Anyway, I continued along my patrolling of El general's bunker. It wasn't as if he needed the extra help. But I found it vastly satisying to begin my mornings this way. So I leisurely loped along the treeline surrounding the structure, and then rapidly leapt to a great height, all in the most Mexican and manly fashion one could hope to express...while using a thickly-braided vine to make his way about, that is.

I landed—kneeling and dramatically well-lit—on the turret level of El General's Bunker. Looking about quickly, I could pinpoint la guardia, the sharpshooters—a fine, elite group of young, well-toned and ultra patriotic men gripping their guns, aiming their sights, and warily resting a finger alongside their triggers. All manning their posts around me in a muscular effort of unidad and great, manly power. I felt a sudden swelling of (strictly-heterosexual) pride to be amongst such hardcore vatos. For a moment it was all I could do to contain an outburst of feeling. But then, I had to move on!

I gymnastically (and most heroically) edged myself out over the drop and along a very thin rail that would lead me past the gun stations to the front of the Bunker. I crept from darkness into light, for the sun had now risen fully above the horizon. In the day's first luminance, I moved carefully. I made only the tiniest incremental gains as I left the towering and silent machine gun turrets behind me.

Then, I was by the entrance. I peered down and through the foliage and was very curious all at once.

A rotundish man was leaving the compound, and everything about him played strangely to me. I had planned on dropping in on El General for coffee, but I knew right away that I might be called upon to heed my latent indio instincts—which were buzzing like ten, furry-legged, mescolating, habanero spiders—to follow this strange presence and see what fate awaited—or what gift lay shaded—in the crooked crook of a strange man's arm.

He was an elderly man, with strange eyes that sharpened his smile into a frown. He had a stiff neck, and walked as if his underwares were filled with a glomulous gathering of mucky-warm oatmeal. Still, all the while, he was holding a box tightly under his left arm. It made for quite a strange style of motion.

I did not like this man, and so I followed after him closely. For a moment, I was even pretending to be a statue, for the hombre turned back and shuffled oatily toward me when I wasn't expecting it! But then, he stopped and dug something out of his pantseat and turned around again. His facial expression of relief mirrored my own emotions as he backed away from my statuesque positioning. I knew then that I was bound by fate to this pinche oatmeal-squeezer, and I went about giving gracias a Dios with profuse and magnanimous gestures all about myself. But I did so cleverly, as I deftly trailed the waddling man's footsteps, and so these gesticulations were enacted in the purest of silhouettes and with the muted style that will henceforth characterize this brave adventure.

The man with the sharpened and sickly smile, the BOX under one arm, and the shuffling walk soon made my mustache droop. All the joy was draining out of my early-day surveillance, for this character seemed to emit a radiance of foul vapor, a mist of vapid danger, an aura of the Crook'd, Crack'd, Stranger. Of course, despite his quickening pace, I followed along with the most surreptitious of glidings and tiptoed shufflings, muffled jumpings and flex-tabulous shoulder-rolls.

At the front gate to the street, the pain-faced man stopped when he came to a gardener. He began to question the young man, whom I know as Ciudadano. I know it was Ciudadano because I stationed him there. He could handle himself. But as I drew closer I realized that I did know, indeed, who the oatmeal-maker was!

Ay Dios Mio! I whispered, in the most velvety and masculine tone I could summon. It is the American Punditician, Pat Buchanan! I watched the flushed face flare as Pat breathed all over the young Ciudadano.

What was this pinche cabrón doing at El General's? Perhaps some secret dealings, eh?

And what was in the box?

conclusion here and will follow, as well.

The Magical Mysterious Corn Cake (CONCLUSION)
BOOK 2: The Hidalgo Beach Feint. An agreement of sorts. Back at the bunker.

I WAS EXHAUSTED. It had been a good three hours before I tracked down Señor Buchanan in the manner of my choosings. True, there were many opportunities to slip in alongside his very footsteps...to try and arrange a casual meeting of the ways. But these things have to be done correctamente! I had a feeling about this cat.

When I did finally find the proper moment, he was sitting at a small, round table at a boardwalk cafe on Hidalgo beach, his box with the ropy twinings plopped next to him. He was gazing at the ocean.

I took the opportunity to sit down next to him, all in one graceful motion. The crying of the gulls above sounded to me like a hearty wave of approval.

"Oye, gringo," I said, quite daringly and rather confrontationally. I shrugged my well-shaped and browned deltoid toward the clamoring of the gulls. I wanted to throw him off balance so I could get my hands on that box. "That sounds like a hearty wave of approval to me. Sound that way to you?"

"What?" said the man, making a very weird face, as if he didn't understand me.

"I said, does that SOUND like a healthy WAVE of approval to yooooo, vato?" I purposely raised one eyebrow off my face so high that it lifted up, at last, and flew in a tiny circle with two of the gulls before eventually coming back.

"You said 'hearty' before," said the man with the sharpened-stake eyes.

"Qué?" I retorted, quick as lightning. He wasn't gonna outreason this Mexican!

"The first time you asked, you said 'That sounds like a hearty wave of approval' and the second time, you said 'healthy.'" said the man.

"So you DID hear me, then, eh?" I spat, grinning broadly. The man could not reply, only roll his beady eyes in his fleshy face. "No answer, now, ehhhh?" I lifted my head high and trilled with happiness, a hale grito to grease the shoulders up. Then I lowered my face half into shadow and spoke with a jade sparkle of self-restrained suavemente.

"What was I saying?" I asked, after a pause.

"Healthy approval."

"Yes, cabrón!" I whipped my head up and glared at him with a smile blazing forth like a row of mystical pearl-tipped arrows. "The GULLS! Do you get what I'm saying, man?"

He only stared at me. He was struck dumb with awe.

I had him right where I wanted him. I leaned in and pointed my (devastatingly handsome and meticulously-groomed) chin toward the Box.

"I like your Bahhhhx, Señor," I said. Before he could say anything, I slid a knife from one of my 29 sheaths and eased it under the twine, popping each piece free, one string at a time. With every twunnnng sound, Sr. Buchanan's face twitched, his mouth bunching up in jagged, unexpected shapes.

"What are you doing, MEXICAN?" he finally shrieked as I totally undressed his paltry package with my blade.

"I am exploring this item that you are trying to hoard, DOOD!" I bellowed, switching superquick to a Warring (Urban) Indian approach. "I am uncovering what is hidden. Watchoo think, holmes?"

The man scrabbled at the package desperately, as if he had some right to it that I did not.

"Be still, foo'." I said quite calmly. I held the teardrop-toothed pun-dejo at arm's reach and drew in a deep, deep, deep sigh, as if pulling air into my lungs from across a desert, from between a thousand lonely nopales waving in slow motion, from the cool ruins of distant temples and from under the infinitely-arranged scales of Quetzlcoatl, Himself.

I sat down, then. As I did, Pat sat with me, on the opposite side of the table. I opened the box. The beach, itself, grew brighter as I lifted the lid.

And there it was. It all came back to me. All her words, Doña Luisa's warnings. How I said I would feel differently. But how could I?

Inside the box was the Magical, Mysterious, Golden Corn Cake. It was a sun-colored, orange-cinnamon-sugar scented cornbread cake like I had never seen. From its center, glowed a strong light. Despite my well-trained reflexes, I drew in a breath. It was more than I can describe, this cake. It spoke to me. I knew at that moment that even if I died, I must obtain this piece of bakery divinity. No matter who or what stood in my way. It was a type of madness, but one I felt must be sanctioned by every saint in the vicinity.

Taking advantage of my awe, the Buchanan man grabbed the box from my hands. He tried to stand up again, but then suddenly stopped, as if he were riveted to his spot, He grimaced, ending up halfway to a standing position. Crouching.

It looked silly. I yawned.

"How much do you want for this CAKE, vato?" I asked, swinging my head around. "It must be mine."

"The Golden Corn Cake is not for sale. At any price," said this man. He reluctantly sat down again. "There are no more ingredients, you see."

"But you don't understand, man," I said, all the heartbreak in the world lapping up against the edges of my plea. I leaned into his space. "My destiny lies in owning that cake. Nothing must stop me. Even now I feel its brilliant hue commanding me. Don't you feel it?"

"Back off, Jose," squawked the man, suddenly, eyeing my expression. He stood up then, taking everything in. "My lord. Who in the hell told you to wear those things"?

"My name is not José, Señor Buchanan. It is Nezua LIMÓN! I am not to blame if my agendas disturb you! But let it be known. Fate is a river. My destiny is like, it is like a TORRENT that must pour onward, ever onward, to the cake! You cannot brook this."

The man was beginning to look a bit alarmed as I said all this with the most serious of conviction. He probably would have bolted and ran were it not for the fact that I was stepping on his toes quite firmly, and had been for about ten minutes.

"I am now going to take a good look at your cake," I said in a most hypnotic tone. I began to move my hands toward the box.

The man reached down slowly and picked up a fork.

"Put your hands back by your sides or I will stab you," he said.

"Let's keep this civil, Señor," I whispered. Our bodies remained very still. The only thing moving was my hands, which made the smoothest progress forward, gliding like two water moccasins at midnight. The smile on my face grew slightly as my fingers brushed the underside of the lid and trembled, only a hair's breadth from the frosting, itself. Our eyes locked.

Then Pat brought his arm down hard (the one with the fork) and stabbed my left hand into the wood of the table. This was immediately extremely uncomfortable, and I was forced to shift my weight somewhat to adjust to the experience. When I leaped up in that way, Buchanan stood quickly, escaping my toe-trap. Yet, the cake remained there, and under both the cake and my hand was the cardboard, pinned fast by the fork piercing my palm.

I masked my scream with a wild flaring of the eyes and an extremely deeply-felt grito-type exultation which I then let gently trickle down into a Wise Chuckle. I shook my head sagely, and looked down at my hand which was already swelling around the tines.

Pat was just standing there with both eyes on his pinche cakebox.

"Ah, damn. Now, Pat. I really wish you hadn't a done that." I began to chuckle ominously when Pat lunged forward and yanked at the cardboard, which brought on another unexpected screaming fit.

When I was done screaming, I wiped the drool from my lips and spat. "Look at what you've gone and done. You have provoked me," I snarled.

Almost as if this were a made-up story instead of a real life situation I am recounting, a flamenco guitar strummed a lemony lick of F7 on some dead man's classical guitar, and a rhythm began playing (from somewhere among the gulls, I think) that told me it was time to dance. Neither Pat nor I were distracted by the music. It was, of course, perfectly natural.

I gave another mustache-rippling grito and pulled the fork out of my hand with a flashing grin. The surge of pain would have felled ten normal men, but I only laughed loudly and bent down with my head to grab my cottony shirt between my teeth and yank my head back so as to tear a long rip in it. (The wind rising up off of the ocean was playing right into my hands!) I quickly wrapped up my wounded mano with a few swaths of this fabric and so, did appear for all intents and purposes, like a swashbuckler of sorts. What with my green tights and ragged, fluttering shirt and all.

I was in a low fighting stance, and I left Earth on the offbeat, moving forward as if in a blur. I rolled and extended briefly in mid-air, bringing a low-sweeping arc of my still-rippling shirt sleeve up to blind the awkward man at the very same time that I feinted a grab at the BOX.

The percussion to the flamenco tune kicked in just then and caused my foe to panic. In the moment he dodged my feint and struck out at the flapping ribbons of my shirt, I touched ground with two knuckles, and swung my legs around in a most graceful and heterosexual method, kicking out the stumpy limbs of my opponent with ease. His wild flailing only brought him down with less grace than necessary, and he tumbled, quite dramatically, down a boulder-lined hill that I hadn't noticed we were on until this sentence made it clear.

But it didn't matter to me. Beach, rock-lined hill, it was all the same when the brass entered the game. And I stood tall as the trumpets blazed. Because, you see, my hard work was about to pay off. The gulls were swaying, Buchanan was squirming on the beach like a mescal-sopped lobster, and it was THUS that the Golden Corn Cake was delivered into my possession as if divinely ordained. I crossed myself and reached into my pocket, fishing my fingers through a deep well of change. I walked over to the still-squirming Pat who had fallen onto the beach from his rocky height. I dropped two coins on the sand by his face, where they landed with a wet smack.

"I've torn your pants. Buy some new ones. That seems fair, Pat. Don't you agree?"

I turned to the golden rays of the sunset, a warm—

"Wait," the saggy man gasped as I shoved my thumb deep into the dessert. I stopped, my back still to him. I wasn't even going to slow down. Let him plead and negotiate. The Magical Corn Cake was mine. Fair and square. We made a deal, fair and square.

"What do you want, Señor?" I growled this out, as I licked the icing from my calloused finger.

"Can I just come back and look at it? Can I have at least one tiny piece?" He asked, hope in his voice. "My great-great grandfather passed the recipe down, and it can never be made again."

His little family tale of woe sounded so pathetic, my heart was moved. After all, it had been his just a short time ago. And only I knew what this cake could actually do. What it was worth in the street, where they knew its secret power..

"Okay, sure" I said. "I'll be fair to you."

I paused to think, striking a wise profile in the hot light mirroring off of the ocean. "You can have a share of whatever I sell this for, Okay? And if I don't sell it, but eat it instead, I will save you a piece. That will be my promise to you. Just sign this paper, and know that it will be honored. It shall henceforth be known as the Treaty of the Hidden Golden Corn Cake."

With that, I reached somewhere in my ever-so-mysterious tights, and produced a roll of parchment that looked quite regal and offical—almost as if I had been expecting to need it. The stamp of NLXJ was prominent, and adorned quite fashionably with many esoteric rollings and curlings of lines and various iterations of small designs and ornamental type squiggles. Pat reached his trembling digits forward, and with the utmost of concentration, signed his name and underlined it very deliberately. Immediately, his withered paw fell to the floor.

I looked the document up and down, very stern-faced and bobbing my chin for effect.

"Bien, bien," I said, and then cleared my throat. "But you forgot the date. February 2, amigo. El segundo de Febrero," I said, patiently holding the parchment still as he dated the document. As he lay down his head again, I launched myself—in an undeniably virile manner—onto the horse that was suddenly waiting at my side.

AND SO I RODE OFF. Though I made some changes to the Treaty (I felt Pat was getting just a little too much consideration), I felt it was fair. Anyway, those who think I was being unkind with the whole cake thing just don't understand destiny. Destiny is something you cannot argue. And As Doña Luisa told me recently, in the form of a giant agave plant, it was my destiny to bring back the Golden Corn Cake. The deal was done. Let the pundits deal with the aftereffects of Great Men reaching for a little Corn Cake.

The sun was rising high, it was nearly lunchtime, and defintely time to be forward-looking. I leaned into my steed in order to better help us pace the final miles, and also to minimize any wind resistance upon my tights and before you know it, we had come to the secret bunker of El General de Jesus. I dismounted in one, fluid and masculine movement, the epitome of Mexican American heterosexually-charged horsemanship.

As I sidled past the heat-sensing doors, I was not surprised to see El General, himself, gazing out a window with a cigar as a black-haired Luisa worked furiously at carving a piece of African Butternut in the center of the warmly-lit room. It was one of those parties. I strode in with a smile, and placed a box upon the table. The lid seemed to hover, not wanting to stay shut. They both turned and looked at me. Doña Luisa smiled wisely.

El General seemed to realize all at once what the box meant, and he grinned with a well-chiseled and steely humor as he rose to the table. He had a spatula in his hand, which surpised me. We were all silent for a moment. as I reached for the broken twine.

"Did you get the 5 gallon jug, or the 10?" he said, excitedly.

"¿Qué?" Luisa and I, said at once, puzzled looks on our faces.

"That's the Tapioca pudding, right?" The General looked confused. "It is Friday, right?"