A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story<\/i><\/p>\n
“Madre de dios…!”<\/p>\n
Mrs. Marquez said that, and it seemed a fair estimate to me. Everywhere we looked in the overlit room we saw things of wonder and beauty and uncontested menace. Despite the din, I heard myself groan, and I wasn’t utterly sure I’d done the right thing. Walking through the valley of the shadow of death in a grade school cafeteria is one thing. Pushing an underfed eight-year-old boychild ahead of you is another.<\/p>\n
The road I walk is the path that separates the straights from the crooks, the pencil-fine line that splits the people we call “decent” from the sneaks, the freaks and the side-show geeks. I have a scruple or two, painted and waxed, so I don’t quite fit in among the bungled and the botched. And yet I do<\/i> have an itinerary, and I don’t<\/i> have much of an agenda, so the quality folk are never dismayed to see the back of me. Neither fish nor fowl, always on the prowl, quick to resign from any community that would even consider having me as a member. This is the life I’ve chosen for myself, after all, and I’d be daft to beef about it.<\/p>\n
Still, there are Other Matters to consider. Among them: I’ve been nineteen-years-old forever, but I’ve been nineteen for a lot of years. I’m making a buck or two more than I ever have before, and staying in one spot a day or two — or a week or two, or a month or two — is not only more desirable than it ever was before, it’s suddenly financially possible where it never was before. Plus which, I don’t love the cold and I do love the sweet smell of orange blossoms. And to make a belabored excuse slightly less laborious, I’ll just come out with it: I hung out in a half-big town halfway from nowhere for so long that I got myself well and truly hooked in a scheme straight out of the handbook of the straights.<\/p>\n