Read Online Thirteen Senses by Víctor Villaseñor - Free Book Online Page A

I decide to be with you!
    â€œBecause, as I’ve told you time and again, even after I’m dead and gone and the worms have eaten my earth-body and you’re so old and deaf that you can’t hear your own farts, I’ll still be here inside your heart and soul like una GARRRRRAPATA, a tick up a dog’s ass, scratching at you, clawing at you, giving you great discomfort, every time I see you or one of your offspring get lazy and allow the Devil to come near! Do you understand now? This is who I am, your ancestral TICK UP YOUR SPIRITUAL ASSHOLE FOR ALL ETERNITY! So you don’t get lazy on me again,” she added. “GET YOUR SHIT FIRST!”
    Salvador burst out laughing. What else could he do?
    THE NEXT DAY , Salvador was down in Carlsbad, delivering whiskey, when his good friend Jerry Bill told him who the guy was who’d brought the two men down from Los Angeles to try to take over his territory. Why, it was Tomas, a good friend of Salvador’s, a man who’d sat across the table from Salvador in many a poker game and then had had breakfast with him in the early hours of the morning.
    And the two men that Tomas had invited down were no other than . . . the Filipino and the Italiano, the two guys who’d cut Salvador’s throat a few years back in Corona, leaving him for dead, and then they’d also been the sons-of-a-bitches who’d gotten Salvador arrested in Hanford, for gambling. That’s how he’d ended up spending time in the Tulare jail.
    These two stool pigeon bastard -cabrones, Salvador was going to kill immediately, and he didn’t give a good damn if they were amigos of the big boys out of Fresno, or not!
    But then, that night as Salvador slept alone in Carlsbad in the little white house that he’d especially prepared for his honeymoon with Lupe, his mother, Doña Margarita, appeared to him in his dreams. “ Mi hijito ,” said the old Indian woman, “I didn’t raise you up all these years for you to now just go out and do your revenge like a stupid, typical man!
    â€œYou must think deeper, mi hijito, much deeper than the wolf or the coyote, and come up with a plan as cunning as the little She-Fox herself, the Female Force who helps God reign the Heavens.”
    And saying this, his old mother then turned into a little She-Fox in Salvador’s dream, and whispered to him so quietly that his sleeping male-brain now thought that these were his very own thoughts.
    â€œSleep, my child-darling, sleep,” whispered the little She-Fox, “and let all the wisdom of the ages come to you. Remember the story of how the little She-Fox fooled the big strong coyote when he was going to eat her babies. She took the big, hungry coyote down to the lagoon and convinced him that the reflection of the full Moon in the water was the biggest, most delicious cheese in all the world. Greed did all the rest, mi hijito. The coyote drank the water, wanting to empty the lagoon so he could get to the cheese, and he choked to death. Remember, greed can be a person’s best friend when the other has it and you don’t.”
    â€œYes, mama ,” said Salvador to the She-Fox in his dream, “I remember that story well, but I’m a man, mama, so I don’t know what to do, except kill these two cabrón -bastards!”
    â€œThen sleep some more, mi hijito ,’’ said his old Indian mother to him in his dream, “and believe me, you’ll soon come up with a plan so fantastic that it will give you a greater reputation than just the killing of two mere mortals. And also remember the formidable powers of the mother pig, the only farm animal capable of returning to the wild and surviving, because she never lost her wild instincts. And it is within our wild instincts that lies the key to our soul.
    â€œDream, mi hijito, dream, and know that our soul is our doorway to God. Coo-coo rrroo-coo coooooo, dijo la Paloma! ”