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chapter 22
I woke up in the morning, well rested and knowing where I was, in a town called Te-pal-ca-tepec. I could say it now, having practiced it diligently the evening before. Since it ended in "tepec" the name was probably of Náhuatl origin; the land of the Tarascans was behind us.
The spooky thoughts of the previous day no longer bothered me, and this morning I felt a thrill to be on this journey. The sun was shining and we'd soon be heading up into the coastal range.
Cuauhtémoc was strutting about, waiting for us to get up and get the day started. MacClayne had already risen and was again reading the Odyssey.
"How did you sleep last night?" he asked. There was a trace of annoyance in his voice. I wondered what it might be due to.
"Fine, and you?" I said.
He looked at the bird for a moment before speaking. "Does that rooster have to crow all night long?"
"I don't think he crows that much. Not any more. He used to, when he first moved in with me, but he stopped that."
"He hasn't stopped," said MacClayne grimly.
"Maybe I've just gotten used to it."
"No doubt you have."
Cuauhtémoc hopped on my lap, and I put my arms around him. "Poor bird," I said. "Sometimes he needs to express himself."
"Express himself? In the middle of the bloody night? He kept me awake with his noise!"
"That's a value judgment," I said. "How would you feel if someone said that about your poetry? Called it noise."
"You think my poetry is nothing more than a rooster's crowing?"
"I see beauty in both," I said, trying to be diplomatic. I seriously doubted that the bird had crowed more than once, maybe twice at the very most. MacClayne was probably exaggerating, but I thought it best not to say that.
"Maybe I should take him to my next poetry reading, have him crow between verses." MacClayne's voice was thick with sarcasm, but it struck me as a thought with some potential merit. "Why not?" I said. "It might go over really well."
The bird and I went out to the water pila where he perched on the edge and preened his feathers while I shaved with cold water. After that I made one more try at phoning Uruapan. The line was still down. Cuauhtémoc looked disappointed. Perhaps he too had hoped to hear Chayo's voice.
"A promising day," MacClayne said when we returned to our room. The beautiful sunshine had apparently put him back in a good mood. He was ready to go, so we set out.
At the depot we learned that our bus would be leaving in an hour, and so there was time for breakfast. Nearby we found a market like the one in Tancítaro, though much larger. Dozens of vendors sold everything from farm products to cooked food. As in markets of other towns, the roof was of corrugated metal, and the stalls were concrete.
"How about here?" I suggested, as we passed a stall where a middle-aged lady was chatting with a young girl who seemed to be her assistant.
MacClayne nodded, and in his charmingly accented Spanish he asked the lady, "¿Qué hay de comer?"
"Carne de res o carne de puerco."
We ordered two of beef. The image of the cute little piglet somehow remained with us.
"¿De dónde son?" the lady asked us as she cooked.
"California," I told her. I'd discovered early on that most people didn't know where Minnesota was, so it was simpler to say California. After all, MacClayne and I had both spent some time there, and in fact that's where we'd originally met, at an antiwar demonstration in San Francisco. So it was a handy simplification, and people seemed to like references to places like California and San Francisco.
We chatted a bit, and I mentioned that we were now heading in the direction of Coalcomán and parts beyond.
"¿De veras?" Coalcomán was where she'd grown up, she told us. There had been an iron mine nearby, and the town used to have an ore mill and smelter. Her father had worked in it. That had been years before, when she was a little girl. It was closed now; the mills and smelters had moved to Lázaro, the coastal city where a seaport was being constructed.
MacClayne nodded in an understanding way, so I didn't translate. We finished our meals and headed off to the depot.
The bus we were about to board was large and stub-nosed, the kind we called "good-road buses." This indicated that our ride to Coalcomán would be fairly smooth. The other kind, which we'd ridden back in the mountains, were smaller and had the engine in front, sticking out like a dog's snout. Such buses had a battered look about them, but they were built to take battering; "bad-road buses" was what MacClayne and I had named them.
As we got on and took our seats, I noticed that the fellow across the aisle had a fighting cock on his lap. The rooster glanced haughtily at Cuauhtémoc, as if in challenge. Cuauhtémoc gave the young upstart a look of casual contempt.
Immediately on leaving town we began climbing into the mountains, ascending steadily on a winding but well-maintained gravel road. Fortunately, the weather seemed to be improving.
The countryside was completely different. The rocks and even the trees were unlike those I was used to seeing in Chayo's world of the Meseta Volcánica. Cinder cones and lava flows were behind us now. Here the rocks exposed in roadcuts were sedimentary, and only at the very top was there an occasional deposit of volcanic ash. One such deposit was well over a meter thick, and I tried to imagine a volcanic eruption powerful enough to send that much ash all the way up here. As we rolled on, higher and deeper into the mountains, the deposits of ash thinned out and then disappeared.
There was no forest, only scattered deciduous trees which I at first assumed to be oak, but MacClayne suggested they were probably a variety of mesquite or acacia. In draws and ravines they grew thickly, but not on the rounded hillsides, which were exposed and dry.
The gravel road was good all the way to Coalcomán, and in less than two hours we were there. The bus let us off at the plaza, under the shade of a tremendously large tree. I don't know what kind it was, except that it was deciduous. It was the only vegetation in the square, and its wide branches gave shelter to the many vendors underneath.
"Like the mythical World Tree," I said.
Cuauhtémoc looked upwards with interest, perhaps visualizing one of the upper branches as a potential roosting place.
But, contrary to our expectations, the town was not surrounded by scenic mountain peaks, nor did it seem to retain the atmosphere of its colorful past as a mining center.
"What's our next destination?" asked MacClayne.
"Villa Victoria," I said, and went to ask when the bus would be departing. The answer was four o'clock. It was still only ten in the morning.
"Maybe we should have coffee," said MacClayne.
We walked down the street till we found a restaurant. Along one wall stood a jukebox which MacClayne eyed with suspicion. Classical music was about the only kind he ever listened to. He hated everything else, especially if it came from a squawky jukebox. But the monster was unplugged and therefore apparently disarmed. And there were no other customers.
We ordered coffee for ourselves and a glass of water for the bird. After a few disparaging words about jukeboxes, we got back to talking about the awesome tree in the plaza.
"There was a tree like that in Norse mythology," I said. "Ydrasil they called it. A story goes that Oðin hung himself on it for nine cold and windy days and nights."
"Why did he do that?"
"In pursuit of wisdom," I explained.
"I suppose they didn't have schools and universities back in those days."
We went on to talk about other mythical deeds and experiences of legendary suffering. MacClayne recalled an epic beer famine which had ravaged Britain during World War II, while he was in the Royal Marines and stationed at Sandwich, in Kent.
". . . And then a huge supply of beer suddenly came in. There was as much as anybody could drink. But because of the war there were other shortages as well, and the pubs didn't have enough glasses for the numerous drinkers. Tipplers were drinking from jam jars, pots, bowls, even army mess tins, and we didn't have any. I was wandering about this night with Maudwyn Morgan, a friend whom we called Maudlin Morgan because of his drunk behavior every payday. Surely we were two of the most frustrated drinkers alive, walking around jarless that night; all the beer you could pay for and nothing to drink from.
"We wandered morosely around suffering great misery, and in the course of our dejected meanderings found ourselves outside a cemetery. We glanced over the wall and spotted among old dusty wreaths and faded artificial flowers a pair of coarse china vases, shaped like cornucopia or large green ice-cream cornets. Before the days of plastic they were in common use to hold flowers and other offerings from the living to the dead.
"Slipping over the wall, we secured one each, emptied out the old flowers and wiped them clean. Returning swiftly to one of the pubs, the publican accepted our containers without a tinge of surprise, filling them from the beer pump and passing them back with a big head of foam frothing over the edge."
Cuauhtémoc had been gazing at MacClayne, perhaps entranced by his melodic voice. Now and then the bird shifted slightly from one leg to the other, seeming to inhale the aroma of the frothy brew so deliciously described by MacClayne, and impatient for a glass to appear under his beak.
"Establishing ourselves at the end of the bar with our large beer-filled and re-filled china cones, we no doubt presented a fine image of small Falstaffians and soon other drinkers wanted to know where we had gotten the big green drinking horns. It wasn't long before Marines and soldiers began appearing with large china vessels. The style spread rapidly through Kent and Southwestern England, perhaps as far as London.
"Graveyards were scoured clean, and--"
MacClayne had stopped in mid sentence. His jovial grin was gone. Three young fellows had just walked in and ordered beer. One was at the jukebox.
"I wonder if they're going to play that goddamn thing?" MacClayne growled.
One of the trio plugged it in and fired it up. And so there it was, blasting away at full volume.
"Are you ready to go?" MacClayne said, getting up.
"Yes," I said, but then paused as I recognized the tune. "It's one of Chayo's favorites."
"Are you coming or not?"
"I'd like to hear it," I said.
"I'll see you in the plaza," he said. Leaving his unfinished coffee on the table, he paid for both of us and walked out the door.
I sat back down and listened to the song. It was sung by Juan Gabriel. I had no voice for singing, but I had often recited these lines to Chayo:
No tengo dinero
ni nada que dar
lo unico que tengo
es amor para amar
si asi tu me quieres
te puedo querer
I have no money
and nothing to give
the only thing I have
is my love
if you'll have me, poor as I am,
then I can love you
The Juan Gabriel song was followed by one I didn't care for. But I sat there anyway, wondering why MacClayne had just stomped out the door. He disliked jukeboxes--but couldn't he endure a single song? On the other hand, maybe the beer-drinking at the other table had somehow clicked with old memories of himself as a young drinker, beginning his career in booze.
But poor MacClayne. He couldn't drink any more; that was what a doctor had told him. So had several former employers. Even the director of the San Francisco Zoological Gardens had offered such an opinion--when MacClayne was one day found in a bird cage at the zoo. It was on the front page of the morning newspaper, with MacClayne's explanation that he was passing through the park on his way from a bar when a Crested Grebe called to him by name and asked for a nip of good Scotch whiskey. Unfortunately, the thirsty avian was not available to show up in court and verify the account.
The judge was quite impressed with MacClayne's fondness for cages, and kindly offered to provide him with living space in one for the next thirty days--he wouldn't take no for an answer, and MacClayne was obliged to accept. Although MacClayne was something of a leftwing radical, perhaps even an activist at times, he'd probably spent more time in various jails for being drunk and disorderly than for his political activities.
But his drinking days were supposedly over. Nowadays, like an old salt who sits in a tavern and recalls his days on the water, MacClayne would sit with coffee cup in hand and reminisce about his years on the sauce. But like so many men who were forced into premature retirement from their life's calling, MacClayne had not taken it without dissatisfaction, and at times fell into moods when he expressed bitterness at life itself.
Well, I didn't think it would do any good to go chasing after him at this moment when he was in a bad mood. Maybe if I waited a while he'd get over it. I finished my coffee and ordered another. The guys at the other table continued to play the jukebox, and began another round of beers.
Cuauhtémoc was nudging me with his beak. Lost in my thoughts, I didn't pay much attention till finally he gave me a jab that was difficult to ignore.
"No," I told the bird. "It's too early in the day to be drinking."
I took another sip of coffee, and Cuauhtémoc gave me another poke.
"No," I said. "And that's final." He glared back at me. But I wasn't in a mood to try to reason with him. I stood up to leave and held my arm out for him to hop on to. "¡Vámonos!" I said.
But he just sat there, so I lifted him up. With his talons he clung to the backrest of the chair. I pried him loose and headed out the door, pausing only to leave some pesos for my last coffee.
"¡Travieso!" I scolded him as we stepped out onto the street. The bird gave me a sullen look. For a while I wandered around aimlessly with him on my arm. I thought of finding a phone and making another attempt to call Chayo, but right now I was a bit upset and didn't feel like it. Anyway the line was probably still down and I was pretty sure that Chayo had left Uruapan by now. Finally I went back to the plaza where I found MacClayne sitting under the branches of our huge mythical tree. As I had hoped, he was back in a genial mood.
"I guess we've got at least three hours until the bus leaves. Do you want to see more of the town?" he said. "Or are you ready to move on?"
The sun was still shining nicely. It was a beautiful warm day, just perfect for a day in the country.
"I'm ready to leave," I said.
At that moment Cuauhtémoc leapt from my arm and flew up into the tree.
"Cuauhtémoc! You come back down here this instant!"
The bird just sat there, perched on a limb over my head.
"We're leaving!" I said.
He remained where he was.
I called to him, both in English and in Spanish. Passers-by glanced my way, and a mother with her small children stopped to watch. "Pajarito," I heard a little girl say. MacClayne was giving me an impatient look.
"You wouldn't dare sit up there like that if Chayo were here!" I exclaimed in exasperation. But Chayo wasn't here, and so he did dare. What could I do? I was helpless and so I gave in. I went to one of the shops along the plaza and bought a can of beer. Hopefully this town didn't have an ordinance against drinking in public. I glanced to make sure there weren't any police around. Then I held the can up for the bird to see, tapped it loudly, popped it open, and poured some into a tin cup from my pack.
The bird came flying down and dipped his beak thirstily into the beer. As he drank, I imagined the eyes of the entire town upon me, but when I glanced around, I saw that hardly anybody had bothered to take note. Thank god for that!
I was just hoping MacClayne wouldn't comment on this. He didn't, and I was grateful for his silence. The bird finished what was in the cup and I poured the rest out on the ground. "That's all you get," I said, and gathered him up. He was already beginning to hiccup.
With the rebellious rooster on my arm, we at last set out. We walked to the edge of town, and almost immediately got a ride in the back of a pickup that was going all the way to Villa Victoria.
"Our lucky day!" MacClayne and I said to each other. The road was gravel but in good condition and we sped along. The bird was still hiccuping and still in a bad mood, the beer apparently having placated him only slightly. He was sulking and went to perch by himself on the upturned tailgate.
We hadn't been riding for very long when we hit an unexpected bump in the road, causing us to be sent up into the air, only to crash down on the hard metal truck bed. When I got reoriented and glanced around, I realized that Cuauhtémoc wasn't there. And we'd just rounded a bend so I couldn't see the road behind.
I pounded frantically on the cab, asking the driver to stop. He did. But he didn't have time to go back for the bird, so MacClayne and I got off and lost our ride. It was a good 500 meters back that we finally found the bird, sitting in the middle of the road looking slightly dazed.
"You cost us a ride!" I scolded. The bird hiccuped as he stumbled onto my arm. I was so angry that I couldn't think of anything else to say to him. Meanwhile, MacClayne wore a frown suggesting that he was annoyed at both of us.
There wasn't much traffic, but the next pickup also stopped and gave us a ride that lasted 15 or 20 minutes. This left us still a long way from Villa Victoria, but it improved our spirits greatly, and by now we were some distance into the hills. They were covered with grass, mostly dry-looking with some patches of green. Trees grew only in the ravines.
No more vehicles came for a while; we just kept on walking till we came to a grove of trees which sheltered a small creek where we went wading. Downstream we found a waist-deep pool and swam a bit. Cuauhtémoc waded around in the mud along the edge, and by the time we were ready to go, he'd gotten himself gloriously muddied up.
"You're not riding on my arm like that," I said. I picked him up, squawks and all, and plunked him in the cool water. "You deserve this!" I said grimly, and held him there, only his neck and shoulders protruding above the surface.
Suddenly I realized what an awful thing I was doing. I lifted him out of the water. "Are you okay?" I asked, concerned that the poor bird wasn't traumatized. He was shivering slightly.
"¡Pobrecito!" I wiped him dry and held him close. "Eres mi pajarito, y soy tu humano," I said. "Para siempre."
"You're my little bird, and I'm your human. Forever."
Cuauhtémoc tucked his head under my arm. And as if in response to the intensity of my feelings, a powerful gust of wind swept the hillside, tearing leaves from trees and swirling them around us.
It was a good hour before we saw another vehicle, and when we did, it was heading the other way, back towards Coalcomán. We continued walking, not with the expectation of getting to Villa Victoria on foot, but because we felt like walking.
Except for wooded ravines the countryside was open and grassy with scattered nopal cacti. These were the same type of cacti I'd seen around Uruapan. Except for them, however, everything was different in these hills. Not even the rocks were the same. It felt strange to be in a land without cinder cones and lava. There was just thinly laminated shale.
Cattle grazed here and there, but we saw no people. There were a few clouds in the sky, just enough to make it look the way a beautiful sky is supposed to look.
Off to the north, I could see the bluish outline of the Meseta Volcánica, dominated by snow-capped Mount Tancítaro, which, as our road meandered along, was sometimes to the right of us and sometimes to the left, but usually behind us. It seemed so far away. We took a break to snack on oranges, and I took out the map and estimated the straight-line distance from Uruapan to our present location. One hundred and fifty kilometers. Could that be right? I measured it again. Same number.
I finished peeling my orange and shared some with Cuauhtémoc. "Estamos lejos de Chayo," I said, thinking of the enormous distance that separated us from her. The bird looked almost longingly towards the distant plateau. I had the uncanny feeling that he understood my words.
Uruapan ought to be slightly to the east of Tancítaro, though I wasn't sure exactly where to look. But as I kept gazing, the bluish mountains seemed to turn green, and at last I imagined I could see individual pines and even red-tiled roofs. It was a strange feeling to be looking back at the place where I'd met Chayo, found Cuauhtémoc, and experienced so much--and now see it so far away. I'd been there only a few months, but they had been very eventful months. So much that was now part of my life had been entirely new to me back then.
My memories of California were like something from another lifetime. And, in comparison, my childhood in Minnesota belonged to an even earlier incarnation, almost as far back as the Viking era when the first Norsemen found their way to Vinland.
MacClayne stood up. "I hear a car," he said.
In the silence of the mountains, we could hear it long before we actually saw it. It was a Volkswagen bus, and when it finally got to where we were, it stopped for us.
The driver was in his early thirties and wore a wide-brimmed hat, a denim jacket and blue jeans. This was contemporary ranch style, though not exactly Michoacano. An attractive woman in a rebozo and a smart-looking skirt and blouse was with him, and they had a seven- or eight-year-old boy who was dressed like his father, hat and all.
You can often tell what part of México people are from by their hats. The ones worn by the driver and his son were made of straw fiber and had high crowns but no tassel in back, quite different from the style around Uruapan. After the usual introductions, I asked, "¿Ustedes son Norteños?"
"Sí, yo soy de Chihuahua," he affirmed with a grin, and added that his wife was Michoacana, from Coalcomán. "You've been here a while, I would guess?"
"Just a few months," I said.
"¿De veras? That's about how long we've been here," he said. They'd spent the last five years in California, and had returned to México only a few months before.
They now lived on a ranch up in these hills, he told me. I could guess that it was the realization of a long-standing dream for which they'd spent years working and saving in California. Wages were five or even ten times higher in the US, and many Mexicans went there to get a stake they could start out with.
He then glanced at the little boy and said, "Él habla ingles."
The child smiled shyly. He was handsome and bright-looking.
"Do you speak English?" I asked him, in English of course.
"Contéstale al señor," the driver urged his son, who looked away.
"Where did you learn English?" I tried again.
"En California," he replied in Spanish, but to his parents, rather than to me.
"Really? How did you like California?" I asked him.
"Me gusta Michoacán," he whispered to his father.
"Díle en Ingles," his father urged him again, laughing good-naturedly.
"Didn't you like California?" I continued in English.
Again he whispered to his parents in Spanish: "No hay vacas."
I smiled and glanced at MacClayne. The grin on his face indicated that he was following the conversation. "There are plenty of cows in California," MacClayne assured the boy.
"Yes," I said. "As my friend says, there are many cattle."
"Pero no tienen cuernos."
"They don't have horns," I translated for MacClayne.
In apparent validation of the boy's statement, Cuauhtémoc chose that moment to crow, and I said to the boy, "I think the rooster agrees with you. He's also a true Michoacano."
The boy glanced shyly at the bird, and at that point the family turned off onto a smaller road which presumably led to their ranch. We got out of the vehicle to continue on the road to Villa Victoria. This ride had taken us to the top of a ridge where we walked for a while. From there we had an even better view of the Meseta Volcánica, and off to the northwest we could even see the Needle Peaks. A tiny cloud still clung to the crest of one. From the fact that it was always there, I realized it must have been vapor from the volcano.
As before, the hillsides around and below us were grassy and open. Here the grass was dry looking, and I recalled some lines from an old Marine Corps song which Uncle Rolf had taught me years ago, sung to the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home. The verses of it could've been written to describe the countryside around us:
The mountains were high / the rivers were dry / the sun was blazing hot.
Our day was warm, not hot, but the bare, sunburned hills suggested that this might be a very hot place.
Cattle grazed in the distance, and I thought of the little boy who liked cows with horns. Perhaps if Chayo and I were to marry, we might have a little boy like him. He was an intelligent-looking child, and no doubt some day he'd be playing an important role in running the family ranch.
The road followed along the crest of the ridge and around a bend, where we found ourselves looking down into a small, narrow valley with a creek and even a pond like the one we'd swum in. There were also a corral and a building with a red-tiled roof. Like most ranch houses in Michoacán, it was long and single-storied. I guessed that it was of adobe, though at that distance I couldn't tell for sure.
"Chayo dreams of a ranch like that," I said.
"It is idyllic."
"Do you think she would marry me if I could give her that ranch?"
"No question about it. The two of you would live happily ever after."
Cuauhtémoc eyed the ranch and then closed his eyes. I imagined him pleasantly contemplating a life with Chayo and me.
"If only I had the fifty thousand dollars to buy it."
"Is that what a place like that would cost?"
"I have no idea," I said. "It could be many times that, or on the other hand it might be much less. Whatever it is, I don't have it."
I sat there gazing at the red-tiled ranch house, dreaming of how I might come across the money. I pictured myself walking down a street in some town back in California and then suddenly coming upon a money bag fallen out of an armored car. It'd be full of hundred-dollar bills, enough to buy that ranch for Chayo.
"Can you imagine what Alasdair would do with a place like that?" MacClayne remarked. Alasdair MacAlistair was MacClayne's old friend and fellow countryman, the ne'er-do-well scion of a wealthy family who'd lost his inheritance in a card game and hopped a ship to America to escape creditors. There was probably nothing that could outrage MacClayne quite as much as the concept of a Scotlander who couldn't hang onto his money. Nevertheless, the two of them had a common bond in that both were poets, and, in the opinion of some, both reprobates. I'd briefly met Alasdair once when we were both visiting MacClayne at the same time. Alasdair had come by to borrow money, MacClayne told me afterwards. Mostly I knew him from hearing MacClayne rant about him, as he often did.
"Yes," I said. "From what you've told me, Alasdair is always dreaming of a place where he could have a garden and grow vegetables, have a few chickens, write poetry, and eke out a simple living."
"But that was just a dream," said MacClayne. There was profound bitterness in his voice. I'd heard him tell it before and had a pretty good idea of what he was about to say next.
"Suppose he somehow acquired it," MacClayne said, "A rich uncle dies, leaves it to him. Suddenly it's his."
"Yeah, I know," I said.
MacClayne had already told me the story twenty times, so of course he knew that I knew, but he couldn't resist going through the ritual of telling me anyway. "He'd sell it for a tenth of its value and head for the nearest card game. A week later you'd see him, broke and demoralized. Trying to borrow money to pay the rent."
"Yeah," I said, recalling that on the single occasion I'd met Alasdair, he'd asked me for the loan of $20 which I obligingly lent him. He did actually attempt to pay me back, mailing me a check which of course bounced. Well, he tried, poor man. Not that I wasn't angry about it. But I could understand how that gambling obsession had ruined his life. I'd never told MacClayne about that unpaid loan.
"And he never learns. Never changes," MacClayne continued, his voice thick with disgust.
I nodded and gazed down at the red-tiled ranch house which Alasdair would be sure to lose in a card game. A wisp of smoke rose from the house, from a kitchen stove no doubt, and lingered above the roof, almost like a small cloud of doom.
Just the same, I said, "Maybe he could just give that ranch to Chayo and me as a wedding present? Then he could come and stay with us. It would be his home as well as ours."
"That's not Alasdair. He'd have to lose it to some card shark."
Cuauhtémoc stood up and looked at the road, as if suggesting that it was time to be moving on.
A faint sound cut through the silence. An insect perhaps? As it grew louder we could tell it was the steady hum of a vehicle climbing the hill in low gear. Cuauhtémoc saw it first, a tiny dot on the road below, which grew to the size of a pickup. Although it was full of people and supplies, the driver was willing to stop for us. Three or four sat in the cab, and seven or eight others, mostly children and teen-agers, were crammed into the back where they sat wedged in between bags and boxes. It appeared they'd been to town for their monthly shopping.
MacClayne and I climbed in the back of the crowded truck, and people found room for us. I sat on a box with Cuauhtémoc on my lap while MacClayne found room on the wheel guard. Near us a woman of about thirty five sat on a spare tire holding a small girl. She was the only adult in the back and from time to time she spoke to one or another of the youngsters, telling them to do this or that. She gave the orders, but did so gently, and they responded when she spoke. She vaguely reminded me of an aunt who'd occasionally looked after me when I was a child.
Having ascended the slope immediately below, we sped along the winding road which was getting progressively more bumpy. It hadn't been bad for the first stretch after leaving Coalcomán, but by now it was a washboard surface, and in places even worse. The box under me bounced and kept shifting into an unworkable position that left me with insufficient room for my legs. I clung to the side of the truck with one hand and kept pulling the box back into position with the other. Cuauhtémoc sat tenaciously, digging into my leg with his talons and frequently extending his wings for balance.
The road was cut into a mountainside and led upwards much of the time. Again and again I thought we had almost reached the top of the mountain, but we still continued climbing the switchback road. From time to time we caught panoramic glimpses of everything from Mount Tancítaro to the Needle Peaks. From this angle the Needles were lined up almost one behind the other to appear like a single towering volcano with that ever-present vapor cloud. The Valley of Infiernillo could also be seen now, and somewhere on the far side of it would be Apatzingán.
"That's where it happened." It was the voice of the woman with the child on her lap. I glanced around and saw her pointing to a ravine below the road.
"Were they all killed?" a boy asked.
My curiosity got the better of me. "What happened?" I asked.
"A pickup went off the road back there," she said. I craned my neck to see where she was pointing, but by now the place was behind us.
"An accident?" I asked.
"No," she said, and told me of an incident from the previous summer. A young fellow had asked a girl to marry him, but she refused. So he kidnapped her, with intentions of forcibly taking her to bed and then marrying her. He had her in his pickup and was heading towards his ranch when the girl grabbed the steering wheel and sent the vehicle crashing down into the ravine below. Both she and her kidnapper died instantly. Another passenger died a few days later; it was she who told what had happened.
"Who was this third victim?"
"The fellow's sister-in-law. She was the one who had come up with the idea, planned it, and persuaded the man to do it."
"Some sister-in-law!" I said.
"¡De veras!" said the woman, and shook her head.
"But why was she with them on the ride?" I asked.
"She was also a friend of the intended bride. She persuaded the girl to get into the vehicle and ride off with them."
"So the fellow didn't kidnap her at gun point?" I asked.
"No, the girl thought they were just taking her to visit a neighbor's ranch. When she realized what their intentions were, she demanded that they stop at once and let her out. But they wouldn't let her go, so she grabbed the wheel."
Robando su novia, as it was called, kidnapping one's bride, had some status in custom and tradition. It'd been the theme of a ranchera movie which I'd once watched with Chayo. In the film, the girl had wanted her boyfriend to kidnap her, and was angry only because he took so long to make up his mind to do it. I mentioned that film to the woman.
"There are people who get their movie fantasies mixed up with reality," she said.
I translated the story for MacClayne.
"Ask if the guy was drunk," he said.
"It doesn't sound that way," I told him.
"Ask her anyway," he insisted. "It's the sort of thing people do when they get drunk."
I shook my head and said nothing. MacClayne was given to interpreting the dynamics of human relations in terms of alcohol consumption. Usually that amused me; right now I was annoyed. It struck me as sadly ironic that he, a master storyteller, was making no attempt to understand the incident in its cultural context or appreciate the interaction of personalities. I silently sympathized with the plight of the kidnapper. Poor guy. He was a reluctant anti-hero, pushed into action by a meddling sister-in-law. Perhaps she was herself secretly in love with the guy. At the same time I had to admire the lady whose 'no' was final.
Cuauhtémoc gave me a look of understanding. I stroked his feathers and said to him appreciatively, "Tu sí comprendes."
"¿Es su mascota?" the woman asked, apparently sensing that the bird was a pet.
"Sí, es mi amiguito," I said, and told her the bird's story. The children turned their heads to listen. As I finished, a little boy tugged at the woman's sleeve and said, "Mommy, when can I have a rooster?"
A patch of white clouds hugged the slopes above. The engine was now laboring in low gear as we went steadily up, up and up, winding along hair-pin curves. Suddenly we were in dense fog. The sun was gone, visibility was nil and our vehicle slowed to an even slower crawl. I shivered slightly as the damp chill cut through my shirt.
A ghostly pine tree appeared by the roadside and crept past us. Then another. Overhanging branches brushed our heads, and a cone fell into my lap beside Cuauhtémoc. Then suddenly the fog was gone. We were above the clouds, in a world of pine forest. Golden shafts of sunlight angled down between the trees.
I inhaled the fragrance of the conifers, and no longer felt so far from Uruapan. There was another brief glimpse of Tancítaro. Its snowy crest glistened in the sunshine, making it appear very close as I looked out across the sea of clouds. It gave the illusion that I could have stepped out of this vehicle and floated over to it.
Despite the bouncing, the child on the woman's lap was dozing off. "Wake up," the woman said. "Owls eat little girls who fall asleep."
"Is she your daughter?" I asked.
"No, she's my niece, the daughter of my brother. He's the driver," she said, nodding towards the cab. The others, she told me, were also members of her extended family, who lived on three separate ranchos where they raised cattle and horses. There was no electricity, and it was an hour's walk for the children to the school they attended. Originally the family had come from a place near Coalcomán.
She, in turn, asked me about our travels, and I told her we were making a tour of Michoacán.
"Michoacán es bonito, ¿no?" she said.
"Sí lo es," I affirmed. Her comment had surprised me. I hadn't expected these mountain people to be aware of the natural beauty of their region. I'd been to many places in the U.S. where the locals didn't seem to appreciate the scenery.
The road began to descend, and there were no more glimpses of Tancítaro. I guessed we had crossed over to the Pacific slopes of this range, and I expected to catch a glimpse of the ocean which shouldn't be more than 50 kilometers away. But all I saw was pine forest.
At a fork in the road, the pickup turned off onto a trail which would presumably take these people to their ranches. We hurriedly said our good-byes as we got out to continue on to Villa Victoria.
We sat on some rocks by the roadside and peeled oranges as we gradually recovered from the intense bouncing and pounding to which we'd been subjected. I kept thinking of how the woman in the truck resembled my aunt whom I hadn't seen for well over a decade. Of course my aunt had blue eyes and blond hair while this woman had dark eyes and black hair. My aunt spoke Norwegian, and this woman Spanish. But when she spoke I felt I was hearing my aunt's voice. My aunt had gone back to Norway, and it was a while since I'd written to her.
I took out the map. That morning we'd ridden from Tepalcatepec to Coalcomán in less than two hours. Using a twig to measure with, I estimated the distance to be about sixty kilometers. From there to Villa Victoria was only twenty kilometers; it was now late in the afternoon and we weren't there yet. There is no relationship, of course, between straight-line distance and travel time in mountainous terrain.
Shadows were lengthening. The sun still shone on a hillside above us, but not much of the day was left. There was a sound like the flowing of water in a creek, though there was no sign of water nearby. It was probably the wind moving through the trees that made the sound.
MacClayne broke the silence. "After Villa Victoria, where do we go?" he asked.
"Aquila," I said, and circled it on the map. "And we'll reach the coast at La Placita."
"And after that?"
"We simply follow the coast to Lázaro," I said.
MacClayne took the map, studied it for a bit and said, "There's no road down the coast."
There was a brief pause.
"It's probably just not shown," I said.
"How much of a piece is it?"
I retrieved the twig I'd just discarded and used it to measure the coastal segment. "Two hundred kilometers," I said.
"What's that in miles?"
"A hundred and twenty."
"That's a good stretch of road," he said. "Do you think the cartographers would have overlooked it?"
"Well, they did, it appears."
"How could that happen?"
"This is the hinterland of México, basically unexplored and unmapped until quite recently," I said. "The people who've given us rides are recent settlers who've moved up here during the last decade or so."
"A last frontier?"
"Basically yes."
A slight breeze passed through the pines with a faint whistle that the forest reserved for travelers who ventured this way. Cuauhtémoc was scratching in the pine needles which carpeted the ground.
"So what makes you think there's a road along the coast?"
"There has to be," I said.
"Why does there have to be?"
"So people can get places."
"I don't follow your logic."
"No? Roads are a necessary part of modern infrastructure."
"I'm asking if there's one along the coast."
"I guess I'm not communicating."
"No, you're not."
I stared at a pine sapling in front of me and tried to contain my irritation rather than retort with some hasty comment.
MacClayne said nothing more. Cuauhtémoc was still scratching in the pine needles. In a roadcut nearby, I saw an outcropping of slate, the first metamorphic rock I'd seen in these mountains. I went over to study it and tried to get my mind off the irritating exchange with MacClayne. I felt sure the coastal road existed, but it struck me that I had presented my view in a rather dumb way. But what could I have said? After all, there was no evidence of my road. As I stood there, staring rather absent-mindedly at the slate and thinking about the coastal road, Cuauhtémoc joined me and took a peck at the rock, sharing my investigation.
In Britain this slate might have been mined for use as roofing material, in years past at least. MacClayne had been telling me about that just the other day. I wondered if they still roofed their houses with slate in Britain.
MacClayne was reading when we returned. The forest on the hillside above had become a deep, somber green; the sun was no longer on it. I glanced at my watch. Close to seven, and still no vehicle had passed. I took out a book and began reading, but before long I found myself squinting, struggling to make out the words which had suddenly become very indistinct on the page. I blinked my eyes and looked around. Night was nearly upon us. Twilight was very brief in the tropics and I could never quite get used to that.
I sighed, and, just as I was putting my book away, I heard the loud crash of a vehicle which came coasting and bouncing down to us. In the next instant I was blinded by bright headlights. I jumped up and waved my hand.
It turned out to be the bus which had left Coalcomán at four o'clock and had finally caught up with us.
"¿Qué tal?" "¿Cómo les fue?" Voices greeted us as we climbed aboard. It was a couple of fellows we'd talked briefly with back in Coalcomán when asking about the bus schedule. They grinned and asked us how our day had been.
"Pues muy bien," I said, and we began chatting, but not for long, because as the bus began lurching forward, and, on account of the road noise, conversation became nearly impossible. Inside the bus the din was far worse than sitting in the back of the open pickup; it was like being locked in an iron box which was being worked over by sledgehammers.
Hardly five minutes had passed before a patch of lights appeared in the dark hills below. Villa Victoria, no doubt. It couldn't have been more than a few kilometers away; if we'd known it was so close we could have walked instead of sitting there for so long.
The descent continued, quite rapidly in fact. We wound back and forth on switchbacks that went on and on, occasionally allowing glimpses of the village lights which, though not far, didn't seem to be getting much closer.
Cuauhtémoc shuffled restlessly. Poor bird, he was getting impatient. We'd been on this bus for only fifteen minutes, but the feeling of getting nowhere was tiresome.
The lights kept appearing and reappearing as we continued our way down the steep grade. Suddenly we passed a light, then another; we were driving down a village street. The bus stopped to let people out before heading on to the plaza.
"Do they have a hotel here?" I asked the driver.
"Two or three," he told me, "They aren't really hotels, but they do rent rooms. The nearest is here on the corner, another is a couple of blocks further on."
We got off, and as I translated that for MacClayne we noticed that all the houses looked dark and shut down for the night. It was only about seven thirty.
Across the street was a store which I took to be where the driver had indicated. We entered through a tall door in the thick adobe walls and stepped up to an ancient counter which could have been from the previous century. The room was lit by a single candle which strained to hold back the darkness.
An old guy came hobbling out. Actually, he was probably younger than MacClayne, but he seemed eternally old. He'd probably looked like this when he was twenty.
"Do you have a room?" I said.
"I have two. One is quite luxurious," he said, "Which do you want?"
"The cheapest," I replied. Spanish, like English, has a euphemism for cheap. Lo mas economico would have been the polite usage, but something about this guy didn't inspire me to such niceties. I was acquiring some of MacClayne's negative attitude, and I asked for 'lo mas barato.'
"That will be fifty pesos each."
"Can we see it?" I asked.
He led us through the door and into the courtyard and showed us a very tasteful, high-ceilinged room.
"This is fifty pesos?" I asked.
"a hundred each."
"You said fifty."
"This one's one hundred. But I do have one for fifty."
"Well that's the one we want to see," I said, putting a touch of irritation into my voice.
"I'll show it to you," he said, but first he went to find an "aparato."
MacClayne asked me, "Is this the room?"
"No, and it annoys me," I said, "I clearly told him we wanted the cheapest he had."
MacClayne shook his head.
I sucked in my breath and added, "My Spanish can't be that bad. Everyone else seems to understand me."
We stood there alone in the room for several minutes.
"What are we waiting for?" MacClayne asked.
"The guy went to get an aparato," I said.
"What's that?"
"Probably the Spanish word for apparatus."
"A thingamajig?" MacClayne suggested.
Finally the guy returned with an oil lamp. It was like the ones sold in doña Rosario's store.
"Are you sure you don't want this room?" he asked again.
"No."
"It's the very best," he said.
"Just show us the one for fifty."
This time he led us out to the street, and then through a wooden gateway to the courtyard of another house. Even by the light of the moon I could see that the rooms on one side were crumbling. The roof was caved in and a pile of rubble lay strewn in front.
The rooms across the courtyard looked better. The guy opened a door, held up the lantern, and we stepped into a room about half full of large grain sacks. Squeezed in between them were a couple of sagging cots. Each had a single blanket.
Despite its low ceiling that nearly brushed our heads, its bare mud-brick walls, its unswept dirt floor, and its current usage for storage, this was still a rather charming room in an old adobe house. I liked it.
"Is this the one for fifty pesos each?" I asked.
"Yes," the landlord replied
"Can I get an extra blanket?"
"There's a blanket on the bed."
"I can see that," I said, "But I want two. Can I get a second blanket?"
"Yes."
The place was overpriced. Even that elegant adobe room back in Tancítaro had only cost us thirty pesos each. But when you travel you often have to take what you find. I glanced at MacClayne, and he nodded.
"We'll take it," I told the guy, and we walked back to the store where I paid for both of us, a total of one hundred pesos.
"It's a hundred and fifty," the guy said.
"You said fifty each. That's a total of one hundred pesos."
"There are three of you," he said and pointed at the bird.
I shook my head but didn't feel like arguing, I reached in my pocket for another fifty. Cuauhtémoc chose that moment to hop onto the counter and take a crap.
MacClayne grinned broadly as I laid the final fifty pesos on the counter, next to the bird crap. The guy looked at the shit and took the money, but said nothing.
continued in Chapter 23
The spooky thoughts of the previous day no longer bothered me, and this morning I felt a thrill to be on this journey. The sun was shining and we'd soon be heading up into the coastal range.
Cuauhtémoc was strutting about, waiting for us to get up and get the day started. MacClayne had already risen and was again reading the Odyssey.
"How did you sleep last night?" he asked. There was a trace of annoyance in his voice. I wondered what it might be due to.
"Fine, and you?" I said.
He looked at the bird for a moment before speaking. "Does that rooster have to crow all night long?"
"I don't think he crows that much. Not any more. He used to, when he first moved in with me, but he stopped that."
"He hasn't stopped," said MacClayne grimly.
"Maybe I've just gotten used to it."
"No doubt you have."
Cuauhtémoc hopped on my lap, and I put my arms around him. "Poor bird," I said. "Sometimes he needs to express himself."
"Express himself? In the middle of the bloody night? He kept me awake with his noise!"
"That's a value judgment," I said. "How would you feel if someone said that about your poetry? Called it noise."
"You think my poetry is nothing more than a rooster's crowing?"
"I see beauty in both," I said, trying to be diplomatic. I seriously doubted that the bird had crowed more than once, maybe twice at the very most. MacClayne was probably exaggerating, but I thought it best not to say that.
"Maybe I should take him to my next poetry reading, have him crow between verses." MacClayne's voice was thick with sarcasm, but it struck me as a thought with some potential merit. "Why not?" I said. "It might go over really well."
The bird and I went out to the water pila where he perched on the edge and preened his feathers while I shaved with cold water. After that I made one more try at phoning Uruapan. The line was still down. Cuauhtémoc looked disappointed. Perhaps he too had hoped to hear Chayo's voice.
"A promising day," MacClayne said when we returned to our room. The beautiful sunshine had apparently put him back in a good mood. He was ready to go, so we set out.
At the depot we learned that our bus would be leaving in an hour, and so there was time for breakfast. Nearby we found a market like the one in Tancítaro, though much larger. Dozens of vendors sold everything from farm products to cooked food. As in markets of other towns, the roof was of corrugated metal, and the stalls were concrete.
"How about here?" I suggested, as we passed a stall where a middle-aged lady was chatting with a young girl who seemed to be her assistant.
MacClayne nodded, and in his charmingly accented Spanish he asked the lady, "¿Qué hay de comer?"
"Carne de res o carne de puerco."
We ordered two of beef. The image of the cute little piglet somehow remained with us.
"¿De dónde son?" the lady asked us as she cooked.
"California," I told her. I'd discovered early on that most people didn't know where Minnesota was, so it was simpler to say California. After all, MacClayne and I had both spent some time there, and in fact that's where we'd originally met, at an antiwar demonstration in San Francisco. So it was a handy simplification, and people seemed to like references to places like California and San Francisco.
We chatted a bit, and I mentioned that we were now heading in the direction of Coalcomán and parts beyond.
"¿De veras?" Coalcomán was where she'd grown up, she told us. There had been an iron mine nearby, and the town used to have an ore mill and smelter. Her father had worked in it. That had been years before, when she was a little girl. It was closed now; the mills and smelters had moved to Lázaro, the coastal city where a seaport was being constructed.
MacClayne nodded in an understanding way, so I didn't translate. We finished our meals and headed off to the depot.
The bus we were about to board was large and stub-nosed, the kind we called "good-road buses." This indicated that our ride to Coalcomán would be fairly smooth. The other kind, which we'd ridden back in the mountains, were smaller and had the engine in front, sticking out like a dog's snout. Such buses had a battered look about them, but they were built to take battering; "bad-road buses" was what MacClayne and I had named them.
As we got on and took our seats, I noticed that the fellow across the aisle had a fighting cock on his lap. The rooster glanced haughtily at Cuauhtémoc, as if in challenge. Cuauhtémoc gave the young upstart a look of casual contempt.
Immediately on leaving town we began climbing into the mountains, ascending steadily on a winding but well-maintained gravel road. Fortunately, the weather seemed to be improving.
The countryside was completely different. The rocks and even the trees were unlike those I was used to seeing in Chayo's world of the Meseta Volcánica. Cinder cones and lava flows were behind us now. Here the rocks exposed in roadcuts were sedimentary, and only at the very top was there an occasional deposit of volcanic ash. One such deposit was well over a meter thick, and I tried to imagine a volcanic eruption powerful enough to send that much ash all the way up here. As we rolled on, higher and deeper into the mountains, the deposits of ash thinned out and then disappeared.
There was no forest, only scattered deciduous trees which I at first assumed to be oak, but MacClayne suggested they were probably a variety of mesquite or acacia. In draws and ravines they grew thickly, but not on the rounded hillsides, which were exposed and dry.
The gravel road was good all the way to Coalcomán, and in less than two hours we were there. The bus let us off at the plaza, under the shade of a tremendously large tree. I don't know what kind it was, except that it was deciduous. It was the only vegetation in the square, and its wide branches gave shelter to the many vendors underneath.
"Like the mythical World Tree," I said.
Cuauhtémoc looked upwards with interest, perhaps visualizing one of the upper branches as a potential roosting place.
But, contrary to our expectations, the town was not surrounded by scenic mountain peaks, nor did it seem to retain the atmosphere of its colorful past as a mining center.
"What's our next destination?" asked MacClayne.
"Villa Victoria," I said, and went to ask when the bus would be departing. The answer was four o'clock. It was still only ten in the morning.
"Maybe we should have coffee," said MacClayne.
We walked down the street till we found a restaurant. Along one wall stood a jukebox which MacClayne eyed with suspicion. Classical music was about the only kind he ever listened to. He hated everything else, especially if it came from a squawky jukebox. But the monster was unplugged and therefore apparently disarmed. And there were no other customers.
We ordered coffee for ourselves and a glass of water for the bird. After a few disparaging words about jukeboxes, we got back to talking about the awesome tree in the plaza.
"There was a tree like that in Norse mythology," I said. "Ydrasil they called it. A story goes that Oðin hung himself on it for nine cold and windy days and nights."
"Why did he do that?"
"In pursuit of wisdom," I explained.
"I suppose they didn't have schools and universities back in those days."
We went on to talk about other mythical deeds and experiences of legendary suffering. MacClayne recalled an epic beer famine which had ravaged Britain during World War II, while he was in the Royal Marines and stationed at Sandwich, in Kent.
". . . And then a huge supply of beer suddenly came in. There was as much as anybody could drink. But because of the war there were other shortages as well, and the pubs didn't have enough glasses for the numerous drinkers. Tipplers were drinking from jam jars, pots, bowls, even army mess tins, and we didn't have any. I was wandering about this night with Maudwyn Morgan, a friend whom we called Maudlin Morgan because of his drunk behavior every payday. Surely we were two of the most frustrated drinkers alive, walking around jarless that night; all the beer you could pay for and nothing to drink from.
"We wandered morosely around suffering great misery, and in the course of our dejected meanderings found ourselves outside a cemetery. We glanced over the wall and spotted among old dusty wreaths and faded artificial flowers a pair of coarse china vases, shaped like cornucopia or large green ice-cream cornets. Before the days of plastic they were in common use to hold flowers and other offerings from the living to the dead.
"Slipping over the wall, we secured one each, emptied out the old flowers and wiped them clean. Returning swiftly to one of the pubs, the publican accepted our containers without a tinge of surprise, filling them from the beer pump and passing them back with a big head of foam frothing over the edge."
Cuauhtémoc had been gazing at MacClayne, perhaps entranced by his melodic voice. Now and then the bird shifted slightly from one leg to the other, seeming to inhale the aroma of the frothy brew so deliciously described by MacClayne, and impatient for a glass to appear under his beak.
"Establishing ourselves at the end of the bar with our large beer-filled and re-filled china cones, we no doubt presented a fine image of small Falstaffians and soon other drinkers wanted to know where we had gotten the big green drinking horns. It wasn't long before Marines and soldiers began appearing with large china vessels. The style spread rapidly through Kent and Southwestern England, perhaps as far as London.
"Graveyards were scoured clean, and--"
MacClayne had stopped in mid sentence. His jovial grin was gone. Three young fellows had just walked in and ordered beer. One was at the jukebox.
"I wonder if they're going to play that goddamn thing?" MacClayne growled.
One of the trio plugged it in and fired it up. And so there it was, blasting away at full volume.
"Are you ready to go?" MacClayne said, getting up.
"Yes," I said, but then paused as I recognized the tune. "It's one of Chayo's favorites."
"Are you coming or not?"
"I'd like to hear it," I said.
"I'll see you in the plaza," he said. Leaving his unfinished coffee on the table, he paid for both of us and walked out the door.
I sat back down and listened to the song. It was sung by Juan Gabriel. I had no voice for singing, but I had often recited these lines to Chayo:
No tengo dinero
ni nada que dar
lo unico que tengo
es amor para amar
si asi tu me quieres
te puedo querer
I have no money
and nothing to give
the only thing I have
is my love
if you'll have me, poor as I am,
then I can love you
The Juan Gabriel song was followed by one I didn't care for. But I sat there anyway, wondering why MacClayne had just stomped out the door. He disliked jukeboxes--but couldn't he endure a single song? On the other hand, maybe the beer-drinking at the other table had somehow clicked with old memories of himself as a young drinker, beginning his career in booze.
But poor MacClayne. He couldn't drink any more; that was what a doctor had told him. So had several former employers. Even the director of the San Francisco Zoological Gardens had offered such an opinion--when MacClayne was one day found in a bird cage at the zoo. It was on the front page of the morning newspaper, with MacClayne's explanation that he was passing through the park on his way from a bar when a Crested Grebe called to him by name and asked for a nip of good Scotch whiskey. Unfortunately, the thirsty avian was not available to show up in court and verify the account.
The judge was quite impressed with MacClayne's fondness for cages, and kindly offered to provide him with living space in one for the next thirty days--he wouldn't take no for an answer, and MacClayne was obliged to accept. Although MacClayne was something of a leftwing radical, perhaps even an activist at times, he'd probably spent more time in various jails for being drunk and disorderly than for his political activities.
But his drinking days were supposedly over. Nowadays, like an old salt who sits in a tavern and recalls his days on the water, MacClayne would sit with coffee cup in hand and reminisce about his years on the sauce. But like so many men who were forced into premature retirement from their life's calling, MacClayne had not taken it without dissatisfaction, and at times fell into moods when he expressed bitterness at life itself.
Well, I didn't think it would do any good to go chasing after him at this moment when he was in a bad mood. Maybe if I waited a while he'd get over it. I finished my coffee and ordered another. The guys at the other table continued to play the jukebox, and began another round of beers.
Cuauhtémoc was nudging me with his beak. Lost in my thoughts, I didn't pay much attention till finally he gave me a jab that was difficult to ignore.
"No," I told the bird. "It's too early in the day to be drinking."
I took another sip of coffee, and Cuauhtémoc gave me another poke.
"No," I said. "And that's final." He glared back at me. But I wasn't in a mood to try to reason with him. I stood up to leave and held my arm out for him to hop on to. "¡Vámonos!" I said.
But he just sat there, so I lifted him up. With his talons he clung to the backrest of the chair. I pried him loose and headed out the door, pausing only to leave some pesos for my last coffee.
"¡Travieso!" I scolded him as we stepped out onto the street. The bird gave me a sullen look. For a while I wandered around aimlessly with him on my arm. I thought of finding a phone and making another attempt to call Chayo, but right now I was a bit upset and didn't feel like it. Anyway the line was probably still down and I was pretty sure that Chayo had left Uruapan by now. Finally I went back to the plaza where I found MacClayne sitting under the branches of our huge mythical tree. As I had hoped, he was back in a genial mood.
"I guess we've got at least three hours until the bus leaves. Do you want to see more of the town?" he said. "Or are you ready to move on?"
The sun was still shining nicely. It was a beautiful warm day, just perfect for a day in the country.
"I'm ready to leave," I said.
At that moment Cuauhtémoc leapt from my arm and flew up into the tree.
"Cuauhtémoc! You come back down here this instant!"
The bird just sat there, perched on a limb over my head.
"We're leaving!" I said.
He remained where he was.
I called to him, both in English and in Spanish. Passers-by glanced my way, and a mother with her small children stopped to watch. "Pajarito," I heard a little girl say. MacClayne was giving me an impatient look.
"You wouldn't dare sit up there like that if Chayo were here!" I exclaimed in exasperation. But Chayo wasn't here, and so he did dare. What could I do? I was helpless and so I gave in. I went to one of the shops along the plaza and bought a can of beer. Hopefully this town didn't have an ordinance against drinking in public. I glanced to make sure there weren't any police around. Then I held the can up for the bird to see, tapped it loudly, popped it open, and poured some into a tin cup from my pack.
The bird came flying down and dipped his beak thirstily into the beer. As he drank, I imagined the eyes of the entire town upon me, but when I glanced around, I saw that hardly anybody had bothered to take note. Thank god for that!
I was just hoping MacClayne wouldn't comment on this. He didn't, and I was grateful for his silence. The bird finished what was in the cup and I poured the rest out on the ground. "That's all you get," I said, and gathered him up. He was already beginning to hiccup.
With the rebellious rooster on my arm, we at last set out. We walked to the edge of town, and almost immediately got a ride in the back of a pickup that was going all the way to Villa Victoria.
"Our lucky day!" MacClayne and I said to each other. The road was gravel but in good condition and we sped along. The bird was still hiccuping and still in a bad mood, the beer apparently having placated him only slightly. He was sulking and went to perch by himself on the upturned tailgate.
We hadn't been riding for very long when we hit an unexpected bump in the road, causing us to be sent up into the air, only to crash down on the hard metal truck bed. When I got reoriented and glanced around, I realized that Cuauhtémoc wasn't there. And we'd just rounded a bend so I couldn't see the road behind.
I pounded frantically on the cab, asking the driver to stop. He did. But he didn't have time to go back for the bird, so MacClayne and I got off and lost our ride. It was a good 500 meters back that we finally found the bird, sitting in the middle of the road looking slightly dazed.
"You cost us a ride!" I scolded. The bird hiccuped as he stumbled onto my arm. I was so angry that I couldn't think of anything else to say to him. Meanwhile, MacClayne wore a frown suggesting that he was annoyed at both of us.
There wasn't much traffic, but the next pickup also stopped and gave us a ride that lasted 15 or 20 minutes. This left us still a long way from Villa Victoria, but it improved our spirits greatly, and by now we were some distance into the hills. They were covered with grass, mostly dry-looking with some patches of green. Trees grew only in the ravines.
No more vehicles came for a while; we just kept on walking till we came to a grove of trees which sheltered a small creek where we went wading. Downstream we found a waist-deep pool and swam a bit. Cuauhtémoc waded around in the mud along the edge, and by the time we were ready to go, he'd gotten himself gloriously muddied up.
"You're not riding on my arm like that," I said. I picked him up, squawks and all, and plunked him in the cool water. "You deserve this!" I said grimly, and held him there, only his neck and shoulders protruding above the surface.
Suddenly I realized what an awful thing I was doing. I lifted him out of the water. "Are you okay?" I asked, concerned that the poor bird wasn't traumatized. He was shivering slightly.
"¡Pobrecito!" I wiped him dry and held him close. "Eres mi pajarito, y soy tu humano," I said. "Para siempre."
"You're my little bird, and I'm your human. Forever."
Cuauhtémoc tucked his head under my arm. And as if in response to the intensity of my feelings, a powerful gust of wind swept the hillside, tearing leaves from trees and swirling them around us.
It was a good hour before we saw another vehicle, and when we did, it was heading the other way, back towards Coalcomán. We continued walking, not with the expectation of getting to Villa Victoria on foot, but because we felt like walking.
Except for wooded ravines the countryside was open and grassy with scattered nopal cacti. These were the same type of cacti I'd seen around Uruapan. Except for them, however, everything was different in these hills. Not even the rocks were the same. It felt strange to be in a land without cinder cones and lava. There was just thinly laminated shale.
Cattle grazed here and there, but we saw no people. There were a few clouds in the sky, just enough to make it look the way a beautiful sky is supposed to look.
Off to the north, I could see the bluish outline of the Meseta Volcánica, dominated by snow-capped Mount Tancítaro, which, as our road meandered along, was sometimes to the right of us and sometimes to the left, but usually behind us. It seemed so far away. We took a break to snack on oranges, and I took out the map and estimated the straight-line distance from Uruapan to our present location. One hundred and fifty kilometers. Could that be right? I measured it again. Same number.
I finished peeling my orange and shared some with Cuauhtémoc. "Estamos lejos de Chayo," I said, thinking of the enormous distance that separated us from her. The bird looked almost longingly towards the distant plateau. I had the uncanny feeling that he understood my words.
Uruapan ought to be slightly to the east of Tancítaro, though I wasn't sure exactly where to look. But as I kept gazing, the bluish mountains seemed to turn green, and at last I imagined I could see individual pines and even red-tiled roofs. It was a strange feeling to be looking back at the place where I'd met Chayo, found Cuauhtémoc, and experienced so much--and now see it so far away. I'd been there only a few months, but they had been very eventful months. So much that was now part of my life had been entirely new to me back then.
My memories of California were like something from another lifetime. And, in comparison, my childhood in Minnesota belonged to an even earlier incarnation, almost as far back as the Viking era when the first Norsemen found their way to Vinland.
MacClayne stood up. "I hear a car," he said.
In the silence of the mountains, we could hear it long before we actually saw it. It was a Volkswagen bus, and when it finally got to where we were, it stopped for us.
The driver was in his early thirties and wore a wide-brimmed hat, a denim jacket and blue jeans. This was contemporary ranch style, though not exactly Michoacano. An attractive woman in a rebozo and a smart-looking skirt and blouse was with him, and they had a seven- or eight-year-old boy who was dressed like his father, hat and all.
You can often tell what part of México people are from by their hats. The ones worn by the driver and his son were made of straw fiber and had high crowns but no tassel in back, quite different from the style around Uruapan. After the usual introductions, I asked, "¿Ustedes son Norteños?"
"Sí, yo soy de Chihuahua," he affirmed with a grin, and added that his wife was Michoacana, from Coalcomán. "You've been here a while, I would guess?"
"Just a few months," I said.
"¿De veras? That's about how long we've been here," he said. They'd spent the last five years in California, and had returned to México only a few months before.
They now lived on a ranch up in these hills, he told me. I could guess that it was the realization of a long-standing dream for which they'd spent years working and saving in California. Wages were five or even ten times higher in the US, and many Mexicans went there to get a stake they could start out with.
He then glanced at the little boy and said, "Él habla ingles."
The child smiled shyly. He was handsome and bright-looking.
"Do you speak English?" I asked him, in English of course.
"Contéstale al señor," the driver urged his son, who looked away.
"Where did you learn English?" I tried again.
"En California," he replied in Spanish, but to his parents, rather than to me.
"Really? How did you like California?" I asked him.
"Me gusta Michoacán," he whispered to his father.
"Díle en Ingles," his father urged him again, laughing good-naturedly.
"Didn't you like California?" I continued in English.
Again he whispered to his parents in Spanish: "No hay vacas."
I smiled and glanced at MacClayne. The grin on his face indicated that he was following the conversation. "There are plenty of cows in California," MacClayne assured the boy.
"Yes," I said. "As my friend says, there are many cattle."
"Pero no tienen cuernos."
"They don't have horns," I translated for MacClayne.
In apparent validation of the boy's statement, Cuauhtémoc chose that moment to crow, and I said to the boy, "I think the rooster agrees with you. He's also a true Michoacano."
The boy glanced shyly at the bird, and at that point the family turned off onto a smaller road which presumably led to their ranch. We got out of the vehicle to continue on the road to Villa Victoria. This ride had taken us to the top of a ridge where we walked for a while. From there we had an even better view of the Meseta Volcánica, and off to the northwest we could even see the Needle Peaks. A tiny cloud still clung to the crest of one. From the fact that it was always there, I realized it must have been vapor from the volcano.
As before, the hillsides around and below us were grassy and open. Here the grass was dry looking, and I recalled some lines from an old Marine Corps song which Uncle Rolf had taught me years ago, sung to the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home. The verses of it could've been written to describe the countryside around us:
The mountains were high / the rivers were dry / the sun was blazing hot.
Our day was warm, not hot, but the bare, sunburned hills suggested that this might be a very hot place.
Cattle grazed in the distance, and I thought of the little boy who liked cows with horns. Perhaps if Chayo and I were to marry, we might have a little boy like him. He was an intelligent-looking child, and no doubt some day he'd be playing an important role in running the family ranch.
The road followed along the crest of the ridge and around a bend, where we found ourselves looking down into a small, narrow valley with a creek and even a pond like the one we'd swum in. There were also a corral and a building with a red-tiled roof. Like most ranch houses in Michoacán, it was long and single-storied. I guessed that it was of adobe, though at that distance I couldn't tell for sure.
"Chayo dreams of a ranch like that," I said.
"It is idyllic."
"Do you think she would marry me if I could give her that ranch?"
"No question about it. The two of you would live happily ever after."
Cuauhtémoc eyed the ranch and then closed his eyes. I imagined him pleasantly contemplating a life with Chayo and me.
"If only I had the fifty thousand dollars to buy it."
"Is that what a place like that would cost?"
"I have no idea," I said. "It could be many times that, or on the other hand it might be much less. Whatever it is, I don't have it."
I sat there gazing at the red-tiled ranch house, dreaming of how I might come across the money. I pictured myself walking down a street in some town back in California and then suddenly coming upon a money bag fallen out of an armored car. It'd be full of hundred-dollar bills, enough to buy that ranch for Chayo.
"Can you imagine what Alasdair would do with a place like that?" MacClayne remarked. Alasdair MacAlistair was MacClayne's old friend and fellow countryman, the ne'er-do-well scion of a wealthy family who'd lost his inheritance in a card game and hopped a ship to America to escape creditors. There was probably nothing that could outrage MacClayne quite as much as the concept of a Scotlander who couldn't hang onto his money. Nevertheless, the two of them had a common bond in that both were poets, and, in the opinion of some, both reprobates. I'd briefly met Alasdair once when we were both visiting MacClayne at the same time. Alasdair had come by to borrow money, MacClayne told me afterwards. Mostly I knew him from hearing MacClayne rant about him, as he often did.
"Yes," I said. "From what you've told me, Alasdair is always dreaming of a place where he could have a garden and grow vegetables, have a few chickens, write poetry, and eke out a simple living."
"But that was just a dream," said MacClayne. There was profound bitterness in his voice. I'd heard him tell it before and had a pretty good idea of what he was about to say next.
"Suppose he somehow acquired it," MacClayne said, "A rich uncle dies, leaves it to him. Suddenly it's his."
"Yeah, I know," I said.
MacClayne had already told me the story twenty times, so of course he knew that I knew, but he couldn't resist going through the ritual of telling me anyway. "He'd sell it for a tenth of its value and head for the nearest card game. A week later you'd see him, broke and demoralized. Trying to borrow money to pay the rent."
"Yeah," I said, recalling that on the single occasion I'd met Alasdair, he'd asked me for the loan of $20 which I obligingly lent him. He did actually attempt to pay me back, mailing me a check which of course bounced. Well, he tried, poor man. Not that I wasn't angry about it. But I could understand how that gambling obsession had ruined his life. I'd never told MacClayne about that unpaid loan.
"And he never learns. Never changes," MacClayne continued, his voice thick with disgust.
I nodded and gazed down at the red-tiled ranch house which Alasdair would be sure to lose in a card game. A wisp of smoke rose from the house, from a kitchen stove no doubt, and lingered above the roof, almost like a small cloud of doom.
Just the same, I said, "Maybe he could just give that ranch to Chayo and me as a wedding present? Then he could come and stay with us. It would be his home as well as ours."
"That's not Alasdair. He'd have to lose it to some card shark."
Cuauhtémoc stood up and looked at the road, as if suggesting that it was time to be moving on.
A faint sound cut through the silence. An insect perhaps? As it grew louder we could tell it was the steady hum of a vehicle climbing the hill in low gear. Cuauhtémoc saw it first, a tiny dot on the road below, which grew to the size of a pickup. Although it was full of people and supplies, the driver was willing to stop for us. Three or four sat in the cab, and seven or eight others, mostly children and teen-agers, were crammed into the back where they sat wedged in between bags and boxes. It appeared they'd been to town for their monthly shopping.
MacClayne and I climbed in the back of the crowded truck, and people found room for us. I sat on a box with Cuauhtémoc on my lap while MacClayne found room on the wheel guard. Near us a woman of about thirty five sat on a spare tire holding a small girl. She was the only adult in the back and from time to time she spoke to one or another of the youngsters, telling them to do this or that. She gave the orders, but did so gently, and they responded when she spoke. She vaguely reminded me of an aunt who'd occasionally looked after me when I was a child.
Having ascended the slope immediately below, we sped along the winding road which was getting progressively more bumpy. It hadn't been bad for the first stretch after leaving Coalcomán, but by now it was a washboard surface, and in places even worse. The box under me bounced and kept shifting into an unworkable position that left me with insufficient room for my legs. I clung to the side of the truck with one hand and kept pulling the box back into position with the other. Cuauhtémoc sat tenaciously, digging into my leg with his talons and frequently extending his wings for balance.
The road was cut into a mountainside and led upwards much of the time. Again and again I thought we had almost reached the top of the mountain, but we still continued climbing the switchback road. From time to time we caught panoramic glimpses of everything from Mount Tancítaro to the Needle Peaks. From this angle the Needles were lined up almost one behind the other to appear like a single towering volcano with that ever-present vapor cloud. The Valley of Infiernillo could also be seen now, and somewhere on the far side of it would be Apatzingán.
"That's where it happened." It was the voice of the woman with the child on her lap. I glanced around and saw her pointing to a ravine below the road.
"Were they all killed?" a boy asked.
My curiosity got the better of me. "What happened?" I asked.
"A pickup went off the road back there," she said. I craned my neck to see where she was pointing, but by now the place was behind us.
"An accident?" I asked.
"No," she said, and told me of an incident from the previous summer. A young fellow had asked a girl to marry him, but she refused. So he kidnapped her, with intentions of forcibly taking her to bed and then marrying her. He had her in his pickup and was heading towards his ranch when the girl grabbed the steering wheel and sent the vehicle crashing down into the ravine below. Both she and her kidnapper died instantly. Another passenger died a few days later; it was she who told what had happened.
"Who was this third victim?"
"The fellow's sister-in-law. She was the one who had come up with the idea, planned it, and persuaded the man to do it."
"Some sister-in-law!" I said.
"¡De veras!" said the woman, and shook her head.
"But why was she with them on the ride?" I asked.
"She was also a friend of the intended bride. She persuaded the girl to get into the vehicle and ride off with them."
"So the fellow didn't kidnap her at gun point?" I asked.
"No, the girl thought they were just taking her to visit a neighbor's ranch. When she realized what their intentions were, she demanded that they stop at once and let her out. But they wouldn't let her go, so she grabbed the wheel."
Robando su novia, as it was called, kidnapping one's bride, had some status in custom and tradition. It'd been the theme of a ranchera movie which I'd once watched with Chayo. In the film, the girl had wanted her boyfriend to kidnap her, and was angry only because he took so long to make up his mind to do it. I mentioned that film to the woman.
"There are people who get their movie fantasies mixed up with reality," she said.
I translated the story for MacClayne.
"Ask if the guy was drunk," he said.
"It doesn't sound that way," I told him.
"Ask her anyway," he insisted. "It's the sort of thing people do when they get drunk."
I shook my head and said nothing. MacClayne was given to interpreting the dynamics of human relations in terms of alcohol consumption. Usually that amused me; right now I was annoyed. It struck me as sadly ironic that he, a master storyteller, was making no attempt to understand the incident in its cultural context or appreciate the interaction of personalities. I silently sympathized with the plight of the kidnapper. Poor guy. He was a reluctant anti-hero, pushed into action by a meddling sister-in-law. Perhaps she was herself secretly in love with the guy. At the same time I had to admire the lady whose 'no' was final.
Cuauhtémoc gave me a look of understanding. I stroked his feathers and said to him appreciatively, "Tu sí comprendes."
"¿Es su mascota?" the woman asked, apparently sensing that the bird was a pet.
"Sí, es mi amiguito," I said, and told her the bird's story. The children turned their heads to listen. As I finished, a little boy tugged at the woman's sleeve and said, "Mommy, when can I have a rooster?"
A patch of white clouds hugged the slopes above. The engine was now laboring in low gear as we went steadily up, up and up, winding along hair-pin curves. Suddenly we were in dense fog. The sun was gone, visibility was nil and our vehicle slowed to an even slower crawl. I shivered slightly as the damp chill cut through my shirt.
A ghostly pine tree appeared by the roadside and crept past us. Then another. Overhanging branches brushed our heads, and a cone fell into my lap beside Cuauhtémoc. Then suddenly the fog was gone. We were above the clouds, in a world of pine forest. Golden shafts of sunlight angled down between the trees.
I inhaled the fragrance of the conifers, and no longer felt so far from Uruapan. There was another brief glimpse of Tancítaro. Its snowy crest glistened in the sunshine, making it appear very close as I looked out across the sea of clouds. It gave the illusion that I could have stepped out of this vehicle and floated over to it.
Despite the bouncing, the child on the woman's lap was dozing off. "Wake up," the woman said. "Owls eat little girls who fall asleep."
"Is she your daughter?" I asked.
"No, she's my niece, the daughter of my brother. He's the driver," she said, nodding towards the cab. The others, she told me, were also members of her extended family, who lived on three separate ranchos where they raised cattle and horses. There was no electricity, and it was an hour's walk for the children to the school they attended. Originally the family had come from a place near Coalcomán.
She, in turn, asked me about our travels, and I told her we were making a tour of Michoacán.
"Michoacán es bonito, ¿no?" she said.
"Sí lo es," I affirmed. Her comment had surprised me. I hadn't expected these mountain people to be aware of the natural beauty of their region. I'd been to many places in the U.S. where the locals didn't seem to appreciate the scenery.
The road began to descend, and there were no more glimpses of Tancítaro. I guessed we had crossed over to the Pacific slopes of this range, and I expected to catch a glimpse of the ocean which shouldn't be more than 50 kilometers away. But all I saw was pine forest.
At a fork in the road, the pickup turned off onto a trail which would presumably take these people to their ranches. We hurriedly said our good-byes as we got out to continue on to Villa Victoria.
We sat on some rocks by the roadside and peeled oranges as we gradually recovered from the intense bouncing and pounding to which we'd been subjected. I kept thinking of how the woman in the truck resembled my aunt whom I hadn't seen for well over a decade. Of course my aunt had blue eyes and blond hair while this woman had dark eyes and black hair. My aunt spoke Norwegian, and this woman Spanish. But when she spoke I felt I was hearing my aunt's voice. My aunt had gone back to Norway, and it was a while since I'd written to her.
I took out the map. That morning we'd ridden from Tepalcatepec to Coalcomán in less than two hours. Using a twig to measure with, I estimated the distance to be about sixty kilometers. From there to Villa Victoria was only twenty kilometers; it was now late in the afternoon and we weren't there yet. There is no relationship, of course, between straight-line distance and travel time in mountainous terrain.
Shadows were lengthening. The sun still shone on a hillside above us, but not much of the day was left. There was a sound like the flowing of water in a creek, though there was no sign of water nearby. It was probably the wind moving through the trees that made the sound.
MacClayne broke the silence. "After Villa Victoria, where do we go?" he asked.
"Aquila," I said, and circled it on the map. "And we'll reach the coast at La Placita."
"And after that?"
"We simply follow the coast to Lázaro," I said.
MacClayne took the map, studied it for a bit and said, "There's no road down the coast."
There was a brief pause.
"It's probably just not shown," I said.
"How much of a piece is it?"
I retrieved the twig I'd just discarded and used it to measure the coastal segment. "Two hundred kilometers," I said.
"What's that in miles?"
"A hundred and twenty."
"That's a good stretch of road," he said. "Do you think the cartographers would have overlooked it?"
"Well, they did, it appears."
"How could that happen?"
"This is the hinterland of México, basically unexplored and unmapped until quite recently," I said. "The people who've given us rides are recent settlers who've moved up here during the last decade or so."
"A last frontier?"
"Basically yes."
A slight breeze passed through the pines with a faint whistle that the forest reserved for travelers who ventured this way. Cuauhtémoc was scratching in the pine needles which carpeted the ground.
"So what makes you think there's a road along the coast?"
"There has to be," I said.
"Why does there have to be?"
"So people can get places."
"I don't follow your logic."
"No? Roads are a necessary part of modern infrastructure."
"I'm asking if there's one along the coast."
"I guess I'm not communicating."
"No, you're not."
I stared at a pine sapling in front of me and tried to contain my irritation rather than retort with some hasty comment.
MacClayne said nothing more. Cuauhtémoc was still scratching in the pine needles. In a roadcut nearby, I saw an outcropping of slate, the first metamorphic rock I'd seen in these mountains. I went over to study it and tried to get my mind off the irritating exchange with MacClayne. I felt sure the coastal road existed, but it struck me that I had presented my view in a rather dumb way. But what could I have said? After all, there was no evidence of my road. As I stood there, staring rather absent-mindedly at the slate and thinking about the coastal road, Cuauhtémoc joined me and took a peck at the rock, sharing my investigation.
In Britain this slate might have been mined for use as roofing material, in years past at least. MacClayne had been telling me about that just the other day. I wondered if they still roofed their houses with slate in Britain.
MacClayne was reading when we returned. The forest on the hillside above had become a deep, somber green; the sun was no longer on it. I glanced at my watch. Close to seven, and still no vehicle had passed. I took out a book and began reading, but before long I found myself squinting, struggling to make out the words which had suddenly become very indistinct on the page. I blinked my eyes and looked around. Night was nearly upon us. Twilight was very brief in the tropics and I could never quite get used to that.
I sighed, and, just as I was putting my book away, I heard the loud crash of a vehicle which came coasting and bouncing down to us. In the next instant I was blinded by bright headlights. I jumped up and waved my hand.
It turned out to be the bus which had left Coalcomán at four o'clock and had finally caught up with us.
"¿Qué tal?" "¿Cómo les fue?" Voices greeted us as we climbed aboard. It was a couple of fellows we'd talked briefly with back in Coalcomán when asking about the bus schedule. They grinned and asked us how our day had been.
"Pues muy bien," I said, and we began chatting, but not for long, because as the bus began lurching forward, and, on account of the road noise, conversation became nearly impossible. Inside the bus the din was far worse than sitting in the back of the open pickup; it was like being locked in an iron box which was being worked over by sledgehammers.
Hardly five minutes had passed before a patch of lights appeared in the dark hills below. Villa Victoria, no doubt. It couldn't have been more than a few kilometers away; if we'd known it was so close we could have walked instead of sitting there for so long.
The descent continued, quite rapidly in fact. We wound back and forth on switchbacks that went on and on, occasionally allowing glimpses of the village lights which, though not far, didn't seem to be getting much closer.
Cuauhtémoc shuffled restlessly. Poor bird, he was getting impatient. We'd been on this bus for only fifteen minutes, but the feeling of getting nowhere was tiresome.
The lights kept appearing and reappearing as we continued our way down the steep grade. Suddenly we passed a light, then another; we were driving down a village street. The bus stopped to let people out before heading on to the plaza.
"Do they have a hotel here?" I asked the driver.
"Two or three," he told me, "They aren't really hotels, but they do rent rooms. The nearest is here on the corner, another is a couple of blocks further on."
We got off, and as I translated that for MacClayne we noticed that all the houses looked dark and shut down for the night. It was only about seven thirty.
Across the street was a store which I took to be where the driver had indicated. We entered through a tall door in the thick adobe walls and stepped up to an ancient counter which could have been from the previous century. The room was lit by a single candle which strained to hold back the darkness.
An old guy came hobbling out. Actually, he was probably younger than MacClayne, but he seemed eternally old. He'd probably looked like this when he was twenty.
"Do you have a room?" I said.
"I have two. One is quite luxurious," he said, "Which do you want?"
"The cheapest," I replied. Spanish, like English, has a euphemism for cheap. Lo mas economico would have been the polite usage, but something about this guy didn't inspire me to such niceties. I was acquiring some of MacClayne's negative attitude, and I asked for 'lo mas barato.'
"That will be fifty pesos each."
"Can we see it?" I asked.
He led us through the door and into the courtyard and showed us a very tasteful, high-ceilinged room.
"This is fifty pesos?" I asked.
"a hundred each."
"You said fifty."
"This one's one hundred. But I do have one for fifty."
"Well that's the one we want to see," I said, putting a touch of irritation into my voice.
"I'll show it to you," he said, but first he went to find an "aparato."
MacClayne asked me, "Is this the room?"
"No, and it annoys me," I said, "I clearly told him we wanted the cheapest he had."
MacClayne shook his head.
I sucked in my breath and added, "My Spanish can't be that bad. Everyone else seems to understand me."
We stood there alone in the room for several minutes.
"What are we waiting for?" MacClayne asked.
"The guy went to get an aparato," I said.
"What's that?"
"Probably the Spanish word for apparatus."
"A thingamajig?" MacClayne suggested.
Finally the guy returned with an oil lamp. It was like the ones sold in doña Rosario's store.
"Are you sure you don't want this room?" he asked again.
"No."
"It's the very best," he said.
"Just show us the one for fifty."
This time he led us out to the street, and then through a wooden gateway to the courtyard of another house. Even by the light of the moon I could see that the rooms on one side were crumbling. The roof was caved in and a pile of rubble lay strewn in front.
The rooms across the courtyard looked better. The guy opened a door, held up the lantern, and we stepped into a room about half full of large grain sacks. Squeezed in between them were a couple of sagging cots. Each had a single blanket.
Despite its low ceiling that nearly brushed our heads, its bare mud-brick walls, its unswept dirt floor, and its current usage for storage, this was still a rather charming room in an old adobe house. I liked it.
"Is this the one for fifty pesos each?" I asked.
"Yes," the landlord replied
"Can I get an extra blanket?"
"There's a blanket on the bed."
"I can see that," I said, "But I want two. Can I get a second blanket?"
"Yes."
The place was overpriced. Even that elegant adobe room back in Tancítaro had only cost us thirty pesos each. But when you travel you often have to take what you find. I glanced at MacClayne, and he nodded.
"We'll take it," I told the guy, and we walked back to the store where I paid for both of us, a total of one hundred pesos.
"It's a hundred and fifty," the guy said.
"You said fifty each. That's a total of one hundred pesos."
"There are three of you," he said and pointed at the bird.
I shook my head but didn't feel like arguing, I reached in my pocket for another fifty. Cuauhtémoc chose that moment to hop onto the counter and take a crap.
MacClayne grinned broadly as I laid the final fifty pesos on the counter, next to the bird crap. The guy looked at the shit and took the money, but said nothing.
continued in Chapter 23
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