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| (visual by Abel Briquet via this license) |
dispatch ten
Mule Factory
by Steve Goerger
debuted 15 August 2009 | kept 1143 times | click to keep
There are six of them, interns, at the Mule Factory that summer. Dan. Florian, the German, who is fair, tall, and intelligent. Rico, a Mexican. Inez, the Portuguese crier, whom everyone assumes is Mexican. Shaito, who has come from Japanese business school to learn Spanish. And Don, the other American, who on the very first morning of work, while Dan and Shaito learn the probe, beds Inez in the bunkhouse and steals a carton of Rudolpho’s pre-rolled cigarettes.
Rico and Florian work with the donkeys. Mornings, the donkeys are fed and cleaned; in the early afternoon there is exercise, walking in circles, powering the mill; then comes siesta. Both the Mexican and the German have been around equine beasts all their lives. Over the first weeks they find they have much in common. Rico speaks fluent German. They discuss philosophy as they recline on haystacks in the dusty corral.
"Marx yes, Lenin no–I think we can agree to this!" Rico says, but Florian just chews some grass awhile.
"I have no interest in politics; my thought is purely existential," says Florian. Through the office window he observes the mascara streaking from Inez’s eyes–a Nietzschean Mona Lisa, he thinks–and considers the long chain of cause and effect which has led them here. "Wer war die erste Ursache?" he asks. It is a difficult problem, but these things take time, is all.
In bed at night, Dan wonders who, or what, could have hurt Inez so; wonders exactly how Don helps; what he might be able to do to cool the fever that melts her. Mentally he sends soft bay breezes and a lapping, licking shoreline her way. Recollections of a surfer girl he once knew wash over him: blonde, buoyant in the water. With sudden guilt he shakes his head and tries to refocus on Inez. But only a word comes to mind–Don!
Just then Inez cries "Don!" into the blackness of the bunkhouse. It is her first English word.