Barnard left Audie at the hospital and headed out to get a pair of boots. Using his phone as his GPS, he was able to put the thinking part of his brain onto other tasks than directions. He reflected on his week up to this point and how crazy it had been. He thought about Lydia again and remembered that he had been in the middle of a rather naughty dream about her when Audie had unceremoniously wakened him with a scream. He wished that had been able to play out. He thought about Donnie and Sid and hoped they were securely locked away for whatever charges the police could have thrown at them. He also remembered that the night before he and Audie had made a rather manic video about their week and what they had left to do, saying they were going to make their own fiesta over in Juarez this very afternoon. He thought that he should at least go across the border and get something for Audie and maybe make a video or two since he would have to backtrack across the state as soon as Audie got out of the hospital.
He was pulling up in front of the boot factory with these last thoughts running through his mind. Being at a manufacturing facility with a visitor's area and outlet store at the front reminded him of the brewery in Shiner as he was getting out of his car. That realization made him jerk his head around in a full circle, feeling like a truck might barrel into him any second. He wondered how long he might have post-traumatic stress caused by Donnie and Sid when at that exact moment a black pickup cruised around the corner to his left so fast it was almost on two wheels. The two guys inside were hooping and yelling, apparently on a liquid lunch break from a construction site, and sped down the road. Barnard realized as they disappeared around another corner that he was pressed against the side of his car with his hand clutching his chest. He breathed several deep breaths to force himself to relax, dug his phone out of his pocket, and started shooting himself.
"I'm here at the J.B. Hill boot factory to buy a set of primo boots. Audie will be in the hospital until at least tomorrow because of his rattlesnake bite, so I'm flying solo for the next twenty four hours. After leaving here I will make a ceremonious journey across the border in honor of mi compadre, eat a taco for us both ... yes, I know, sacrifices must be made ... and then come back over to sleep in the park again tonight. This time I will NOT be relying on a rope to keep snakes away. I'm pretty sure I will set up my tent." He kept the video running while he stepped through the doors, asked permission to record his buying some new boots, and asked for Eduardo. Only a few moments later, Eduardo stepped out of a hallway that led into the showroom area.
The man was a little more than Barnard's six foot height and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds, much of which was in his chest. He had a dark complexion with rugged features, a full, salt-and-pepper beard, and a full head of hair that was swept backward with possibly an entire tube of Brylcreem. Barnard thought he greatly resembled The Most Interesting Man in the World. The overwhelming scent of cologne made Barnard fight to not sneeze while he greeted the man and said he was a friend of Aunt Jeanie. As soon as that was out of his mouth, he realized he didn't know her last name.
"I know a lot of women named Jeanie, my friend. I am sorry, I do not know exactly who you are talking about." His smile was warm and friendly, though, as if they were old friends. "It is clear, though, that you know someone who says she knows me and that is good enough for me to show you around a little bit."
"Is it okay with you if I record all this? I'm doing some videos to put on the Internet as kind of a travel show sort of thing. I've heard a lot about your boots and this would make a great piece." Barnard was trying to be respectful, but without Audie he felt suddenly very vulnerable.
"Oh, sure, sure, senor, it is my pleasure to be on your movie. We do not do tours, but I will be glad to show you how we make your boots and then get you fitted for your new pair. Comprende?"
About halfway through the tour, Barnard thought this was probably the best piece he had gotten the entire week. This was the kind of thing he wanted his trip to be about. He could not, of course, dismiss the fact that everything up to this point had been a blast, but he was beginning to convince himself that the week might have gone like this very tour if he had done it by himself.
"That is our operation, my friend. We make the best boots in the world right here in El Paso. Should we get started on a pair for you?"
"Well, yeah, I would love to get a pair. That's why I came, but how much do they cost?"
"They are all different costs, but first we need to cast your feet. Then we can build them for you from there. Luis will help you and then you will look at the styles. Muy bueno, senor?" Barnard thanked him and sat down where Eduardo directed him, then Eduardo disappeared back into the hallway. He noticed a couple of men standing in one corner with their arms folded and snickering. He thought maybe they were just getting a kick out of the gringo getting a pair of boots, but he never liked being the object of jokes. After taking off his socks and shoes, Luis put on a fresh pair of tube socks and began wrapping them with duct tape. Barnard was fascinated with the process and recorded the entire thing. After taping several layers over the socks, Luis carefully cut the whole thing down the front of his shins all the way to his toes and explained that they would make a plaster mold and then make his boots to fit.
Standing back up with his old shoes on, Barnard started looking at the displays. The first pair of boots with the sticker stating a price of $3,400 nearly gave him a coronary. He started gasping and hyperventilating, pointing at the boots. Luis grabbed him by the arm and started asking if he were alright, but all Barnard could do was bob his upper body up and down for a "yes." He cleared his throat loudly and from the right side of his peripheral vision he could see that another couple of men had joined the first two and were now a little more openly enjoying a show at Barnard's expense. He thought maybe he should just ask where the cheaper boots were.
"Um, not that these aren't nice, they're beautiful in fact, but where are the boots in the, say, hundred dollar range?" At this Luis and the four men behind him burst out laughing and yelping a couple of "ayee" sounds. He thought he heard someone mutter "stupid vato," but he wasn't so sure because Luis was leading him to the opposite side of the small showroom.
"These are our least expensive boots, senor. They will do very fine for you, but not quite as comfortable as the ostrich skin. Regular cow leather and leather soles, but still made to fit your feet. Very nice." Barnard stared in shock at the $1,540 price on the boots and then stared at Luis with his mouth open.
"They are still too expensive for you, my friend?"
"I thought that by saying I was a friend of Aunt Jeanie that I might get some kind of discount. That's how she made it seem, anyway."
"Oh, no, no discounts, I am very sorry, senor. You got the tour because you know somebody who knows the owner, but the boots are the boots. You know?" Luis displayed a grin that Barnard thought conveyed a certain smugness on the quality of the boots being beyond Barnard's means. It made him angry, but he stifled it and decided to bow out with grace before he said something he might regret.
"Oh. I'm really sorry. Thanks for your time and letting me make my video, but I can't buy any of these. I had no idea they were so much money." He shook Luis' hand and asked if he knew somewhere in Juarez he could get something to eat without getting sick and maybe get a beer.
"You don't have to worry about getting sick in Juarez, senor. That's mostly for down into Mexico where you don't want to drink the water. Very good in Ciudad Juarez. Just don't eat the cabrito from the men in the push carts, though. Even I won't do that, my friend. Give you Montezuma's revenge. Go through the walking gate and go two blocks to the left. You will find a big cafe with plenty of good tacos for you on your budget." He gave Barnard a wink that also seemed to convey "cheapskate" but he was appreciative of the tip. Heading out, he saw that one of the other men had stayed and still had a huge smile on his face and stared unrelentingly. He resisted the temptation to walk over and ask what he thought was so funny, but after the way this day had gone so far, he was feeling like the biggest joke he knew. He had gone a complete 180 from the guy he had felt he was the night before. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if he might be bipolar with these recent ups and downs. He flopped into his now rather worn Smart Car, slammed his door, and uploaded his newest video. At least he could get something out of this and over in Mexico he'd probably be off the radar from the feds. Starting his car, he saw the straggler from the showroom come out of the front door and walk in front of his car, down the building, and into the lot at the side.
Driving away, he noticed that an old pickup was pulling out of the boot factory parking lot and driving along behind him. He paused a moment at the stop sign to open his GPS app on his phone and then spoke into it to find the border crossing while he continued driving. He didn't want to stay stopped for very long in case this guy behind him had sensed his resentment for being laughed at and decided to be a bully. Stopping at the next intersection, he could see through his mirror that this was, in fact, the guy that had remained to get the final snicker, so he pressed the gas pedal to hopefully lose him. He thought he had lost the guy when he was pulling into the border crossing parking area. Getting out and locking up, though, he saw the pickup pull into the lot about a hundred feet away. This was no coincidence, he realized, so he ran at full speed for the gate. His only hope was that this guy was an illegal and wouldn't take a chance to cross over.
Getting through the gate and running a block to his left as Luis had suggested, he looked back over his shoulder and saw the guy now running to keep up with him. So much for him being an illegal. He felt that his best option was to lose himself in the big cafe Luis had told him about. At least there maybe this guy wouldn't make a big scene and try to beat him up. He would have time, then, to figure out what to do from there. He also wanted to make sure this was documented so his attacker would be known, so he started recording video and swapping between his face and the face of his follower without being too obvious while talking about what he thought was going on.
"Sorry for the bouncing and being out of breath on this. I'm being chased in Mexico by a guy who followed me across the border in El Paso. He was in the boot factory and was laughing at me there. I think I pissed him off somehow. I don't know what he wants, but it can't be good. So far, everybody on this trip who has chased me has been trying to beat me up. This is the guy." He pointed the phone backward to try and get the man's face on camera. "If I don't show up in the U.S. again, I'm dead or in a gutter someplace in Juarez. Somebody please come find me. I'm going to get some food in this café and try to lose this guy in the crowd." Barnard pointed the phone at the café, then back again at the man following him, then said, "If I don't upload anything else, this is my last one and I hope it teaches people a lesson to be very careful when going to Mexico." He stopped the video just as he came to the doorway of the café.
He found the cafe just where Luis had said and with the time being just after noon, he was in luck. Luck for it being crowded, that is, but not luck for getting served. He picked up recording again to get some video of the guys working behind the counter and to take in some of the flavor of the place. He had almost forgotten about being followed when he turned toward the front door and saw that the guy had taken a seat at a sidewalk table and was watching him, talking on a cell phone. Barnard was flummoxed at this point, but not so much so that he couldn't eat. He found a seat in between a very large, sweaty man and a smaller man holding a Chihuahua. As he ate and watched his stalker watching him, he decided to make a little small talk.
"What's your dog's name?" he said to the smaller man, trying to not smell the other guy.
"Dinner," the smaller man said, eliciting a huge laugh from the dozen or so people in ear shot. Barnard looked at his food then back at the dog, and at that point nearly lost his appetite.
"Just kidding, gringo! You Americans take everything so seriously. No wonder you all die of heart attacks. Can't you take a joke?" He remembered making fun of Audie for the same thing and suddenly wished his friend were here, taking back all of his thoughts at the boot factory about wishing to be by himself. The smaller man fed his little dog the last of his flauta and Barnard decided that if the dog would eat it, it probably wasn't dog in the food. To the best of his knowledge, Chihuahuas weren't cannibalistic. Relaxing a bit in this assurance, he took the first bite of his food and from that point didn't care what it was made of. The flavor burst in his mouth like a hot pepper and garlic explosion. He was in heaven as long as he had enough beer to calm it down. As he was finishing, he realized he had no exit plan, which was resolved by a small boy about six or seven years old coming up and tugging on his sleeve.
"Hey, senor! Senor! You want a tour?"
"What? A tour of what?"
"A tour of the best places in all of Juarez!" The little boy glowed with his hands and arms held outward. The other men tried to shoo the kid away, but Barnard grabbed him by the shoulder.
"You know a way out of here without going through the front door?" He asked with sudden excitement.
"Oh, yes, senor, we go the back way. Short cut to the best places for beer, horse betting, and very good deals for your woman." Barnard thought he had said "for your woman" instead of "for a woman" but he wasn't absolutely sure. "Take you on tour for only cinco dinero." The man with the Chihuahua grabbed Barnard's elbow.
"You don't want to do that, senor. These boys ..." The man didn't get to finish because Barnard cut him off.
"You don't understand. I've got to get out of here and this is my exit strategy." The man pulled his hand back with a confused look on his face, then shrugged. He took his beer, toasted it to the other men at the table saying something in Spanish, and took a drink while they all were laughing.
Barnard stood up, anxious to get away from his stalker who was at this point blocking the front door, and grabbed some money out of his left front pocket. He stuffed back the few twenties he had left, glad that his big money was still in his wallet. His mother had told him to make sure to only keep a little spending money visible in case a would-be thief might see his cash roll. He thought in that very moment that his mother might actually have some redeeming qualities, but he didn't realize that to this kid a twenty dollar bill was wealth. The kid's eyes swelled open to their maximum diameter as he took the fiver from Barnard and followed his hand back into his pocket making sure he knew where the rest of the money was kept. As Barnard was being led out of the back of the cafe, he glanced back to the front and discovered that the stalker was nowhere to be seen.
Alleys in the U.S. are usually large enough to accommodate a garbage truck, as we have already witnessed in this story. Alleys in Juarez, however, are sometimes just walkways between buildings, large enough for a person or two. Stepping into the alley out of the back door of the cafe, Barnard immediately began to rethink the possibility of just taking his chances out front. He thought maybe the man with the dog had been trying to be helpful. The light was notably dimmer because of the shade of the buildings. The din of the packed cafe was instantly shut out when the door closed and only ambient sounds could be heard of a not-so-distant cantina band and the voices just inside the cafe. A dog barked somewhere nearby. A trash can fell over somewhere down the alley, but Barnard couldn't see it or any cause for the noise. His eyes were still adjusting to the difference in light. He missed Audie. He even missed his mother. He wished he had Lydia's other shoe for some semblance of protection. Taking his chances with the stalker guy and trying to reason with him, maybe even buying him a beer to make amends for sneering at him, might actually work out. This definitely was not feeling like a good idea.
"Hey, kid, I think I'm just gonna go back in. Thanks anyway and you can just keep the money." The kid started pulling violently at his shirt as he tried the door, which was now either locked or hopelessly jammed.
"No! No, senor! You pay me! You got to take the tour! We get out of spooky alley right now and you will see, es right this way!" The kid started dragging Barnard deeper into the alley. Barnard argued with him saying that the street was closer the other way but the kid insisted that this was the fastest way out of the alley. Glass shattered ahead. Two looming shadows stepped out of a doorway about thirty feet further along. In the shadowy play of light, he could make out that one of them appeared to be holding the neck of a broken bottle. Barnard recognized the drawl as soon as one of them opened his mouth.
"Ya know, Barnyard boy, fer somebody on the run from the likes of us, you ain't been too damn smart." The kid let go of Barnard's shirt and jammed a hand into his jeans pocket to pull out the two twenty dollar bills he had seen get stuffed into it. He quickly and deftly jammed them into his own pocket with no one else noticing and ran up to the men. The one speaking, who was also holding the bottle and standing in the middle of the alley, took a hand out of a pocket and gave the kid something, probably money, and patted him on the head. "That's a good boy, Paco, now you run along and tell yer mama I'll find her in a little bit. She better be where you said she'd be." The boy ran off between them, disappearing into the shadows behind the men. The two stepped slowly toward Barnard who had suddenly lost any capability of movement, even to have stopped a little boy from robbing him, but he was able to muster a squeaky bit of speech.
"Um, I don't get it. Um. Sid? Donnie?"
"Aw, how touchin', Donnie, he does remember us! Just like ol' times!" The one holding the bottle was evidently Sid since he slapped a backhand across the other one's chest. Their cowboy hats covered their faces with enough shadow that from 30-or-so feet away Barnard could only guess at their identity, but their voices were clear enough that he had little doubt.
"How ... why ... um, what do you mean about not being smart?" Barnard was hoping to buy at least enough time that use of legs would return to him before they got close enough for him to lose the chance for an attempt to run away. He remembered, though, from Houston that he was not as fast as these guys. Not without a decent head start or a beer to toss onto the ground.
"Oh, now, Barny, you don't remember puttin' a video on the Internet last night with you and Otterboy talkin' about comin' over to Mexico t'day?" Donnie clicked his tongue. "Tsk, tsk, tsk, you got a bad memory these days, son." Donnie was definitely the one not holding the bottle neck because as he was speaking, Donnie moved an arm and banged something metal against the building next to him, "Maybe we need to adjust that melon head o' yers." The two advanced on Barnard with slow, baby steps, in time now with the pipe dinking on the building. Barnard thought it was frightfully similar to some kind of a funeral march and realized that they weren't planning to adjust his head. They were planning to bash it in.
"Yeah, Barnyard ... ya know, Donnie, I prefer Barnyard over Barny 'cause it points out what a world o' shit this boy's really in right now, don't it?"
"Yep. Yeah, it does, Sid, it sure does."
"As I was sayin', Barnyard, it didn't take no rocket science to figger out that all we had t'do was t'wait right chonder in that there parkin' lot until you boys pulled in some time t'day. Gotta admit, it took ya longer than we figgered, but patience is a virchew, as they say. By the way, where is that girlfriend o'yers? Ain't seen Otterboy with ya since ya got out of that little windup car."
Barnard wanted to lie and tell them that Audie was on his way over with some very large friends of theirs, but he knew these guys wouldn't buy anything but the truth. "He got bit this morning by a rattlesnake," he squeaked out, barely able to even catch his breath. "In the hospital right now. Might not make it. You didn't see my video about that?" He thought that maybe he could take away their attention from his friend and let them be pacified with his own death. Maybe he could do at least one noble thing in his life. He stood trembling with his arms folded tightly across his chest in mock defiance, his phone sticking out just enough for the camera lens to see the men advancing on him, which they did now a little faster. He hoped there would be enough light for it to show up.
"Nah, we ain't bothered lookin' any more since findin' out where you'd be. But thanks for the tip."
"Well, then,"Donnie said, "We'll just have to look at that in a few minutes. If itdon't say where the puto is, we'llpay some convalescent visits to every hospital in El Paso until we find thatlittle SOB and beat him to a pulp right there in his bed. Thanks for lettin' usknow how to find him. Too bad he won't be comin' back out. Too bad yer time isup, Barnyard Patty." With that, the two of them broke into a jog, thoughthey were only about six leaps away. This must have been all the impetusBarnard needed because his legs suddenly worked. He spun around to run awayjust as something cold and hard struck him on the right side of his head.Sparks seemed to fly in his vision and he went down to the dirt with whatseemed like several pairs of legs running at him from the street. Donnie andSid must have brought friends. Who knew that the likes of them could have friends?