Mosquito Read online

  Beginning Yoga Postures is one of them books I’s got myself. Am got one of them solar-powered flashlights anyhow. Recharges it on my dashboard. When I first got me that stun gun I felt like something outta science fiction, with my laser ray gun and shit like in them science fiction movies, but now it just a ordinary utensil. And a lot of them popular science fiction they just cowboys and cowgirls except but set in the future, you know, ’cause I reads that science fiction along with them cowboy and cowgirl novels when I ain’t reading romance novels and they be sounding like the same novel, except but one be set in outa space or in some distant galaxy and the other in the Wild West. I likes that science fiction with the girl heroes in them as well as the man heroes. Them science fiction movies is like comic books. They jokes about them Japanese science fiction movies, but that’s ’cause they’s colored peoples saving the Universe, and they just wants to save the Universe theyselves. I mean, the pink people. They just thinks they’s white. And them that ain’t white plays once they gets to America. Peoples that is desperate somewhere in they own little countries and America is the true dream. They might be the niggers of they own little countries, like they say, but they knows that part of the American dream is they ain’t have to play the Niggers in America. Like the man say on television on some talk show, if they’s white they gets to play full white; if they’s peoples with some color in them, they gets to play probationary white. Them that can’t play white in America or refuses to play white is the niggers. There is some whites that plays niggers for commercial or protest purposes or to innovate or renovate white culture, but they is generally the marginal types. And, of course, they is also whites that plays white. ’Cause they don’t know what white is.

  And some of them stun guns, you can even buy you them leather holsters for them, or them plastic holsters, make it seem like you’s in the real Wild West. And in that science fiction they uses them same metaphors as them cowboys. My ray gun, I mean, my stun gun don’t have no holster. It one of them streamlined space-age stun guns, which I thinks is more prudent than them real guns. Some of them truckers, they carries them real guns like they thinks they’s road warriors, or road cowboys, like in them Australian movies, but me I just buy me one of them stun guns, you know. But they’s even women truckers who thinks they’s road warriors. I seen one of them on that TV show Geraldo. But I remember that Geraldo bemused when one of them African-American mens talk about even the possibility of getting theyselves guns, and ain’t bemused when the likes of Charlton Heston talk about the First Amendment rights to bear guns. As if ain’t what’s good for the goose ain’t good for the gander. And all them suburban white women learning target practice. Even showed that on TV. Now if it were colored womens learning that target practice. . . . They be bemused as Geraldo, and be instituting some new legislation to make it against the natural law for the colored woman to bear guns. I mean, if it were a organized thing amongst the colored womens. I’m thinking if that Oprah got her a gun, or some of them mahogany starlets. I still prefers me my stun gun. They oughta outlaw all them guns, though, as a universal law. Course they say that means that only the outlaws got guns. And that means the official outlaws, the government outlaws and all them other legal outlaws as well as the common outlaw outlaws. Them outlaws that do they outlawing under the cover of law is the outlaws I’m talking about. They’s the outlaws that oughta be outlawed. They talks about them outlaw nations, but every nation is a outlaw for its own interests. Delgadina say they ain’t no such thing as law. That law is them that makes the laws. That law is discretionary, when it ain’t arbitrary. But a lot of them treats them guns like they’s amusements, though, and even go hunting for them prairie foxes. They has them prairie fox hunts like them Englishmen has they regular fox hunts. I seen a poster for one of them prairie fox hunts. Even seen a poster in Mr. Delgado’s cantina. The true patrons of Mr. Delgado’s don’t go to that prairie fox hunt, but there’s a few agringados that joins in the hunt. And treating it just like it a sport.

  First I don’t see nothing ’cause they’s these big yellow tins and drums and crates of industrial detergents. I don’t cram the whole back of the truck with them big yellow tins and drums and crates of industrial detergents ’cause you got to have you space to move around in the back of that truck, plus them border patrols they always insists that they has space to move around. But anyway they’s the kind of silence where you know they’s something in the back of that truck. If it is a coyote or a prairie fox, or even one of them horny toads, what look like them baby dinosaurs, you know, like in them dinosaur movies, spiny, short-tailed lizards, with them horns projecting from they heads and probably they is modern-day dinosaurs like that Komodo dragon but they calls them toads, then it’s one of them intelligent and cunning coyotes and prairie foxes or horny toads. I think them horny toads is only native to the Southwest, ’cause I ain’t seen none of them horny toads till I was in the Southwest. But all animals is intelligent and cunning when they’s hiding. Of course they says a lot of that intelligence and cunning is instinct. Like maybe that psychic ability is just instinct. Can intelligence be a instinct or instinct intelligence?

  My favorite animals is them that changes color when they’s hiding. And when they’s dreaming? Like a lot of them ocean animals. They’s got a lot more tricks than land-dwellers, except maybe them chameleons. What another name for them chameleons? They’s got them another name. They’s supposed to be Old World lizards, them chameleons, the New World lizards, they’s supposed to have them another name. Whether you’s talking about the Old World or the New World, a lot of them animals got theyselves another name. But them ocean animals, some of them even speaks by changing colors, they says. Them rays, some of them speaks by changing colors, I think, or maybe it’s them jellyfish. They’s supposed to have theyselves a whole language based on them color changes.

  They showed them at Marineland in Florida, them rays and jellyfish, and this marine guide was talking about how that’s they way of speaking, they form of communication, ’cause I be wondering why them marine animals keep changing color and think it just for camouflage. ’Cause most of the time they tell you when animals changes color, it’s for camouflage, least all of them land animals. Few of them has color displays for mating purposes, but when they changes colors that’s for camouflage.

  Anyway, we was walking through one of them glassed-in ropewalks underneath the ocean surrounded by all them fishes and looked like some type of marine city. Like we was in some future world that was a marine city. And the marine guide he didn’t call them by no ordinary names, called them Rajiformes or something, like they was not no ordinary marine fish, but name sound like some Indians from India. Raji. I call them true Indians to distinguish them from the Native Americans, though that don’t mean the Native Americans ain’t true people theyselves. Even they names for theyselves means people. Course there’s still peoples in the Southwest that treats them Zunis and Hopis and Cherokees and Navajos like they ain’t true peoples or they comes to the Southwest to photograph them and calls them all Charlie Potato. I ain’t know the names they calls the womens. But I did see a tourist photographing a Navajo man and keep telling him he look like Charlie Potato. I suppose, though, that Charlie Potato must be a famous photograph of a Navajo. I heard they ain’t usedta let theyselves be photograph. I know Leonora Valdez don’t let none of them photograph her. She a Navajo I met when I was in New Mexico when I stopped at one of them adobe McDonald’s. She seen me climb out of my truck and took a interest. I believe she were on her way to the University of New Mexico. She a reservation Navajo but her name Valdez. She ain’t let none of them photograph her. She don’t even let her own peoples photograph her, ’cause they was some peoples from the American Indian College Fund in Denver, Colorado, that wanted her to send them a photograph so’s they could use it in they advertisements for the American Indian College Fund, and she ain’t even sent a photograph for that. She from a reservation in Arizona, and be telling me about that reserv
ation. A lot of the tourists when they’d come to the reservation, ’cause she work in a store on the reservation selling cactus candy, want to photograph her. She says that there’s still people—she got another word she uses for white people—the tourists, when they travels through the reservation, thinks that they’s just supposed to be tepees, not no modern houses. Some of us is poor as shit, but we ain’t in no tepees, she says. Some of us have got tepees, for cultural purposes, and houses. Some Native American culture, though, has always been houses, at least for centuries.

  My route went through that reservation, so I knows the reservation she talking about. As soon as you arrives in Arizona, you’s on the reservation. You’s at the Arizona Welcome Center and then you’s on the reservation. A lot of people travels through the reservation and ain’t even know they’s traveling through the reservation. ’Cause a lot of them don’t notice the little road sign that says they is entering the Navajo Reservation. If you ain’t notice that little road sign that says you’s entering the Navajo Reservation, you ain’t know you’s in the reservation. I remember I stopped on the reservation at this little gas station to get gas and this couple from the East comes and asks me where is the Indian reservation, or maybe they says Navajo, and I says, Y’all is on the reservation. Is this the reservation? Yes. They’s on the reservation and ain’t even know it. ’Cause ain’t neither one of them noticed the sign that says, You are entering the Navajo Reservation. Y’all’s on the reservation, I says. And the fools ain’t believe me, of course, they asks the owner of the gas station—who a Navajo but kinda look like a gringo—Where the reservation? They believes him when he tells them they’s on the reservation, ’cause he a gringo-looking Navajo. His wife, though, a brown-skinned Navajo. And don’t none of y’all fool tourists be calling her no squaw, ’cause then y’all learn the true meaning of squaw. If they’s one thing I do know is not to ask the wife of a native person if she is his squaw. Them eastern tourists, though, they be looking around for tepees. They’s a trading post, but it looks like a regular store. It Navajo-owned. ’Cept it say trading post, that the only way you know it a trading post and ain’t a regular store, and probably the only reason it say trading post is the tourists, if they’s on a reservation, wants to shop at a trading post rather than a regular store, though it probably were originally a trading post. There’s a tepee village where the tourists can rent tepees, though, but most likely when you see a tepee on that reservation, there’s a white person staying in it—or that word she uses for white—rather than a Navajo. Seem like she use the word pahuska, but I ain’t think that a Navajo word. Maybe I heard another Native American use that word for whites. Every colored peoples in the world I knows about has they word for whites, and they word for whites ain’t have the same dictionary meaning as the word for whites the whites has for theyselves. Like one of them books I’s read says, the whites they renames everybody. ’Cept that book ain’t say them whites is renamed they ownselves by the peoples that they renames. Especially when them renamed peoples learns the true meaning of white, least as it applies to they ownselves and they peoples. Changing color, though, is that intelligence or instinct?

  Whenever I’m anywhere in South Texas, traveling them roads, I thinks about them ancient cultures, wondering whether them mammoths, supposed to be the ancestor of them elephants, and them bison, supposed to be the ancestor of them buffalo, traveled these same roads. I thinks of them roads when they was still the roads for musk-ox and elk and brown bear. I remember hearing a poem where someone talked about the road like that, and took them roads back to they beginnings and what and who traveled on them before the modern peoples traveled on them roads. I thinks about this whole land when it were just the lands of the Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Apache and what Delgadina call the Clovis Culture before them. Sometimes I finds pottery in the desert which I collects and thinks were it made by them Ancients. I daydreams of myself sometimes, riding the prairies on a wild, Spanish mustang. I ain’t know the full history of this land, but sometimes I hears pieces of the story. The fabled cities of gold, explorer-mapmakers, the California Gold Rush, Chief Peta Nocona, Comanche, Quaker Indian agents, New Mexico cattle rustlers who would masquerade as native Peoples, native rebels like Quanah. I ain’t like to hear the white man’s version, ’cause everybody know that. I likes to hear the other people’s eclectic stories of the Southwest.

  Leonora Valdez, the Navajo I met in New Mexico, asks me whether I wants anything from the McDonald’s counter. I says Naw, ’cause I gots me my Coca-Cola. She goes up and gets her one of them salads—which seem like it a special southwestern-style salad—and comes back and sits down at the table. I didn’t have the intention of staying in McDonald’s that long, but now she’s telling me that she seen several men climb in the back of my truck—a Indian—she use the word Indian—a black, and some type of clown.

  Ah, I knows they’s there, I says. I explains that one’s a Navajo—seem like she would say Navajo since she a Navajo—the other’s from Oklahoma but is working one of the ranches in New Mexico and the other is a roustabout with a local carnival, ’cept sometimes he plays they clown and don’t always take off his clown makeup. I always gives them a ride into Albuquerque, I says.

  Ain’t that against y’all’s union rules? she asks. She wearing moon disk earrings, a silver and turquoise bracelet. Naw, it ain’t just silver and turquoise, look like it got all kindsa things in it—silver, turquoise, gold, copper, little bits of iron, marine shells, quartz, coral, mica, I think it called mica. I heard of something called galena, maybe it got galena in it. It ain’t that big a bracelet, but look like whoever made it try to put every metal and what you makes art with in that bracelet. You could probably go over the whole list of metals and what you makes art with and find it in that bracelet. She kinda remind me of a woman I seen in a book called Mystic Women of the Southwest. ’Cept it were paintings of women, not photographs, so I ain’t know if she the model for any of them paintings. And kinda remind me of women I seen in paintings by a woman that Delgadina calls a “southwestern fantasy landscape artist.” She say they is painters that ain’t paint real landscapes, but paints fantasy landscapes.

  Am got a union, but . . . Well, I’m a independent, I explains. Then I explains that them mens usedta ride into Albuquerque with someone else that works on one of the ranches. They usedta ride in the back of his truck sharing hooch, one of them open-air trucks. I usedta see them myself when I was coming into Albuquerque, this long-haired Navajo, the black cowboy, and the roustabout who were sometimes made up to look like a clown. They was always sharing hooch, and to tell y’all the truth, it all looked pretty low class; then once when I was at that same McDonald’s I heard the man tell them that he couldn’t drive them into Albuquerque and they was asking around for somebody to drive them into Albuquerque. Ain’t nobody want to drive no long-haired Navajo, black Oklahoma man, and white clown into Albuquerque. I told them I’d drive them into Albuquerque, but I didn’t want them to be sharing no hooch and spilling no hooch in the back of my truck. I usedta tell them I usedta see them in that open-air truck and how low class they all looked and told them how they ought to acquire a little race pride, and then I told them that they can ride in the back of my truck—I don’t let nobody ride in the cab of my truck but me—that they could ride in the back of my truck as long as they didn’t share no hooch back there, even if mine ain’t no open-air truck I ain’t want them to be sharing and spilling no hooch back there, and they’s got to wait till they gets into Albuquerque to share they hooch, if they’s got to share that cheap hooch. I likes Budweiser myself. They says, Yes ma’am, so I lets them ride in the back of my truck. And they don’t behave as low class as they usedta behave when they didn’t have no discipline. I mean they is disciplined men and ranch workers, except for the clown, who’s a roustabout, that sometimes assumes the role of a clown, but ain’t nobody look disciplined when they’s riding in the back of a open-air truck and sharing hooch. To tell you the trut
h I didn’t want to include the white clown in the back of my truck, but the Navajo and the Oklahoma black man vouched for him.

  Hooch? asks the woman.

  You know, liquor, from one of them brown paper sacks, you know, cheap wine or whiskey, you know.

  I thought that’s what you meant, ’cause you kept saying spilling hooch, said Leonora. Then I didn’t know if you meant they was sharing a woman. I thought you were using that as some type of metaphor.

  Naw, that’s hoochie. I don’t think that even they is low class enough to be sharing no hoochie in the back of a open-air truck. And they knows who I is and shows that they is got to be disciplined mens in my presence. Plus, they’s all got wives in Albuquerque and I knows all they wives by name. So they knows they can’t be sharing no hoochies in my presence. Men has got they own places that they can go to share a hoochie, but it ain’t in the back of my truck. Men has they own places or creates they own places to do shit like that, but this truck is mine. And as for me myself I just drives them into Albuquerque. And them that thinks that I’m a hoochified woman has another think. I likes my romantic freedom, like the books say, but that don’t mean I is hoochified, and I don’t even take the same romantic freedom as the womens in the books I reads. ’Cause there is some hoochified women in some of them books, even them that don’t believe theyselves to be hoochified. Well, some of them books you reads, these modern novels, they is perfect models for hoochification. But they is modern women and reclassifies hoochification as romantic freedom. I’m romantically free, but it ain’t no hoochified romantic freedom, and I believes in the old-fashioned kind of romance myself. Which don’t mean I’m naive. Some womens gets grown, or think they is, and they forgets Whose child they is. The mens they helps me to unload my truck when I gets into Albuquerque. Them industrial detergents that is meant for the warehouse in Albuquerque. Then I travels through Laredo, Brownsville, Galveston, Texas City, you know, I gots customers all along the Texas border. I travels through the whole Southwest, though. I ain’t know what it is I likes about the Southwest. Maybe ’cause I grew up on them cowboy and . . . I mean cowboy movies.