dexter

The Suicidal Butterfly

Although I have a tendency to notice other people who sit alone, this homeless man didn't initially seize my attention. Nor did he seem particularly out of place. He sat a few tables away from me, blocked partially from view by the protruding umbrella. There was nothing especially peculiar about his appearance, but he was exceptionally short. So much so that I didn't even notice him for about an hour.

He was heavily bearded and even his hands were incredibly timid. Since his fingers trembled mercilessly from advanced epilepsy, he hid them in his lap, concealed ineffectively by the granite rim of the glass circular table where he sat. Had it occurred at any other outdoor Mexican restaurant, I might have considered the absurdity of watching a homeless man sitting at a bar drinking a cold refreshment. But it was an exceptionally oppressive September afternoon, and this was definitely not your ordinary establishment.

By Mexican restaurant, I mean we were resting at a bar in Mexico that offered affordable American nutrition, like cheeseburgers and chicken wings, both delicious and greasy enough to eventually clog even the healthiest of arteries.

The bartender delivered the food from a tiny window carved into the wall of a small room which they called the kitchen. This claustrophobic space imprisoned the voluptuous old lady with smoke, like a hopeless baby engulfed and held hostage by the rising ocean waters consuming the subterranean dungeon of a sunken pirate ship.

For his part the homeless man looked no worse off than any of the other usual costumers at Tanga Tanga. I had been watching him discreetly for hours, as he gradually devoured my attention, one drink and two limes at a time.

Like all bars in Cabo San Lucas, unsuspecting tourists were relentlessly drawn to this place like moths to a flame. But the dangerous element came from the poorest clientele, especially the inebriated dichotomy created between the natives and the tasteless expatriates from the United States.

This was a volatile mix which often tempted and taunted me toward an awkward and unfriendly predicament. Each time I survived only by carefully reviewing my limited options. Usually choosing to walk rapidly away from the open invitation for violence, only escaping and making it safely out of harm's way by using the most conspicuous meandering route imaginable.

He drank his grapefruit citrus soda from the can, and wiped the lid carefully with a napkin to prevent any potential contamination before lifting the beverage to his lips. He quickly finished the liquid in one sip, or at least in the first few minutes. But he persisted to pretend that his drink was not yet empty, instead choosing to raise the aluminum can to his mouth at random increments for about an hour before seemingly admitting to himself that it was in fact finished.

When this finally occurred he would walk quietly away from the tables and excuse himself through the crowd with such apparent natural grace and beauty that I wondered if he had choreographed the steps of his own departure.

He knew exactly who to find, and where he was most likely to discover the next twenty pesos for a refill. His hands shook with vicious spasms as he took the change from his onlookers, and even the cook could see that he was innocent, harmless. But he looked like a savage, and the tourists couldn't have it.

His arms were glistening with the fresh layers of sweat which had collected while he was nervously working up the courage to summon the confidence to beg. He looked discouraged as he wiped the warm perspiration from the coins before he lay them down on the bar. A minute later his drink was finished again. This went on for seven seemingly endless hours, and by the end of the day he was so drenched with sweat that he looked like he had bathed and then showered.

He was a puppy dog, polite and obediently unintrusive. Not like the rude stares exuded by the cruel canadien man sitting between us, who rejected, mocked, and embarrassed the respectful vagrant for the better part of three hours. This was the only person who the innocent toothless patron had attempted to request money from who had rejected his plea. He was otherwise successful and victorious, having spent a glorious afternoon in the company of drunkards and other ignorant tourists.

I felt like a foreigner, and in many ways I was. I had come down to Mexico after finding myself without a home, when most of the wealth I had was instantly invested into a bus ticket down the Baja California peninsula, one way of course. I initially wanted to go to Las Vegas, until I discovered the difference in cost and that a ticket to Mexico would be cheaper than pissing away my last penny at the closest casino or slot machine from the local greyhound station.

It took a couple days on the unpredictable peninsular highway to travel the thousand mile distance from the international border, but after the first dozen stops in the middle of nowhere I got used to the ride and even met a few new friends. They never spoke any English, but they were always in a hurry to get to work. Either at the local prison, the factory, or to pick berries in the infinite golden fields in the middle of nowhere that faded into the crimson horizon.

Most jobs paid between three and ten dollars a day. That could easily cover the modest bus fare. But the endless despair was invisible. Perhaps hidden within their smooth sun-drenched faces, with the perfect skin that never wrinkles and the happy eyes that twinkle like those you rarely see outside of third world countries. They didn't seem to mind that they were underpaid and inadequately educated, and I wish I could have gotten a position right beside them, but of course I couldn't because I was an illegal immigrant. So I stayed on the bus and patiently watched the dust collect on the front of the windshield, then cover the entire vehicle with the Mexican debris of a warm summer breeze.

Somehow I ended up in Cabo San Lucas a few hours later at this bar on the main drag of town, across from the marina and amongst the locals, who crowded around me and began to laugh and ridicule the homeless man. It was that ugly time of the afternoon when the standing room only mentality took full effect and the early pleasantries of alcohol turned into the drunken melancholy of an evening at the end of the earth, which was where we were.

I focused most of my attention on my newfound friend, trying my best to ignore the ignorant tourists and regulars, especially those who had only lived here for a few months but pretended that they owned the whole damn peninsula. Some of them had actually spent a decade dancing to the rhythm and booze of Tanga Tanga, but people like me and the homeless man had been waltzing aimlessly through life and forgotten memories in our minds for centuries.

That was our connection. Every moment was focused on the hopeful pursuit of a better tomorrow, but he had the strength to wallow in his misery without alcohol, which I swallowed with joy, attempting to relinquish my endless sorrow. It had been this way ever since my unexpected induction to nothingness, and I don't want to bore you with the vivid details of my failure since this is the story of a homeless man who gave his soul to the world. Besides, you've already heard a million stories just like mine, and I'm the one who deserves to die, not him.

I thought he was considering melting into his seat when suddenly something made him rise unexpectedly and chase a black butterfly across the empty street and fade out of sight someplace on the other side.

“He's such an idiot that he actually thinks he deserves to get free drinks all day,” the Canadien man shouted, “after all, he's homeless because of his own actions, and lazy people never deserve a free handout. How can you teach a man how to fish if he can't even swim? He should just go outside and play in traffic and see what happens. Do society a favor.”

This guy was obviously nothing more than an ignorant drunkard who was mustering the strength of his intoxication to interrupt my train of thought. Plus I lost my homeless companion.

“He was only drinking a goddamn soda genius,” I politely informed the stranger, a sunburnt tourist, who looked more like a lobster than a human being.

“Give him a break he was thirsty,” I added, paying my tab with the last ten dollar bill in my pocket, then heading after the so-called lazy homeless refugee.

I heard laughter and words which I'm sure were directed disparagingly toward me as I ran away from the bar, and if the Canadien man wasn't so far away I might have come back just to strangle him.

The homeless man had knelt down in front of a car parked beside the entrance to a pharmacy. I gave him sufficient space so that he wouldn't notice me, but I couldn't help but slowly approaching from behind, hoping to figure out what he was studying so intently.

He picked up the dark object and held it motionless in front of his eyes for a few seconds, and I could see immediately that it was the same butterfly that had drawn his attention away from the bar. I used discretion and turned away when he made a sudden attempt to see if his strange actions had attracted anyone, but since a crowd of about a half dozen had quickly surrounded us I was not discovered as the innocuous spy who I has suddenly become.

The butterfly was obviously dead, but the surprising aspect of the event occurred when we observed the vagabond hastily yet accidentally rip one of the wings away from the insect's body, which had inadvertently gotten caught between his unkept fingernails. This unintentional impalement triggered an initial reaction of utter bewilderment in the man, which created a ripple effect that quickly swept through his entire frame, shaking him to the very core, enraging him with unmitigated self-directed condemnation.

He cursed himself and the onlookers as he took what remained of the butterfly and placed it gently on the sidewalk beside the entrance to the pharmacy. What alarmed me most was the unexpected speed by which he recklessly ran away from the scene, darting in-between traffic like a dog about to die, a chicken with its head cut off.

Somehow he managed to safely make it to the other side. Though he kept running at such a frantic stride that during my pursuit I almost got sandwiched between a sanitation truck and a school bus full of construction workers. But the risk was worth it when I was finally able to catch up to the man and follow in his footsteps. His pace was becoming less feverish by the minute, but I was growing ill from the sickening expressions of contempt which he attracted from random strangers who turned their heads after he passed to take another look at his ragged clothes.

I don't know why I decided to follow him, but for some inexplicable reason I could not stop. I watched him weave through back streets and narrow alleys that were infested with wild cats chasing rats desperately toward the sewers. We walked past open windows of butcher shops with skewered pigs roasting in the flame cookers, where the aroma filled my nostrils with the reminder of hunger, until the swine's bloody carcass and perpetually dripping fat curbed my appetite and kept me in pursuit of my subject.

Daylight began to fade and the people of the night began to replace the mainly innocent pedestrians of the day. You could tell the difference between those who had just woken up from those who had been working all day by the way they walked and how they carried themselves. There was a devilish illumination within the pupils of those who were about to embark upon a night on the town, an urgency in the words they spoke, a demoniac bounce in their steps as they went about their business, patiently waiting for the hour when they shower themselves with alcohol and devour the meat of hedonistic decadence.

Many of them were already heavily inebriated, but as the streets grew busier I had to keep my eyes on the meandering path of the man I was chasing. He was racing down the main drag and appeared to be making his way to the blind man who was posted outside the only supermarket in downtown Cabo. He stood in front of the door to the adjacent Aramburo pharmacy with a sign that implied he was blind and his hands intertwined and outstretched, palms open to the heavens in hopes of a few loose coins.

The homeless man emptied his pockets and filled the blind man's hands with the contents, as an expression came to both their faces with such delight as if all the desperation and struggle was worth it for this moment.

“Gracias amigo,” the blind man said in sequence about eleven times, increasing his voice at each new interval.

The homeless man relied with a silent pat on the shoulder before strolling down the sidewalk toward the Taco Fiesta restaurant. I didn't expect him to stop, if for no other reason than the overpriced tacos and beverages they sold. Most of their customers were tourists and most locals didn't think the food was great enough to pay twice as much as other places.

I was wrong though. He walked into the open air restaurant and took a seat at a table beside an old woman who was sitting on the ground nearby, hoping to evoke sympathy by the intricate web of wrinkles which defined her face, her hands toward the sky as people walked past. She was homeless and very dirty, since the evening was well underway and she had been outside collecting dirt and change all day.

The homeless man ordered a grapefruit soda and paid with the change he kept in his sock. He drank it without taking the lid away from his lips and then left a generous tip on the table. On the way out he gave the old lady the remains in his other sock, along with a few small denomination blue peso bills.

The lady blessed him with her clenched hands and she took his arm in her own, as they both shook together in rhythm and watched the trembles, united by disease and old age, they were one in the same for this moment. The exchange was significant enough to flood my eyes with tears, which I had to wipe away so that I could follow my subject up the hill before he disappeared.

When I got to the top of the hill I exhausted all efforts to find a trace of my new hero. I finally gave up and was headed back down the road when he jumped out from behind a truck and threw his arms up in the air.

“What are you following me for,” he asked, “who are you?”

“I don't know who you are,” he continued, “but I speak English and I'll call the police if you don't stay away!”

I was about to explain but it was already too late. He ran away. Full speed down the precipitously steep hill. He was screaming at the top of his lungs in words of English which I could not distinguish. He didn't think to look in both directions when he encountered the intersection, since it was a one-way street. He hit the car with rapid precision, almost as if this hideous event had been rehearsed like some intricately choreographed horror scene. The collision lifted the man off of his feet and catapulted him through the vehicle's windshield.

The impact was merciless and the fragments of flesh, blood, and loose change were sporadically scattered all over the dusty road. The momentum of the crash left the car inoperable, since the homeless corpse was embedded in the windshield, obstructing vision. The driver collided with the building almost instantly.

He stumbled out of the mangled car and attempted to walk away from the scene. He didn't make it that far though, since the police had quickly arrived and decided to give chase when he would not respond to their innate demands that he stay in one place. Since he was staggering in a jagged direction they easily caught up to him and placed him under arrest.

There was something about his face as he came closer that caught my attention. It was the Canadien man. But not the same person he was earlier in the day. He had metathesized and changed into the cancer of the night. I watched as he infected the Mexican police and paramedics with his hostile disease. They responded with aggressive treatment to prevent the spread of his malignancy and he disappeared belligerently into the night.

I trembled uncontrollably at the sight of the homeless man being extracted from the cracked windshield. It took hours to get his body free of entanglement. Debris and shards of glass were the only evidence of a disaster when the sun illuminated the beautiful Cabo San Lucas landscape a few hours later.

I walked sluggishly down to Tanga Tanga and took a seat at the bar with the tourists. I ordered a cold soda and consoled my guilt and torment with the bitter taste of lime and wasted time listening to the mindless conversation of the morning.

Nobody cared that the homeless man was dead. Nobody was upset that the man they met yesterday ran him over. The only tears were shed by the cook, who drowned her sorrows with a glass of cold water amid the smoke that engulfed her kitchen. I listened to the others as they conducted their drunken business, wishing that I was with the homeless man in heaven.

I stayed all day, until exhaustion beckoned me away from the bar and a black butterfly fluttered between my arms. I followed him across the street, hoping he would lead me somewhere. Hoping he would take me home.