The Mescal Papers, Part 1

Letter to the editor:

Got your package today! Apparently, a guy on a scooter goes around telling people that they have a package downtown. Not, “Sorry we missed you, we’ll try again tomorrow," that’s what I thought the note said. There is only one post office in San Miguel de Allende! I hauled ass downtown with little time to spare, scored, then bagged it to El Jardin for a Michelada and a quasiburger. I am sitting in the oldest square under the shadow of the last Baroque church in Mexico. An old hag with 3-4 miles of ruts in here face was eyeing my quasiburger.

It was not Quasi to her...

I asked her if she was hungry since her eyes were already making up for many days of nothing. When her tongue made a move toward the Michelada, (iced beer blessed by St. Michael with salt/pepper and texas pete & limon.) My honkey guilt freaked. I had no small coin. She wasn’t begging, just trying to sell an old doily she made and apparently already used a few times. The mesonero eyes were like a billy club. I asked for my bill. I brilliantly produced the right dinero that would produce some change for La LLarona and her husband, who put her up to all this. She was moving her teeth around in her head, took the ransom for the post office box with your gift, put the HOODOO de La Catholica on me and dematerialized. She said I was a good person, not like the other “People of the Sheets” (white ones). I made her tell me what she would eat tonight. I was curious since her mandibles, brown chicklets (sort of like mine) were basically falling out of her head (like my front one). “Consome de pollo de Oro,” she beamed, and tortillas of corn that her husband would use to dutifully pour down her throat before heading back to the cantina. I pour chicken juice down the sink like it is nothing. “She said I would be with her in heaven at the side of chiken lovin’ St. Michael,  for my kindness. I changed the subject prontomundo!

I asked her if she would have some carnitas with the 30 pesos I gave her. She began to cry and said "No, way too expensive, only at weddings and funerals, but (genuflecting wildly in the shadow of the great Cathedral of St. Miguel the Archangel) they are all dead, all killed by poverty and plague: los ratones diabolico!” I couldn’t take it anymore....I sent the mesonero with the billy club eyes away. 

What a pig....I eat carnitas for every meal, except for today! Thank you Jesus..

I grabbed your package and ran down the street, happy that you thought of me at this time of precious giving...