“Burn It Blue” - Caetano Veloso & Lila Downs

…

          Years have gone by since I went on walking alone, not because I wanted but because I had no choice. You see? that’s what happen when you know who you are. Nobody grows balls to walk along with you and the ones who do, well… it's not because they’re brave but because they don’t understand what's going on. Mind you know, being alone is not difficult, however no one, not even myself would dare to say it’s easy as pie. 

…

         What can I say, uh? I was rich and I was fearless so, of course I was wicked. Money can buy that luxury. Folks, even maids, were afraid of me. Afraid of whatever I was looking at, afraid of whatever word I spoke with unknown inflection. I went up and down like I owned every goddamned soul in this town and as I grew older, I felt it was my birthright to be feared.

          I lived in a small town all dried up and brown full of sordid gypsies and shrivelled gals. Except for The Luminous, a plummeting brothel for inexperienced young clergy men, and The Funnel bar, a raucous circus of drunk men, which also functioned as a hide-out for outlaws and criminals, the town was dead as a cemetery. It was a joke of a town but these two places were all these folks got to gratify their body and soul urges. 
          Brothels were not my thing anymore. I had spent too many nights at The Luminous to learn that money could buy me great nights but never a lady’s heart. And bars? well, The Funnel was always open at odd hours and I didn’t care about the filth nor the drunks as long as I could sip alone some good ol’Jack.

          I was an animal, a voracious animal for lust and danger. Folks called me whatever they wanted and I took it with pride. I was everything you named evil, like hell I was! but one thing nobody called me was a hot-blooded trouble-maker. I was a fair fighter, of course I was! I respected the weak, I never started a fight by mistake, and I always made my escape calculations precise. However one can never be so sure about one’s own luck and that night, my lucky stars were clouded by rain.

          Inside The Funnel, the weather was already dense and those cheap drunks kept on singing dreadful songs while a filthy gypsy kept on coming and going, proclaiming himself to be “a fine man,” “the finest, righteous man you would ever meet in this town.” Who on earth proclaimed such things about himself? No one that I knew at the time but he did, hell yes he did! and the truth is, if you asked me, that the gypsy was fine for what a gypsy can be, of course. He even seemed righteous. He might have been the finest gypsy I’d ever met, the only problem was that he was drunk as a mad dog. So I knocked him down. One shot straight to the forehead. It just so happens that patience is a virtue I lack… and that I don’t like to be patronised by faux moralists.

          Of course this was not the first time I'd killed a man. I had killed as many men as my grandma's age and you didn't want to know how old she was back then. I had killed gypsies before as well but the problem with this “fine, righteous gypsy” was that he was some Clergy’s Protégé. “Clergy’s Protégé” for Christ sake! Why didn't they admit he was the Reverend’s cocksucker instead? There were things these folks did held as sacred, such as God and His so-called Sons.

          So from one minute to another, there I was, chained to the desk of the Sheriff's town. At the station, the deputy told me that I was in deep trouble this time. That no amount of money nor fancy last name would make up for that gypsy’s death. I had mess with the Clergy and they were clearly up my ass.
          By God’s Divine Hand, The Fortunes or The Fates, good and ol'time pal Sheriff Jones arranged a quick trial and in less than two hours there I was, avoiding death penalty and sentenced to exile.

…

         Painting a bloody sunrise, the sun climbed up the sterile hills. Tired and slow, like an old lady waiting for death at her porch, a discoloured train appeared on the rusty railroad. There I was alone, and what’s worst, sober as a drunk who got dry right in the middle of the night. There I stood  God knows for how long, waiting with the patience I lacked, with nothing more than a flimsy coat, a raged hat and a small paper bag full of cash that Janice, my favourite Luminous dame, managed to get me from the safety box I kept at The Funnel.

          It was a wreck. An ambush. A charade. Exile? Sheriff Jones just kicked me out from my own town? A favor he said it was. A favor! I was mad to the point of returning to kick more Clergy ass. If I had already killed some holy gypsy, I could continue on a killing spree of monks, nuns, reverends... even the Bishop! why not! but everything happened so fast I wasn't even sure if exile was better than death. Maybe I should have stayed chained to the desk, maybe I should have waited for the town's Bishop to rape my ass with some biblical lines while I spitted on his face and then they would take me to a dirty cell full of drunks and whores while they prepared to execute me. I would have taken that stupid death sentence like the brave man I was... Either way, it was done. I was out with no return, consuming my own rage, waiting for that lousy mechanical beast to stop, waiting to get inside and get somewhere away from this madness, from this town, from this gruesome exile, and there, just right there in this struggle with myself, I saw her.

          She appeared in the form of a tight waistline swaddled in black lace, a generous bosom hidden behind a satin fan and some black hair falling by her right ear. Her hazel eyes clashed with mine and for a moment, between my muted resentment and the travellers descending off the train, I saw through. I saw the bloody sunrise, I recognised the hills I once climbed with Chloe, my eldest brother hoe, during my ninth birthday. I saw that ironed railroad as a doorway opening up right in front of me…  I saw… a shadow? Suddenly, a gush of shadows went by dissolving the illusion of that perfect escape, my escape.

          A tumultuous crowd of gypsies, merchants and tourists rushed up and down the station. Quick as a blink, her hazel eyes disappeared in a trail of grey smoke right in front of me. I hurried wagon after wagon looking for that mysterious dame, but there was no one not even alike. The train started to move in monotonous rattles. I stopped at wagon 142, resigned that she was nothing but a by-product of my sobriety and wakefulness. I had nothing but a lonesome wagon and the unpleasant taste of exile burning like the Sun at noon. I sat down and as I looked through the window, the outside world seemed so vast and abundant. I'd never felt so defeated in my entire life.

…

         You see... there's a catch: when I'm drunk I slur, so it's not the whisky but the heat the one that got me all chitty-chatty tonight. What can you do when you were born a rambling man? it just happens that from time to time, her hazel eyes, her curvilinear silhouette and her volatile smile roam free like ravaging horses in my dreams. Wild animals are not for taming for sure. How treacherous memories are. 

ToBeContinued

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