down from up.”

Falcón silently wished he could find a formidable sparring partner. He’d hoped this ostentatious pseudo-cowboy from the North would have put up more of a fight.

Falcón turned back toward the beer glasses on the back wall. “It’s rare for something to happen to us that we don’t desire.” Granger’s blood boiled.

∆

A 1983 Honda CR125 made its way down the dirt road where the desert cantina perched atop the hard, stone ground, driven by a madman with long black curls and an orange helmet, around whose waist a young woman with no helmet, jean cutoff shorts, midriff tank top, long hoop earrings, and straight hair, black as night, flopping and twisting and tangling in the wind clung for dear life. “¡Mas despacio!” Her tears dried before they had a chance to fall. Manuel Ortega accelerated, and a half-smile crept across his face. He was just not the slowing-down type.

∆

Granger muttered under his breath. Falcón dug deeper, unkindly, impersonally, as if Granger were any old rat off the street. “We call out to the universe for what we need, whether we know it or not.” Granger was miffed. “Why would I need to be drugged, cheated on, fightin’ at 3am in the middle of the street, slammin’ doors, and callin’ the police?” Falcón was waiting for this moment. “No se, Vaquero. ¿Por que lo harias?”

Granger didn’t understand him, but he knew he didn’t like it. “Sir, I’m a gentleman. A real man’s man. But I think it’s about time you step on back off this boundary line here. Or you’ll have a world of Texas trouble headin’ your way. And you don’t know East Texas.” Falcón finished off his tequila as if Granger had said nothing. Granger had another mouthful, locked and loaded, when Manuel and Liliana skid into the cantina’s lot.

Liliana pushed Manuel as she dismounted. “Cabrón!” She went after him, finger extended. “You could have killed me! ¡Vete a la mierda!” Manuel would’ve been more inconvenienced by a tiny housefly. His lack of reaction infuriated her. She got up in the side of his face. “No quiero volver a fuerte. Miserable excusa de hombre.” The smell of warm, half-digested onion was a tidal wave in Manuel’s face. He’d had enough.

Manuel grabbed Liliana’s face with one of his hands, which were big, larger than average, could definitely palm a basketball, and dismounted his bike. The saloon doors were swinging back against the cantina wall before Falcón had a chance to turn around.

Manuel pushed Liliana to the ground and hovered over her. “Quién crees que eres? Sabes dónde estamos? Este es mi pueblo, Puta!” Manuel gathered saliva in his mouth for his big exit. That was when Granger socked him in the left side of his face.

“Not while I’m around!” But Granger overestimated the strength he harbored. Manuel was hardly fazed, but he did accidentally drool on his own chin, which swung below his face as he turned to look at Granger with the devil in his eye and a dagger in his hand. Liliana screamed. Granger stuck up his forearm to block the blow, but the shiv was sharp.

Falcón and the barkeep, Liliana’s father, Alejandro Mendoza, exited the cantina. Alejandro cocked his shotgun. Manuel made a run for it, as cowards do, and disappeared into a cloud of dust quicker than a desert lizard scurries beneath a rock to evade a bird of prey.

Granger, in shock, couldn’t even feel his wound, but he was bleeding quite profusely. Liliana came to him. She spoke English for Granger’s comfort and took his arm. “This is deep. Papa, I need to take him to my shed. Help me?” Alejandro and Liliana each took a side, but Granger shrugged them off with a smile. “I can walk. Jesus.” Liliana grinned from ear to ear. “No, Gringo. Liliana.”

When they’d reached Liliana’s shed, which was nothing much, just an old 10x12 box made of planks, Liliana lit a candle and tinkered with glass bottles, none of which were labeled, and all of which made Granger nervous. “It’s just a scratch.” Liliana hummed to herself. Her voice mesmerized him, though the melody was simple. Liliana brought Granger some tea, which she’d put on without him noticing. “Drink this very slowly. It will help.” Granger did as he was told.

“A-ha! I found it!” Granger choked on the tea a bit. “What is ‘it’?” Liliana sat in front of him and took his arm. “It’s a tincture mi abuela taught me to make before she died. It’s made of desert marigolds, which grow wild in the lands around here. They’re yellow. And, most importantly, they’re an antiseptic. This will fix you right up.”

Liliana applied the marigold mixture gently to Granger’s gaping wound. As she blew on it to set the salve, Granger felt the loss of his entire body. As he hovered there, suspended, he saw Liliana for the creature she truly was, with a long mane of golden shimmer flowing from behind her head, onto the floor, over the chair next to the one window, out the window and into the desert. Her eyes became revolving doors to a world Granger did not yet know, but would. Her hands were made of feathers of heaven’s angels. Liliana dabbed the drool from Granger’s chin, and left him there to rest.

∆

When nightfall came to pass, Granger made his way back through the saloon doors and into the cantina, where he found Falcón and Alejandro. “Where did she go?” Alejandro didn’t look up from his task of drying recently cleaned glasses that were not ever actually dirty. “Quién?” Granger let out a sigh. “Come on, guys. The woman.”

A breeze blew open the saloon doors. They exchanged a glance, but neither Falcón nor Alejandro said anything.

Granger wondered if he had gone insane. He had read once that insanity can befall a depressed person if they fall deep enough for a long enough period of time. He looked at his arm. The bandage was gone, and no scar was left behind. Falcón interrupted Granger’s mounting panic. “Did you receive what you sought?” It was then Granger knew that he wasn’t crazy, but he wasn’t the same, either.

Granger nodded his head to both Alejandro and Falcón. Falcón called after him. “Fare thee well, Vaquero.”

Granger stopped just before the saloon doors, but he turned not around. “I’ll be just fine. I’m gonna be the Titan of Texas Fiction.” Granger strode out the door with a finger in the air and into his pickup, due East, where he would become a Texas troubadour, a connoisseur of vocations, a loyal friend, and a medium for his daemon; where he would remain a rebel rouser.

Those saloon doors kept swinging, though there was no breeze left to blow.