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A Sacrifice to the God of the Blues
By Jonathan LaPoma

[This short story appeared in the November 2014 issue of 34thParallel Magazine]

We’d only been on the road for about an hour before the first prophecy rang true.
“That smells delicious,” I took a deep breath and winced. I craved food, yet my stomach was in a constant, dull pain.
“What’d I tell ya? It’s like this every afternoon.” Herb continued driving through the small town.
Both sides of that narrow Mexican road were lined with grills and chicken rotisseries and kids in dirty clothes waving us over.
“Think we should stop?” I gulped my warming caguama.
“Forward’s the way, my boy.”
We’d left Lila later than we’d wanted to that day—a little after 1:00. We were both hung over from the previous night, but the headaches were cured when the dirty, old man showed up at my dead-end house with a couple of forty-ounce caguamas. “For the road,” he said. We popped the tops with Herb’s lighter, hopped in his old lime-green Buick, and set out for a remote beach in the Michoacán countryside, whose name caused the others to gasp when we’d said it. Even among the most adventuresome, the journey was too dangerous. But not for Herb, and not for me.
Herb gave me free reign with the CD player, and I chose carefully, putting in Clapton’s Unplugged disc. I settled on “Running on Faith.”
“What are you, my uncle?” he said. “You got anything else?”
“I thought you were from Chicago, Herby?”
“Don’t mean I need the blues. Got plenty of that in the skies above us, and the waters ahead.”
“You’re the boss.” I slipped in some Wilco instead. The old man mumbled about the “wild noise” but eventually shut up.
We started out on Lila’s cobblestone streets, passing the university, the language school where I gave English classes, the Catedral de San Miguel; then we arrived on the paved highway, making a blur of the backwoods strip clubs and whorehouses and tequila joints that were the reason for our early morning headaches. The other foreigners were suffering through the same headaches, but even those drunks had their limits. At some point or another, they’d all claimed they were there for a transcendent experience, but they’d pack it all in as soon as Sunday had passed, and Monday brought with it the demand for success. Almost every foreigner I knew had come to Lila to study at the university. The only gringos I knew who didn’t fit this description were me and Herby. And we were the only ones on that trip that morning.
That afternoon was gorgeous: Another tropical blue West Coast day. We rode through countryside, which alternated lush greens and dusty browns. At some moment, it hit me.
“This is the farthest south I’ve gone from Lila,” I said.
“You’d think the world would end, wouldn’t ya?” Herb looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“That’s not what I mean—“
“There’s a great big world out there.”
“I know that. I’ve been all over—“
Herb started laughing. “What are you, twenty-two?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Call me when your balls drop.”
I gulped my caguama. “So, you’ve been out this way before?”
“A hundred times. It’s a scenic route. Takes you right through the heart of drug country, but it’s got its charm. We could take the main highway—it just don’t have the same flair. There’s a town up ahead. They should be selling chickens on the roadside. They do it every afternoon.”
We came to a few speed bumps in the highway, and soon I could smell it. The old man knew what was coming. My stomach bellowed. “Can we stop?”
“Forward’s the way, my boy!”
We passed through the small town, and people were everywhere. Old women were walking into church, dragging children along behind them; women were strolling obediently beside their husbands; pack animals were pulling carts with that dead stare in their eyes. But of all the sites, I focused on one in particular: Beside the highway, a group of young tough guys were pushing a much smaller boy.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” I said.
“Haven’t you had enough of Chickentown?”
The runt took a swing and shattered one of the kid’s lips, and the others scattered. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
We continued until the fields were green again.
“See all this?” Herb fanned his hand indiscriminately across the landscape. “Go about a hundred yards in, and you’ll find endless fields of ganja.”
“That explains the drive-through chicken shacks down the road.”
“Yeah, and the federales up the road. You should try to kill that beer.”
Herb took the last gulp from his and chucked the bottle out of the window.
“I thought you were an outlaw, Herby?”
“These aren’t ones to fuck with. It’s different down here than it is up there.”
“Sounds like you’ve got some stories.”
“They still go by the rules of the Wild West here—and that’s a code only a fool would break. All that constitutional BS in the US can be bent somehow by lawyers and cops and college professors and shit, but don’t you turn your back on a gunslinger, boy.”
“I don’t plan on it.” The car got quiet, and I got to thinking; I chuckled to myself.
“What?”
“When I was in high school, my buddy used to work at this convenience store on the West Side. He’d fill up big boxes with booze, and frozen pizzas, and ice cream, and all this other shit, and leave ‘em behind the dumpsters out back. Another buddy and I’d drive up a short time later, grab the boxes, toss ‘em in the trunk, and drive off. He eventually got fired, but for a period of about a year, we’d supplied nearly every party in our neighborhood with free booze. When I was seventeen, man, I was the fuckin’ king.”
Herb started laughing.
“What?”
“You kids and your fucking small-time shit.” He sat tall in his seat. “Just before I moved down here, I met this woman at a bar just off the Vegas strip. Just this tired old skeezer. It was obvious she’d had some work done—cheeks pulled tight, and flaps under the eyes cut away. But it couldn’t hide the exhaustion in her face. Anyone could’a had her. I could tell right away. I spent a few minutes talking to her, and she was ready to give up her life. So I figured, why not? She took me back to her place, played me some old records—Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline—that ilk. I could read her like a book. Only took half a bottle of wine before I was inside of her. Just this dried-out old bag. Had to lube up every few minutes just to keep my dick hard. But I gave her what she wanted. When the morning came, she started makin’ all these big plans about us doing dinner that night, and heading to Durango for the weekend, and all this other crap; then she went off to work, and left me in her bed. So, I got up, rented a U-haul, and cleaned the place out. Not a trace of her life could be found left in the place, except for some old, dead, dry skin.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Says the man stealing pizzas from a gas station.”
“That’s different. They were a fucking soulless corporation, this was a woman.”
“That bitch needed a fresh start. I did her a favor.”
“She’s a fucking person!”
“She’s a woman. They’re all the fucking same. You think that little morena ho you’ve been taggin’ hasn’t been spreadin’ those legs for everybody else?”
“You watch what you say about her!”
“Don’t be so naïve. A girl like that don’t belong to anyone—not even herself. She’s probably gettin’ stuffed like a piñata right now.”
“Fuck you! You don’t see the way she loves me. The way she looks at me.”
“You are worse than I’d thought. I didn’t want to tell you this, but I’ve seen her out with other guys.”
“Yeah, well, she’s a student. They could have been studying or something.”
“Not the way she looks at these guys. She wants more.”
“How the fuck do you know that? You don’t fucking know!”
“C’mon, Willy, I thought you were smarter than that. You run a good game most of the time, then you say shit like this, and I just start to wonder about you.”
“Just worry about the fucking road, old man.” I reached for the cross around my neck. I didn’t know why I still wore it—it’d been so fucking long. I should have pitched it on some highway long ago, but I couldn’t part with it—a worthless relic of time and energy lost. I stuck my head out the window and took a deep breath, but even there couldn’t find any relief. “God, what is that? It smells terrible.”
“Probably a dead horse upwind.”
“Naw, that’s gotta be something else. That’s too strong.”
Herb reduced our speed. “Alright, either kill that beer or hide it.”
I looked up the road. There were about seven or eight guys dressed in fatigues and wielding assault rifles.
“You sure this is cool?” I said, after swallowing a mouthful of warm beer.
“Yeah, they’re just checking to make sure we’re not carrying any shipments. Makes ‘em jealous when others are cutting in on their business.”
“Alright, man, I’ll follow your lead.”
“God, kill that fucking beer already, Princess.”
I finished as much of the forty as I could and hid the bottle between my shins.
A soldier stepped in the middle of the road and put up his hand. Herb slowed, and stopped, and another walked up beside the car. The soldier said something I didn’t understand, and Herb responded with what sounded like a joke. The others guys started laughing. I didn’t know the reason, and didn’t want to unleash my already tainted imagination with so much space to roam along that empty highway. I would have felt a little more secure had there been even one other car there. But it was just us, the troops, and our everlasting journey.
The soldiers eventually let us through, and we continued up the road. The smell got worse.
“What’d you say to those guys?” I said.
“I just told ‘em I was taking my little gringo friend to offer up as a sacrifice to the beach gods.”
“I thought you said not to fuck around in the Wild, Wild West?”
“No, that ain’t a good idea…unless you’ve got the quickest motherfuckin’ draw.” He gave me a look I’ll never erase from my mind.
“Well, alright, Jesse James, how much longer ‘til we’re at the beach?”
“Probably another twenty minutes.”
We continued down the highway, and came across a small ranch. Beside the ranch, in a large, cleared field, was the bloated corpse of horse lying on its side.

Son of a bitch…

Herb said nothing. He just made his fingers into a gun and took a fake shot at the corpse.
I chugged the rest of my beer and stuck my head out of the window again. I took a few deep breaths of fresh air, and re-entered the car when I felt a little better. I rummaged in my bag and pulled out a new disc, and played “Let it Ride” by Ryan Adams.
“Fuckin’ rip-off artist. He’s apin’ Dylan.” Herb said. He immediately started fumbling through some discs in the consol.
“Maybe he sweet-talked Dylan into letting him stay the night, then cleaned out his riffs when Bobby D. went to the studio in the morning?”
“Yeah, yeah, fuck you.” Herb ejected the disc and put in Nashville Skyline. He played the second track. “See?”
“There’s a slight resemblance.”
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘slight resemblance?’ It’s the same shit.”
“Alright, alright, Christ. Alright already.”
“You youngsters just don’t know how to rock n’ roll.”
“And I suppose you greasy, old fucks do?”
“Look, here, if it’ll make ya happy.” He ejected the disc and the car was again filled with silence.
“But I love Dylan…?” I said.

We sat in silence for a few minutes, and soon came to a bend in the road leading us along a cliff overlooking the sea. It was gorgeous. I’d been in Lila for nearly three months, and even though the ocean was only a short trip away, I hadn’t yet seen it. Others had promised to take me, including Luz—the girl who promised me love forever—but only Herby came through. He pulled over at a scenic overpass far above the beautiful, blue ocean.
We got out of the car and took a look around. Below us were a few palapas spread throughout endless unspoiled beach. A shrine of the virgin mother sat at the edge of the cliff. I turned and looked at Herb; he was taking a piss over the cliff. I shuffled over to the shrine and caressed her cheek. I felt words coming, but—
“C’mon, son,” Herb zipped up and got back in the car. “Let’s roll.”
I wished to say something to her—anything. But we’d let each other down so many, many times … Besides, the beach was below us, and her eyes were fixed on the road. What the fuck could she ever know? What could we ever say to one another? They made me love you, babe. I tried, but I think it’s all for the better. After all, I’ve always longed to feel the blue.
“Forget her, man,” Herb shouted through the passenger window. “Let’s go.”
I hopped back in the old Buick, and we began our short descent to where our blues were, and would always be.
“Forward’s the only way, Herby.”