Bird Feed

One of my stints in Mexico was at a small town on the Pacific Coast, south of Puerto Vallarta. There I met Felix, a "Prieto", dark skinned, late seventies, made of indestructible wood and terribly addicted to alcohol. Felix took a liking to me. I diligently worked at learning Spanish, made the best coffee around and I was quiet, nearly invisible. He let me stay in a spare bedroom, which was probably on par with a Monks' cell, minus the decor. It did have a bed and a mattress, first-class, wink wink.
Felix combined his penchant for beer with a way to scrape together a few daily pesos. In the late morning he brought out some tables and chairs and a cooler of iced brew. He was a daily stop for a horde of Canadians, who would spend their money with him, play cards and argue. I would be long gone before that action began and I returned after he fell into bed.
Early morning was the best time. We got up before the town began to stir and I made Cowboy Coffee. I would buy some coffee from the woman at the corner that sold good beans delivered fresh from Guadalajara. In a cheap ceramic pot, using my immersion heater, I brewed a thick, tasty elixir that stood up to copious amounts of evaporated milk and enhanced with raw sugar was, if not a meal, certainly a righteous start.
These mornings were precious. Felix and I would talk, sip coffee and watch the towns' morning routines. Felix talked about his life and once about the utter viciousness of alcoholism. At a table across the way, three men met to drink coffee, ate the grainy and tasteless sweet rolls that I avoided, and had a bottle next to a table leg with which they fueled their get-up and go.
At some point, a flock of black birds began to gather on telephone and power lines overhead. When there were the requisite number, they began to chatter and screech until Felix walked to the small corner store and bought a little bag of white rice. Emerging from the store and to the chagrin of the proprietress, Felix scattered rice onto the ground, carelessly as if the bag emptied itself against his will and his face transformed into that of an ancient child, a bad boy, the Trickster and the Saint.
I think that this was the high point of his day, a compact with the birds and by extension all of nature. This daily ritual, when he allowed the birds to call him and bring about the scattering of rice, Felix aligned himself most closely with the Natural Universe.