Mando

A couple of years ago, before the plague struck planet earth and accelerated the already impressive pace of batshit crazy behavior here on our little blue ball, I had a fellow who helped me out around the ranch. I’ve written about Mando before, sharing the story of him arriving one day on our porch with a rake and a tarp, his bicycle parked in the driveway, and asking in Spanish if I had any work he could do. There is always work to do and so I gave him some, and before long he became a regular fixture around the Mighty Figure 8, doing an assortment of odd jobs that need doing and that I have precious little time to get done.

The following spring Mando drove into the driveway in a battered car, with two rakes and a tarp. I was glad to see him and we took up where we had left off the previous fall. Often times, at the end of the day, I’d haul out a couple of cold beers and we’d sit under a ponderosa pondering the mysteries. Between my bad Spanish and his bad English we understood each other well enough. Then I’d stuff some greenbacks in his hand, and a dozen eggs, and maybe some fresh vegetables from the garden, and off he’d go. Mando kept coming around whenever I needed help until December when the work runs out and, like a lot of Mexican folk, he went south with his hard-earned cash to visit family and spread some cheer in the old country.

And then the plague struck, and Mando didn’t come back.

We’ve missed him these last couple of years, and talked about him frequently. We wondered if he survived, and if so, if we would ever see him again. I doubted it. Mando is an old man, probably in his 70s—though he’s cagey about answering how many years he’s stacked on that wizened old frame—and I figured between the plague and the prospect of making the gruesome trip back across the border we had probably seen the last of him.

But I was wrong. This morning, after a visit to town, my wife and I were driving home when we saw an old man pushing a bicycle up the hill that leads to our place. I thought nothing of it until we got closer and that beat up old man pushing a bicycle was suddenly familiar. My wife shouted “It’s Mando!” and I slammed on the brakes and was out the door in a flash. We greeted there on the side of the road with hugs and handshakes and a fountain of mucho gustos and the truth is Mando shed a tear. And maybe I did too.

So we tossed Mando’s bike in the back of the truck and he jumped in the passenger’s seat and we rolled on into our place and he went right to work. Mando can’t stand a pine needle or a pine cone, and neither can I, and we struck up our bargain again—arguing from top to bottom and laughing our way to the middle—and somewhere in there I learned that he’d just made it back from Mexico yesterday.

Mando looks tired. And ten years older. The deep brown color of his skin and the fatigue in his eyes answer most of the questions I have about how he managed to get back here at all, and what he must have endured along the way. And someday, soon, I look forward to sharing a couple of beers with him under a ponderosa, and poking around the edges to hear whatever part of that story he’s willing to tell me. Because we know it is a righteous tale full of human suffering and brutality.

It’s easy to be gloomy. I suffer from it from time to time. But life will still throw us a bone every once in a while, a gift along the trail. Here’s one: Mando is alive, and he’s here, and I’ll fight any man who dares tell me that isn’t something to celebrate.

Because he’s my friend, and I’ve missed him.