We Three Kings

Some Christmas memories are atypical and have nothing to do with—garlands, cozy fireplaces, ornate cookies, eggnog, the giving of stuff, and mistletoe. 

This is a story about a seasonal memory that has everything to do with the magic of youthful adventure and little to do with Christmas.

Henry and his parents traveled to Acapulco from Mexico City on Christmas eve,1966, staying at The Las Hamacas Hotel, across the street from Acapulco Bay in the central city.

The Lucowski family show at the small-time hotel in a pink Cadillac limousine at 10 AM, checking in and going to the canopied dining area by the pool for a late breakfast. 

The hotel serves a homespun and memorable breakfast— freshly baked hard rolls, Churros or Mexican donuts, sliced avocados, tomatoes and cucumbers, bananas, fresh strawberry papaya, eggs, bacon, and brewed coffee. All of it served in a fun, relaxed manner on tables covered with white linen. 

The Mexican waiters wearing white chaquetas and black pantalones are known for their dark sense of humor— directed at each other and the gringo guest. 

Like, telling a woman with a wig on, 

señora your hair is bonita! 

Or, saying to a kid who isn't eating,

Niño, finish your breakfast or Papá Noel is going to bring you coal for Christmas. 

And, telling an elderly woman who's dining with her husband, 

señora, take it easy on the Red Snapper your eating, he looks like your husband.

After breakfast, Henry walks across the street to a taco bar on the bay, and his parents shop for souvenirs, crap really— bogus machetes that couldn’t cut butter, silver from Taxco that turns green by the time you get home, cheap sombreros wrapped with Shrink Wrap, making them look costly, and so on. 

Anyway, Henry's sitting at a taco bar on Acapulco Bay drinking a beer at a small table. He puts a hand full of pesos in a jukebox filled with 45 RPM records, the hippy music of the day— Sopwith Camel, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Hendrix, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane. 

At 16 he’s an easily tempted, astute lover of everything native— psychedelic music, incense, exotic and erotic literature, who’s constantly reading— Hemingway, Henry Miller, Anis Nin, William Faulkner, William Butler Yeats, Kerouac, and even the Kama Sutra, still a virgin though.    

He notices a young couple approaching, crossing the street, coming from his hotel, they are walking arm in arm. As they pass he leans towards them, asking them to sit down, they oblige.  

They're siblings, Juan and Moon, 16 and 15 respectively, also staying at The Las Hamacas Hotel.

Moon’s fetching, willowy with long chestnut hair, wearing glasses, looking nymph-like, a child who's becoming a woman. Her older brother Juan is cool, lean, tanned, with long sideburns, his hair parted in the middle, a member of the Carte Blanca surf club of Southern California.

After a beer, Juan sees a shadowy figure walking the beach who locals call El Mago, The Magician. 

Juan stands, running to catch up with El Mago, then walking down the shore with him.

Henry and Moon talk over beers at the cafe, for them, love is in the air.

When Juan returns, he sits down at the small table, the lover’s trance fades as he says, 

look under the table.  

Juan flashes a plastic bag full of golden buds, Acapulco Gold. Henry was familiar with ganja, having read about it in Kerouac’s On the Road, and Henry Miller’s book Big Sur.

At sundown, the trio walks across the street to The Las Hamacas Hotel, going to Juan and Moon’s room. Their mother is staying next door and she respects their privacy. Something, Henry’s parents didn’t see as an innate right of youth.  

They sit on the single beds at the center, facing each other as Juan rolls a joint. Eventually, he lights it, instructing the nascent lovers on the art of taking a pull.

Draw steady, hold the smoke in long enough for it to flow through your veins, heart, and brain. Whatever you do, don’t fish lip the joint. Moon laughs at her brother saying,

fish lip? Where'd you dig that up? 

After smoking awhile, they laugh at nothing, and anything— exaggerated, fun, laughter. 

Finishing the doobie, the trio walks through the patio door to the pool, sitting poolside with their legs dangling in it, tossing fallen flower peddles into the blue water, watching ripplets expand outwards as their chakras open magnifying their senses. 

Henry stands on the poolside, bolting to his hotel room, returning with a paperback copy of Yeat's The Land of the Heart’s Desire, going to the diving board and standing at the end, reading out loud.

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!  

Juan and Moon stand and applaud.

On Christmas Day they wake at sunrise, giving their parents the run-around, taking a taxi to a beach on the Pie de la Cuesta coast. There's a rundown film location behind the beach where scenes of Johnny Weissmuller's last Tarzan film were shot by RKO in 1948.

The beach is packed with Mexicans who went to Mass on Christmas Eve to honor the Baby Jesus.

Going to the beach on Christmas Day helps the Mexicans to shake off the stifling circumstance of praying for hours in church pews the night before.

You can hear Ranchero music blaring from beachside cantinas, shacks made of bamboo and thatched straw roofs serving, fresh grilled chicken and fish, tortillas, refried beans, rice, beer, tequila, and soft drinks.

Juan, Henry, and Moon walk away from the crowd to an isolated area of the beach with a single cantina. They place a large Las Hamacas bedspread on the sand, strip down to their swimsuits, and drink Pacifico beer.

Juan body surfs while the precocious teens, Henry and Moon, talk about esoterica— 

What is life? 

Is there a God? 

Did Martians create the human race?

The young lovers bond intellectually, physically though, their both virgins.

At sunset, the trio catches a taxi back to The Los Hamacas Hotel and go to their room. The virgin lovers lay in one single bed and Juan passes out on the other. 

At this point, Henry's parents were missing him and suspected something was going on.

Henry and Moon make out on the bed, breathing hard, deep kissing, fumbling, confused, finally getting naked under the sheets— getting closer to first-time coitus.   

Hit and miss, he locates Moon’s pink taco and gently puts the meat to it, getting off in record-breaking time, 30 seconds. She's surprised, shaken some, and she can't recollect feeling anything.

As for Henry, he couldn't have pulled it off if he hadn't read the Kama Sutra.

In that it was their first time, the lovers clean up more than they need to, Moon spends 40 minutes in the shower. 

They walk out the patio door to the pool. Henry’s mother, Linda, is waiting and she corners him. He realizes he missed Christmas diner with his parents and she reads him the riot act,  

Henry, what were you doing in THAT hotel room with THAT girl? Where have you been for the last two days? Your father and I have been worried sick. You could have left a note at least.

She smacks him around, cross-slapping him European style on both cheeks in front of Moon. 

He's more embarrassed than hurt.

His mother goes on with the sermonizing, she’s juiced on Martinis.

Henry, you missed Mass. It's Christmas Day, a time for families to be together, to pay respect to the Lord. I can smell beer on your breath, and God knows what you've been doing with THAT girl? Go to confession tonight.

Linda opens her purse and pulls out a Rosary, handing it to him, knowing her son is beyond hope and backsliding. He says to her, 

Ma, you shoulda been a nun.

Speechless, his mother does an about-face and goes to meet his father somewhere.

In spite of missing Mass, Christmas Dinner, and getting chewed out by his mother, the happenings over the last few days are an awakening for Henry.

Maybe, the magic of new love discovered was paramount to— garlands, cozy fireplaces, ornate cookies, eggnog, the giving of stuff, and mistletoe.  

Juan, Henry, and Moon— We Three Kings, or Two Kings and Queen, win the crapshoot of life, this time around anyway. 

Sam Flood

 

Sam Flood was born in 1951, delivered by a Coahuiteco Indian midwife in a 3 room tar paper shack on the Pitchfork Ranch, a 234,000-acre spread in the Texas Panhandle. 

His old man Will worked as a cowhand on Pitchfork Ranch, and his mother Anita, who's Mexican, cooked for the Chas Middleton family who owns Pitchfork.

At 5 years old, Sam's a kindergarten student.

 

It's 6 AM, a school day, Anita wakes him, kissing his forehead and saying, 

Jesús te ama niño.

She stacks his school clothes neatly on a kiddy table— a striped T-shirt, green jeans rolled at the cuffs, underpants, socks, and PF Flyer gym shoes. 

After dressing and cleaning up, Sam walks half-asleep to the kitchen table, sitting with his dad Will for a breakfast of, hotcakes, fresh farm eggs, tortillas, rice, beans, coffee, and cocoa. Cooked and served by Anita, a warmhearted, soft-spoken mother, and wife. 

Sam's reared in a coddled household, but later, during his twilight years, things get out of control.   

At 8 AM a rusted Ford bus shows at Pitchfork. The ranch employees' offspring, ages 5 to 17, flirt and roughhouse as they board the bus for the 35-mile trip to school in Kingsville, Texas. A rough ride over dirt roads and asphalt sprayed crushed stone highways.

The children and teenagers on the bus are poor. Some dream of escaping small-town life and getting ahead, but most are preoccupied with hot rods, sex, and Saturday nights. 

The 50s is a parental stone age, a freewheeling time for kids growing up, allowed to go into territory that would be considered dangerous today. 

Sam lived to run free with his young pals around the ranch after school and on weekends— tossing dirt balls at cows, catching insects and placing them in bottles, hunting Garter snakes, wading in the stock tanks, climbing trees, and rusted windmills towers.

The cowboy kids living on Pitchfork Ranch are encouraged to play rough because ranch life is rugged and challenging.

In 1968, Sam's a junior at Kingsville high school— a shadowy figure who's a chronically shy, poor student, with alopecia, and an acne-scarred face.

He is more at home on the vast prairies of the Pitchfork Ranch than in a schoolroom so he quits high school to work on the ranch. 

Sam asks Pete Nash, the foreman, for a job and Pete hires him on the spot because he knows the Flood family are good people.

He shows for work the following day at 7 AM and Pete tells him, 

son, I'm sendin you and Custer Willcup out to ride fence on the northeast arm. Custer's a seasoned hand and you can learn cowboying from him. He's waitin for you at the bunkhouse.

Thank you, sir, 

call me Pete.

Sam runs into his new partner in front of the bunkhouse, and says,

you must be Custer Willcup, 

yup, that'd be me, unless in you're the sheriff. 

Howdy, I'm Sam Flood.

the cowpunchers shake hands and laugh, then Custer says, 

Let’s head out to the run and get us a couple of horses and a mule. 

Ranchers kept mules with cattle and horses to protect the herds from coyotes and snakes. Mules are wiry and tough with a mean kick, more clever than donkeys.

Custer's pint-sized, in his 30s with long blond hair and a handlebar mustache. He contrasts young Sam who's bald with a red beard, 6’3 and strong as a bull.

Both the cowboys wear Showdown straw cowboy hats, bent at the rims, jeans, Levi shirts, and boots. 

At the run, Custer chooses two quarter horses he's familiar with and the cowboys secure them with rope leads. The horses are built powerfully, tall at 16 hands, white, and spotted like Indian ponies. Then he tells Sam,

go bridle that big mule over there with a lead, that's Buckshot, he's a good ole boy, tough as they come.

The painted ponies and the mule are tied on the run's wood fence. The cowhands saddle and rein the horses and strap a couple of empty framed canvas packs on Buckshot over a square piece of wooly lambskin.

They mount the majestic geldings, riding cooly out of the run with Buckshot in tow, careful to close the metal gate behind them, a cardinal rule on a ranch.

At the supply shed Custer requisitions supplies — bread, powdered eggs, beans, dried beef, jerky, flour, chocolate bars, water, and, coffee and whiskey. 

Then, work supplies including— a claw hammer, 2 rolls of barb wire, baling wire, a set of screwdrivers, heavy-duty work gloves, 12 inch bolt cutters, u-nails, a post digger, and 2 Browning A-Bolt rifles to take out coyotes and  rattlesnakes, 

At times cowboys riding the range would take pot-shots at goofers jumping up and down in their holes from 40 yards off, similar to playing Whack a Mole, but the goofers were too fast to hit.

The cowhands ride with Buckshot in tow, following the fence line, it's 9 AM. Custer pulls a Coahuiteco Indian pipe from his boot made of deer horn and fills it with ganja, lights it, taking a pull, passing it to Sam who takes a deep draw saying,

woo ah, ain't that something now.

As the cowboys ride the open plain, an uncommon feeling engulfs them— serene, and otherworldly. 

The balmy scent of Buffalo grass in the air stirs up a soft feeling inside them.

By 1 AM they notice a torn-up stretch of barbwire spaning 20 feet between 2 wood posts over a stream. 

The cowboys cool down and water Geronimo, Jigsaw, and Buckshot in the stream, then hitching them to a tree.

They easily cut and remove the faulty barbwire with 12 inch bolt cutters. Then, attach 3 strands of wire evenly spaced on one post, securing it with u nails and rolling the wire to the next post, u nailing it loosely then tightening it with a Texas wire stretcher.

30 minutes later they're riding the fence, moving lazily. Custer abruptly pulls his Browning A-Bolt out of a saddle sheath and fires 7 caps up range, saying, 

cowboy, we got us some supper!

He rides Geronimo to the dead prey and jumps off, picking up two bleeding Black-tail Jackrabbits.

The cowhands are riding as the sunsets. They pass the deerhorn pipe, toking and grooving on the colors the earth's brother star radiates through orange clouds.

That night they camp in a grassy area, near the fence they’ve been following all day like a map.

The cowhands remove the tired animal's saddles, bridles, and packs, securing them with lead ropes and tying them using bowknots to a half-fallen mesquite tree. 

The dry mesquite tree is a good source of firewood. Sam starts a small fire.

Custer skins, guts, and cuts the rabbit meat into pieces like you would a chicken, placing the meat in an iron skillet on the low burning fire. The mesquite smokes adds a wild, aromatic flavor to the rabbit meat.

After eating rabbit, Indian fry bread, and beans, the cowhands sit around the fire and bullshit as they sip Rebel Yell. The whiskey warms them on the cool prairie night. 

In the close distance, they see a haunced figure walking towards them covered in an Indian blanket wearing warn gym shoes, dusty trousers with long unwashed white hair that has a single Golden Eagle feather tied in with a strip of rawhide. He says, 

Boys I’m lost, I got drunk a few nights back in Kingsville and have been following this here fence ever since, thinkin it leads somewhere. Sam says, 

How bout a drink chief? The lost Coahuiteco Indian sits cross-legged around the fire with the cowhands saying.

They call me Pecos Will, when I’m sober, which ain’t often, I run a sweat lodge on the reservation.

Sam hands Pecos Will the bottle of Rebel Yell, the Indian takes a long swig, grimacing and saying, 

to the mighty Great Spirit.

The cowboys look at one another. They have plenty of whiskey, but they know the Indian will drink every drop of it if they offer him more. 

Pecos Will finishes what's left of the bottle of Rebel Yell. Custer brushes off the wondering Coahuiteco saying,

Chief, We got a shit load of fence to ride tomorrow and need to get some shut-eye. Walk the fence south till you hit Pitchfork Ranch. From there, you can take a bus to the reservation or Kingsville.

The old Indian stands, his legs make a cracking sound and he silently walks south following the fence, swaggering from side to side.

The following day Custer and Sam spot a herd of wild mustangs. They cut Buckshot loose and give their quarter horses free rein, running them all out with the mustangs, a breath-taking experience.

In a few days, the cowboys return to Pitchfork Ranch.

                                  50 YEARS LATER 

Sam Flood lives alone in a run-down tar paper shack like the one he was born in. It's 60 miles from Kingsville and off the grid— no phone, TV, with a wood-burning stove for heat and to cook with, and a Honda generator in a pallet-covered cement pit for power. 

He had worked for Pitchfork Ranch till 5 years ago when a horse rolled him, busting up his leg so badly that it had to be amputated at the knee.

It’s no secret cowboys are underpaid. When Sam left Pitchfork, he didn’t get retirement pay, a watch, or handshakes from his long-time employers, the Chas Middleton family.  

Being an amputee did qualified Ole Sam for government disability pay and Medicare provided him with a prosthesis, cane, and wheelchair.

The disability pay, 1475 a month wasn't a lot, but Sam didn't need much.

He'd drive to Kingsville once a month in his 1960 Chevy pick up, a space-age looking rectangular vehicle puttied with Bondo and power sanded that was unpainted. 

At Walmart, he'd buy bacon, eggs, ground chuck, beans, chicken, instant potatoes, canned fruit, vegetables, soup, instant coffee, a case of Lone Star beer, and 3 quarts of Rebel Yell.

Sam wasn't much on hygiene and didn't take to soap. Back home he'd clean up by rolling his wheelchair down the ramp of his wooden shack to the well, pulling up a bucket of water on a rope pulling, and dousing himself with cold water a few times.

As for razors, he didn't need them either, he hadn't shaved in 50 years and his beard was waist long. 

And, he didn't need a toothbrush because he was toothless and didn't have dentures.

At the Walmart checkout counter, a chubby cashier recognizes him with his long beard, overalls, Texas A+M t-shirt, and cowboy boots. She says, 

why Sam you get more handsome every time I see ya. He laughs with a toothless smile saying,

I'm just another weirdo in this here Walmart freak show.

Sam had taken physical therapy seriously and had learned to walk stably using his prosthesis.

He pushes his shopping cart to the parking lot, loading up the supplies in the back of his pick-up and driving to Ed’s Place, a dive outside of town, parking in the dirt parking lot.

Inside he sits at the bar. Ed, who doesn't weigh a pound under 450, is behind the bar and he says, 

Why it’s Ole Sam, howdy cowboy,

Ed, you're wastin away, don't your old lady feed ya? I’ll have a Jack and 7 and ounce of the flavor of the month.

Ed dealt dope in his bar, everybody in town knew it, he paid the sheriff off monthly, in weed. Texas is a state that’s unhip to the health benefits of herb, famous for busting people with a single joint in the 70s who are still rotting in the can 30 years later.

Ed reaches into a cabinet under the bar, pulling out a paper bag which Sam promptly pockets in his overalls. 

He finishes his drink, standing and paying his tab for the last few months, 200 dollars, a sizable chunk out of his disability check but weed soothed his mind and took away his pain. He simply says, 

adios Ed, see ya next month.

He walks out of the bar and gets into his pick up, pulls out of the parking lot, and drives west on an asphalt highway.

7 miles out of Kingsville he turns south on a dirt road, driving the 53 miles home as his tires spin dust into the air. At times his windshield is covered with soot so he reaches out the driver's side window and wipes a patch clean with a handkerchief.

Sam’s alone day after day, his only distraction is a vintage Grundig radio that he listens to country music broadcast out of Claude, Texas on.

He couldn't call 911 because he didn't have a telephone. If he dropped dead at home his body would rot where it fell, decomposing.

No-one visited Sam to say howdy or check on him. His only friend is Ed, who tried to visit once but could find Sam's place.

His parents Anita and Will Flood had died years ago, and he didn't have any relatives he knew of. 

His pal Custer died driving drunk one night, rolling a Willy Jeep out in the sticks of Pitchfork Ranch.

As time moves on, the booze and dope no longer mask the wretched situation he lives in, and reality begins to haunt him.

Eventually, Sam stops driving to Kingsville monthly, going every three months instead, buying canned hash, beans, soup, beer, and whiskey. Merely, opening the cans of food without warming them, eating with a spoon. 

Then, he stops burning and burying garbage, leaving empty booze bottles and half-eaten cans of food around the place for his only companions, flies, ants, and cockroaches to finish off. 

Soon, he's rotting inside and his shack reeks of decay. He lays in bed for days with his Grundig radio on, giving off static electrical sound. 

Finally, It's the ninth inning, Sam's out of options.

With pronounced effort, he gets out of bed, grabbing a shotgun that's leaning against the wall, hopping on one leg to the front porch, and sitting in his rocking chair.

He looks outwards into the dusty expanse, remembering his mother Anita waking him for school, kissing his forehead saying, 

Jesús te ama niño,

an apparition of serenity. 

Sam calmly loads a shell in the chamber of his shotgun, 

placing the barrel to his temple, squeezing the trigger. The force of the blast scatters brains and skull fragments backward through the open front window of his house onto the floor inside.

6 months later, his friend Ed calls the sheriff, worried because he hasn’t seen Sam. 

The sheriff uses GPS, driving out to Ole Sam's shack in the afternoon, rattled to find a skeleton with a fragmented skull and shotgun laying in its lap sitting in a rocking chair. 

The forensics were so obvious a 5-year-old could figure them out.

A week later Sam Flood's skeletal remains are buried on Atascoso's County's dime in a paupers graveyard outside of Kingsville, Texas.  A preacher, Ed the bartender, and the chubby Walmart clerk look on as his cheap pine coffin is lowered into the ground by a crew of gravediggers.