Free The Uncomfortable Dead by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Subcomandante Marcos

“Okay, Tachito, now we’re going to test the other beam. What method should we use? Scientific method or customs and mores?”
    When I passed the guard post, I could still hear Comandante Tacho laughing his ass off. I put the letters in a plastic bag so they’d stay dry.
    Elías’s Trip According to the Broken Calendar Club
    We left very early Sunday morning. The five of us climbed aboard a three-tonner: May, June, July, August, and Elías. We got there in time to catch the bus for Mexico City. June sat next to Elías and gave him the window in case he got bus-sick. I had May next to me and August sat behind us. When we got to La Ventosa, the bus stopped at the immigration checkpoint. An officer got aboard and walked by May and me with hardly a glance. August made believe he was asleep and snored. Then, on the way back, the officer stopped next to June and Elías, who was leafing through a French edition of Le Monde Diplomatique.
    “Identification, please,” he said.
    June reached for her passport.
    “Not you, madam, the gentleman,” he said, pointing to Elías.
    Elías never raised his eyes or broke concentration on his reading. “American citizen.”
    Although Elías had a wetback accent, the immigration officer hesitated. After a few seconds, which I suppose is long enough to keep the suspense high in a mystery novel, he did an about-face and walked off the bus. The driver got the bus on the way again and June, without a word, took the newspaper Elías was reading and turned it right-side up.
    “Right! Musta been why I couldn’t find the sports page,” Elías said, and promptly fell asleep.
    That night and during the whole trip, the Broken Calendar Club monopolized the bathroom in the back of the bus. Without ever consulting each other, we all blamed it on the pozol we’d had the evening before.
    As we left the bus terminal, we said goodbye to Elías and took off in different directions.
    When I returned later to La Realidad, I passed the message Elías had given me to the person in charge of the caracol: The one with the big eye is already with the doctor.
    I asked El Sup the other day, when I ran into him by the stream, if he was going to use us as Elías’s team in the book. He said he wasn’t, that we were only going to be in one chapter. I asked why, and he answered, “Cause dead people don’t have teams.”
    So this is as far as we go. If we want to know what happens from now on, we have to wait to read the following chapters in the book. Sonovabitch! I don’t know about you, but me, I’ve had it with these mystery novels where all the characters are so intelligent and cultured and the only ignorant asshole is the reader. Well, I don’t know about being assholes, but we sure are ignorant, cause we’re always missing what’s missing.
    Elías’s Trip According to Elías
    So I did it: I went into the Monster. I woke up just as we were going down this very steep hill. The campamenteros were fast asleep. And then I saw the city. It was sitting there, it was still far away.
    And it’s true what Belascoarán says about there’s lots of antennas, like skinny little hairs growing on the heads of the houses. When we was close I saw that besides antennas there was people, lots of people, and I didn’t count em but I think there was more people than antennas, although there was about as many cars as antennas. How to find my way?
    Back home I could tell where a town was by looking at the trees. So I figgered the city people must find out where houses are by checking the antennas. Later I found out they don’t. What they have is streets with names and numbers. Then there’s also very tall houses, so tall you’d think they wanted to get up over the antennas, and they put numbers on those houses too.
    When I got to the station, there was Andrés and Marta. They were the city comrades that was sposed to wait for me, but they were alive, you see, not deceased like me. I saw them from far away and I said