Daniel missed, but just by a little bit. The pebble fell short of his target, an indifferent, black dog with white spots sprawled out in the middle of the road in the hot sun. As the pebble fell, the spotted dog briefly raised his head and considered the pebble. Then he considered Daniel, the stout Mexican man silhouetted against his Mayan hut in the shade of the papaya trees. He briefly considered getting up to move, but found sleep the better prospect and immediately dozed off.
Daniel cursed to himself, and straightened his back, shifting his position on the rock right outside the gate. It was a hot day, and he put aside some special time for himself to sit outside his house on the side of the gravel street to watch the people trod by, watch the sun crawl across the sky.
Today he was distracted though, cause he just really wanted to hit this dog.
In a lot of ways, Tunkás, like many Mayan villages, has gone to the dogs. It was just crawling with them. Those mangy, flea ridden, emaciated animals. Weaving their way through chairs, yards, gardens and huts, sniffing, scratching, laying in the middle of the road. Licking the crumbs of your dinner and rooting through the leftovers in the street. They come in big and small, black, white, brown, red, male, female, fat, and skinny. There are loners who lumber around on their own, tongues hanging in the heat, or maybe the gangs of three or four that sneak around the town like a couple of kids skipping school.
Yucatecos have been kicking them in the faces for ages, throwing them into the street to build their houses and feed their families. The village has grown around them, children filling the streets and the smell of tortillas piercing the jungle air. Yet, despite the many strikes to the ribs and brooms to the face, the dogs are here, even if in they are confined to the streets. They hold that special place in a relationship that's abusive, yet strangely symbiotic.
His eyes narrowed as he gazed at the spotted dog in the street.
"You think you're better than me, don't you?" he growled.
The spotted dog did nothing to deny this accusation, but instead kicked his leg in the dust. A tubby, brown dog was politely pooping in the road right behind him.
Daniel spat in the street and scratched his bare stomach, quietly boiling over in resentment. He wondered what the spotted dog was dreaming about. Whatever they were, he was jealous of them.
"I oughta smack you for lying in the street like that, gettin' in people's way," Daniel shouted. "You're nothing but a stupid animal! What have you got to show for it?"
A cackle erupted from the swinging hammock in the hut behind him. An old, toothless woman, sprawled in her hammock, was swinging to the rhythm of the radio with a wide grin on her face.
"Shut it, vieja!" he shouted back.
The woman shrugged, and cackled a little softer.
Daniel scratched his stomach again, this time less as habit and more as a thoughtful gesture. It was about the middle of the day, and the heat poured down from the heavens like rain. It was too hot to take a walk, too hot to mend the fence, too hot to check the garden. Nothing to do but sit in the shaded road side and consider the foot traffic, consider life. On any other day, he would have made conversation with his neighbors that were passing by at that moment, but he only had one priority on his mind that afternoon. He picked up another pebble, and aimed for the spotted dog once again.
As he aimed, Luis, the old neighbor down the street, strolled up to Daniel, kicking his worn out sandals in the dirt and making clouds as he walked. Standing next to Daniel, Luis looked at the dozing dog for a few seconds before turning back to Daniel, who weighed the pebble in his hand and held it up to his eye, looking for a perfect shot.
"Ma'alob' k’íin," said Luis.
"Good day? There's nothing good about today," said Daniel.
At this, he took his shot and nailed a turkey in the yard across the road. The turkey shrieked in protest and shuffled off to the other side of the yard.
"Not even close," Daniel muttered. Another curse, another spit, another cackle from inside the hut.
"Where are my manners? Señora!" Luis said with the grace of gentleman. "B'ix a bèel?"
"I'm not too good," the woman yelled back. "I'm sick."
"What do you have?"
"Old age!" she yelled back. She cackled again, though with less enthusiasm.
Luis sighed in agreement. "'Life is nothing, everything ends, and only God makes man happy,' as they say," he mused, wondering if he believed what he was saying. He stared off down the road, eyes glazed by cataracts, at two ladies at the panaderia fighting over the last piece of bread. His face was worn, but well chiseled by his Mayan heritage. He had the stone face you might imagine in a carving on the side of a temple, and a growling voice that spoke eons in every syllable. His thin shirt hung loosely on his skinny body, but his hands were strong and callused, carved from rocks. He placed a boulder hand on Daniel's shoulder.
"You hear about the man from the city?" he asked.
"Yeah, I saw him walking around," said Daniel. "What was he sayin?"
"Oh, the usual," said Luis. "Talkin' politics, talkin' bout our homes, talkin' bout our children and future. He talked about the voting booth, our salvation. Turns out the only ticket to heaven is an x on a ballot, not a prayer to God. Makes me think that maybe one day when we get to heaven we won't find any pearly gates, but we'll find one big bureaucracy. Angels with rolled up sleeves, cherubim with picket signs. A whole new set of speeches, signs, and people telling us they know our pain. A whole new set of sympathy, a whole new set of sucking up to do."
Daniel shrugged.
"It's fine. It's all were used too," Luis admitted. "Although they say its better across the border. You know, you've been there right?"
Daniel considered his memories and scratched his stomach, as if he was brushing away years of his life. "That was years ago," he muttered. "When the Dream was alive. Turns out, its terrible in Los Angeles too. After paying my cousin for the trip, I ended up in a dingy apartment with a bunch of other guys. Wasnt even enough room to think to myself or hardly relieve yourself in peace. I went to work everyday by sitting on the side of the road waiting for a job, and at night I got to back to being a caged animal. They call it the Dream, but its the same nightmare we've always known, only over there the politicians are pasty white and you work through the afternoon. No wonder so many of our friends have died over there."
Luis and Daniel inclined their heads in respect for the dead. After a few moments, Daniel began to speak again, slower and more deliberately than before.
"That's not the life for me. Many of them over there would rather die on the job than have to die with dignity, maybe kick this life with their heads on a desk and their hands bleeding. I say, better to die on my own dusty street with dignity than to die in a foreign land as some filthy animal for the sake of someone's Dream. You wouldnt even have family to bury you over there. Instead of wasting your life, I say take to the streets, make your home out of everyone's way. Then find a woman who can feed you when you're hungry and stays out of your way."
As Daniel spoke, a middle aged woman began walking down the street. She was holding the hands of both her children, kicking away dogs as she went. As she passed, she looked at Daniel with a mixed expression of pain and resentment, the wrinkles extenuating every grieving thought etched in her face. Daniel avoided her gaze and began searching for more pebbles in the dust, but her soft gaze continued. Years before, she was his wife, the one who would call him in from the street, fix his food, raise his children. Now, she went to an empty home with her two small children, with hardly a bite to eat. Despite Daniel's pitiful appearance, she never forgot what he looked like the day he returned from the States, eyes blazing with passion, arm around another woman. He looked alive then, but still in a pitiful way. It was the look of an excited beast that thought of nothing better than humping anything that moved. Now it was just her and the kids, and Daniel continued in the dust, being called into dinner by his new wife, mending her fences, and putting up with the cackles of his mother in law. As the memories hung in the air like the dust of the street, the woman Daniel loved directed her gaze back to the road, kicking the tubby, brown dog in the ribs as she passed him.
The tubby, brown dog, tongue hanging out, wandered off down the road, less from hurt and more from boredom. A couple of other dogs nearby began to slowly follow him. As the dogs slowly wandered down the road, a man in a suit paraded in the background with several other Yucatecos following him. As he passed, words like "freedom" "good wage" and "your future" drifted on the wind. Luis let out a long sigh, said his graceful goodbyes, and slowly began to wander after the man in the suit.
Within a few minutes, the trains of dogs and people had gone to another part of the village, and only Daniel remained. Picking up another pebble, he threw it at the sleeping dog and nailed it straight in the head. The dog cried out in pain, and quickly ran off down the street. Daniel, laughed wildly, eyes glowing with passion and head thrown back in glee. The barks of the village dogs rose up on the afternoon air, laughing right along with him.
~Jared
