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I

Before he, she, or maybe even it washed up at our encampment, I always said it wasn’t the heat that killed fools down here in Tucson Arizona, it’s all that moving around, that unnecessary shit. Everyone who leaves the men’s shelter in the morning heads to church for breakfast then back up to social services where all the women sitting up under air conditioning have ponytails, even the men got their hair tied up in ponytails, well, you know why. Then they walk themselves to the park, for drinking, highway offramp to make money holding cardboard signs, liquor store, till finally back to the shelter. Brother, you are going to drop dead, face first onto the concrete from doing too much. Over 1 million black ants will climb onto your body, hell they might even fight with the red ants under what’s left of your hair. Not that you’d care about being dead, but I do. I look out for everyone, always have always will, that's what people say about me, big 6’3 Lorenzo T. I used to ball, even got recruited to Arizona State but anyways I tell everyone they don’t need to be doing all that. Me? I stay right here in my tent behind the 7-11 on Mesero street, down the dirt hill in a weeded-out field where storm drains flush water when it’s not dry season. Me and the other guys, friends of mine like Johnny Dips and Tre-Marvelous, we don’t bother anyone. Social worker women and those male bitches come round to pass out bibles and shampoo. Other than that, I don’t move much. Maybe the library during the heat of mid-day is what I call the syrup hours. You can find me at the bus stop where kind people give me things like rotisserie chicken in plastic bags, cash, or Barnes and Noble gift cards. They unroll their minivan windows and hand me a plastic sack of meat while asking God to bless me. You can’t appreciate that on fentanyl. Simple joys like sitting out on the hill is what life is about. Every night I watch the sun turn the hills red then to nothing. A little dance and romance with the moon, nothing wrong with that.

Anyways, I knew he or she was dangerous, and we needed to kill her from the moment I laid eyes on it. I was sitting at the bus stop having an evening beer when a little teen with acne and a fade on a BMX rolled up, always annoyed I don't want fent. “Fuck away from me with that Mexican poison.” I told him. The kid returned with some fat rocks I exchanged for my last 40$. I had my pipe right up to my lips when the bus stopped. The drivers all know me as a regular who never gets on. About 10 men got off and shuffled down toward the 7-11 where we got our tents. Another shipment of migrants must have just come into town. Social workers are never happier than when a trucker makes it across the border with 50 illegals and just lets them loose or maybe the coyotes took them the back way over the mountains. Either way they fill up our shelters and us God fearing Americans must leave for refugee program funded shit. The fuck is wrong with these immigrants? I for goddam sure don’t deal with the government. Cartels probably dumped them here instead of taking them to Los Angeles as promised. And all us Americans go a grumbling down the hill to our little encampment. That first crack hit had to wait when a second bus stopped, and another 10 shabby men got off, but one was not like the others, shit stopped me cold. There, between two drunks, a scratchy dark figure dressed in rags. Man? Woman? A circular straw hat like an ancient corn farmer tipped low and a black bandana held over the face looked like rotting bandages and some lips the color of red ants sleeping beneath the sun for a thousand days jutted out. It wore a shredded-up trench coat holding in a bent body and it half floated half leaned almost invisible between two men. I knew there would be trouble and stood up to beat the shit out of this thing, this ludicrous addict when I froze a second time. I blocked the dirt path, and a short somebody 5'2, wide hips, plumber jeans and baseball cap, looked up with sweet blue eyes. Who are you? I asked.
“Basil” they said in a scratchy voice all the wrong pitch. “Just came from the shelter with the other guys,”
“Baby, you a whole ass woman,” I countered, and her eyes opened like a faucet turned all the way on.
“I was in the men’s shelter!” She insisted, with a proud tone.
“That doesn't make you a man.” A scruffy drunk looked back over his shoulder at her. “Don’t think you can fool Lorenzo T. I’ve been in the world a mighty long time. I put my arm around her waist.
“Don’t” she shrilled between rosy cheeks, but we kept walking. I slicked the front of my hair back.
“Well, that’s alright with me.”

II

Sitting cross legged, I showed her around my tent, sleeping bag with cardboard underneath to smooth out the rocks and a little storage shelf for the things I find, books, newspapers, cups from interesting places. And of course, a big bottle of gin. I poured her a shot, then put my pipe to my lips and took a big hit of bliss. “Your mom didn’t stare at that angel face and say your name was Basil. So, what’s really going on?
“I’m not dead naming myself, I don’t even know you.”
“Not doing what now? Smoke on this,” I told her, exhaling some crack from the glass. Her nose wrinkled up all cute and she coughed a little bit then waved it away from me. “Ok then, tell me, how’d an angel end up at the shelter.” she sighed, exhaling in her own way.
“I was thrown out of my house.”
“Isn't right,” I told her, taking my second hit.” You should be in school.”
“I’m 33.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
“Mom doesn't think my medical condition is real.” Her voice turned metallic and far off, like she was speaking through a pipe on the other end of the universe. I put my shades on and nodded along anyways. “I can’t work so I run VR chatrooms with my boyfriend who is also my dealer and dom. He’s kind of a gooner but a furry alpha with pink futa stripes. The more I hang with him the more testosterone he ships because of his transition kink. I was managing my own inworld bar when I left the hot pot in my room on and partially burned down the basement,” she sighed again, “my mom’s basement, not the VR one.”
“Didn’t understand a word you said baby girl.”
“I’m a trans man, so not your girl.” She huffed at me like a small dog who’d had too much. “Plenty of men can’t get someone pregnant, are they not men? And many men can’t do one pull up either, so what?”... I stuck my head out the tent while she was yapping on. The new guys were setting up tarps with cardboard and there was that ragged figure again. It held a pipe in a bony palm, skin stretched tight the wrong color, like an old man whose blood leeched purple across the back of his hand. The thing reached into the coat and put something black in the pipe. My friend Johnny Dips, older white guy with a beard and gulf war vet who never recovered from Iraq took the pipe pre-loaded and flicked his lighter to it. I ducked my head back in to find this woman still talking… “I pass very well, barely anyone clocks me.”
“Why don’t you take a male-sized hit off this pipe then, man?” I asked, ignoring all that other shit. But she shook her head as a no.
“What's your story?” She said.
“Have you ever had a wife, kids, backyard, eating dinner every night under some air conditioning?”
“Honestly, no.”
“What would make a man give all that up?” I pointed to my pipe before she could fuck up the response. “Wonder if I even remember it right, like if I remembered it better, I’d want to go back more than I do. The simple shit I still miss, like seeing the same cashier on my lunch break or the sound of my own microwave dinging, where every cup is where you put it. that mundane shit, or the lack of it really gets to me.”
“Yeah,” Basil chimed in, “I got problems too.” Before droning on about her discord servers. I stuck my head out the tent again. My buddy Tre-Marvelous joined Johnny Dips and around that black figure with the pipe. I watched it reach into the trench coat, like it was reaching into its own rib cage, and loading the glass pipe. I frowned and stuck my head back in the tent.
” You got to earn your keep to stay.” I cut her off.
“Who says I want to?”
“Fine, get the fuck out.” I snapped, not in the mood with that thing out there. Her lower lip started quivering, and her big blues got all watery. “Ok, just go to the bus stop up the hill and sit till you get money.”
“What?”
“Bitch don’t argue.” And she waddled her big butt away. I stood outside the tent watching the ragged thing. I heard whispers, she had some fire shit and for cheap, nobody was even sure what it was charging. “That thing from Mexico has got to go.” I said and just took one step when Basil came charging her big butt down the hill.
“I got some chicken and 14$” she beamed.
“That’s a good girl.” I stood aside for my princess and when she stepped in, I zipped us up for the night.

III

“We have to kill it.” I said raising to a half sit in our tent. Basil’s arm slid right off my chest rolling over in that cool pre-dawn light.
“What baby,” she cooed, half asleep and fully naked. I wiped last night’s gin from my face. My mouth felt rockier than a vacant lot that had gone unsold for a decade. I needed a cold Dr. Pepper and that fucking thing out of here. I should have never let it get this far. I had bite marks all over my thighs and my fingers felt sucked on, kind of a fucked up feeling really but that’s not the point.
“Find a weapon. That ragged monster thing is dangerous.” I unzipped the tent and stepped out with my pocketknife in one hand; Basil had the empty bottle of gin clutched tight to her big chest wading in behind me. I walked the length of the encampment and back but even when the sun fully cleared the hill and flooded the plain with yellow light, it was nowhere to be found. Neither were my friends Tre-Marvelous or Johnny Dips. And that wasn’t right either. Old Tre-Marvelous always had a fresh pack of Newport's and one for me at this hour. He was first up having been raised on a farm in Arkansas and never kicked the lifelong habit. “Baby go get my pipe; we have to find it and kill it.” She strode off to my tent and goddamn that lil tomboy got me fucked up.

We walked over to the liquor store, park, even to social services. The day just kept getting hotter, but I wanted to find my friends, like they’d find me if I ever so much dipped my toe in smoking whatever that ragged thing had in its pipe. Further out by the downtown gospel mission an American Central American gangbanger wearing a black and grey football jersey walked up and asked about Basil.
“She do dates? Dates?” He repeated. So, I gave him a date with getting his shit rocked. He went down with a pouty little twist.
“That’s a man to you fuckface. Don’t ever disrespect her.” Lil homeboy thought he had the right to get up and so I smacked him across the mouth and asked him where the male migrants campout.
“D-D-D-own by San Xavier Mission under the bridge.” He pussied out his mouth and we were off. Swear to God Basil was acting like nobody had ever punched someone before and wouldn’t leave my side. We walked to the bus stop and there was Tre-Marvelous, and Johnny Dips, sitting up, backs against the wall, dead. Their bodies slightly slumped. Twenty years now they’ve been on these streets and OD’d one night after smoking with this thing? I don’t think so. I can’t help but think they went to the bus stop to make it to the hospital and never got on, or nobody stopped. RIP old friends. I will avenge you. Basil sobered up and went to the next stop waiting for the crosstown.
“How’d those shelter migrants get here?” I asked.
“Walked I guess.”
“Wrong, the cartels…. dropped them off. Damn it, that thing is some kind of undead demon they can’t kill, just made it our problem by kicking it to our side of the border.
“Then we should deport.” Basil said. “Get it the fuck out of here.” I put my arm around her again. And we climbed on the bus.

It was a long way through the heat till we arrived on the other side of town. The streetlights just turned on leaving a yellow tint to the roads. A 10-minute walk and we found an encampment of short Mexican men under the bridge standing in a circle. There it was in the middle, the ragged figure offering up a pipe to anyone that wanted to smoke. This was fucked up. They can abandon their families and be a piece of shit in their own country. I whipped out my pocketknife and held it up under my palm till we got closer. Maybe she’s the offspring of all their hatred for how we took Texas in that war. Maybe you can’t make industrial fentanyl without a chemical runoff of greed taking human form. Who knows how many of them are wandering around in our cities. Either way doesn't have the right to start offering weary Americans eternal rest. I don’t care how grateful they are. We got our own problems here. It isn’t right. In the coming dark we crept up from behind them. This was for Johnny Dips and Tre-Marvelous and every American who died in the epidemic. But my leg stumbled out from under me in a flash and I sank to the ground. As I always said, it wasn’t the heat that killed fools, it was all that moving around, Me knees bent, then chest, I couldn’t move anymore, that damn heat was going to kill me. Basil ran over and cradled my face in her hands.
“Baby!” Basil whispered an inch away.
“Bitch,” I moaned, “shut the fuck up.” And handed her the knife. She nodded quick, put it behind her back and walked towards the circle of men that had turned to watch us. That’s when I saw it. The ragged creature held a pipe made from its own shaved bone, and when it reached into the jacket, there was nothing inside but pure black, like a sheet of night that it packed back into the pipe and held out for Basil to smoke. From the ground I saw Basil swing the knife out and stab into the neck muscle, a strange hissing began, like the ragged figure was hollow and full of wind sounds. It started to thrash in a bending dance. The Mexican men all fled at once and my little eagle was all alone wrestling with this snake in her grip. She pushed it over and landed on top, her bottom-heavy pear-shaped body straddling the thing’s sides while sawing at the neck. But alas, everything in my sight was growing dim, dimmer, then dark for me, farewell all.

“Please,” she said, "please come back and be proud of me.” I woke up and knew she hadn’t dared slap my face, just begging for my approval. And I gave her a nod, man to man. Basil collapsed on my big chest with relief. My hands trembling from the heatstroke, shaky, managed to place the pipe up to my lips and take a big fucking hit of crack. I thought about all the times I was a man, helicoptering my dick in the gym locker room while everyone laughed or knocking up my first girlfriend. A tear streamed down my face, and I never wanted to die. I passed the pipe to her lips, and she took a big old man-sized inhale, smiling right back at me as we locked eyes.
“Hell yeah,” I coughed, “off the charts.” She helped me up, and I looked down to see she’d put the monster’s head in a duffel bag left behind by one of the migrants. I brushed the ants off my shirt and felt 100 feet tall. “We’re going to Mexico to bury this poison where it belongs.” But first, I turned her towards the mountains. We watched the sun turn the hills red then to nothing and nothing was wrong with that.