Gringos Read Online Free PDF Page B

four years old. He was a biter. He bit his playmates and threw rocks at strangers until he was twelve. Now here he was, a fine young man of sixteen.
    Refugio turned on the air conditioner in my honor, though it wasn’t very hot. The lights dimmed, as for an electrocution. It was only a small window unit but it put a strain on his generator.
    â€œHow is the bennee?” he asked me.
    â€œBusiness is bad, Refugio. Life is hard for a gringo in the Republic these days. I’m selling hammocks on the street now.”
    â€œÂ¡No! Qué desgracia!” He laughed and drummed his hands on the desk. “And the Doctor?”
    This was Doc Flandin.
    â€œI don’t see him much anymore. He stays in his big house.”
    â€œHis tobacco pipe is drawing well?”
    â€œOh yes.”
    Mexicans don’t smoke pipes and they find them amusing.
    â€œStill he throws his head back? So?”
    â€œNot so much. He’s not tossing his old white locks about these days.”
    â€œHe works hard on his book, no?”
    â€œSo he says.”
    â€œIt will be a hundred pages?”
    â€œMore like a thousand.”
    â€œNo! This is one of your jokes!”
    â€œI speak the truth. Las mil y una. ”
    He laughed and pounded the desk again. “No! What a miracle! So many leaves! Who could ever read them all?”
    Not me. I went along with Refugio on that. Short was good in a book.
    Then he became solemn and said, “My name is in this book, you know. Refugio Bautista Osorio. On many leaves.”
    â€œI know. Mine too. You and me and Chino. The doctor will make us all famous.”
    I told him about the Servel refrigerator and how the jet had been changed to use propane gas. I had found it in the port town of Sisal and cleaned it up. He summoned Manolo and another boy and told them to unload it and connect it to his gas bottle and light the burner.
    â€œÂ¿Cuántos?” he asked me.
    I wrote “$150” on the palm of my hand and showed it to him.
    â€œNi modo.” No way. He made a quick slicing move on one index finger across the other. Too much. Cut your price in half. But he was only playing around. When a price really upset him, he called on St. James and the Virgin both in a whisper.
    My pricing policy was simple. I doubled my money and then rounded that figure off in my favor. This refrigerator had cost me around $70, so my price was $150. My terms were cash on delivery, payment in full, no acepto cheques .
    Refugio took a thermometer from the drawer and held it up. “I will place this in the box, and if the red line gets down to fifty in one hour, then we will talk about the value.”
    â€œThere was no talk of fifty degrees before.”
    â€œTwo hours. What can I do? You are my friend.”
    â€œAll right. If you put that thing in the congelador. ” The freezing compartment, that is.
    â€œGringos are so hard.”
    He wanted to barter and first he offered me an old hospital bed that cranked up and down. Then he dragged a wooden box across the floor, a hand grenade box with a rope loop at each end. It was there that he kept his antigüedades . He brought out a mirror, slightly concave, made of a wooden disk and shiny bits of hematite. Some Mayan queen had seen her face grow old in it.
    â€œWorth more than two hundred.”
    â€œYes, but not to me. I’m finished with that. No more relics. Término .”
    â€œThat is what you say. Look. Fine orange ware.” It was a ceramic cup.
    â€œNo, I’m serious.”
    Next a baroque pearl shaped something like a fish. Eyes and mouth and fins had been incised on it.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAnd what do you say to this?”
    At first I thought it was a piece of green obsidian and then I saw it was a carved lump of beautiful blue-green Olmec jade. The figure was a hunchbacked man with baby face and snarling jaguar mouth. Very old, even for Olmec. The nostril holes were conical. They had been