. He had a God given killer instinct.
Al Davis on George Blanda, Oakland Raider.
Everything tastes like Chicken.
Lee Ervin
To: Clark Seamon, Editor
Crested Butte Comical
From: Max Mcrath
Travel writer, El Salvador
To locate Rana Pipiens, poison spitting tree frog
Max starred between his jammed knees at a small haggard metal plate. BLUEBIRD, it said. Through a slight mescal haze he wondered if this particular bus might be the same BLUEBIRD on which he had spent a better part of his youth. Old BLUEBIRDS never die he mused they fly south. How many lives had this old bus carried, how many relationships had been made, or lost. How many cookies tossed, how many....A wild eyed molting chicken pecked at a unlucky louse on the back of Max’s head, breaking his concentration. God what a country, he mumbled to the toothless witch next to him. She grinned, parched lips pulled thin across purple gums.
“Sapo Pelegroso” he had told the customs man. He had come. looking for a ‘dangerous frog” The agent had smiled, for if this gringo wanted danger he had certainly come to the right place, starting right there, as he had immediately threatened Max with jail or the copy of Max’s ‘Dangerous Frog permit.” As Max’s luck would have it though the agent was able to secure a spare ‘Frog Permit,’ & for 50 green backs he was on his way. It now seemed to him that starting with that agent, everyone in this country was a psychopathic criminal. Even the women looked like serial killers. Children here could strip a car before they were potty trained. Max knew a bit of history of the place, or at least thought he did, and from there he formed an opinion....his own, mind you, in which he jotted down & submitted to his editor. ‘El Salvador was overlooked by the Spanish Conquerors & disregarded by any Indians of interest. Slowly only the outcasts of society crawled into it’s jungles to propagate today’s population.”
This of course was not entirely true, but travel writers are not exactly concerned with that aspect of a story.
“The country side on the other hand,” he continued , “is handsome enough with it’s smoking volcanoes & flattened rainforests. A lush jungle about 4 feet high ,[ before it’s eaten or burned no doubt], conceals a wealth of God forsaken reptilians among which my poison hacking little friend must cohort.” I continue on to the coast, a town called Acajutla, said to be crawling in vermin such as spitting frogs & the like.”
He put away the dog-eared notebook, lit a Marlbourgh, & blew a cloud of blue smoke into the baby’s face in the seat ahead. It’s mother giggled at the attention.
“Try that in America.” mumbled Max.
From a ragged South American Handbook he read “Acajutla, Salvador’s main port is designed for 4 ships. There is a cement factory, 2 oil refineries, a fertilizer plant , & a sulfuric acid plant.
“Sounds nice.” mumbled Max. It was probably best that our hero was an out cast of America. He was not what you’d call a man of the nineties & years in the third world had not exactly honed his environmental empathy’s. He had become ‘Socially unacceptable’.
“Acjutla!” yelled the driver, then winked at Max in the mirror & yelled again “ But chew, Gringo will want to go de Beach, where de GIRLS are!!!
Suddenly every male on that bus turned to Max & with sly grins winked at him. It was obvious everyone on that bus knew something Max didn’t.
He stayed on.
The filthy Bluebird sputtered down a dusty, jungle smothered road & disgorged itself onto the “Beach”
And it was in fact , a beach. A tiny, littered covered, sand spit jammed between surf & turf...the turf being a teaming, steaming, infectious, damp & dank jungle. The road ran between the two, & lining both sides of this road leaned a motely collection of ramshackle shacks. In front of each shack stood.....THE GIRLS....hundreds & hundreds of women lined the street, waiting for the bus to produce it’s passenger. Max.
Max was not good with women, they made him nervous & vice versa, women were not exactly throwing themselves at Max. It must have been the ‘eye’.
Max had lost an eye to a BB gun as a youth, (exactly as his mother said he would} & some time during his Army days had replaced his regular glass eye ball with a eye-sized 8-ball. It really threw women off....
“EH GRINGO!! CHEW ARE A LUCKY MAN!!” The driver shut the rumbling Bluebird off. “See Gringo, there are no ships in the harbor now, dat mean der are no sailors.....Dat mean Gringo, chew are the only man in town....HAH!!! He opened the door, “ADIOS AMIGO!!!”
Max stumbled from the bus, knees jammed, butt numb. The heat & humidity, equally in the nineties hit him like a hot, wet towel. A horrifying, smothering stench of sewage caught in his throat. Hundreds & hundreds of dark eyes stared from garish mascara sockets of rainbow hues.
A plump teenage senorita jammed in dangerously taut spandex waddled toward Max. She looked like an over inflated tire...ready to explode.
“Looking for a girrlfriend? “ cooed the lass.
“No...I’m looking for a frog.”
The girl stared at him for an uncomfortable length of time...”Una Sapo?” She finally said very quietly.
“Yes, a poison spitting tree frog.”
The girl slowly backed away, never taking her eyes from his eight-ball as she blended back into the spandexed , painted crowd.
Max started down the street, his purpose proceeding him.
“HEY GRINGO !! I GOT A LITTLE FROGGIE IN THE BACK ROOM!!”
For three blocks women came pouring from the shacks to see the’ FROGMAN’.
“HEY MISTER!!” With all these beautiful girls here, chew want a frog?”
“HEY GRINGO!!” DE CALL ME DA FROG!!!
“HEY SENOR FROG!!!
And so on. It was the longest 3 blocks Max ever walked.
At the end of the street a decrepit pier listed into the oceans swells & onto this rotted structure Max now sought solitude.
The pier was actually quite large, jutting into that tepid Pacific half the length of a football field. Dozens of old women in rags haggled with greasy fishermen along its rotting planks. Alongside each unsound looking fisherman lay, gasping for breath, the catch of the day. Great slimy terrors of the deep like 10 foot octopus’, their tentacles slowly writhing. Huge sharks stared with black eyes like little windows to Hell itself. A couple of 12 foot long Hammerheads, eyeballs still swiveling in cartilage sockets a foot from their heads. Fishermen stripped to the waist & dripping in blood & slime hacked at the heads of frantic grouper & dolphin. At the end of the dock a pile of moray eels, eight feet long & round as scuba tanks grinned their hideous grins. Close by a naked man squatted & gutted one of the gruesome beasts. The man actually looked more animal than man. Unkempt hair dangled in gummy tangles. His lower jaw protruded an inch past is upper lip. A long thread of drool hung from the lip into the garroted belly of the eel. He mumbled & screeched to himself as his eyes, wild as a rabid bat, darted over the crowd. He looked to be the missing link.
About 20 feet from this knife wielding lunatic Max bent to drop a cigarette butt between the 4 inch gaps in the piers planking. To the eel gutter it must have looked like the gringo had extinguished his smoke on his pile of morays & with a demonic howl the demented fisherman leapt to his feet & charged at Max.
Our hero barely had time to spring away as the maniac lunged after him. Down the dock they went. Max’s one good eye desperately searching out dry foot holds on the greasy planks as he tore down the pier leaping over piles of stinking sea creatures & dogging ragged hags. The naked, screaming lunatic was two steps behind, slashing the air at Max’s back. The only thing that was going through Max’s mind was the fact that he was about to be slashed with the same bloody knife that had gutted countless slimy eels. The thought of that infectious blade spurred Max to new heights of speed.
He hit the end of the pier & tore down the main strip unconsciously screaming at the top of his lungs. Un-benounced to Max pure adrenaline had won out & the lunatic had quit the chase at the end of the pier. So down main street Max came running for all he was worth & howling like a scalded cat. The women of the strip again came pouring from their shacks to witness the chaos.
“COME QUICK THE GRINGO HAS SEEN THE FROG!!!
To be continued;
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