Spicaresque:

A Spanglish blog dedicated to the works, ruminations, and mongrel pyrotechnics of Yago S. Cura, an Argentine-American poet, translator, publisher & futbol cretin. Yago publishes Hinchas de Poesia, an online literary journal, & is the sole proprietor of Hinchas Press.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

OSVALDO DOMINGUEZ: WASHING MACHINE TECHNICIAN POLITICAL PRISONER

That morning Osvaldo was not necessarily running late. He was just another person with an urgent sense of time. He had one appointment with a lady over on Urumburu at 10 to fix the drum in her washer, and then he had to rush by another lady's house before noon to adjust the main. But first,Osvaldo had to pass by the clandestine bachelor pad Osvaldo kept with his brother, Eduardo. You see Eduardo owned a bar downtown so that meant there was a constant bevy of broads to dingle. And since they had used the pad last night to entertain the hostesses from El Mareo, the bar across the street, Osvaldo had to make sure that the place was presentable for that night's tryst.
Naturally, this means that Osvaldo didn't really see the gunmetal Ford Falcon that was peeking its schnoz from behind the parapet. Not only did Osvaldo not see the Ford Falcon he did not automatically register that he was going to wallop the nose of a car belonging to los milicos (the military). After the smoke and initial ringing of metal on metal, four men came out of the car. While not in uniform, Osvaldo could clearly tell that the men belonged to the military moonlighting as police. Even though they were military men, the occupants of the Ford Falcon did not belong to the military either. They were invisible aggressors and agents in dirty, secret doings. But mostly, they were interested in the doings of students, artists, lawyers, and generally stayed out of the way of civilians trying to keep their heads down and mouths shut.
They came out of the car and opened the door without knocking on the window. While there were four of them, they moved as on; and before he knew it, Osvaldo was surrounded: two of them stood outside the left door, and two sentineled by his right door. Instead of getting out of the car, the men grabbed his elbows and made sure his exit was smooth but brusque. Almost as if they were pulling him from danger. It was hard to tell which one was the leader because they all had moustaches, charcoal shooting glasses, and combat boots with the pants tucked into them. They were on Osvaldo as soon as he got out of the car, submitting him to various exams of vital signs. They smelled him to make sure he wasn't drunk; and then, they shoved their fingers by his eyes and opened the eyeball to ensure the pupils weren't dilated. Then they searched him and smacked him a little when his instincts kicked in and made him flinch.
The two that were by his passenger door asked him to open his trunk; he complied and after rifling through the contents asked one of the two officers that were arresting Osvaldo to come and take a look. Osvaldo couldn't think of what they found so interesting in his trunk, but knew they had found something questionable because one of the men went to their crashed car, still sputtering with steam from the impacted radiator, and pulled out an M1. Before Osvaldo protect himself from the blow, the man had taken the rifle's but and stabbed him in the ribs with it. Before, he was put in a transfer vehicle to be taken to the comisaria, Osvaldo ran through the items that he knew were in his trunk, and realized that he had several timers in the trunk. These timers were used on the drying machines and used to tell the machine when to turn off.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am wearing a pair of Charcoaled Shooting Glasses like Tom Clancy.

Timers could be construed as the paraphenalia of bomb makers, just like our phones are confiscated everytime we cross into the Green Zone, just in case this kid from the NH goes Jihadist in the PX