Santipala found a wrinkled piece of paper in his pocket a couple of weeks ago: Dupree: El or James? You be the Judge I could almost ignore the heavy crunch of foot steps coming my way, another phantom on the landscape of my exhaustion. Then my 108 headsack was ripped away and I gasped, instinctively, gratefully, like a diver coming out of the water, inhaling fine sand in place of the foul stuffiness of the sack. The stench, however remained, by now an accepted part of the landscape. My eyes focused, squinting, on a pair of rattlesnake skin cowboy boots, skin tight black jeans, a very puffy stained white blouse and a gray stubbled face that looked half brother to one of those stingy sun scorched trees of the north Mexican desert. "It's not like in the stories, is it?" the face said gruffly, laughing. I noticed then two or three others squatting against the wall of this small adobe room, their hands tied and tethered to their ankles like mine. I had known there were others, we had jostled against each other in the truck, in the dark, but no one of us had spoken since that first, demand, the voice still fresh, "What's going on here?" followed by a barked command, "No talking!" and a gunshot. In the shaft of bright sunlight you could watch the sand sifting in the high open window, choking the room. Another voice croaked, brave soul, "El Dupree?" The eyes of the rattlesnake boots twinkled unexpectedly, he laughed, "I love it when they ask that! "Nope," he said, "But the boss'll be with you soon. He wants to be sure you're comfortable and refreshed." The man talked like a North American, like he was from maybe Des Moines, how could he be El Dupree? With that the man of the stained blouse reached into the bucket by the door and making a cup with his hands, splashed each of us with water. The cold water was a shock, but I was glad of it, and still sucking the drops that trickled near my mouth when the 108 headsack once more fell on my head, taking away the daylight and sifting sand and the faces of others. I knew it was a 108 headsack because I had been able to see, sewn into the seam just in front of my nose, a little white tag, like those on Levis. This one had "108" on it, written vertically like this: 1 0 8 Inspected by Mrs. 108? Size 108? Maybe its a style, like Levi 105 jeans: headsack 108! "Your visit is important to us," the man said. "Please stay on the line." He must have jerked someone's rope because there was a cry of pain followed by moaning. The same heavy crunching as before faded out of the room. What had he said before? It's not like the stories. In some ways it was exactly like the stories, the stench, the venue, the head sack. All that remained was El Dupree himself and his ridiculous imitation of a Mexican accent and that sombrero out of old Ponco Villa movies. In other ways, it was utterly different. For example, this urgent anxiety in the pit of my stomach, the sting of sand in my nose and in my eyes, this exhaustion in which I wonder whether the rattlesnake boots were an hallucination. It seemed indeed that my whole life were in this head sack, my previous life an hallucination, a delicious dream from an imaginary existence in which sleep was possible. Yet it could not be more than 48 hours since I bathed my feet in Buckingham fountain, still optimistic in my quest. I had been hanging about a coffee house for some time, enjoying the witty, if faceless, repartee. For, strangely, in alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, no one ever //looks// at another. And you have to bring your own JAVA. I'd been fascinated for some time by loudly declaimed stories of "El Dupree," but when I asked "Who is he, //really//?" or "Where is he //really// from," for I did not believe his accent nor his stupid hat, no one responded. Even after hanging around and making a few friends and feeling like one of the faceless crowd, my queries fell sterile and impotent as gentle rain on the true lotus. Then an anonymous phone call: "Can Tina..." Intrigued, I said, "Can Tina what?" "No. Tina can tell you everything." "Tina can tell me about El Dupree?" "Can Tina can." "That's what I..." But the caller hung up. Confused, I pressed *69, last call return. The call had come from Chicago, but the number itself was blocked. Chicago information, however, gave me the number of Tina's Cantina, a little cantina on the North Shore. Little did I know, bathing my feet in Buckingham fountain, tired from the flight and the bus ride, how precious water would soon become, or how little I then understood tiredness. Tina's Cantina is a colorful affair, with strange blank paintings on the wall that reveal themselves slowly as you stare at them. Almost as though they are shy of being seen by strangers. "Java," I said loudly, getting the bartenders attention, squeezing up to the bar. I hadn't noticed the din of conversation until it stopped, suddenly and totally. Even the paintings seemed to fade slightly. The 'tender wiped his hands methodically on the wet towel, taking his time, then swiped the bar top. "You'll be wantin' Rob's place," he said evenly. "What?" I said, still loudly, brazening it through, "You don't have coffee?" The room relaxed, the bartenders face relaxed and smiled, the paintings brightened. "Oh! Sorry. Caff or de-caff?" "I need to see Tina," I said in a low voice as the bartender leaned near, placing the coffee. He was a dumpy little man with a large handle bar mustache. Even in his dirty serape he looked like an Italian chef. "Who needs to see Tina." "I do," lowering my voice further. "I want to ask her about El Dupree." "El Dupree!" he said in a normal voice, and there was the tittering of laughter from the crowd around us. "Listen son, if I was you, I'd turn around right now march out that door and never look back." "I came a long way for this," I countered. "I want to see Tina." I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a tall good looking man gesturing me away from the bar, "Tina," he said, pulling me across the room, "can tell you everything about glaciers." "But can Tina..." I started. "Tina." He said, placing me in front of a diminutive young woman, who looked anything but dangerous. "So," she said, smiling. I will always remember that smile as belonging first to Tina, innocent yet mysterious, almost as though one of those mindless, noseless happy faces had been turned sideways. "So, you want to know about El Dupree!" Bright and straight forward. I liked this woman! I noticed, on the wall to our left, a mirror in which I could see our reflections in profile, silent doubles of the two of us and of that fragment of the room that we inhabited and with that illusion of depth into which a bird will attempt fly. Enchanted, I said something superficial and witty about the mysterious phone call, and my flight out, as much to her mirror image in our peripheral vision as to flesh and blood. I saw the arm emerge from the void behind the frame, behind my image. Fascinated, looking right at the mirror now, I watched the arm, the hand, the baseball bat materialize out of the frame and down upon the image of my head. The rattling, bumping, roaring of the truck awakened me, but my eyes opened on the darkness of the 108 headsack. Though not in the cruel, uncomfortable way known as hog tied" my hands were tied together and tethered to my ankles so that while I could sit more or less normally on the bouncing floor of the truck, I could not reach up to remove the hood, or to explore the bump on the back of my head or to massage my throbbing temples. "What's going on here?" a voice demanded. "No talking!" another answered, followed by a gunshot. By the time we were led from the truck, through what felt like early morning but what smelled like a stock yard - - or perhaps a combined sewage treatment plant and inner city gym - all vestiges of hope and defiance were gone. Clarity had been replaced by the roaring and thumping and clattering of the truck. The absurdity of my predicament, the astonishment at having been translated from a lark in Chicago to a hooded prisoner had not lasted more than a few hours on the truck. Even outrage had dissolved in the drone of the eternal miserable minutes. The dawning of the second day on the truck, revealed in the brilliant line around the bottom of the hood brought not hope, but the feeling that this was indeed the new day, this imprisonment was now my life. I think it was then, in my resignation that I examined the inside of my hood and saw the "108" tag and knew that I had chosen this quest, this horrible destiny. I had succumbed to despair and gained the peace that comes of accepting fate. If only I could sleep! But how do you sleep, with the very realistic fear that you may not wake up? So you relish each moment inside your headsack 108. Still one thing remained to me, my question. Where did El Dupree really come from? I held to that quest, silly as it seemed now, as I waited in the little adobe room, in the stench, in the head sack, hoping every moment for another splash of water. I did see him. My hands and ankles were untied and the hood removed as I was shoved out onto a verandah. El Dupree sat behind an old fashioned desk, one leg was broken and the desk was resting on copies of the Lotus Sutra, the Digha Nikaya, the Koran and the Bible. What can I say? He was El Dupree: sombrero, unshaven, fat. He was so fat that I wondered how the chair could possibly hold him. Then I realized that he was not sitting but standing up: he was that short! When he spoke, the morning after odor of a thousand skid row bars blossomed into the air. "You have traveled far, have you not, to speak to El Dupree? "Have a tequeela." It was not a question, and as soon as he had filled the shot glass, I seized it, throwing it down my parched throat, knowing that alcohol is a poor thirst quencher. "Cigar, my friend? The superiority of Mexico lies in ease with which one can get Havana cigars." He actually said "Habana," and "Meheeco" with the proper guttural "hee," but, I thought, rather too self consciously. I thought he was English. I took a cigar and accepted a light, grateful for something to counter the stench of the man himself. The ring on the cigar announced that they had been made in West Virginia, U. S. A. "Well?" He said. I leaned over the desk, made bold or indifferent by tequila and exhaustion and the fact that my crotch was itching madly in the heat. "James James Morrison Morrison, Weatherby George Dupree," I said in a near whisper, emphasizing the last word. "Took great care of his mother, though he was only three!" There was in El Dupree's eyes, something like surprise and discomfiture, though his features remained clam and as it were forceably frozen. Thinking I'd struck a cord, I continued, "James James Morrison Morrison said to his mother, said he, don't ever go down to the end of the town without informing me." You see, I knew that El Dupree would never answer a direct question: Are you English? Were you abandoned in London at three years old? I'm afraid that I broke down a bit here and forgot the rhyme. I stumbled on, faking it, "James James Morrison's mother, quite of her own accord, went down to the end of town and was never seen again, and all the kings horses could not find her, nor could all the kings men!" "What?" Said El Dupree. "It's you isn't it? The little boy in the story, abandoned..." I'd hoped that he would be in tears by now, recalling his personal tragedy and confirming my suspicions. Instead, he rolled his eyes and muttered, "We're keeping 'em in those 108s too long again." "Carl!" he called out, "Dame el gusto de llevarse este gringo!" The rattle snake boots came in and gripped my arm. El Dupree jerked his head to one side, like a movie Mafia Don giving the command to terminate. Feeling humiliated and defeated, I allowed myself to be escorted out of the building. "G'wan," Carl said. "Git outta here." There was nothing but sand in every direction, no place to go. Feeling relatively safe now, I fell asleep on the shady side of the little adobe house at the center of a very wide desert, trusting that this time the head sack and the truck would lead to a more convienient situation. END Apologies to A. A. Milne John Dos Passos for the mirror (via J. P. Sartre) Tina & Johan