Tijuana Donkey Showdown Read online

  Before I could stress how important it was—

  The front door burst open. I heard wild braying and hooves thundering across the floorboards, like some rampaging beast of the apocalypse. I wheeled around inside the kiosk. The phone dropped from my hand in shock. Walt shouted, “Reggie! Get your goddamn jackass outta here!”

  Enrique was loose. He’d torn the wing mirror from Lou’s car and come galloping inside the bar. He was sheeted in sweat like a racehorse, his upper lip curled in a toothy leer. His eyes were wild, bugging in his skull like a tweaker on a meth binge—and they were locked on Marlene as she twerked her fat ass upon the stage. The donkey’s johnson was whipping and writhing like a monstrous black tentacle from an H.P. Lovecraft story. Walt spluttered, “Sweet merciful Jesus!” And then the animal charged headlong at Marlene.

  I scrambled from the phone kiosk—too late—Enrique had already raced past me, smashing through tables and chairs as he charged Marlene like an equine stage invader. Marlene saw the donkey coming and screamed. On hands and knees, she scuttled away down the stage, glancing back in terror and colliding headfirst with the dance-pole. A gong-like clang echoed through the bar, and she collapsed out cold on the stage, a fleshy avalanche of woman with her ass heaped invitingly in the air. Enrique rushed forwards to claim his prize.

  Lou leapt to his lady’s defense. He snatched his sports coat from the back of his chair and started waving it like a matador, yelling at Enrique, “Yah! Get back! Yah!” But Enrique just butted Lou aside and attempted to scale the stage. Rearing onto his hind legs, he hooked his forelegs on the platform, his hooves clattering for purchase on the slippery floor. Unable to drag himself up, he heehawed in frustration. The size of his johnson, I half-expected him to whip his wang around the dance-pole and winch himself onto the stage.

  I grabbed the donkey’s reins and tried to drag him back. But the beast was freakish strong, and the sight of Marlene’s ass had driven him to frenzy. Lou tried to help, but made the mistake of straying behind the donkey and pulling his tail. Enrique jacked his legs and kicked Lou clear the length of the bar. Lou crash-landed on the Smokey and the Bandit pinball machine. The glass tabletop shattered and Lou sank down inside the machine like a corpse in a gaudy coffin. The machine teetered under Lou’s weight, then the legs gave way and it crashed to the floor. The backboard blew up in a John Woo-explosion of light and sparks. Burt Reynolds’s automated laughter wheezed through the room in an electronic death rattle.

  Walt racked his shotgun behind me. “Step aside, Reggie.”

  I stepped between Walt and the jackass. “Wait!”

  According to boxing legend, to win a wager, the Panamanian slugger Roberto ‘Hands of Stone’ Duran once kayoed a horse with a single punch.

  But I’m no Duran; it took me a full three-punch combination.

  I whaled on the jackass with a left and a right that whipped Enrique’s head from side to side, and then I put him to sleep with an uppercut that snapped his snout heavenwards, damn near stretched his neck like a giraffe.

  Enrique’s legs buckled, his ears twitched, and then he keeled on his side with a heehawing moan, his johnson wilting across the floor like a fire hose.

  2.

  * * *

  “Goddamn,” Walt said, lowering the shotgun.

  “Now I didn’t want to do that,” I said. “Anyone asks—PETA, anyone—it was self-defense.”

  “Goddamn,” Walt said again.

  I helped free Lou from the guts of the pinball machine. It was damaged beyond repair. So much for earning my high score back. I could have cried.

  Marlene snorted awake like a walrus from a nightmare. “What happened?” she said, propping herself against the dented dance-pole.

  I clapped Lou on the back. “Lou here defended your honor.”

  “He—he did?”

  Lou shot me a grateful glance.

  “Wasn’t nothing,” he said to Marlene. “Any man would’ve done the same.”

  Marlene reached down from the stage, snatched Lou’s tie and yanked him towards her, and planted a big smackeroo on his head. “My hero.”

  Lou flushed redder than the sucker-print of lipstick on his scalp.

  Marlene peered down nervously at the unconscious jackass.

  “Is—is it dead?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Lou hit him pretty hard.”

  Lou gave me a look like I was overdoing it now.

  We crowded around the out-cold jackass. Walt prodded Enrique’s side with his shotgun barrel, got no response, and then teased the donkey’s mane from his face.

  Lou let out a gasp. “It—it can’t be.”

  I said, “Friend of yours?”

  “You mean to say you don’t recognize him? Fellas, this right here is Enrique.”

  I shrugged.

  Lou said, “Otherwise known as ‘Mister Head.’”

  Walt frowned. “Wasn’t Mister Ed a horse?”

  I said, “Of course, of course.”

  Walt snickered.

  “Not Mister Ed,” Lou said. “Mister Head.”

  Walt and me exchanged blank looks. Lou rolled his eyes, apparently convinced we were just acting coy. “Oh, c’mon now, boys! Enrique! He’s only the most celebrated adult entertainment animal of his generation!”

  Walt said to me, “The jackass didn’t kick Lou in the head, did he?”

  Lou explained—with nerdish enthusiasm—that Mister Head was a popular porn parody series. A riff on the old TV show, it chronicled the sexcapades of the freakishly endowed, dirty-talking donkey as he cuckolded and cock-blocked his hapless human owner, Wilbur.

  Walt said, “Jesus, Lou! How do you know this stuff? Didn’t you used to teach Sunday school?”

  But Lou wasn’t finished: “When Enrique’s adult entertainment career petered out—no pun intended—his owners sold him to a Mexican bordello to see out his twilight years as the star of a donkey show.”

  I said, “Beats the glue factory, I guess.”

  “It was like seeing Marlon Brando reduced to dinner theater.” Lou gazed down in awe at the unconscious jackass. “What in the world is Mister Head doing in Bigelow?”

  “More to the point,” Walt said, “what’s he doing on my floor?”

  That’s when everyone looked at me.

  So I told them everything that had happened—from Harry recruiting me to retrieve his Chinese crested terrier after it was mistaken for a chupacabra … to my escape by donkey-cock from Grabowski’s Gas & Zoo.

  When I was finished, Walt shook his head slowly.

  “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Levine.”

  Enrique heehawed back to consciousness. We all started in surprise, backing away as the donkey brayed in pain. Marlene clamped her hands over her ears. “Make it stop, oh god, make it stop!” Walt shouted to me, “What’s wrong with him? You think you broke his jaw when you punched him out?”

  I crouched down beside Enrique, patted his neck and made soothing noises.

  “Who’d you think you are,” Walt said, “the Jackass Whisperer?”

  The donkey’s hide was hot and feverish, slick with sweat. He made a pitiful attempt to right himself, his legs flailing weak as a newborn foal. His eyes rolled up in his skull. He looked at me plaintively to ease his suffering—or maybe he was worried I’d slug him again. Then he thrashed his tail and cut a long foghorn of gas, emitting a hiss of hot air like a slashed tractor tire. Walt, who’d been standing behind him, still basking in his Jackass Whisperer wisecrack, gave a cry of disgust and moved upwind.

  “I think—he’s got some kind of bellyache,” I said. I could sympathize; wasn’t long ago I’d had a similar complaint, caused by the ill-advised ingestion of a microwave burrito.

  “No shit,” Walt said, gagging at the stench.

  Enrique was splayed on his side, grinding his teeth as he released a series of strained, high-pitched farts, like gassy Morse code. The white ruff of his belly was grossly distended. I gently parted the fur and found a l
ine of crude, inflamed sutures, zigzagging his abdomen like a rusted zipper on a 1950s movie monster. Five rectangular shapes bulged against his swollen gut. They were roughly the same shape and size as television remote controls. I tried to imagine the jackass devouring a whole TV remote, and liking the taste so much that he ate another four; it seemed unlikely. I lightly prodded one of the shapes. Enrique heehawed in pain and cut another long fart. “Stop that!” Walt said. “I’ll be airing this place for a damn month.”

  “There’s something inside him,” I said. “He’s like a living piñata.”

  “Maybe it’s aliens,” Marlene said.

  Walt and me looked at her.

  “I seen it on The Unexplained Files,” she said, “how the aliens in-semen-ate people n’ stuff.” Marlene had experience of alien insemination; she’d birthed two bastards by illegal day laborers. “You oughta kill it now, Walt. Shoot it in the head and set it on fire before it hatches donkey aliens.”

  “We’ll file ‘aliens’ under the maybe column, Marlene,” I told her.

  I returned my attention to Enrique, and the strange rectangular shapes bulging against his belly.

  Walt said, “What’re you thinking, Reggie?”

  I was thinking: Why does this shit keep happening to me?

  What I said was: “Damned if I know what’s going on here …”

  I glanced at the phone kiosk. “But I know someone who might.”

  “Who?” Walt said, as I went and made the call. “Doctor Dolittle?”

  3.

  * * *

  The cavalry arrived within the hour. I was waiting outside, necking a couple few Coors to settle my nerves. I’d used the bar’s first aid kit to clean and dress my grazes, stuck Band-Aids over my cuts, and the gash in my forehead, till my mug resembled a crudely repaired clay vase. I’d also changed out of the tee shirt I’d ripped to rags while being dragged behind Enrique, and donned a rumpled Hawaiian shirt, adorned with palm trees and toucans, from the lost and found crate in the stockroom. I just had to hope that slashed jeans were still hip.

  Shelby’s truck pulled up outside, and my stomach butterflied, and I drained the dregs of my beer and hid the bottle with the other empties. Shelby climbed from the truck, carrying a Gladstone medicine bag. She was mad as a wasp. Her eyes were all puffy and red and her hair was ironed flat on one side where she’d been sleeping on it. She was wearing tossed-on civvies of a jersey and jeans. But to me, she still looked a million dollars. I said, “Thanks for coming, Doc—”

  “Mr. Levine!” she said, the way the teachers in school used to call on me in class when I was woolgathering. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  As a matter of fact, I didn’t. Enrique was no longer wearing my watch as a cock-ring. I assumed it must have fallen loose and been lost when we were riding to The Henhouse. I decided not to share this with Shelby. I said, “It’s late, I guess.”

  “This had better be important like you said on the phone,” she said. “I don’t appreciate being dragged from bed in the middle of the night and brought to a place like … this.”

  She looked up at The Henhouse and shuddered.

  “It really ain’t as bad as you think, Doc.”

  Come to think of it, it was probably worse.

  “What’s so important it couldn’t wait until office hours, Mr. Levine?”

  “Reggie,” I insisted. “How many times I gotta ask you to call me Reggie?”

  “I’d prefer to keep things formal.”

  “I understand. You’re on duty.”

  “In general.”

  “Gotcha … Well, like I said on the phone, it’s kinda hard to explain.”

  “Then maybe I should just see for myself—”

  She moved towards the door and I blocked her path like I was carding her.

  “Doc, wait. I oughta warn you. It ain’t pretty in there.”

  “Mr. Levine,” she said, with a condescending smile. “Before starting my surgery in Bigelow, I served two tours with Veterinaires sans Frontieres.”

  I nodded like I had a clue what she was talking about.

  “Veterinarians Without Borders,” she explained. “I can assure you, there is nothing inside this fine establishment that can shock me. Except maybe the clientele.”

  She gestured for me to move out of her way. “Now, please. The sooner I get this over and done with—whatever the big mystery is—the sooner I can go back to bed. I have a surgery first thing in the morning.”

  So I opened the door and held it open, which she seemed to resent—a fella can’t even be a gentleman anymore. She brushed past me, but hadn’t taken two steps inside before stopping dead in her tracks.

  Enrique was lying on his side on the pool table. Don’t ask me how we got him up there: Wasn’t easy. Lou was busy tucking Enrique’s johnson into the left corner pocket, out of harm’s way. Marlene was just standing there in her G-string and pasties, looking worried the jackass was about to spawn alien-donkey hybrids. Walt was plying the nag with whiskey poured through a funnel.

  Shelby sputtered in disbelief, “What the hell are you—are you giving that animal alcohol?”

  “Thought I’d save you the trouble and anesthetize him,” Walt said. “Don’t worry, Doc. He seems to like it. As well he might. It’s the good stuff.”

  It figured Walt would save the good stuff for a jackass.

  Enrique smacked his lips and puckered up ready for another shot.

  Walt chuckled dotingly and poured another measure down the funnel.

  “Stop!” Shelby said. “That’s enough!”

  Walt removed the funnel from Enrique’s mouth. “Sorry, bud. Veterinarian’s orders.”

  Shelby took a deep breath to compose herself. She set her medicine bag on the corner of the pool table and was about to start examining her patient. Then she noticed the Chinese crested terrier scuttling back and forth along the top shelf behind the bar, yipping furiously. “Would someone please shut that dog up?”

  That’s years of veterinary college for you; she recognized the ugly fucking mutt for what it was right away.

  “With pleasure,” Walt said. “Reggie, where’s the duct tape?”

  “Just put him in the stockroom,” I said.

  Walt clearly preferred his idea, but he hiked Gizmo down from the shelf and put him in the stockroom. The dog clawed at the door and yip-yip-yipped.

  As Shelby continued her examination of Enrique, teasing her fingers across his swollen belly, and those strange TV-remote-shaped bulges, I wished I was a donkey, instead of a regular jackass. Enrique’s eyes rolled drunkenly towards her. Liking what he saw, he gave a lusty sigh, and Lou had to cram his johnson back down inside the corner pocket of the pool table. But thanks to Walt’s generosity with the whiskey he was too shitfaced to be any real threat.

  Shelby finished her exam, looking grave.

  “Someone has sewn something inside this animal.”

  She looked at me accusingly.

  “Hell, Doc. It wasn’t none of us. He was like this when I found him.”

  “And where might that have been?”

  “The roadside zoo out on old highway 9.”

  “Grabowski’s,” she said, with a knowing sigh.

  “You know the place?”

  She nodded like she wished she didn’t.

  “The old man means well, I suppose. But he’s a hoarder.”

  “I noticed.”

  She looked down at the donkey and stroked his mane; again, I couldn’t help feeling a pang of jealousy.

  “So—you rescued him?” She sounded surprised; apparently this didn’t jibe with what she’d heard about me being the terror of all wildlife.

  “Matter of fact,” I said, “he rescued me.”

  Walt said, “Tell the Doc how you escaped from Grabowski’s by holding onto his—”

  I cut him off quick. “Thank you, Walt! The doc doesn’t wanna hear about that.”

  Before I could give Shelby a sanitized account of what had
happened at Grabowski’s, Lou stepped forwards: “What’s the diagnosis, Doc? No bushwa now. Is Enrique gonna make it?”

  “Not unless I operate right away.”

  Lou choked down a cry. “Don’t let him die, Doc! Please! You gotta treat this jackass like he’s the President of the United States!” I ushered Lou away before he started telling Shelby about Enrique’s dubious celebrity. “Give the doc room to work, Lou.” Marlene took Lou off my hands. I nodded thanks to her. The wily old lech pretended he was sobbing and buried his face in her cleavage.

  I said to Shelby, “You want us to carry him out to your truck?”

  “There’s no time for that. I’m going to have to operate right here.”

  “On my pool table?” Walt said. “Now wait a fucking—”

  “Mr. Levine,” Shelby said. “I’ll need you to assist.”

  “Assist—like—dab the sweat off your face with a towel or something?”

  Shelby smiled at me; the first time she’d ever really smiled at me, and I didn’t like it, not one bit. “I’m afraid you’ll be getting your hands a little dirtier than that.”

  Walt shut up about his pool table and grinned. “Oh, this oughta be good.”

  4.

  * * *

  Shelby disinfected her hands and pulled on latex gloves. She took what she needed to operate from her medicine bag, placing everything neatly on a bar towel she’d unfurled across the pool table. “I need a razor,” she said.

  Walt returned moments later with his electric razor. “Best I can do.”

  Shelby buzzed Enrique’s belly and then gave him the local. The needle punctured his swollen belly with a sound like punch pliers popping through leather. Feeling queasy already, I turned my head and closed my eyes and sucked deep breaths. “Exactly what am I doing here, Doc?”