Peace Brought to a Screeching Halt
Where are you Max? Where did you go?
non-fiction
Standing in my yard this morning. It’s a beautiful day, incredibly so.
The climate is a reminder yet again why people choose to live in this valley. Something about the five-thousand-foot elevation, this Central American town sits near volcanos which almost surrounds the small city. It’s little wonder that so many foreign travelers choose to make this region their home. Many retired people mostly from the US call here home.
Coffee in hand, my second. If I go for my third, I run the risk of overdosing the stuff. Standing silently and alone watching the insects, hummingbirds and larger birds begin their days of survival. Survival of the fittest. There to my left are my wife’s poinsettias still blooming bright red. Usually this far after Christmas the red blooming leaves are long gone.
These stand directly over our beloved Beagle Max’s grave site.
All around the yard is covered in a colorful variety of flowers and lush plant growth. Avocado tree and a full kumquat tree hanging low due to the weight of their fruit. Our tall bamboo from Honduras reached past two stories high had its beginning five years ago as a one-foot-tall sprig. Italian pines, two of them, their pointy tops struggling to keep pace with the bamboo give the setting a touch of the exotic.
Elephant ears of various varieties, even one, richly black and purple cover one corner. In another a group of richly green ferns, thick and high takes my mind to a totally separate though much appreciated sense. On and on, this small space is improbably covered in growth, every single plant lovingly placed by me, or my wife.
Several years ago, my wife and I got Hibiscus fever. We love the bright red flower of this beloved plant. Now the yard has a number of Hibiscus plants of varying-colored blossoms. The local growers have started breeding brightly painted hybrids of a number of colors in impossible sizes.
Some of the tree growth threatens to grow beyond what might be called acceptable growth sizes. One example is the roble. A standard type of tree is how I describe it and its going to be huge. It began as a half foot tall gift from a friend of my wife. Too huge for this rather small yard space. Could even become a problem for our nice neighbors someday not in the too far distant future.
The stillness and peace of our, lush, green patch accents an otherwise rough moment in our lives.
Max our beloved Beagle rests under the shadows of the avocado and the crepe myrtle, directly under a group of brilliantly red poinsettias. All that comes to mind this morning is ‘where did you go to Max?’ It’s a valid question.
For some reason clearer than I wish it to be, the cosmic question seems to persist more than the passing usual. There is beyond a doubt a parallel between a dying business and a dying being.
Where once there had been an active, furry dog, happy and full of life, even smiling often, tail always wagging now the tri-colored beagle lay forever asleep under poinsettias brushed by the slight breeze that often accompanied the early morning in these Central American highlands.
‘Where did you go Max? Where are you?’ The question for certain reasons persists this morning.
Then, as I sit at my desk a deep and distant rumbling is heard, almost felt. I wait a moment to see if it will become a shake. Even after ten years living here, I’ve still not grown accustomed to the shaking earth here. Not eight miles away one of the planets most active volcano puffs away and will often roar, just to let you know who rules.
Just as Max was here and no longer is, somehow inextricably tied to the shaking earth, the mystery and unpredictability of life for several very powerful reasons rears its ponderous head this morning. No amount of coffee will make this go away.
Financial ruin stands in the dark hall just around the useable corner. It strikes me that there are connections in all these things. Financial ruin is a distant cousin to death. In fact, the two are bound together by the depth of emotion they engender and by the clear sense of impotence and irreversible loss.
Standing there in an almost hidden corner near Max’s grave the question is asked again: ‘Max where’d you go? Is where you went scary? How did it all go?’
I face an abyss now in that my remaining business has breathed its last. My business is in Central America and at one time was a thriving pastry business. Our stores outsold all the competition in cakes. Cakes of all shapes and sizes, flavors, icings, hot and cold, weddings and birthdays and Mother’s Day.
Christmas and New Year's were when we paid all our debts because of the overwhelming flow of sales.
The local gangs took aim at our business and determined they wanted a monthly stipend. In this country, immersed in crime, it’s called a war tax. The business is forced to negotiate with the gang. We paid war taxes for over two years but then the gang decided to up the monthly payment. We finally reached that point where profit disappeared completely.
We were making and selling cakes for the gang. The gang threatened terrible things to my manager and his staff. Their tactic is to at first be friendly and business like, asking for a specific quantity. If a business balks and says it can’t meet such a price the gang may determine to accept a lower increase.
The gang then begins to issue ever increasing and ominous threats to the management.
These threats are taken seriously as the city is covered with tragic stories where a business failed to satisfy the gangs’ requirement. The gangs think nothing of using violence. Shootings, knifings, beatings are common when the negotiations reach such a low point. With enough blood letting of the business, it finally gets to a point where it all just bottoms out and a decision has to be made. Close the business down?
The state of things in our pastry last week reached such a low point that the gang arrived at our tall entry gate demanding entry. Some tried to climb over but the loan guard held them off at gun point from the inside. A gang scare tactic. They may have wanted to push the manager around or steal whatever they could get their hands on.
The police finally showed up and the gang scattered like fleas. The gang was gone before the cops arrived. The police have the clearance to shoot to kill if they encounter an armed group. The gangs will scatter rather than face a battle they cannot win.
If a business does decide to shut down operations, there are all sorts of requirements of the law to legally close. Not least of them paying employees off for their time worked at the business. For most small businesses such as ours, there is no extra monies laying around for these payments. Add to these are paying off suppliers, taxes, rents for store locales, bank loans, on and on.
In my case it means losing what little we have in our pocket. My wife and I already looking in the mindscape distance, to new dwellings, to find new livelihood at this point seems impossible. We are both well past prime work age; I’m mostly retired and there is no incoming cash anymore.
We will of course both go look for jobs just to keep food on the table. There is no other alternative.
With what the lawyer tells us closing will cost us depends on which of a potential three options we choose, regardless we still lose everything and then some. Each option offers different ways to handle the dead business, none however offers an easy way out. All cost approximately the same, any differences is slight and makes no positive impact.
Oh, sure this experience brings into question the old yet still valid question: why even bother? Why even go into business? Sure, it’s great if the business enjoys screaming success and the owners are able to sock away a bundle. Most small businesses can’t rely on a cushion of dollars should the bottom fall out.
We certainly can’t.
It is said over and over again by the wise and the not so wise that nothing lasts, all things pass.
You just have to look around to see this is true. Nothing can be depended upon to last forever. In my yard, still caught in the crux of a tree branch an old bird nest. I think of the young life once there, years later now and no doubt the parents have died, the baby chicks long gone and with nests of their own.
It is best to prepare for when time changes your reality. Sooner or later life will toss one into the whirling storm of confusion and loss forcing one to take new direction, make new, tough decisions.
