2) Orange Walk Town

& I don’t know shit about mad adventure, but Friday I find myself in Gorilla Burns’ Grand Marquis with Mario & Snitch. Me & three Belizean pirates. We’re nearing Orange Walk Town, halfway north to Mexico.
Mario tells me later, “Gorilla land him planes right upon the highway. Keep cutting down them telephone posts the government put in along the road. Him close it after midnight, chop them poles then land him planes there & Orange Walk Town is no place for whities, Johnny. Them hate you. Maybe kill you for joke, if Gorilla no here, if I gone. Hell, maybe them fuck up Snitch, too.”
Gorilla Burns is a frightening celebrity, mid-30’s, humungus 400 lb. offensive tackle, Baby-Huey. Hundreds of hundreds always in his wallet. Rudeness his calling card, a wicked, toothy grin.
Yesterday, Snitch tells me, “Gorilla B.’s an enforcement agent for the United States when it doesn’t interfere with being a smuggler.”
Which means every so often he calls & squeals on the stray he has flying to Texas or Miami with a load of mostly flour duct-taped to his stomach, like poor Limey-Neil, such a boastful whitie, went to Houston & never returned, ‘cuz Gorilla wanted Limey’s sexy black wife.
& he got her.
“Gave it to her so tough we could hear their beer crates crashing & her bawling like a bitch,” Mario laughs. “It drown all conversation at the bar.”
& I don’t know shit about business, but Gorilla B. is looking for chicks to dance at his discos in Belize’s only “city.” We stop at bar after bar, seemingly getting nowhere, finally end up at the Orange Walk whorehouse, four kings on horses of gold. I’m young, happily married, & don’t understand that we’re here ‘cuz these ladies are going to be Gorilla B.’s dancers, but they won’t come with us until Johnny-white-guy fucks one of them to prove he isn’t some kind of agent.
& Gorilla Burns secretly needs to know if I am disposable, ‘cuz the disco systems are in, so now he can steal my wife, Mary Beth, Scandinavian like Belizean’s only see in magazines & on television, lovely, intelligent, easy-going. Unlike his wife, Dominating-overbearing-Sybil-blondie-dye-job-from-North-Dakota-also, which is where Gorilla Burns & I met in the first place – “Johnny James, Sound Engineer,” now serving Belize. “Too white,” & who’s to say, “too reckless.” I’m the only one who’s ever done it.
Many nights transmogrify Gorilla B. into an accessory for his wallet & he gets massively animal-wild drunk. Often he Rambos up, 6-foot-4 & grabs me across dented bar mahogany, lifts me off the ground by the front of my shirt & shakes me like rags. I’m gagging & helpless & he’s barking, “I’m calling immigration tomorrow to have your shaggy ass thrown out of me country & by god you better stay clear of the whorehouse here ‘cuz I don’t want none of your mother-fucking AIDS! You’re nothing but a ragamuffin! Worse than one Chinaman! Worse than a coolie!”
Whiskey is a screaming waterfall down his throat & none of the other guys ever try to stop this. Yet every few weeks, Gorilla B. sends over a grocery bag – a gift filled with indica bud so tight & resinous I have to cut it apart with a steak knife. My family often dines at his house (big honor), & he takes me on road trips to Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, & tonight, he tells me to go into that Orange Walk whorehouse bedroom, “& wait for Corrina. Brah, nah fuck dis up.”