3415. SO WHAT'S THE TROUBLE WITH ME?

SO WHAT'S THE 

TROUBLE WITH ME?

Edwardo Santiago Bulimay  -  he was a cowboy

fellow I met long ago, the sort with the wide leather

chaps flapping around walking the pampas. All that

stuff was very funny to me. He came from somewhere

in Mexico and, apparently, never went back, instead

ended it in San Jose. Took cyanide, the note said,

right before he shot himself  -  just to see which

worked quicker (or better). Umm, apparently he

never found out. Once he told me about his

woman  -  he called her 'Miranda' as if I cared.

He said she was so spiteful and yet so very

 powerful as well, that one day (for example)

after he'd really pissed her off about something,

when he came home she had made garter snakes

come out of all the faucets in the small, two-room

house. Exaggeration on his part? Probably  -  how

many faucets in a two-room house can there be?

Anything to inflate the story, I guess. He was like

that, claiming to once having ridden Santa Anna's

horse, another time his woman. All bullshit, and

I knew it. It's like that in poverty places  -  the stories

get bigger and more outlandish as resources fall away.

Another time, he did his William Tell (with a twist),

though he didn't know it. He'd stood his twelve year

old boy up against the monastery wall and placed

two small apples side-by-side atop the boy's head,

saying he'd whizz a bullet right through the middle

of them. The only way anyone would know, he said,

was by the bullet hole left in the monastery wall.

Trouble was, there was already a hundred bullet

holes just like that in the wall. Anyway, he shot

his son right through the head, the son who - right

before he fell - said 'So what's the trouble with me.'

It was always like that in the Bulimay family, and

then Edwardo fled, never to be found again.