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chapter 19
Morning came and I woke up shivering, even though I was under three blankets. MacClayne was stirring in his bed, and Cuauhtémoc was strutting about, ready to start the day. At last I got up, wrapped myself in one of the blankets and moved my arms to get the circulation going as I went to open the door.
A world of white met us. I stood in the entrance, watching as Cuauhtémoc stepped into the courtyard to investigate. He pecked and scratched at the strange fluffy, white substance, took a few more steps, then pecked and scratched again, discovering that it was the same everywhere. "Remarkable!" he seemed to be saying each time he lifted his head to reflect on the situation. "Quite remarkable!"
I wished Chayo were here so I could throw a snowball at her, though it would have been hard to scrape together enough to manufacture one, considering that the snow was hardly more than a centimeter deep. In the room behind me, MacClayne had gotten up and was putting on his shoes, which must've still been damp from wading across the street the evening before. "Do you think we can travel in this?" he remarked as he came to look.
Why not? I thought. In spite of the snow, Cuauhtémoc was stepping about with relative ease. The air was clear and the sun was shining. It was the nicest day I'd seen in weeks, and presumably the buses would be running as usual.
The bird was soon back looking for his breakfast, and I gave him the remainder of the tortillas. While he ate, we got ready to go. I sucked in my breath and shivered as I put on my damp trousers, then my damp shirt and finally my damp jacket which hadn't dried much since the soaking of the night before. It was like wearing a wetsuit; hopefully my clothes would dry out as I wore them. I thought longingly of my childhood in Minnesota where rooms were heated and you always had something dry to wear.
Then I realized that I hadn't bothered to bring any of my maps, not realizing that we'd be traveling this far afield. Although maps of this region weren't terribly good at showing where all the back roads went, they at least gave an idea. Well, we'd just have to ask. The landlady seemed well informed.
I told her we were looking for the road which led down the mountainside to Apatzingán.
She shook her head, "Go back to Uruapan. Take the bus from there."
"There's no other road out of here?" I asked.
"No. Only the trail to Apo."
"Apo?"
"From here it's a five hour walk," she said. "Sometimes a pickup goes through, and you might get a ride.
"There's no bus?"
She wagged her finger, a gesture which in México means no.
"Which direction is Apo?" I wished I had my map.
"You go north."
Apatzingán, of course, lay to the south.
I translated for MacClayne, who had understood some but not all of the dialogue. "Perhaps we could find someone else to ask," he suggested. "A second opinion."
We decided to go have breakfast; we could ask directions at the restaurant. There had to be a road.
"Maybe we could leave the rooster here in the room while we eat?" MacClayne said. "Things might be simpler that way."
"Cuauhtémoc," I said. "Do you mind?" The look in his eye told me that he did mind. No, things wouldn't be simpler that way; I could see that. So I took him with.
The snow had mostly receded from the plaza, leaving only scattered patches behind, and the cobblestone street we'd waded across the night before was drying under the morning sun. The air was almost warm and the sky was almost clear. Mount Tancítaro was still hidden in clouds.
The restaurant on the corner wasn't open, but we found a nearby market where food was served. And there was not only food. Vendors sold everything from oranges to blankets to pots and pans. It was a miniature of the covered market in Uruapan which consisted of booths and stalls under a corrugated metal roof. It was probably the only concrete structure in the village.
"Not very aesthetic, but practical," MacClayne said. "I remember markets like this in Veracruz."
"Were you in the merchant marine then?"
"No, I was out of the merchant marine by then. It was after I came to America, some time in the mid-1950's."
The market was nearly empty, probably because of the weather. The air was so chilly our breath turned to vapor, but there was the delicious smell of food, and my damp clothes didn't feel so cold now. We sat down at a small booth and I asked the lady what she had to offer.
"Carne de res, y carne de puerco," she said.
It was what we'd had the evening before, and again, MacClayne had one and I had the other. This time I had the beef and he had the pork. As was the custom, these were served with beans, rice and tortillas. From time to time I shared a tiny morsel with Cuauhtémoc; he liked the beans.
"What weather!" the lady remarked after serving us the food.
"Does it often snow here in the village?" I said.
"Not at this time of year."
We chatted with her while we ate. She asked us about the bird, and where we were from, the usual stuff. Finally I asked about the road to Apatzingán.
"Go to Uruapan, take a bus from there," she said.
"Isn't there a road or trail going down the mountainside?"
She stopped to think, and then asked the vendor of a nearby stall that happened to be open. That person expressed belief that such a trail existed, but didn't know where to find it. Word went around, but nobody knew for certain.
Customers were trickling in. After eating we decided to have coffee and wait a while. Somebody who knew the way might turn up.
"It's strange that these people have lived here all their lives and don't know the roads," MacClayne remarked.
"That's the way it is," I said, "People know the way to the nearest large town or city, but they don't know the back roads of their own region. Nobody goes into the hinterland. Almost nobody, I should say. Chayo is different. She's been everywhere and knows these mountains well."
"It would be helpful if she could show up now," MacClayne said. "To give us directions."
"Yes," I said, and sighed. Without Chayo I felt a bit lost. Maybe this was one of the reasons why I needed to make this journey without her, to learn to find my own way in this new world.
Cuauhtémoc hopped onto my lap, reassuring me with his presence.
MacClayne took a long, slow sip of coffee, then reflected for a moment. "Apatzingán is a fairly large town, isn't it?" he said. "Don't people go there?"
"These are mountain people and, when they go to town, they go to Uruapan," I said. "The mountain is one world. The valley below is another."
Indeed, everything around us did seem to be split up into separate worlds, not only the mountain and valley, but even the languages we spoke: English, the private language between MacClayne and me, and Spanish, the public language which MacClayne was generally left out of unless I translated it for him.
Just then the lady told me that there was a customer who knew a road which went downhill to Apatzingán. He was a large, robust man and had the self-assured look of a professional, perhaps an engineer. The lady introduced us to him.
Yes, a route did exist, and he'd occasionally taken it himself. But it wasn't a road, it was a horse trail, inaccessible to vehicles. We'd have to walk. "If you start now, you might get to Apatzingán by evening," he said. "But in this weather--no, it's not a good idea. You could easily get lost. If you don't want to return to Uruapan, then take the trail to Apo, it's much easier and you might get a ride."
I translated for MacClayne and suggested that in spite of the difficulties, we should take the way which went directly down the mountainside. That was why we'd come to Tancítaro, to take that trail. But he shook his head and asked, "Did Chayo recommend that route for us?"
"She mentioned it, but she didn't tell me where to find it."
"When?"
"Recently, some time during the last month or so."
"Not in the depot when she met us there?"
"No."
"She didn't specifically instruct you to take that trail?"
"I never said she did."
"Well that's what I'm asking, and you made it sound like she had."
"I only meant to say that she'd told me of a trail going directly down the mountainside. So I think that would be the way to go."
For some moments we sat there in a tense silence, which was finally broken by MacClayne. "What other road is there?"
"The trail to Apo."
"Another isolated village?"
"Apparently," I said. I kept wishing I had my map.
"So what happens when we get there?"
"Then we can get a bus to Los Reyes, and from Los Reyes--"
"Los Reyes is in down in the Valley of Infiernillo?"
"No. It's the other way," I said.
"So we begin with a five hour walk. Go north to get south, and get deeper into these mountains? Is this how you plan things out?" MacClayne's voice was becoming somewhat raspy, the way it was when he was impatient.
"We're in the back woods of Michoacán, and this is how the road system works around here."
MacClayne glanced up at the bare concrete restaurant wall and sighed, apparently disappointed, frustrated and perhaps even angry. I wondered if he felt misled, that I'd done him a disservice by getting us into this apparently dead-end situation.
I took another swallow of my coffee, pondered a moment, then said, "We're in quest of a fabled city, so we can't expect the going to be easy. If the roads don't go where we want them to go, that's perhaps the way things are supposed to be."
"We're Holy Grailers," he said. I wasn't sure if it was a question or a groan.
"I should hope so," I replied.
A long silence ensued, punctuated only by the sounds of the market around us. MacClayne stared at the remains in his cup, perhaps looking for an omen. "Then let us set out," he said at last, returning to his previous good humor. "We must not delay in our quest for the chalice."
I was glad to see him getting back into the spirit of things.
We finished off our coffee. Over to one side of us was a booth where they sold oranges, and nearby was one where they had oats which would serve as bird food. We stocked up for the journey ahead and then stepped out onto the bright sunlit street. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust.
Snow had left the village and was retreating up the mountainside, which was by now free of clouds. We walked to the middle of the plaza for a better view, and saw the green forest rise upwards to where it turned white, then narrowed to a pointed pinnacle.
From Uruapan I'd seen the mountain as a long, extended ridge, but this village was at the end of that ridge, so from here it had the appearance of a peak. It was like looking at a long, sloped roof from a new angle. I wished Chayo were here to see it with me.
We got our things from the room and set out.
The road to Apo was a pair of tire tracks going off into the forest. At first the trail was fairly straight, but it soon began to make hairpin curves, doubling back on itself as it clung to the edge of one steep ravine after another which cut deep into the mountainside and exposed outcrops of ancient lava flows. The thick woods prevented us from seeing what lay to either side of us, but we could look upwards through the treetops and catch glimpses of the snow-covered slopes above.
There were water puddles here and there, but not a lot of mud. Though I couldn't imagine anyone driving a vehicle on this trail, it was easy enough to walk on, and walking kept us warm.
We weren't carrying much. My backpack was just big enough to hold three books, some oranges, a small sack of oats for Cuauhtémoc and his blanket. MacClayne carried a bag of similar size slung over his shoulder in which he had a few personal items, a book or two, and perhaps a change of socks.
Cuauhtémoc scurried along on his short little legs, doing his best to keep up. Back on the malpaís where we'd had to fight our way through underbrush, the bird had gotten around much better than me, but here on this open trail he was at something of a disadvantage. When he fell behind he took to his wings, flew over our heads and landed on the trail up ahead. Then he turned around and stood there looking at us. "Slow pokes!" he seemed to say. As we approached he hopped on my arm and let me carry him.
From time to time the pine forest closed in so tightly on both sides that I felt as if we were winding our way through a tunnel. I glanced at my watch and found that we'd been hiking for over an hour, but the surroundings were so pleasant that it didn't feel that long.
The path curved along the edge of a cliff. We rounded the bend when suddenly the trees opened up and we found ourselves gazing raptly at a magnificent pair of snow-capped volcanoes. Their steep slopes rose almost vertically; a small, lonely cloud clung to one of the peaks.
We stood there in dumb amazement. I was astonished to see volcanoes so tall and slender. "A pair of needles," I exclaimed. They dwarfed the tiny cinder cones around Uruapan, and must have been even higher than Mount Tancítaro.
The valley below spread out before us. That gave us a better notion on how very distant the volcanoes must have been. I would have guessed at least 70 kilometers. Paradoxically, some peculiar atmospheric condition must have brought the peaks up close and made it appear that we'd soon be climbing their slopes.
"I think I'll have an orange," said MacClayne.
"An orange break?" I said. "Sure."
We stood there, peeling oranges and admiring the view. Although the sky was clear, the valley floor was covered with a sea of fog. Only the rims of scattered cinder cones poked through. They were brown and treeless.
"So where would Apatzingán be?" MacClayne said, thinking aloud.
I shook my head and offered a piece of my orange to Cuauhtémoc, but the bird's attention was fixed on the misty scene below.
"Can that really be a desert down there?" said MacClayne.
"It apparently is. That's because it lies in a rain shadow."
"Which means?"
I pointed to the bluish silhouette of the distant coastal range which rose up on the south side of the valley. "The wind comes in from the Pacific Ocean and drops its moisture as it rises up over those mountains. That's where the rain falls, so the air is pretty dry when it reaches the valley."
"And that makes it a desert? It looks like something out of one of your Norse myths. What did you call that place?"
"La Tierra Caliente--the Hot Country," I said. "Some call it the Valley of Infiernillo."
"In the Norse myth, I meant."
"Niflheim--which means land of icy mist. It was said to be an extremely cold, desolate, miserable place. And it apparently lay at the bottom of a valley somewhere below Asgarð. There are accounts in the Edda of men who went there. It was a nine day horseback ride down through dark canyons."
"Nine days? That's quite a horseback ride."
"Yeah, but if you were to go there nowadays you'd probably find a bus service," I said.
"So where would the spring have been located?"
"The Spring of Urð? That would've been in Asgarð."
"Up in the mountains, then," MacClayne said. "So this is like a geographic setting from Norse mythology, and we're looking at it. Walking on it. Passing through it."
At the mention of Nieflheim, a chill seemed to rise from the valley below. Cuauhtémoc gave a low, mournful squawk. It was a sound I didn't realize his vocal chords were capable of producing.
"¿Estás bien?" I said. I hugged him gently and turned away from the valley, but he craned his neck around, unwilling to take his eyes away from it. He made the same sound again.
We moved on and were soon back in the forest. Cuauhtémoc seemed to be okay now. He hopped down to exercise his legs.
"Do you think the Vikings ever visited México?" MacClayne said after a while.
"Remotely possible, but extremely doubtful," I said. "They reached Nova Scotia, perhaps also Maine and Massachusetts, but not México."
"Maybe you're here to fulfill a destiny," he said. "To see this land and complete a project that Norsemen began a thousand years ago."
We came to a ravine crossed by two large logs, spaced the width of a vehicle axle apart.
"Can this be a bridge?" I said.
"What else it could be?"
"Can you imagine trying to drive a pickup across this?" I said.
"There's tire tracks on both sides, so vehicles must be using it."
We crossed with a bit of trepidation. It was only a few meters deep, but I still felt like a tight-rope walker.
The morning that had begun with snow on the ground was turning out very different. It was a good day and a good place to be walking. We talked as we went, daydreaming of how it might be fun to someday get a burro and spend a summer traveling around in these mountains, leisurely wandering from village to village.
With that and many other thoughts we passed the time as we walked, and couldn't have been too far from Apo when the forest behind us began to vibrate with the sound of an approaching vehicle. It was a pickup, and the driver offered us a ride.
Two elderly women rode with the driver, so we got on the flat-bed and rode standing up, hanging onto the roll bar. Cuauhtémoc perched beside me, using his wings for balance as we swayed from side to side and bounced along on the rough trail.
In less than ten minutes we reached the turnoff for Apo, where we got off, expressed our thanks, and chatted briefly with the driver. He was about the same age and build as don Pablo. He was taking his two elderly passengers to the village to visit the shrine of a virgin. One of them was ill and hoping for a miraculous cure.
"How did you cross that log bridge?" I asked him.
He grinned, and said, "In these mountains it's part of a day's drive."
We said our good-byes and, as it was getting on in the day, we felt we didn't have time to visit the village of Apo. We had hopes of reaching Apatzingán that afternoon and continued on foot. As we left the turnoff behind, the trail immediately widened out and became a road. It was still a horrible washboard surface, but it looked more traveled and our chances of catching a ride looked better.
Before long the needle-shaped mountains came into view again. The tiny cloud still clung to the peak of one as if it were pinned there. Maybe it was vapor trailing out from the volcano.
"Would that mean it's active?" MacClayne said.
"Probably. It must be scary to live under."
The slender cones appeared as close as ever, but we decided they must be a lot farther away than they appeared to be. They were due west of us and I had heard of a tall, twin-peaked volcano out in that area. But that was way over in Colima and Jalisco, perhaps a hundred and fifty kilometers away.
"What's that in miles?" MacClayne said.
"Almost a hundred."
Could we be looking at something so distant and be seeing it so clearly? MacClayne doubted it.
Above and immediately behind us were the snowy slopes of Mount Tancítaro. It too had once been a proud active volcano; its eroded remnants still dominated this region.
The fog had nearly disappeared from the valley below, revealing a dry, treeless landscape with eroded cinder cones. Still no sight of any large population center that could be Apatzingán.
We took another orange break. There was something about orange eating that went together with traveling like this. We didn't bother to carry water; oranges were handier. I again offered bits of mine to Cuauhtémoc, and this time he accepted them.
From there we got a short ride in a truckload of sawdust and emerged covered with the stuff, with packs, bags, and pocketfuls of sawdust. But it didn't bother Cuauhtémoc; he just shook it off.
A short walk took us the rest of the way to a road junction with a very tiny hamlet consisting of only three or four habitations.
"Do you have any idea of where we might be?" MacClayne said.
"It should be Copertiro. The driver of the pickup said we could catch a bus in that place."
There was an asphalt road which went northward, up into the mountains and presumably to Los Reyes. The road began here, or, rather, it ended here. We would of course go south, and in that direction there was only an unpaved washboard surface.
No vehicles were in sight.
In front of one of the houses was a tiny roadside restaurant which apparently catered to truckers. It consisted of a crude table with a bench on either side, but lacked anything overhead to shelter customers from the sun and rain. The only person around was an elderly lady who was apparently the proprietress.
"¿Es Copertiro?" I asked.
"Sí."
I asked if there was a bus for Apatzingán.
"Ya viene," It's on its way here. she said, and told us it would take us to Buenavista. There we'd have to change buses.
I glanced at MacClayne, who gave a nod to indicate that he'd understood. "We seem to be at the right place," he said to me, then to the lady, "¿Hay café?"
The lady shook her head. She didn't have much else either, except for several crates of soft drinks. I had a cola and requested water for the bird. MacClayne didn't want anything. Hopefully, the bus would be here soon; if not, maybe we could hitch a ride on some other vehicle. Either way, we expected to be in Apatzingán by evening; it was now mid-afternoon.
MacClayne read one of his books, and I took out my journal. Cuauhtémoc scratched in the pebbles nearby.
The Needle Peaks weren't visible from here, but the long, snowy ridge of Tancítaro still towered above and behind us. This was the western side of it, the hidden slopes I'd never seen before. The ridge now lay between us and Uruapan, separating me from Chayo.
I sat there thinking of the night we'd spent together in Los Reyes, that town to the north of us, the place where the paved road went.
Walking had kept me comfortably warm, but as I sat there I began to cool off. My clothes were still slightly damp from the soaking of the evening before, and they began to take on the chill of the air around me.
An hour went by. No bus, and no other traffic either. The proprietress was the only visible inhabitant of the entire region. Everything around took on a desolate appearance; even the trees and grass were dry and brown, a prelude to the parched valley below. Only the empty road connected us with the rest of the world.
Cuauhtémoc hopped up to perch on a branch beside me, looking over my shoulder as I wrote. The cold didn't seem to bother him. Or MacClayne either, who sat reading in a silence broken only by the occasional turning of a page, making a faint rustling sound that echoed out into the emptiness.
Insects didn't chirp and birds didn't sing. At long last, the beginnings of a faint vibration resonated in the distance. An approaching vehicle? But it was more a feeling than a sound, something so subtle that I wasn't sure if I heard it or not. Cuauhtémoc raised his head. MacClayne lowered his book and looked up. I got up and stretched my arms and legs, but still didn't see anything. Minutes passed; eventually a tiny speck appeared on the road above us, It was a bus, winding its way down the mountainside from Los Reyes. Hopefully, it was the one that would take us down into the valley.
MacClayne waved to flag it down while I gathered up Cuauhtémoc and took a last look in the direction of the snow-capped ridge. The mountain was no longer to be seen; then I realized the sun was also gone. The sky had turned gray and hung low overhead.
"Is this our bus?" MacClayne asked.
It had come to a halt beside us and the door opened. The destination read: BUENAVISTA.
We got on. It was only a third full, and we found a seat near the front where we could see through the windshield as well as the side window. The bus began to move, and almost immediately came to the end of the smooth asphalt surface where there was a jarring crash. We were pounding our way down the washboard road towards the valley.
A huge rain drop splashed on the window beside us. It was followed by another, and within seconds it was raining fiercely.
hillside of scrub
Through the water-streaked panes I saw oak trees, or maybe they weren't oaks; anyway they were deciduous. The pines were gone, so we'd lost elevation and were entering another ecosystem. Before long, the deciduous trees themselves thinned out, and eventually there were only nopal cacti scattered here and there. Several cinder cones loomed in the canyon below and ahead of us.
I imagined that all of this would normally be a dry brown, but the storm had turned everything into a bluish gray.
Icy water trickled in around the loose, rattling window frames, and with each jarring bounce I got spattered in the face.
We came to a stretch where the steep hillsides receded, and the canyon broadened out to form a narrow plain where the road was flat and the water puddled up. We squished and splashed our way along, at times like an old-time paddle-wheeler chugging down a river of soupy mud.
"Can you picture this place ever being dry?" I said.
"It must be a dust bowl," he said. "Another Ecclefechan."
"Eccl--?"
"Ecclefechan. It's a town in Kirkcudbright, about thirty miles from Dundrennan." He paused to recall a refrain and shift gears to Broad Scots of the Border Country:
"Ecclefechan--where the craas flee erse-wise
tay keep the stoor oot o' their een."
"'Craas flee' would be 'crows fly'?" I said.
MacClayne grinned and nodded.
"And they're trying to keep the 'stoor' out of their eyes," I said. "What's stoor?"
"Dust," he said, and finished the translation: "The crows fly ass-backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes."
"Dust, you say. I should've guessed. The Norwegian word is støv." There were a lot of Scandinavian words in Lowland Scots--"bra," meaning good, "foo" meaning drunk and "flit" meaning move were a few I'd come across in MacClayne's stories and poems.
The bus squished on.
"¡Que mierda!" It was a woman's voice, slightly slurred, and came from the seat behind us. I stole a quick glance. There were two of them sharing a bottle. I hoped Cuauhtémoc wouldn't smell it and demand a swig.
The windshield wipers oscillated back and forth, each swipe clearing water from the pane long enough to allow a brief and distorted glimpse down the road. Directly ahead was a treeless cinder cone which gradually grew in size as we approached.
Between it and us, in the near distance, I could make out an indistinct mottled mass that covered a wide area. As we drew closer, I could see that it was composed of individual creatures, which, as they came into focus, turned out to cattle blocking the road in front of us. We came to a halt as horsemen rode back and forth to divide them up and herd them to one side or the other to make way for us. The action was in slow motion as the animals slogged through the mud. The cattle were Brahmans, which I had been told were imported from India and cross-bred with European cattle to make them more resistant to the intense heat for which this region was famous.
At last we were moving again, nearing the cinder cone. We were slightly above it, so I could see into its hollow crater. Although I'd seen dozens of these small volcanoes, I was always curious to see one more, and I watched intently as the road curved around it. On the slopes there grew a few scattered nopal cacti, ubiquitous in this part of the world.
The volcano behind us, we were again pounding and crashing our way down a washboard surface. Hillsides were closing in from both sides as the canyon narrowed and deepened. There were especially loud crashes that shook the bus to its very chassis as the wheels fell into larger holes.
"Fuck! This shit sucks!" It was one of the women in the seat behind us, and for a moment I mused over how such a phrase might be translated into English. MacClayne glanced at me and grinned. Had he understood it? Then it hit me that the woman was expressing herself in English--not in Spanish.
In the next instant something flew past us, narrowly missing MacClayne's head. Cuauhtémoc let out a loud "Rhhhhhhh!" and then jumped from my lap and took off after it. It was a lady chicken and she reversed direction, half-flying, half-scurrying toward the back of the bus with Cuauhtémoc hot on her tail. The owner was also in the chase, running a poor third. I was fourth and last, slipping and sliding on the wet floor as I pursued Cuauhtémoc.
"¡Ariba la pollita!" shouted one of the drunken women.
"¡Ariba el gallito!" shouted the other.
The birds scurried under seats, then flew back over the tops of them. Back and forth they went, from one end of the bus to the other.
The chicken owner finally cornered his hen, and I grabbed for Cuauhtémoc. Just then the bus gave a lurch; the owner landed on a nearby passenger and I fell on top of the owner. The passenger cursed the owner and the owner cursed me, and I pretended I didn't understand Spanish.
"Cuauhtémoc!" I said, after finally apprehending him and hauling him back to our seat. "How could you do this to me?"
MacClayne was laughing.
The booze-guzzling women in the seat behind us were snickering and snorting. A moment later there was a loud rattle as one of them opened the window, shoving it upwards with all her might, sticking her head out into the wind and rain, vomiting into the storm.
My curiosity overcame me and I turned to look, and found myself staring into the face of one of the female drunks.
"What are you looking at?" she said in English, slurring her words and sitting almost immobile in her seat. She paused, then let out a torrent of four letter words that ended with: "Fucking assholes! Go to hell! You're on the road to hell anyway! You know that? You're on the road to hell!"
Having said that, she passed out and collapsed across the lap of her companion who peered at me through a drunken haze.
Cuauhtémoc hopped onto the backrest and gave their bottle a thirsty look.
"Let's move," I suggested as I grabbed hold of my bird.
We found some empty seats towards the rear of the bus. We couldn't see through the windshield from here; but the chances of getting puked on were less.
"I suppose people who die of drink also end up in Niflheim?" MacClayne said with a grin.
Across the aisle was another drinking party, this one more discreet. Three or four guys were quietly passing a bottle back and forth. A couple seats ahead of them sat the chicken owner with his hen. She raised her head over the backrest, spied Cuauhtémoc, and gave a conspiratorial cluck.
"Por favor, Cuauhtémoc," I pleaded, "Pórtate bien."
MacClayne eyed the booze as it went from hand to hand. Perhaps he was thinking nostalgically of his seagoing days when a sailor might smuggle a bottle aboard and pass it around in the forecastle.
At my instigation, we got up and moved again, this time to a seat over the rear wheels. It was the worst place on the bus. There was no leg room because of the wheel configuration, and we also got the full impact of every rock and pothole the wheel slammed into.
Rain beat on the roof and struck obliquely against the side window. We were heading into the full intensity of the storm. I looked out the window, but all I saw was water and darkness.
Suddenly, the road noise stopped, and we found ourselves cruising along smoothly on a paved surface. Within minutes the bus came to a stop. Everyone was getting off.
I slipped Cuauhtémoc's makeshift raincoat over his head as we waited for the crowd to clear. Eventually only the female drunks remained in their seat. One growled an indistinct phrase as we passed by on our way to the door.
"¿Buenavista?" I asked the driver.
"Sí. ¿A dónde van?"
"Apatzingán," I said.
He pointed up ahead, and told me that's where we'd find our bus.
Torrents of rain pelted down as we dashed to a sidewalk where we stood under the eaves of a nearby roof and then paused to look around. The bus had let us off on what appeared to be the town's main drag. That was unusual; normally passengers disembarked either at the plaza or at a depot.
The passengers who'd gotten off with us were also huddled under whatever would serve as shelter. As I peered through the sheets of rain I could barely see the other side of the street. According to the driver, the bus for Apatzingán should be here soon.
The two drunken women finally came stumbling out of the bus. Somehow they made it onto the street where they stood in the midst of the downpour, holding on to each other for support as they looked around.
"It's raining," observed one.
"Is it really?" responded her companion. The two deliberated for some moments longer, then wandered off through the downpour.
A bus drove up with a destination that read: APATZINGÁN. I'd gathered that the road from here on was excellent, so we could consider ourselves almost at our destination. People began to board.
I looked at MacClayne and he looked at me.
"What do you think?" said MacClayne.
For a long time I gazed at the bus. Finally I said, "Apatzingán should be entered in the morning, as the sun rises overhead. That is my vision of how it ought to be."
continued in Chapter 20
A world of white met us. I stood in the entrance, watching as Cuauhtémoc stepped into the courtyard to investigate. He pecked and scratched at the strange fluffy, white substance, took a few more steps, then pecked and scratched again, discovering that it was the same everywhere. "Remarkable!" he seemed to be saying each time he lifted his head to reflect on the situation. "Quite remarkable!"
I wished Chayo were here so I could throw a snowball at her, though it would have been hard to scrape together enough to manufacture one, considering that the snow was hardly more than a centimeter deep. In the room behind me, MacClayne had gotten up and was putting on his shoes, which must've still been damp from wading across the street the evening before. "Do you think we can travel in this?" he remarked as he came to look.
Why not? I thought. In spite of the snow, Cuauhtémoc was stepping about with relative ease. The air was clear and the sun was shining. It was the nicest day I'd seen in weeks, and presumably the buses would be running as usual.
The bird was soon back looking for his breakfast, and I gave him the remainder of the tortillas. While he ate, we got ready to go. I sucked in my breath and shivered as I put on my damp trousers, then my damp shirt and finally my damp jacket which hadn't dried much since the soaking of the night before. It was like wearing a wetsuit; hopefully my clothes would dry out as I wore them. I thought longingly of my childhood in Minnesota where rooms were heated and you always had something dry to wear.
Then I realized that I hadn't bothered to bring any of my maps, not realizing that we'd be traveling this far afield. Although maps of this region weren't terribly good at showing where all the back roads went, they at least gave an idea. Well, we'd just have to ask. The landlady seemed well informed.
I told her we were looking for the road which led down the mountainside to Apatzingán.
She shook her head, "Go back to Uruapan. Take the bus from there."
"There's no other road out of here?" I asked.
"No. Only the trail to Apo."
"Apo?"
"From here it's a five hour walk," she said. "Sometimes a pickup goes through, and you might get a ride.
"There's no bus?"
She wagged her finger, a gesture which in México means no.
"Which direction is Apo?" I wished I had my map.
"You go north."
Apatzingán, of course, lay to the south.
I translated for MacClayne, who had understood some but not all of the dialogue. "Perhaps we could find someone else to ask," he suggested. "A second opinion."
We decided to go have breakfast; we could ask directions at the restaurant. There had to be a road.
"Maybe we could leave the rooster here in the room while we eat?" MacClayne said. "Things might be simpler that way."
"Cuauhtémoc," I said. "Do you mind?" The look in his eye told me that he did mind. No, things wouldn't be simpler that way; I could see that. So I took him with.
The snow had mostly receded from the plaza, leaving only scattered patches behind, and the cobblestone street we'd waded across the night before was drying under the morning sun. The air was almost warm and the sky was almost clear. Mount Tancítaro was still hidden in clouds.
The restaurant on the corner wasn't open, but we found a nearby market where food was served. And there was not only food. Vendors sold everything from oranges to blankets to pots and pans. It was a miniature of the covered market in Uruapan which consisted of booths and stalls under a corrugated metal roof. It was probably the only concrete structure in the village.
"Not very aesthetic, but practical," MacClayne said. "I remember markets like this in Veracruz."
"Were you in the merchant marine then?"
"No, I was out of the merchant marine by then. It was after I came to America, some time in the mid-1950's."
The market was nearly empty, probably because of the weather. The air was so chilly our breath turned to vapor, but there was the delicious smell of food, and my damp clothes didn't feel so cold now. We sat down at a small booth and I asked the lady what she had to offer.
"Carne de res, y carne de puerco," she said.
It was what we'd had the evening before, and again, MacClayne had one and I had the other. This time I had the beef and he had the pork. As was the custom, these were served with beans, rice and tortillas. From time to time I shared a tiny morsel with Cuauhtémoc; he liked the beans.
"What weather!" the lady remarked after serving us the food.
"Does it often snow here in the village?" I said.
"Not at this time of year."
We chatted with her while we ate. She asked us about the bird, and where we were from, the usual stuff. Finally I asked about the road to Apatzingán.
"Go to Uruapan, take a bus from there," she said.
"Isn't there a road or trail going down the mountainside?"
She stopped to think, and then asked the vendor of a nearby stall that happened to be open. That person expressed belief that such a trail existed, but didn't know where to find it. Word went around, but nobody knew for certain.
Customers were trickling in. After eating we decided to have coffee and wait a while. Somebody who knew the way might turn up.
"It's strange that these people have lived here all their lives and don't know the roads," MacClayne remarked.
"That's the way it is," I said, "People know the way to the nearest large town or city, but they don't know the back roads of their own region. Nobody goes into the hinterland. Almost nobody, I should say. Chayo is different. She's been everywhere and knows these mountains well."
"It would be helpful if she could show up now," MacClayne said. "To give us directions."
"Yes," I said, and sighed. Without Chayo I felt a bit lost. Maybe this was one of the reasons why I needed to make this journey without her, to learn to find my own way in this new world.
Cuauhtémoc hopped onto my lap, reassuring me with his presence.
MacClayne took a long, slow sip of coffee, then reflected for a moment. "Apatzingán is a fairly large town, isn't it?" he said. "Don't people go there?"
"These are mountain people and, when they go to town, they go to Uruapan," I said. "The mountain is one world. The valley below is another."
Indeed, everything around us did seem to be split up into separate worlds, not only the mountain and valley, but even the languages we spoke: English, the private language between MacClayne and me, and Spanish, the public language which MacClayne was generally left out of unless I translated it for him.
Just then the lady told me that there was a customer who knew a road which went downhill to Apatzingán. He was a large, robust man and had the self-assured look of a professional, perhaps an engineer. The lady introduced us to him.
Yes, a route did exist, and he'd occasionally taken it himself. But it wasn't a road, it was a horse trail, inaccessible to vehicles. We'd have to walk. "If you start now, you might get to Apatzingán by evening," he said. "But in this weather--no, it's not a good idea. You could easily get lost. If you don't want to return to Uruapan, then take the trail to Apo, it's much easier and you might get a ride."
I translated for MacClayne and suggested that in spite of the difficulties, we should take the way which went directly down the mountainside. That was why we'd come to Tancítaro, to take that trail. But he shook his head and asked, "Did Chayo recommend that route for us?"
"She mentioned it, but she didn't tell me where to find it."
"When?"
"Recently, some time during the last month or so."
"Not in the depot when she met us there?"
"No."
"She didn't specifically instruct you to take that trail?"
"I never said she did."
"Well that's what I'm asking, and you made it sound like she had."
"I only meant to say that she'd told me of a trail going directly down the mountainside. So I think that would be the way to go."
For some moments we sat there in a tense silence, which was finally broken by MacClayne. "What other road is there?"
"The trail to Apo."
"Another isolated village?"
"Apparently," I said. I kept wishing I had my map.
"So what happens when we get there?"
"Then we can get a bus to Los Reyes, and from Los Reyes--"
"Los Reyes is in down in the Valley of Infiernillo?"
"No. It's the other way," I said.
"So we begin with a five hour walk. Go north to get south, and get deeper into these mountains? Is this how you plan things out?" MacClayne's voice was becoming somewhat raspy, the way it was when he was impatient.
"We're in the back woods of Michoacán, and this is how the road system works around here."
MacClayne glanced up at the bare concrete restaurant wall and sighed, apparently disappointed, frustrated and perhaps even angry. I wondered if he felt misled, that I'd done him a disservice by getting us into this apparently dead-end situation.
I took another swallow of my coffee, pondered a moment, then said, "We're in quest of a fabled city, so we can't expect the going to be easy. If the roads don't go where we want them to go, that's perhaps the way things are supposed to be."
"We're Holy Grailers," he said. I wasn't sure if it was a question or a groan.
"I should hope so," I replied.
A long silence ensued, punctuated only by the sounds of the market around us. MacClayne stared at the remains in his cup, perhaps looking for an omen. "Then let us set out," he said at last, returning to his previous good humor. "We must not delay in our quest for the chalice."
I was glad to see him getting back into the spirit of things.
We finished off our coffee. Over to one side of us was a booth where they sold oranges, and nearby was one where they had oats which would serve as bird food. We stocked up for the journey ahead and then stepped out onto the bright sunlit street. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust.
Snow had left the village and was retreating up the mountainside, which was by now free of clouds. We walked to the middle of the plaza for a better view, and saw the green forest rise upwards to where it turned white, then narrowed to a pointed pinnacle.
From Uruapan I'd seen the mountain as a long, extended ridge, but this village was at the end of that ridge, so from here it had the appearance of a peak. It was like looking at a long, sloped roof from a new angle. I wished Chayo were here to see it with me.
We got our things from the room and set out.
The road to Apo was a pair of tire tracks going off into the forest. At first the trail was fairly straight, but it soon began to make hairpin curves, doubling back on itself as it clung to the edge of one steep ravine after another which cut deep into the mountainside and exposed outcrops of ancient lava flows. The thick woods prevented us from seeing what lay to either side of us, but we could look upwards through the treetops and catch glimpses of the snow-covered slopes above.
There were water puddles here and there, but not a lot of mud. Though I couldn't imagine anyone driving a vehicle on this trail, it was easy enough to walk on, and walking kept us warm.
We weren't carrying much. My backpack was just big enough to hold three books, some oranges, a small sack of oats for Cuauhtémoc and his blanket. MacClayne carried a bag of similar size slung over his shoulder in which he had a few personal items, a book or two, and perhaps a change of socks.
Cuauhtémoc scurried along on his short little legs, doing his best to keep up. Back on the malpaís where we'd had to fight our way through underbrush, the bird had gotten around much better than me, but here on this open trail he was at something of a disadvantage. When he fell behind he took to his wings, flew over our heads and landed on the trail up ahead. Then he turned around and stood there looking at us. "Slow pokes!" he seemed to say. As we approached he hopped on my arm and let me carry him.
From time to time the pine forest closed in so tightly on both sides that I felt as if we were winding our way through a tunnel. I glanced at my watch and found that we'd been hiking for over an hour, but the surroundings were so pleasant that it didn't feel that long.
The path curved along the edge of a cliff. We rounded the bend when suddenly the trees opened up and we found ourselves gazing raptly at a magnificent pair of snow-capped volcanoes. Their steep slopes rose almost vertically; a small, lonely cloud clung to one of the peaks.
We stood there in dumb amazement. I was astonished to see volcanoes so tall and slender. "A pair of needles," I exclaimed. They dwarfed the tiny cinder cones around Uruapan, and must have been even higher than Mount Tancítaro.
The valley below spread out before us. That gave us a better notion on how very distant the volcanoes must have been. I would have guessed at least 70 kilometers. Paradoxically, some peculiar atmospheric condition must have brought the peaks up close and made it appear that we'd soon be climbing their slopes.
"I think I'll have an orange," said MacClayne.
"An orange break?" I said. "Sure."
We stood there, peeling oranges and admiring the view. Although the sky was clear, the valley floor was covered with a sea of fog. Only the rims of scattered cinder cones poked through. They were brown and treeless.
"So where would Apatzingán be?" MacClayne said, thinking aloud.
I shook my head and offered a piece of my orange to Cuauhtémoc, but the bird's attention was fixed on the misty scene below.
"Can that really be a desert down there?" said MacClayne.
"It apparently is. That's because it lies in a rain shadow."
"Which means?"
I pointed to the bluish silhouette of the distant coastal range which rose up on the south side of the valley. "The wind comes in from the Pacific Ocean and drops its moisture as it rises up over those mountains. That's where the rain falls, so the air is pretty dry when it reaches the valley."
"And that makes it a desert? It looks like something out of one of your Norse myths. What did you call that place?"
"La Tierra Caliente--the Hot Country," I said. "Some call it the Valley of Infiernillo."
"In the Norse myth, I meant."
"Niflheim--which means land of icy mist. It was said to be an extremely cold, desolate, miserable place. And it apparently lay at the bottom of a valley somewhere below Asgarð. There are accounts in the Edda of men who went there. It was a nine day horseback ride down through dark canyons."
"Nine days? That's quite a horseback ride."
"Yeah, but if you were to go there nowadays you'd probably find a bus service," I said.
"So where would the spring have been located?"
"The Spring of Urð? That would've been in Asgarð."
"Up in the mountains, then," MacClayne said. "So this is like a geographic setting from Norse mythology, and we're looking at it. Walking on it. Passing through it."
At the mention of Nieflheim, a chill seemed to rise from the valley below. Cuauhtémoc gave a low, mournful squawk. It was a sound I didn't realize his vocal chords were capable of producing.
"¿Estás bien?" I said. I hugged him gently and turned away from the valley, but he craned his neck around, unwilling to take his eyes away from it. He made the same sound again.
We moved on and were soon back in the forest. Cuauhtémoc seemed to be okay now. He hopped down to exercise his legs.
"Do you think the Vikings ever visited México?" MacClayne said after a while.
"Remotely possible, but extremely doubtful," I said. "They reached Nova Scotia, perhaps also Maine and Massachusetts, but not México."
"Maybe you're here to fulfill a destiny," he said. "To see this land and complete a project that Norsemen began a thousand years ago."
We came to a ravine crossed by two large logs, spaced the width of a vehicle axle apart.
"Can this be a bridge?" I said.
"What else it could be?"
"Can you imagine trying to drive a pickup across this?" I said.
"There's tire tracks on both sides, so vehicles must be using it."
We crossed with a bit of trepidation. It was only a few meters deep, but I still felt like a tight-rope walker.
The morning that had begun with snow on the ground was turning out very different. It was a good day and a good place to be walking. We talked as we went, daydreaming of how it might be fun to someday get a burro and spend a summer traveling around in these mountains, leisurely wandering from village to village.
With that and many other thoughts we passed the time as we walked, and couldn't have been too far from Apo when the forest behind us began to vibrate with the sound of an approaching vehicle. It was a pickup, and the driver offered us a ride.
Two elderly women rode with the driver, so we got on the flat-bed and rode standing up, hanging onto the roll bar. Cuauhtémoc perched beside me, using his wings for balance as we swayed from side to side and bounced along on the rough trail.
In less than ten minutes we reached the turnoff for Apo, where we got off, expressed our thanks, and chatted briefly with the driver. He was about the same age and build as don Pablo. He was taking his two elderly passengers to the village to visit the shrine of a virgin. One of them was ill and hoping for a miraculous cure.
"How did you cross that log bridge?" I asked him.
He grinned, and said, "In these mountains it's part of a day's drive."
We said our good-byes and, as it was getting on in the day, we felt we didn't have time to visit the village of Apo. We had hopes of reaching Apatzingán that afternoon and continued on foot. As we left the turnoff behind, the trail immediately widened out and became a road. It was still a horrible washboard surface, but it looked more traveled and our chances of catching a ride looked better.
Before long the needle-shaped mountains came into view again. The tiny cloud still clung to the peak of one as if it were pinned there. Maybe it was vapor trailing out from the volcano.
"Would that mean it's active?" MacClayne said.
"Probably. It must be scary to live under."
The slender cones appeared as close as ever, but we decided they must be a lot farther away than they appeared to be. They were due west of us and I had heard of a tall, twin-peaked volcano out in that area. But that was way over in Colima and Jalisco, perhaps a hundred and fifty kilometers away.
"What's that in miles?" MacClayne said.
"Almost a hundred."
Could we be looking at something so distant and be seeing it so clearly? MacClayne doubted it.
Above and immediately behind us were the snowy slopes of Mount Tancítaro. It too had once been a proud active volcano; its eroded remnants still dominated this region.
The fog had nearly disappeared from the valley below, revealing a dry, treeless landscape with eroded cinder cones. Still no sight of any large population center that could be Apatzingán.
We took another orange break. There was something about orange eating that went together with traveling like this. We didn't bother to carry water; oranges were handier. I again offered bits of mine to Cuauhtémoc, and this time he accepted them.
From there we got a short ride in a truckload of sawdust and emerged covered with the stuff, with packs, bags, and pocketfuls of sawdust. But it didn't bother Cuauhtémoc; he just shook it off.
A short walk took us the rest of the way to a road junction with a very tiny hamlet consisting of only three or four habitations.
"Do you have any idea of where we might be?" MacClayne said.
"It should be Copertiro. The driver of the pickup said we could catch a bus in that place."
There was an asphalt road which went northward, up into the mountains and presumably to Los Reyes. The road began here, or, rather, it ended here. We would of course go south, and in that direction there was only an unpaved washboard surface.
No vehicles were in sight.
In front of one of the houses was a tiny roadside restaurant which apparently catered to truckers. It consisted of a crude table with a bench on either side, but lacked anything overhead to shelter customers from the sun and rain. The only person around was an elderly lady who was apparently the proprietress.
"¿Es Copertiro?" I asked.
"Sí."
I asked if there was a bus for Apatzingán.
"Ya viene," It's on its way here. she said, and told us it would take us to Buenavista. There we'd have to change buses.
I glanced at MacClayne, who gave a nod to indicate that he'd understood. "We seem to be at the right place," he said to me, then to the lady, "¿Hay café?"
The lady shook her head. She didn't have much else either, except for several crates of soft drinks. I had a cola and requested water for the bird. MacClayne didn't want anything. Hopefully, the bus would be here soon; if not, maybe we could hitch a ride on some other vehicle. Either way, we expected to be in Apatzingán by evening; it was now mid-afternoon.
MacClayne read one of his books, and I took out my journal. Cuauhtémoc scratched in the pebbles nearby.
The Needle Peaks weren't visible from here, but the long, snowy ridge of Tancítaro still towered above and behind us. This was the western side of it, the hidden slopes I'd never seen before. The ridge now lay between us and Uruapan, separating me from Chayo.
I sat there thinking of the night we'd spent together in Los Reyes, that town to the north of us, the place where the paved road went.
Walking had kept me comfortably warm, but as I sat there I began to cool off. My clothes were still slightly damp from the soaking of the evening before, and they began to take on the chill of the air around me.
An hour went by. No bus, and no other traffic either. The proprietress was the only visible inhabitant of the entire region. Everything around took on a desolate appearance; even the trees and grass were dry and brown, a prelude to the parched valley below. Only the empty road connected us with the rest of the world.
Cuauhtémoc hopped up to perch on a branch beside me, looking over my shoulder as I wrote. The cold didn't seem to bother him. Or MacClayne either, who sat reading in a silence broken only by the occasional turning of a page, making a faint rustling sound that echoed out into the emptiness.
Insects didn't chirp and birds didn't sing. At long last, the beginnings of a faint vibration resonated in the distance. An approaching vehicle? But it was more a feeling than a sound, something so subtle that I wasn't sure if I heard it or not. Cuauhtémoc raised his head. MacClayne lowered his book and looked up. I got up and stretched my arms and legs, but still didn't see anything. Minutes passed; eventually a tiny speck appeared on the road above us, It was a bus, winding its way down the mountainside from Los Reyes. Hopefully, it was the one that would take us down into the valley.
MacClayne waved to flag it down while I gathered up Cuauhtémoc and took a last look in the direction of the snow-capped ridge. The mountain was no longer to be seen; then I realized the sun was also gone. The sky had turned gray and hung low overhead.
"Is this our bus?" MacClayne asked.
It had come to a halt beside us and the door opened. The destination read: BUENAVISTA.
We got on. It was only a third full, and we found a seat near the front where we could see through the windshield as well as the side window. The bus began to move, and almost immediately came to the end of the smooth asphalt surface where there was a jarring crash. We were pounding our way down the washboard road towards the valley.
A huge rain drop splashed on the window beside us. It was followed by another, and within seconds it was raining fiercely.
hillside of scrub
Through the water-streaked panes I saw oak trees, or maybe they weren't oaks; anyway they were deciduous. The pines were gone, so we'd lost elevation and were entering another ecosystem. Before long, the deciduous trees themselves thinned out, and eventually there were only nopal cacti scattered here and there. Several cinder cones loomed in the canyon below and ahead of us.
I imagined that all of this would normally be a dry brown, but the storm had turned everything into a bluish gray.
Icy water trickled in around the loose, rattling window frames, and with each jarring bounce I got spattered in the face.
We came to a stretch where the steep hillsides receded, and the canyon broadened out to form a narrow plain where the road was flat and the water puddled up. We squished and splashed our way along, at times like an old-time paddle-wheeler chugging down a river of soupy mud.
"Can you picture this place ever being dry?" I said.
"It must be a dust bowl," he said. "Another Ecclefechan."
"Eccl--?"
"Ecclefechan. It's a town in Kirkcudbright, about thirty miles from Dundrennan." He paused to recall a refrain and shift gears to Broad Scots of the Border Country:
"Ecclefechan--where the craas flee erse-wise
tay keep the stoor oot o' their een."
"'Craas flee' would be 'crows fly'?" I said.
MacClayne grinned and nodded.
"And they're trying to keep the 'stoor' out of their eyes," I said. "What's stoor?"
"Dust," he said, and finished the translation: "The crows fly ass-backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes."
"Dust, you say. I should've guessed. The Norwegian word is støv." There were a lot of Scandinavian words in Lowland Scots--"bra," meaning good, "foo" meaning drunk and "flit" meaning move were a few I'd come across in MacClayne's stories and poems.
The bus squished on.
"¡Que mierda!" It was a woman's voice, slightly slurred, and came from the seat behind us. I stole a quick glance. There were two of them sharing a bottle. I hoped Cuauhtémoc wouldn't smell it and demand a swig.
The windshield wipers oscillated back and forth, each swipe clearing water from the pane long enough to allow a brief and distorted glimpse down the road. Directly ahead was a treeless cinder cone which gradually grew in size as we approached.
Between it and us, in the near distance, I could make out an indistinct mottled mass that covered a wide area. As we drew closer, I could see that it was composed of individual creatures, which, as they came into focus, turned out to cattle blocking the road in front of us. We came to a halt as horsemen rode back and forth to divide them up and herd them to one side or the other to make way for us. The action was in slow motion as the animals slogged through the mud. The cattle were Brahmans, which I had been told were imported from India and cross-bred with European cattle to make them more resistant to the intense heat for which this region was famous.
At last we were moving again, nearing the cinder cone. We were slightly above it, so I could see into its hollow crater. Although I'd seen dozens of these small volcanoes, I was always curious to see one more, and I watched intently as the road curved around it. On the slopes there grew a few scattered nopal cacti, ubiquitous in this part of the world.
The volcano behind us, we were again pounding and crashing our way down a washboard surface. Hillsides were closing in from both sides as the canyon narrowed and deepened. There were especially loud crashes that shook the bus to its very chassis as the wheels fell into larger holes.
"Fuck! This shit sucks!" It was one of the women in the seat behind us, and for a moment I mused over how such a phrase might be translated into English. MacClayne glanced at me and grinned. Had he understood it? Then it hit me that the woman was expressing herself in English--not in Spanish.
In the next instant something flew past us, narrowly missing MacClayne's head. Cuauhtémoc let out a loud "Rhhhhhhh!" and then jumped from my lap and took off after it. It was a lady chicken and she reversed direction, half-flying, half-scurrying toward the back of the bus with Cuauhtémoc hot on her tail. The owner was also in the chase, running a poor third. I was fourth and last, slipping and sliding on the wet floor as I pursued Cuauhtémoc.
"¡Ariba la pollita!" shouted one of the drunken women.
"¡Ariba el gallito!" shouted the other.
The birds scurried under seats, then flew back over the tops of them. Back and forth they went, from one end of the bus to the other.
The chicken owner finally cornered his hen, and I grabbed for Cuauhtémoc. Just then the bus gave a lurch; the owner landed on a nearby passenger and I fell on top of the owner. The passenger cursed the owner and the owner cursed me, and I pretended I didn't understand Spanish.
"Cuauhtémoc!" I said, after finally apprehending him and hauling him back to our seat. "How could you do this to me?"
MacClayne was laughing.
The booze-guzzling women in the seat behind us were snickering and snorting. A moment later there was a loud rattle as one of them opened the window, shoving it upwards with all her might, sticking her head out into the wind and rain, vomiting into the storm.
My curiosity overcame me and I turned to look, and found myself staring into the face of one of the female drunks.
"What are you looking at?" she said in English, slurring her words and sitting almost immobile in her seat. She paused, then let out a torrent of four letter words that ended with: "Fucking assholes! Go to hell! You're on the road to hell anyway! You know that? You're on the road to hell!"
Having said that, she passed out and collapsed across the lap of her companion who peered at me through a drunken haze.
Cuauhtémoc hopped onto the backrest and gave their bottle a thirsty look.
"Let's move," I suggested as I grabbed hold of my bird.
We found some empty seats towards the rear of the bus. We couldn't see through the windshield from here; but the chances of getting puked on were less.
"I suppose people who die of drink also end up in Niflheim?" MacClayne said with a grin.
Across the aisle was another drinking party, this one more discreet. Three or four guys were quietly passing a bottle back and forth. A couple seats ahead of them sat the chicken owner with his hen. She raised her head over the backrest, spied Cuauhtémoc, and gave a conspiratorial cluck.
"Por favor, Cuauhtémoc," I pleaded, "Pórtate bien."
MacClayne eyed the booze as it went from hand to hand. Perhaps he was thinking nostalgically of his seagoing days when a sailor might smuggle a bottle aboard and pass it around in the forecastle.
At my instigation, we got up and moved again, this time to a seat over the rear wheels. It was the worst place on the bus. There was no leg room because of the wheel configuration, and we also got the full impact of every rock and pothole the wheel slammed into.
Rain beat on the roof and struck obliquely against the side window. We were heading into the full intensity of the storm. I looked out the window, but all I saw was water and darkness.
Suddenly, the road noise stopped, and we found ourselves cruising along smoothly on a paved surface. Within minutes the bus came to a stop. Everyone was getting off.
I slipped Cuauhtémoc's makeshift raincoat over his head as we waited for the crowd to clear. Eventually only the female drunks remained in their seat. One growled an indistinct phrase as we passed by on our way to the door.
"¿Buenavista?" I asked the driver.
"Sí. ¿A dónde van?"
"Apatzingán," I said.
He pointed up ahead, and told me that's where we'd find our bus.
Torrents of rain pelted down as we dashed to a sidewalk where we stood under the eaves of a nearby roof and then paused to look around. The bus had let us off on what appeared to be the town's main drag. That was unusual; normally passengers disembarked either at the plaza or at a depot.
The passengers who'd gotten off with us were also huddled under whatever would serve as shelter. As I peered through the sheets of rain I could barely see the other side of the street. According to the driver, the bus for Apatzingán should be here soon.
The two drunken women finally came stumbling out of the bus. Somehow they made it onto the street where they stood in the midst of the downpour, holding on to each other for support as they looked around.
"It's raining," observed one.
"Is it really?" responded her companion. The two deliberated for some moments longer, then wandered off through the downpour.
A bus drove up with a destination that read: APATZINGÁN. I'd gathered that the road from here on was excellent, so we could consider ourselves almost at our destination. People began to board.
I looked at MacClayne and he looked at me.
"What do you think?" said MacClayne.
For a long time I gazed at the bus. Finally I said, "Apatzingán should be entered in the morning, as the sun rises overhead. That is my vision of how it ought to be."
continued in Chapter 20
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