The water is heating in a small aluminum kettle atop the compact four burner gas stove. I’ve never seen it used for anything other then heating the kettle. A rubber hose runs from the back of the stove to a propane tank standing on the ground beside it. My neighbor and I are sitting on the other side of the room – some ten feet away. Me in a low chair made of metal tubing and rope, him in some sort of excuse for an adirondack chair. It’s painted lime green and leans slightly to the side. I reach back and swing the door shut to keep the breeze out. The only light now enters the room from the small window above the table that sits between me and it. A plastic tablecloth with a mostly yellow floral print covers the rectangular table with five chairs tucked in around it. The sixth sits back at my house, in front of my desk. The light outside the window is so much brighter then the dim light we’re sitting in that it gives the sense of looking out into some sort of over-exposed photo. My neighbor’s wife stands at the window, with her forearms resting on the sill looking out towards the road. She’s wearing a knit hat that’s too big for her head. Next to her, in the corner, is the cupboard. The top half has screen on the doors in the openings were glass must once have been. Rips in the screen are stitched back together as neatly as it’s possible to suture screening with twine. Two drawers filled with hay and rags sit on top of it all – nests for a chicken or two. The whole structure is crooked, leaning both back and to the side, away into the corner. In front of the bottom left door sit the propane tank blocking the swing. Next to it the stove. Our water begins make that sound pots on stove seem to make just before the water starts boiling. She leaves the window and pours some of the water in a cow horn guampa she holds in her left hand and then lifts the horn and metal straw to her mouth hunching down to met it on the way and gently sipping the hot liquid, pulling quick sips through the bombilla like one puffing on a tiny silver cigar getting it to light. She walks the kettle and guampa over to me, handing me the horn while reaching to place the kettle on the ground between me and her husband. I met her hand and take the kettle before she reaches the ground with it. I pour hot water tinted orange from the bark and leaves inside the kettle into the horn and watch the ground up yerba leaves quickly absorb most of it. I pour again until the water just covers the leaves and take a sip. It’s  far too hot to down in a single pull and I go through the same gesture as the women did only a minute before. A dog enters the house through the back door in the adjacent bedroom and comes into the kitchen waging its stubby tail. It’s no doubt a mutt, but by far the best looking small dog I’ve seen in the country and the most personality on four legs around for miles. She’s hungry but doesn’t whine, just somehow lets it be know in the way she prances back and forth. The women walks over to the fridge. It stands next to the stove with a case of vegetable oil in a cardboard box on the floor between them. She opens the fridge and reaches in for a small metal pitcher, more of oversized tin mug then anything. It’s on the shelf next to a burnt aluminum pot full of milk. A few eggs sit in the egg try on the door. Some vitamins and vaccines below them. Some blocks of homemade cheese are stacked on a plate in the corner, their rinds gnarled and yellowing. A black bucket of yet to be boiled milk sits on the floor of the fridge. I can’t see it from where I’m sitting, low to the ground ten feet or so in front of mustard colored appliance but the tray beneath the small freezer inside the top of the fridge is filled with chunks of meat suspended in some sort of hardness between frozen and thawed. Behind the plastic freezer door are tubes of ice in plastic baggies. She takes the mug out  and bends toward the floor in front of the fridge with it, pouring milk into a hole worn into the weak cement dirt floor. A built in dog bowl. The dog quickly laps it up. As she closes the door the small breeze the swinging of it makes wafts the scent of opened container unpasteurized milk, cheese and half frozen meat across the room and in my direction. I’m prepared for it and this time the coldness of the air between us softens the blow. Not that bad at all. I fill the guampa again and hand it to my neighbor to the right. He’s fixing his scarf and once it’s removed he takes the cup with one hand as he whips the scarf in the air with the other one like someone joking around being over pompous with a cloth restaurant napkin before placing it in their lap. This is when I notice it’s logo with a black and gold D&G – a knock-off Dolce & Gabbana. This wouldn’t be nearly as funny if the seventy-six year old man wearing it wasn’t cast-able as some sort of sea-faring hobbit sage turned oversized jungle leprechaun warrior chief who doubles as a 17th century blacksmith in his off time. He fixes the scarf hands back the guampa and stands to turn on the radio. A powder blue satin piece of fabric covers the two side by side radios on a small table until he removes it flinging his forearm towards me the blue cloth following behind as he shouts something in guarani and begins laughing and hoping around the room dancing behind the cloth like a geriatric matador no doubt whispering lewd comments to his wife on the other side of the room trying to prod her into dancing with him. She laughs and heads back to the window, he gives up and sits back down, I chuckle between sips of hot rooty-flavored tea.  He adjusts the volume on the radio on the left, the new one, one of those compact ones with the fake wood finish made to look like something from the days when radios first came out, until you see the thumb drive sticking out of the top it, glowing red like some stubby antenna pulling in music from another era. He holds up a second thumb drive as the scratchy guarani polka music plays from the first and says nonchalantly how they each hold a thousand songs. We talk about how the radio on the right only works as a radio now ever since the cd player broke, but he tells me cd’s aren’t worth using anymore anyway. Same as a cassettes. I tell him my grandparents used to have a record player and he gets excited and laughs talking of the “big black discs”. We sip mate, passing the guampa back and forth until just before the water runs out. The second dogs barks from outside and the women leans out the window looking down the side of the house. I crack the door and see a man walking towards the porch. The town drunk. Every street’s got one. We’ve got two. The door scrapes on the floor as I open it all the way and we head onto the porch to greet him extending hands for shakes and settling into chairs out there. The today-sober man and my neighbor begin talking and I decide to make my exit adding a goodbye to my hello and head off under the hibiscus through his outdoor workshop sidestepping broken wagon wheels and cow droppings as the rainy mist starts to blow again. It’s not even five and already the sun that never came out is setting.

Until next time.

kb