travelling tigers "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring!"

I broke the intense silence, "Têm uma Coca-Cola por favour?"

Perhaps caught off-guard by my Portuguese, or perhaps concluding it was the best way to get rid of me, the store keeper takes a second to react. Moving to one side, she draws a dusty bottle from the inner reaches of a infrequently opened cupboard, and places it, challengingly on the bench between us. "Três reais."

I placed my coins and made to take the bottle. "Nao!" For a moment there was a confused stand-off. She wanted to retain the bottle for it's collection value, and indicated I should drink it in full, right there.

She reaches behind for a solitary glass on a shelf. Smeared and dirty with the cacacha-laden breath of a thousand truck drivers, she wipes the glass across the front of her tunic. Fearing a spit and polish follow up, I was thankful when she opens the bottle and pours an inch measure of Coke into the glass.

With the swiftest flick of the wrist that has tumbled many an unsuspecting man to his seat, she swills and spins the Coke around the glass, and sends the liquid in an arc over the bar, my shoulder, and out onto the sidewalk. A couple of red ants died and went to heaven, caught in the sugary caramel dust. Snapping my neck back to face her again, she has already refilled the glass with the remainder of the bottle and defiantly leaves it on the bench for me.

Her son, barely the height of my hip arches his back and stares me in the face. He doesn't blink once.

The message was clear. We don't like you or your drink.

To both: challenge accepted.

I reach out for the glass - it's as warm as the air. In one long draw I finish the glass - the taste and refreshment are now inconsequential. Calmly placing the glass back on the bench, the foreign intruder says "Obrigado" to both spectators, turns and exits. We leave this dusty town, but the weight of their eyes remain on me today.