I didn’t want to have to get violent. Despite what people say about me, I’m actually a very peaceful person. Willing to work things out and negotiate. Unfortunately, in my line of work, most of the people you encounter just can’t be negotiated with. Sooner or later, violence becomes necessary. That’s what happened with those bodies out in the Mojave. They couldn’t be negotiated with. Which was quite ridiculous considering how they were the ones who had fucked with me and I was willing to be nice about it. Really now, how stupid were they to try to come into my town, steal my drugs, try to sell them and think I was just gonna roll over and let them butt-fuck me like that? The audacity of this generation. 

Apparently, it’s all on me to teach them some fucking manners. I’d like to say “I’m happy to do it,” but I’m not. It really bores into my own personal time since you can’t fucking trust anyone to get a job done for you. No, as usual, I have to do everything myself. Including take a hit out on these six gangbangers who honestly thought I could be trifled with just because I’m a white man. Ha! Didn’t they know? That’s precisely why I couldn’t be trifled with. I might not always “do my own dirty work”—that’s what beaners are for—but I know when the moment is right for me to take action all on my own. Sure, I got some other beaners involved and now they’ve been implicated in the very crime I did/ordered, but, as it is said, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. (Or would it be “you can’t make huevos rancheros” in this case?) Sometimes, them’s just the breaks when you sign on for this life. Granted, we’re all doomed to die, but death can come so much more unexpectedly in this line of work. 

I set up my operation decades ago in El Mirage. Another bastardized pronunciation of a Spanish word, ‘cause we should be calling El Miraje. Obviously, we don’t. White folk can’t much be bothered with speaking any language but their own. But then, I could say the same of most of the beaners under my employ. When I try talking to them, half the time they’re pretending they don’t understand me, and the other half, they really don’t. If they didn’t work for so damn cheap, I’d have sent them all packing long ago. But then, you know what they say: you get what you pay for. So yeah, I wasn’t getting real much. If I had, I wouldn’t have needed to step in at all. Thrown myself into the fray of this whole mess. A boss is supposed to run things. But the way they made me look, I couldn’t run my way out of a paper bag. They were lucky, quite frankly, that I only shot them—showed them the decency of not burning them alive the way I did the others who didn’t work for me. 

Anyway, back to El Mirage. It’s a real weird place. Spooky when you think about it too much. But there isn’t too much thinking around here, so people seem to be fine—not getting creeped out-wise. I suppose all desert towns are eerie, especially to those who aren’t used to them. Hell, you get a New Yorker out here and they’re scared shitless. Despite all that posturing about how “hard” they are. They couldn’t make it in El Mirage. ‘Cause if you can make it in New York…you can pretty much only make it in New York. I stopped “interloping” with their kind a long time ago. Made it so my business is only highly concentrated on the West Coast. A lot of people in the dealing and distributing game were worried when the government legalized marijuana here. They ought to have read the fine print though. No government would ever make every aspect of marijuana legal.

There’s still plenty of room for my illegal kind in this world. Because, to me, it’s all about the cultivation of cannabis outside of the law. And now, they got you by the balls (or so they think) if you do any commercial-level growing without a license and local authorization—even if it’s your own private property. Ain’t no such thing in the ol’ US of A anymore though. What’s “yours” is actually theirs. Here I thought the country was founded on the values that centered around private property and being able to do whatever you goddamn well please on it. But oh no. The only reason the government wanted to get involved with marijuana in the first place was so they could get another piece of a pie they didn’t do shit to earn. Get their grubby little mitts on some more tax dollars. Well, shit, you won’t catch me payin’ the government a fuckin’ dime of what I earn. I work harder than they ever could for my money. 

And definitely harder than any of the lazy Mexicans trying to encroach on my territory. They had to be stopped. So I stopped them. As it happens, and as you may know, the Mojave Desert is really the perfect place for killing and burying people. There are so many remote areas, so many places no one would ever stumble upon unless they themselves were probably about to die. And I know this desert like the back of my own dick. Been livin’ here long enough to “know where all the bodies are buried,” to use a relevant expression. And I really do. No matter how many pile up. This time wasn’t supposed to be any different. It’s just that I got myself the worst possible “ragtag” gang involved to “help” me with it that they ended up botching the whole enterprise. So that’s when I decided to botch them, if you will. 

After I fled the scene, I cooled off in the Mountain Top Cafe, about thirtyish minutes from where I had come from in El Mirage. Skipping over to another town was the perfect cover-up for me. And it wasn’t a luxury my beaner boys were going to have, ‘cause there was no way in hell I was taking them along with me…dead or alive. They had already proven themselves to be useless, so why would I reward them with anything other than the culpability they deserved? Instead, I rewarded myself with what I deserved, which, in that moment, was the Lumberjack Breakfast. Three eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast. With a cup of coffee on the side.

And then, just as I was savoring my last bite, I saw it all up there on the big screen. The news reporting on multiple homicides in the Mojave. The quick tipoff was thanks to one of the El Fuckos that tried to steal from me. They had managed to call 911 long enough for the coppers to get a trace on the location. The reporter also said that no suspects had been tracked down, but that the police were now working around the clock to find them. Ha! Good luck. Because they never would. I killed their suspects too (which I guess rendered them victims, same as the rival gangbangers). And I knew that I myself would never be one.

With a satisfied belly, I left the Mountain Top and got back into my car, confident that my domain was my own again. The cops could chase their tails all they wanted, but it wasn’t gonna stop me from takin’ care of fuckin’ business.