The Pibil

Brilliant orange streaks of light bathed the small Mexican town as the sun slowly began to peak over the distant dry hills. One such ray found its way through a small window in the adobe house of one Ernesto Vega. Ernesto slept in a bed positioned just so that the morning sun would fall on his eyes to wake him each morning. He didn't particularly like this, mind you, but Rosa did. Once a man enters his thirties and has grown into some semblance of reason, he learns that it is best to pick his battles, and Ernesto knew that the battle he could win against Rosa had yet to be found.

As he completed his morning rituals that he had done for the past seven years, his mind wandered elsewhere. He imagined himself as the head chef in a five star resort in Acapulco, on the beach. Perhaps he would have a penthouse on the roof with an ocean view and a room for his young daughter. Ah, life could be good. Reality came back to him as Rosa served him his breakfast of eggs and tortillas. His small house had been built way back in the eighteen hundreds by his great-grandfather. The simple adobe structure had not changed much in the ensuing hundred years. Not even electricity had been brought in for this poor family. Instead of being a celebrated chef, Ernesto was simply a cook in this small town in the middle of nowhere in Mexico. Even by Mexican standards, this town would be found lacking.
The town looked like something from an old western movie as Ernesto walked the few blocks to the restaurant where he worked. Although horses had been replaced with motorcycles and jeeps, some things still looked the same as a century before. The town was a strange, twisted mix of old world and new. There was an old woman getting water from the well that still stood in the center of the main street. There was a young hooker walking down the sidewalk as she returned home from a long night of, well, you know. This town would have dried up a long time ago if not for its strategic location. This town was an important, if little known, crossroads for the trafficking of cocaine and marijuana. As it was located only a few hundred miles from the US border, the town made a convenient location to repackage the product into smaller, more easily concealable containers for smuggling into the United States. This cottage industry fueled every business in town, from the strip club on the outskirts of town, to the bar in downtown, and the three cantinas that fed the steady stream of gangsters that flowed through the town like muddy water through the Rio Grande. Ernesto did not like the gangsters, but he saw that if he didn't bother them, they wouldn't bother him, usually. After a few incidents that brought him several scars and a broken nose, he had convinced Rosa to stay home more, and to avoid the gangsters. He had not won that argument, as Rosa would often point out, she had simply decided to change her mind as to the subject.

Despite his dislike of the people who ran the town, Ernesto felt a small bit of pride in the fact that he worked as the lead cook in the largest and nicest cantina in town. Complete with fine lighting, excellent gas stoves, and freezers and refrigerators, this restaurant could hold its own with many of the nicer places in larger cities. The other two cantinas catered to the peons who moved and repackaged the drugs and did most of the work, HIS cantina catered to the Dons, the Bosses with a capital B. The rank and file of some of the largest cartels in Mexico dined here, eating Ernesto's cooking. While drug lords may be looked down on in some places; here, they were celebrities. The customers wore suits and ties in this restaurant. The servers wore all black, and the cooks had finely pressed and heavily starched smocks and aprons. And on Ernesto's head, sat the chef's hat.

Nobody ate breakfast here, but Ernesto and his crew were busy preparing the place by eight o'clock anyway. All the tables were dusted, all the candles were prepared for the service, and the finer dishes went in to cook. Some dishes took up to four hours to cook, and Ernesto prided himself on providing only the best dishes to his distinguished clientele. The hope lingered in his head that perhaps someday his skills would be noticed by some rich drug lord and he would be given his big break to cook on the big leagues.

Lunch rush came and went as it had hundreds of times before, Customers came hungry and surly, and left full and happy, often leaving behind nice tips. These tips were pooled and shared by the staff, and helped provide for many a fun Saturday night in the local bar. As the last tables were bussed from the lunch rush, Ernesto decided to cook something special for this night's dinner. Looking through the stocks in the freezer, he selected a nice, lean pork butt and prepared to get to work. Puerto Pibil, a slow roasted pork dish, nothing fancy, but it happened to be his specialty. From the careful chopping up of the pork, to the hand grinding of the achiote paste, Ernesto put the utmost care into each detail of the production. While he oversaw the other dishes as they were made, he never allowed anyone to so much as prepare the banana leaves for the roasting. The other dishes were good, he was confident of that, and the other cooks were competent, he had no doubt. But this, this was his Pibil, his masterpiece, each time he cooked it he felt as though he were Michelangelo carving the Pieta of the Madonna and Child itself.

As the other cooks left to take a brief siesta before the dinner rush, Ernesto added the splash of top shelf tequila to the mixture and spread the pork into the bed of banana leaves. After covering the dish in more leaves and topping it with aluminum foil, he put the pibil in the oven and walked away satisfied with himself. Now, if he was lucky, there would be enough left over to take home to his Rosa and little Elena. They loved the spicy dish, but due to the cost of some of the spices, Ernesto had been instructed not to make it often. The manager was always trying to cut cost and pad his own pocketbook, and thought that some of Ernesto's more exotic dishes could be omitted from the menu.

As the night wore on, Ernesto noticed more people than usual in attendance. While armed men were no strange sight to Ernesto, these men were strangers, and one of them looked like the devil himself. As the crowd grew and the orders flew in, Ernesto gladly took refuge in the kitchen and tried to drown his fears in his cooking. Something seemed different tonight; perhaps something big was going down. There had been gang fights before, and there would no doubt be more again. Busy in the kitchen, Ernesto felt safe from these issues. Any fighting would be in the dining room and there were several walls between him and them.

As time crept by, a server came to him and told him that an order had been placed for some pibil, by none other than the man called El Cucuy. Legends surrounded his name and people that knew of him feared him more that the monster of legend. It was said that El Cucuy had killed men who wore the wrong kind of boots; that he had broken the fingers of a mariachi violinist who didn't know the obscure song he requested; that he had crushed the windpipe of a singer who sang when he had a headache. It was said that El Cucuy was now a hit man for hire and was maintaining close contact with several local cartels. A shiver ran up Ernesto's spine as he prepared the plate and sent it out with a server. The man came back quickly, covered in a cold sweat.

"\Did he like it?" Ernesto asked desperately.

"He didn't even take a bite; he just told me to put send it to a table with some skinny Gringo and a mariachi sitting at it. I think it was El."

"What do you mean 'El"?"

"El. As in El Mariachi,"

"Nonsense, there's no way two legends would walk into my cantina in one night. You must be mistaken." Ernesto insisted, although it seemed to make some sort of sense to him. Perhaps El Mariachi and El Cucuy had business to attend to. Ernesto just hoped that whatever business didn't involved violence, but when either of those two were involved, it usually did. The mention of a skinny gringo in a suit didn't mesh with the rest, but perhaps he was some Gringo drug lord.

A rush of extra orders pushed all thoughts of Cartel maneuvers and plots out of his head. Musing on legends evaporated like the steam from the fajitas he prepared. Time passed for a space and all was well with Ernesto. He was in his element, cooking, barking orders, preparing plates; being the conductor of a symphony of sights, smells, and sounds. As this maestro worked, he noticed a clutter of pans behind him. He turned to scold whatever foolish cook that dared to disrupt his smooth running kitchen, his art. A trio of roses of blood blossomed on his chest and he felt a strong tap, as though he had been punched. The burning sensation and blinding flash of light faded away as quickly as the short reports of the silenced nine-millimeter pistol shots. As blackness took him for eternity, Ernesto glimpsed an image of a tall, skinny gringo in a horrible green floral western print shirt and dark glasses walking away. What had happened and why were questions Ernesto would never know the answer to, or even be able to ask. For him, his story was over; an inglorious ending slumped on the ground in front of a stove, screaming cooks around him. For others, the story was just beginning, but would their story end any better?

"El, you really must try this, because its puerco pibil. It is a slow roasted pork, nothing fancy, just happens to be my favorite, and I order it with a tequila and lime in every dive I go to in this country, and honestly, that is the best its ever been. Anywhere. In fact, it's too good. It is so good that when I am finished with it, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen, and shoot the cook, because that's what I do. I restore the balance to this country."

-Agent Sands.