CHAPTER 48

Scott Steinbeck, the managing editor of The McHale Report, has frequently found himself alone in the blog's offices built in the 1880s located in the heart of historic downtown Brownsville. Downtown appears dead although its advocates are insisting that it's a coma from which it will soon awake.

But Steinbeck, with his staff forwarding their articles from their homes, lives a solitary existence during working hours. Steinbeck, however, was pleasantly surprised when Max Maxwell, dean of the RGV sportswriters who has mentored such legendary scribes as "Delta" Dave Handelman, Ronnie Zamora, Roy Hess and Rene Torres among a constellation of lesser stars, walked through the door.

With no local sports to cover, he has turned his attention to politics, which is usually the topic of conversation when he is sitting in his 50-yard-line seat at Sams Stadium with one of the Brownsville football teams trailing 50 to 0. The conversation with his fellow fans inevitably turns to the county judge or the mayor or the BISD trustees or the issue of the day as they amuse themselves until the slaughter mercifully ends.

"What's new?" he asked as he placed a bottle of Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon Whiskey on Steinbeck's desk and extracted two shot glasses from his pants' pockets.

"I can never get over our pinche pendejo president," answered Steinbeck. "Rather than accept the blame for his own incompetence and arrogance, he wants to distract attention from his stupidity by turning China or the impeachment process into the culprits for his tardy response to Coronavirus. We must confront the challenge and quit resorting to scapegoats as if blaming others is going to resolve our dilemma."

"Aren't you being hypocritical?"

"How?"

"You and your compadre Machado were mercilessly portraying Ricardo Adobatti, St. Joe and Rancho Viejo as the Coronavirus scapegoats locally or was I missing something? Was this your revenge for Adobatti kicking the shit out of your boy Judge Sorola?"

"Our critics can certainly sell that argument, but we were dealing in real time and Adobatti interjected himself into the mano-a-mano by blasting the bloggers as liars for allegedly spreading false rumors when in the end he was proven wrong and we were proven right. Adobatti doesn't realize that he is the face of St. Joe and Rancho Viejo and the middle, working and impoverished classes instinctively resent their power and privilege. When they abuse their superior status, they shouldn't be surprised at the backlash."

"I have noticed that you haven't commented on him or St. Joe or Rancho Viejo lately by repeating for the hundredth time that COVID first came to Brownsville after their European escapades. Why the change?"

"We have nothing personal against any of them, but they, by their own negligence, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We have no doubts that Ricky, as we like to pique him, and his handsome family are fine people just like we know many fine people from both St. Joe and Rancho Viejo. The past is the past. We are all in this together and we have to work as one to avoid committing future mistakes. We will leave the finger-pointing to that miserable bastard Trump."

"Maybe I made a mistake in visiting you? You might blame me if you're suddenly infected."

"We can't avoid taking calculated chances on rare occasions. Otherwise, we will go stir crazy. Besides, this good whiskey will kill any germs that might precipitate the virus."

"To your health."

"For once 'to your health' isn't a meaningless toast. To your health."