Savages

247

Gun shop Barney is an inveterate listener to right-wing talk-show radio.

Anyway, Barney hears all about the massacre on the highway and gleans the additional news, welcome other than the fact that he has six less Mexicans to worry about. What he hears is the leaked info about the .50 rounds found in and around the said dead Cans and the speculation that the first shots were fired from a distance—

—well no fucking shit, you don’t use no Barrett Model 90 for close work—

—and he sees a chance to do himself some good.

See, Barney lives on the border.

Yeah, okay, everyone in this fucking life does, but Barney lives on the border and what that really means these days is that he lives as much in Mexico as he does in the USofA.

He don’t like it, he ain’t happy about it, but the facts is the facts.

Don’t matter what the Border Patrol says, what the Minutemen say, what any dickhead in DC says, this country is run as much or more by the Baja Cartel.

Just something Barney had to work with.

Which he does pretty well, seeing as how they’re his best customer.

He don’t let that out, because his second-best customers are the right-wingers, who, like Barney, hate Mexicans, but Barney’s got stacks and stacks of medical bills, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is all over his ass—we’re talking the possibility of him spending his golden years dodging the niggers and the shit in a federal penitentiary—so now he has a choice to make.

Which government does he call?

Which one can he trust?

Which will do him the most good?

He turns down the radio so he can talk on the phone.

Lado is very pleased to hear from him and believes, yes, they can do a little “horse tradin’.”

(Gringo cracker pendejo.)

Then Lado hears which pony ole Barney has to trade and

—he’s not happy.