I was in a howling ambulance. The EMT was holding my hand and talking about Don Quixote. She said, "…so that helmet of his was taken from a barber who had donned his shaving bowl for protection from the rain. Quixote stole it, thinking it was the mythical golden helmet of the great Moorish king Mambrino, which rendered the wearer invisible."

I mumbled, "I think it was invulnerable."

"Whatever. Anyway…"

I woke sometime later. The ambulance had stopped and the woman was gone. I pulled all the tubes off and dragged myself up, weary but no longer in pain. Outside a sweet, warm star-filled night embraced me. The ambulance was parked on a dirt road lit by a gas station a few yards away. No hospital in sight. I circled the ambulance and couldn't find the woman, or a driver.

Under a white florescent tube the sign said, DONKEY HO GARAGE with a buck-toothed cartoon donkey gripping a wrench in its teeth. At the gas station there were two men on their knees. One of them was using an arc welder. He cut it off and flipped up his mask to say to the other man, "We don't know the exact details."

"Give me inexact details."

I couldn't hear his answer. I gave up the ghost and hobbled to the gas station. The two men were working on a gigantic metal bowl, part helmet, part flying saucer, part frying wok.

There was a cut-out of the brim where the person getting a shave would fit their neck. They were going to fill in the missing piece, about the shape of an elongated football, or the blank eye of a Russian icon, fired and hammered into a thin wafer of copper or gold. I pointed to the piece. "What's next?"
    
The older guy took a keychain bottle opener and popped the cap off a Corona. "Reminds me of Roth and Malamud." I stared at him and he offered the beer to me. I told him no thanks and he sighed and said, "You know, when Malamud was dying, and insisted on reading Roth his last writing. It was no good, according to Roth, but Roth with his impregnable integrity couldn't even throw Malamud a bone of encouragement. All he could manage was, 'What's next?' and what did Malamud say?"

"I don't know."

"He said, 'What's next isn't the point!'"
 
He said, "My name's Ernesto." He waved to the big saucer. "You know, Don Quixote's helmet, from the mythical Mambrino. We're going to put in the missing wedge. Supposed to make him invincible. Or invisible.  I don't know. That's going to be part of it."

"It."

The younger man's coveralls said HECTOR. He handed me a bottle of coke from an old machine he had to kick into life.

The coke was beyond sweet.

He dropped his mask again and lit the torch. The phosphorus glare sent dancing shadows over the wall and ground. Little stones cast big shadows.  He used grippers to attach the smoking piece. When he was done he said, "Welcome to the Republic of Nepantla."

"Where's that?"

"Inbetween."

"Inbetween what?"

"Everything."

Ernesto said, "Listen to that guy very long and you'll doubt your sanity."

Hector tapped my knee. "You hungry?"

In the gas station at the front counter was beef jerky and spark plugs. The walls had fan belts and machetes. On a metal table a pile of rachets had been shoved aside for plates of rice and beans, and more Coronas and Cokes in sweating bottles. Ernesto had even set up a centerpiece of candles in glass holders, and a circle of little calavera dolls with sombreros like Mambrino helmets. In the light of the buzzing fluorescents my hosts' coveralls weren't spattered with grease, but dried blood.

Ernesto pointed to the dolls. "Hector makes these."

Beans. Rice. Coke. Beans. Breathe. 

Ernesto belched. "Excellent beginning. Look out there. What do you see?"

"Nothing. Night."

"Excellent again. What do you want from that nothing?"

"Nothing."

"And?"

"I had a dream of seeing my son again."

Hector said, "Dreams have us."

I glared at him. My voice almost gave out. That happens when I'm losing it. " I would have settled for anything. A dream. A ghost. A hologram. Hallucination. I wanted to be a ghost. Maybe if I were on the same level as my son… but the world doesn't need any more of that shit. He's dead."

Hector looked at me intently. "For the dead, we are the ghosts."

"Yeah. Right. Great. We're all ghosts. Watching each other through one-way glass. Endless Law and Order interrogations with Vincent D'Onofrio. Dung-Dung. Cute."

Hector got up and cleared the table. I'd pissed him off. Good. I was glad he was out of my face. While he was gone Ernesto leaned in close. I could smell oil and sweat and gas and blood.  "We're here for the kids in the cages. Hector's family got caught at the border. He's trying to get them back."

"Can he?"

"No, but we can."

I wouldn't look him in the face. I went dead inside. He looked determined to wake me up. "Damn man, listen. For most people it's just a thin tissue between going to work one day, and being in a cage the next."

"I don't know what that means."

"We're gonna' be invisible, man!  Under the helmet! Donkey-Hoes!"

I stared. He said, "Don QUIX-O-TEES, man."

Hector was at my side again. He squeezed my shoulder. "We need you."

"You don't need me."

Hector said, "There's a poet, Eduardo Corral. He wrote: