there's no one

they must have thought I was lying

so they threw me in here

slammed the door

never even tried the knob

I knew it was curtains

I'm not in here for lying

I know that much

I'm in here for blowing

twice the state limit

Guy in the cell next door is shrieking like a beagle in heat. He deliberately bashed his head against the wall when they tossed him in there. Spotted blood all over the floor, like red cottage cheese. I saw it as they walked me past there, handcuffed. Officer grumbled he wasn't cleaning it up. The mess. Idiot smashed his own damn head. Idiot could damn sure clean it up. Or sleep in it. Which was what he was doing.

Now these raw wall scrapings are starting to move all by themselves. Flicker and dance. I remember reading somewhere they burned Jean Genet's manuscript of Our Lady of the Flowers when they discovered it hidden in his cell. He then proceeded to write the whole thing over again-on toilet paper.

Where have they taken my Chevy

I wonder

Will I ever see my white Chevy again

Elkhorn River

I'm in the Elkhorn up to my knees. My yellow dog floats past, hunting crawdads; her black eyes flat and darting on top of her head, like some wild fat opossum. Managed to catch three green smallmouth so far in the same deep hole. I've stopped counting the snags I've had on mossy rock and sunken sycamore. At least no thorny thoughts so far. No haunted memories. Just red-winged-blackbird songs and honking geese. Around the river bend, toward the old bridge I can hear Mexican voices getting closer. Splashing, laughing. Men and boys. Jokes. Tales of chicas way back in some jungle village. Here they come, around the turn; men and sons, crashing right up the middle, casting wide nets in white spiraling fans, like they must have always done in their Caribbean homeland. Spanish shrieks through the thick Kentucky air. Birds and squirrels dash for cover. Silver fish and crawdads spill through mestizo fingers as this little tribe goes wading right past me, pressing upriver; roaring with their brotherhood.

How is it I got cast out here so far in this Kentucky wilderness? Was it horses or women? How did it come to pass that Mayan men are more a part of these snaking waters than my white flat feet touching bottom?

Horse

Dragging my dead gelding by tractor on a chain down to the deep ditch, crying like a baby. Thank God there's no one on the farm right now. Just dogs, chickens, and cattle. Thank God for that. No one to see me like this, all grimaced up in grief; doubled over just about. The head of the horse bumping along over gravel and thick weeds; muscles of the neck flowing with every contour of land-flowing for the last time as they already begin to lock up. This great old gelding; son of Peppy San Badger, blood of King Ranch, carried me into the herd so many times; paralyzed cattle with his stare, rattled the bit in the ground. Now he's going down in a black hole. Thank God there's no one on the farm right now. Just dogs, chickens, cattle, and me.

Descendancy

Here I am again in the bright white glare of fluorescent tubes framing the cheap mirror of a two-banger motor home parked off Paseo de Peralta in the very town where my dad lies buried and my daughter was born. Here I am yet again in another movie, at my age, playing yet another military man, which I'm not and never will be but my father most certainly was and all his brothers and their father and grandfather and great-grandfather going back to the fall of Richmond and further back to Concord and Lexington and back some more to the Norman Invasion and pagans wearing calf skulls and Viking invasions and burials in longboats with dragon-headed prows. I don't know how far back you want to carry this thing. What's the point? Who are you hoping to find back there, anyhow? Some seer? Some diviner of destinies? And here they come again now, calling me on their walkie-talkies; banging politely on my metal door: ADs, Assistant ADs, assistants to the assistants of ADs. Making sure I'm ready. Suited up. Making sure I'm ready to be ready, just in case they're ready. Any second now they might need me to step in front of the camera and portray this ongoing character in a decorated uniform with an aura of tired, grim determination in the face of hopeless odds. Where did I ever come up with an affinity for such a character, such a man? The arrogant jut of the jaw. The downcast scowl. And this terrible sense of impending doom? Was it from as far back as the steel seat of a Jeep in the Mariana Islands sitting beside my mother in monsoon rain? Was it in the back of my father's neck where he picked compulsively at his shrapnel scars? Or is it somewhere deep inside the terror of being lost in the Great Basin at night with no lights and you've run completely out of gas? No use fishing in the dark. Put your costume on. Walk out there and face the music. Hopefully, some mask will appear. Someone from long ago, I might recognize. Something that might just tap me on the shoulder and invite me out of here. Believe me, I wouldn't hesitate.

Durango, Mexico

He drives me out here to location. He won't let me drive. It's a matter of pride or union orders, I guess. I'm his guest, he says, and then he's silent for miles. I don't speak much Spanish so he stays silent. I can't blame him. When I speak English he smiles and nods politely; relieved. I don't know how much he understands. The miles click by. When I speak my stumbling Spanish a dark cloud crosses his face and a look of deep pity casts into his Indian eyes as though I were a "pobrecito"-one of the slab-sided dogs we go flying by; splashing mud on white sows and squealing gilts. We flash past stake trucks, broke down in the lava rocks, stacked high with sweet pine logs, flocks and flocks of swirling cowbirds like falling decks of cards. We head out into the pink Sierras in his beat to shit Oldsmobile, fenders flapping, and leave Mesquitillo's bare dirt streets in the dust. The only car we pass is wheelless; jacked way up on wood Modelo crates. Naked two-year-olds peek out at us from behind fresh sheets, blowing in the high mountain air. The viejos here say they still remember Pancho Villa crashing through this very town on a plain bay horse; galloping toward a historical moment which he entirely staged for the American cameras. Clever bastard.

Tulum, Mexico

Early morning, the little Mayan man rakes the white sand in beautiful crosshatched strokes like a woven basket. He takes such great care with it you wonder what ancient sect of craftsmen passed this impulse down to him. He piles the seaweed and chunks of ragged plastic blown in from Cuba into neat little stacks then collects them all with a wooden wheelbarrow. His feet are wide and leathery like something from Diego Rivera.

Slowly, the tourists begin to emerge from their pink cabanas hauling rubber rafts and tall mixed drinks down to the surf. They set themselves up in distinct camps, depending on language and culture. Some drop their tops. Others stay buttoned up clear to the neck. One of them is peeling badly and her husband slathers heavy-duty sunblock all over her back. She winces at his every touch.

On the edge of the coconut palm grove a buxom Mexican woman lurks in the stripes of shade. She's scanning the tourists with wild eyes, searching for any vulnerable single man. She reminds me of that fat woman from Fellini's Amarcord who seduced all the young boys on the beach. What was her name? Serafina, maybe? She spots a ripe victim and approaches him quickly, almost tiptoeing through the crosshatch marks left by the little Mayan man. She asks the startled tourist, who is reading a Graham Greene novel, if he would like to go with her into the palm grove and get a deep massage. He shakes his head vehemently and rolls over on his belly, shocked at the interruption. One of the waiters from the resort spots the buxom woman and comes running at her, frantically waving a white linen napkin. He chases her off, back into the slender palms, as though she were a pesky seabird. Their tracks have ripped a violent swath through the perfect basket-weave. The waiter apologetically returns to the man reading the Graham Greene novel just as his slinky girlfriend heads toward him in a glistening purple bikini, carrying the New York Times. Little puffs of sand punctuate her every step. The waiter backs off, bowing and scraping. The buxom woman is still lurking, watching it all from a distance.

Boca Paila, Mexico

Why would he ever think, on arriving at midnight through sand and dank luggage, morning might miraculously bring some bright new shining faces to the plank breakfast table from as far away as Omaha, say, or maybe Saskatchewan, Tonopah, Del Rio? Is he finally getting that desperate for company?

Must be all the white identical rental cars jammed up against the blowing palms; the crashing Caribbean repeating the same old song he's just now beginning to recognize.

Why would he ever think he'd become truly engaged talking "issues" with strangers when all they ever do is divide and separate along lines that real fishermen come here to get away from anyway? He would most likely draw a dead blank on every one and create a deep dark paranoia over the pineapple and cantaloupe.

Anyhow, it's clear they're only here for the disposable photograph with some stunned world record Tarpon, a giant Jack or Permit. One of the bigger fellas obviously works for the Secret Service, although he thinks he's anonymous. You can tell by his shaved neck, the automatic bulge in his Simms vest, and the puff in his concave chest.

The top-heavy wives hang behind on the beach, reading historical novels and spine-tingling Grisham under lime green umbrellas. They've left nothing behind.

Just lying here listening to my daughter smash mosquitoes in the next room; smacking her thigh. The waves are softer tonight; lapping almost. Wind has died down. Someone is playing repetitive Euro-disco nowhere music next door. All I can make out is the deadening bass line. My daughter's mosquito smashing grows louder and more violent. Her torture is palpable. Her mother rolls over right beside me and yells out: "You can't just slash away at mosquitoes! You have to be precise!" Her voice carries the authority of the Minnesota Boundary Waters. The smashing from my daughter's room stops. Her candle goes out.

Quintana Roo, Mexico

Finally, the blind man and his companion sit down right next to me on the beach. I've been curious about them for days and now, here they are suddenly. It seems odd they should be so close up when I've been observing them always from a distance; watching how the shorter man gently leads the blind man into the surf by the elbow then lets go of him once the waves begin to crash around their knees. They just stand there staring across in the direction of Hispaniola. Now, they turn and cross the white sand up the hill, back toward the restaurant; the blind man always behind holding onto the shorter man's flowered shirt, very softly. Nothing desperate. Nothing urgent. I follow them and sit down directly across at a round table. I can't help staring straight into the blind man's eyes. He never wears dark glasses and his eyes are wide open, unblinking. They're obviously synthetic eyes, like two large olives in a pale martini. I can see that these synthetic eyes are definitely not seeing mine. I look away quickly toward the green sea when his companion notices me staring. Far offshore the surf is breaking across the coral reef in a thin white line. The frigate bird soars high above, wings unmoving. What a creation.

Dogs really know how to run down here. Away from gasoline-driven demons. Maniacs on bikes. Still, the movement never stops. The night. Squealing, flat-bellied girls on their purple spangled cell phones. Screaming with delight. Disfigured dolls hanging off the hitches of pickup trucks. And always the overripe pregnant ones from out of the skinny alleys, babies in each hand, ice cream running down their arms. Behind them, in a grass palapa, something's being sacrificed to the Gods of Wind. Maybe it's a new white goat brought down from Merida. Maybe it's something from an entirely different time. Only one thing's certain. It never stops.

Land of the Living

"It's just amazing how friendly you become when you're on Zenax," she says. This is after we've been standing in the long snaking customs line for over an hour in the torrid Cancun heat. We're being herded, shoulder to shoulder, with all the other Minnesota "snowbirds" frantically fanning themselves with their immigration forms.