The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mex, by William Logan

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Title: Mex

Author: William Logan

Release Date: April 6, 2009 [EBook #28518]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_Talented William Logan, though he hails from Dodger territory,
tells a quiet story from down near the Mexican border, where men are
very close to ancestral memories and to the things which dwell in
the shadows. Logan is one of the more interesting of the newer
writers._

mex

_by ... WILLIAM LOGAN_

Perhaps it was just as well that I
did not tell them what I was....

What they called me, that was what started it. I'm as good an American
as the next fellow, and maybe a little bit better than men like that,
big men drinking in a bar who can't find anything better to do than to
spit on a man and call him Mex. As if a Mexican is something to hide or
to be ashamed of. We have our own heroes and our own strength and we
don't have to bend down to men like that, or any other men. But when
they called me that I saw red and called them names back.

"Mex kid," one of the men said, a big red-haired bully with his sleeves
rolled back and muscles like ropes on the big hairy arms. "Snot-nosed
little Mex brat."

I called him a name. He only laughed back at me and turned his back,
waving a hand for the bartender. Maybe in a big city in the North it
would be different and probably it would not: this toleration we hear
about is no more good than an open fight, and there must be
understanding instead. But here near the border, just on the American
side of the border, a Mexican is called fair game, and a
seventeen-year-old like me is less than nothing to them, to the white
ones who go to the big bars.

I thought carefully about what to do, and finally when I had made my
mind up I went for him and tried to hit him. But other men held me back,
and I was kicking and shouting with my legs off the ground. When I
stopped they put me down, so I started for the big red-haired man again
and t