Gringos by Charles Portis

broken the code, but it was possible that he had hit on some useful new approach to the problem.
    Beth was waiting for me in front of the Posada Fausto. She wanted me to haul some chairs for her. They wouldn’t fit in Bollard’s Peugeot. If you have a truck your friends will drive you crazy. We drove out to a carpentry shop on Colón, where a man named Chelo made tables and things out of withes and sticks and swatches of rawhide leather. He made baby furniture, too, strange rough cradles with a lot of bark showing and little Goldilocks chairs. I tried to sell him my big planks. Chelo said he never worked in mahogany, seeming to suggest there was something vulgar about it. Another artist.
    Beth had bought a round table and four chairs, bulky pieces but not heavy, and I transported them and set them up in her courtyard. She had a nice roomy place all to herself behind the museum. There was a flowery patio with bees and paper lanterns and wind chimes and two prowling cats. These people on grants did all right for themselves. She had a grant from some foundation to manage this children’s museum, which was a very good one, no expense spared, the idea being to march the local niños through in troops and give them some appreciation of their Mayan heritage.
    Beth wiped her hands on a fresh towel and tossed it into the hamper. It was one use and out for her. She didn’t have to wash them. She made a pitcher of limeade, and we sat in the new chairs. The rawhide was smelly. Bits of flesh still adhered to the skin. I knew a little about the leather business and even I knew that rawhide must be scraped and dried and stretched properly. Beth denied that there was any smell and then denied that the smell was unpleasant. To her it was agreeable and even bracing. She defended all things Mexican.
    â€œI haven’t seen you around. What have you been doing with yourself?”
    â€œNothing much,” I said. “Trying to save some money.”
    â€œOut at night drinking with your buddies, I suppose. Ike and Mutt, are they? Those two you’re always quoting?”
    She meant Art and Mike, the inseparable Munn brothers.
    â€œNo, I haven’t been drinking at all.”
    â€œWill you read something if I give it to you?”
    â€œSure. What is it?”
    â€œI don’t mean now. I’m still working on it. Just some observations. A kind of list. It’s about the kind of person you’ve become.”
    â€œA list of my shortcomings then.”
    â€œNot exactly that. More about personal growth. Our repetitive acts. How our growth can be arrested and we may not even be aware of it.”
    â€œGrowth? That sounds like one of Bollard’s words.”
    â€œDo you think I can’t have my own ideas?”
    â€œI think you’d do better to stay away from people like that.”
    â€œLike what? Look who’s talking. Carleton had nothing whatever to do with this and you know it.”
    â€œWell, no, I don’t know it. I see you all over town with him.”
    â€œWill you read it?”
    â€œI’ll read it if you can put it on one sheet of paper.”
    â€œNow what is that, some military thing?”
    â€œNo, I read about it in a business book. The need for keeping memos and reports short. How it concentrates your thinking and saves time for everybody along the line.”
    â€œYou’re afraid of smart women, aren’t you?”
    She had used this ploy before, having heard via the female bush telegraph that it was unanswerable. She was right though. I was leery of them. Art and Mike said taking an intellectual woman into your home was like taking in a baby raccoon. They were both amusing for awhile but soon became randomly vicious and learned how to open the refrigerator. Beth asked if I remembered her green sofa that the cats had scratched up. I said I did but I had no memory for particular pieces of furniture, having hauled so much of it. She told a long