Country and Western singer/songwriter Skeets Hollaran and best friend, piano player, Jesse Suarez, are both underachieving Austin, Texas, musicians. Skeets finds himself homeless when his soul mate, Gena Koster, kicks him out for philandering. Jesse is threatened with criminal action for the hot checks passed to his landlord.

Faced with little positive in their lives, they escape, riding their Harleys, into the Mexican desert on a voyage of redemption. Before crossing into Mexico, they are kidnapped, stripped naked, and left to die by Redondo, a notorious “coyote” transporter of illegal aliens, who steals their Harleys. Alfonso and Beto, two illegal aliens, rescue them. El Lobo, a DEA agent driving an eighteen-wheeler, picks up the two hitchhikers, smuggles them into Mexico, and takes them to Redondo’s Cantina. They recover their bikes and after a comical pig rodeo, they replace their Harley hogs in Redondo’s truck with two wild hogs. When Redondo opens his truck to show off his Harleys, the wild hogs administer a coupe de grâce.

In Guanajuato they fulfill their promise to Alfonso and Beto by telling their wives that their husbands are safe. Skeets and Jesse are moved to help the family and sing at a cantina to raise money. They fall in with a crowd of Texas University students studying Spanish at Guanajuato’s university. With the help of the university drama students, they enact a hysterical play that convicts a postal employee who is stealing money sent home by Alfonso and Beto and other immigrant workers. Indiscretions with drug dealer Carlos Algo’s twin girlfriends sends them fleeing Guanajuato in a hail of bullets.

Low on fuel, they turn off the main road toward the small town of Tolencita . A serious accident lands them, gravely injured, in the farmhouse of the Ramos family. The daughter, Angelita, owns Casa de Masa, a restaurant and cantina in Tolencita. Jesse falls in love with Angelita during their recuperation.

El Jefe, Tolencita’s tyrannical police chief, who distributes drugs on the side, jails the two for illegal entry and confiscates their bikes. They are beaten until they almost give up hope, but with Angelita’s help, they get word to Gena Koster of their plight. Gena travels to Tolencita and using her feminine wiles and help from Angelita, El Lobo, his 18-wheeler, a group of stranded mariachis, and Josefina, the burro, she executes a cockeyed escape plan for Skeets and Jesse. El Jefe is discredited in front of the Tolencitans who revolt and send him to his great reward..

The four return to Austin and open the critically acclaimed Casa de Masa Bar and Restaurant where Skeets and Jesse gain notoriety performing their original “Tex-Mex Sound,” proving people can be transformed by perseverance and good intentions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Stephens started My Place Restaurant in1972. His food service empire grew to include Casa Alegre Mexican Food; Barrons, a white tablecloth restaurant; three airline in-flight kitchens; three employee feeding facilities; and the catering contract for a dinner train. His company was the third largest off-premise caterer in South Texas. His notable catering clients included Texas governors, presidential candidates, the family of the King of Saudi Arabia, The Prince of Wales, Pope John Paul II, Tom Jones, Neal Diamond, Willie Nelson, and many others

During his three decades of active food service he wrote over 1,000 weekly food and wine columns for Harte-Hanks, Murdoch, and Hearst newspapers. His features appeared in Wine News, Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, Food & Wine, Chef, and Field & Stream. The short story, The Decanter, A Christmas Story, is the only piece of fiction ever published in The Wine News. Texas A&M University recently published his short story, “Toby Tire and His Erratic Curve Ball” in their English Department’s “Big Tex(t)” Ezine.

He is a graduate of The University of Texas and studied creative writing a Trinity University, San Antonio. As an avid outdoorsman he has hunted and fished from Alaska to Mexicoand has ridden his motorcycle more than 12,000 miles in Mexico. He lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife and her four cats.

Skeets finished strapping his guitar to his bike, swung his leg over, and settled into the seat. Jesse still stood beside his Harley kicking at the ground with his boot. “Man, we can’t just ride off into the sunset without leaving that bastard Redondo something to remember us by.”

“Since we’re all out of explosives, what do you suggest?” Skeets crossed his arms expecting the worst.

“I look at it this way. We took two Harley Hogs out of the truck, so we should put two hogs back into his truck. It’s only fair, right?” Jesse looked for agreement from Skeets.

“I don’t know how ‘fair’ it is, but it could be mighty stupid if the bad guys show up during our hog roundup.” Skeets looked disgusted. “I think we should ride like the wind and put distance between us and another brush with death.”

“Aww, come on, man. How hard can it be? We just run those hogs up that loading ramp and pull the door down, and that’s it. Think about the look on Redondo’s face when he rolls that door up, and those hogs are staring him in the eyes. I would almost hide in the bushes and watch, just to see the look on his face.” Jesse was already laughing at the thought.

“You know this idea ranks right up there with buying gas for the guy who stole our bikes, right? I’m not too sure how many of your adventures I can survive.” Skeets knew the only way he could get Jesse to budge was toward the hog pen.

They started the bikes, idled into the parking lot, and parked them out of sight of the cantina front door. At the pen they looked at the two semi-unfriendly hogs. “I think all the rope you used to tie down your bike in Redondo’s truck will come in handy.” Jesse crawled into the truck to get the rope.

“So what’s the big plan?” Skeets still looked at the hogs staring from across the pen.

“We’ll just drop a noose around their necks and lead them up the ramp. Right?” Jesse made a lariat out of the rope. “You keep them distracted, and I’ll go around the pen and lasso that sow first.”

“I think I’m looking at two hogs here who won’t completely understand nor buy into our plan. They don’t seem to be leash-trained.” Skeets fidgeted in the unrelenting stare of the hogs.

The door of the cantina opened, and two borrachos staggered out leaning on each other, laughing so hard they doubled over slapping their thighs until a cigarette coughing spell forced them to sit on the cantina steps to catch their breath. Once under control, they both lit up cigarettes and sat woozily gazing at nothing in particular.

When Skeets realized the drunks could not see them, they returned to their pig rodeo. Each time Jesse approached, the hogs moved away. Finally, in desperation, he opened the gate to the pen, moving slowly toward the sow, and then did his best imitation of a calf roper. More by accident than by skill the lasso caught the sow around the neck, but when Jesse tightened the noose, the indignant sow made a break for it out the gate. The force of her charge almost jerked Jesse to the ground, but he recovered enough to run after the sow until he reached the parking lot gravel. He then set the heels of his cowboy boots, now greased by the mud in the pen, to stop the porcine missile, only to find he was gravel-skiing through the parking lot behind the porker.

Meanwhile, back at the corral, Skeets, thinking he should close the gate before the boar escaped, turned just in time to evade the full brunt of “ol’ Tusky’s” charge by leaping straight up spread-eagle while the boar charged between his legs. The tusker knocked Skeets off balance. He fell forward catching the hog with a leg-lock around the throat and dropped belly-down on the hog’s back. Out of sheer terror he grabbed the hog’s tail, and found he was backward-bare backing his way across the parking lot atop a boar hog trying for the world speed record.

Jesse’s sow turned toward the cantina at the end of the trucks and SUVs, and he clung desperately the rope to keep from slingshoting off the end. She hung a right between the front row of vehicles and the two drunks, who watched the sow fly past with Jesse gravel-skiing behind. The drunks each glanced toward the other for affirmation of what they just saw. Tusky had taken the road less traveled and, reaching the other side of the parking lot, hung a left in front of the cantina from the other direction. The drunks watched the hog and backward bareback rider with equal interest. Each took a long pull on his cigarette before glancing at the other’s reaction to recent events. They nodded at each other, and one said, “It’s a good pig rodeo.”

The pig rodeo sow had completed a circuit around the parking lot with Jesse skiing behind, when she remembered better times back in the livestock pen and made straight for the stockade. Slowed by exhaustion and befuddled by her not finding the gate, Jesse seized the occasion and threw a loop of rope behind her back legs and another around her nose. He then dragged her up the loading ramp into the truck and rolled down the door.

Skeets’ luck dwindled, as the boar’s tail was too slippery to hold. He grabbed the only other protuberance available before falling off of the hog, the boar’s bulbous balls. This produced an immediate attitude adjustment in the hog. His first attempt to dislodge the ball-napper produced a level of pain that slowed him to a confused, grunting halt in close proximity to Redondo’s truck. Jesse, returning from his ski trip, ran over and slipped a noose around the boar’s head. Skeets dismounted without giving up his ball-grip advantage, and they administered a Pavlovian training exercise. A step forward by Tusky reduced the pain in the rear, and before long the porker was loaded, and by the look of relief on the hog’s face, not a moment too soon.

They slammed the door down, closed the latch, and both turned to lean and rest against the truck. Skeets spoke first. “We’ll just drop a noose around their neck and lead them up the ramp, right?’ Is that what you said?”

“What do I know about hogs, man? I mean, those bastards got attitudes.” Jesse wiped his face on his Harley bandana.