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chapter 27
In the morning we went to a covered market by the small plaza which was near our hotel. We passed vendors of fruit, meat, fish, pots, pans and other items till we reached the section where food was served. There were several such booths.
"Let's find one where the people are genial," said MacClayne.
"Sure," I said, wondering why he was suddenly making such a big deal about geniality when people had nearly always been genial anyway--about the only exception being the brain-dead miser who'd tried to sell us the stewed pears.
We sat down at the nearest stall. The proprietress was an efficient-looking woman of about fifty and seemed genial as well. There was more of a selection than usual, including tamales, enchiladas and chile verde. This was my chance to show MacClayne that I did after all know something about Mexican food. So I began patiently listing and explaining these items in some detail.
"Let's go somewhere else," he said, and started to get up.
"Why?" I asked in surprise.
"When things get this complicated I just leave."
I had to think of something fast. It would have been downright rude of us to just walk off. But the solution was simple. I asked the woman for two plates of chile verde. Turning to MacClayne, I said, "The problem's solved. I ordered for both of us."
He sat back down, apparently mollified. Argument averted.
The proprietress was assisted by two teenage girls. One had seductive-looking eyes, and when she brought us our meals she said something I didn't quite catch. I asked the girl what she'd said.
"Quejas de mí," the proprietress spoke up. "She's complaining about me."
Everyone laughed.
"Are you her daughter?" I asked the teen-ager.
"No, I'm just a worker here," she replied.
"I have three children but none of them work here with me," said the proprietress. "They're lazy."
The way she said that struck me as comical. While the woman took a pot off the fire MacClayne asked me what they were saying, and I translated it for him and he chuckled. She then turned to us again and added, "Of my three children, the oldest has just completed his studies at the university to become an engineer. The second will graduate this year in accounting. My youngest is in high school."
"It's too bad most children aren't that lazy," I said. "Actually you've done well." I knew the average kid didn't get beyond primary school. Many didn't go to school at all.
"I don't want my children to be tortilla vendors like myself," the lady said, and turned to stir a pot. Then she commented on Cuauhtémoc and asked us where we were from.
"California," I said.
The same teen-ager who'd spoken before fluttered her eyelids flirtatiously. "Will you take me back with you to California?" she said teasingly.
Grins on the faces of the other two indicated that this was in jest. So I said, "I would need permission from my fiancée."
After we'd finished our meals and left, MacClayne asked me, "Did you ask her about the road to Lázaro?"
"No," I replied sheepishly. I hated to admit that I'd forgotten all about it.
"Isn't that what you were going to be asking?"
"There's other places we can inquire," I said. We'd already said our good-byes and left on a good note. There's something about going back with afterthoughts and after-questions that damages the spirit of things.
We were still in the market, and I stopped to ask a butcher.
"¿Para Lázaro?" The man shook his head and told us there was no road down the coast of Michoacán, "You have to go to Colima City, then east through Apatzingán to Nueva Italia, and from there you can get a bus going south to Lázaro."
I thanked him for the information, though for our purposes it was useless. A few stalls down I asked another person and got a similar reply. I didn't tell anybody that Apatzingán was the ultimate object of our journey, that it was our fabled city and so we couldn't enter by the back gate. I really didn't want to tell them that we were Holy Grailers.
Back on the street, we strolled around the plaza like a couple of ordinary tourists, visiting shops, looking for postcards and asking about the road to Lázaro. The postcards were easy enough to find, but nobody had heard of any such road. Not along the coast.
"Our map doesn't show it either," MacClayne reminded me.
"Very little of what we passed through yesterday was on the map," I said. "Not every road is shown."
The sun was shining brightly, and we were standing in the shade of a palm on one side of the plaza. Nearby was a park bench, and, by tacit agreement, we sat down to think it over.
"Wouldn't the locals here know?"
"Michoacán is another state," I said, "so they don't inform themselves on roads in that direction. In addition, that area is sort of like the back woods to them, not a place they're likely to go to."
"So how far is it from here?"
"To Michoacán?"
"That's what I'm asking."
"I don't know, but it can't be too far," I said.
"Approximately. Give me an estimate."
I shook my head. In this region; it was the road conditions that made distances long or short. Presumably MacClayne knew that, but he wanted a number, so I gave him a number. "Forty kilometers," I said.
"What's that in miles?"
"A couple dozen."
"That plus 120 means we're 150 miles from Lázaro?"
"Something like that."
"And no road."
"Maybe not," I said. "But we don't know for sure."
"Isn't that what everybody's been telling us?"
"They probably haven't been there so they wouldn't know."
"Then what is out there? Tell me what we're going to find."
"The road to Apatzingán," I said. "I'm very sure of it."
MacClayne looked at me skeptically. "I'll take some convincing on that."
We gazed at the passers-by and said nothing more. This plaza was a busy place with a lot of foot traffic and from time to time buses drove up. Cuauhtémoc sat on the backrest beside me, looking over my shoulder as I took out a postcard and began a couple of lines to Chayo: "Our quest has brought us to Tecomán. . . ," I wrote. Another bus drove up; I kept writing and hardly glanced up.
"I wonder if that bus is really going to Apatzingán," MacClayne said. He'd also been writing on a postcard; now he was putting it away and looking at a large stub-nosed bus, the type we called good-road buses. APATZINGÁN was written above the windshield.
"I think it goes back through Colima. Probably on a paved road, judging from the kind of bus it is," I said. "People in the market told me of such a bus."
Cuauhtémoc turned his head to look at MacClayne. Perhaps the bird sensed something.
"I think I'm ready to return to California," MacClayne said. "But I do want to see Apatzingán. People are going to ask me about it. I know Alasdair MacAlistair will."
I wanted to remind him that he would be entering the city through the back gate, by the very route we'd rejected as unworthy. But he probably knew that.
"My bag's still in the hotel," he said. "It's just my jacket, socks, a few books. I can leave them."
I nodded but said nothing. I guess I'd been expecting something like this. He'd told me several times that he didn't want to go slogging through six days of jungle.
Passengers were boarding.
"I take it you still intend to go down the coast?" he said.
"Yes."
Cuauhtémoc had a sad look in his eye; I sensed that he'd taken a liking to MacClayne. "Maybe you'd like to give the bird a hug," I said.
It was the first time MacClayne had taken the rooster in his arms; he held him gently and stroked his feathers. The bird put his head under MacClayne's arm.
The last of the passengers had boarded the bus.
"¿Vienen?" the driver asked us.
"He's leaving now," I said to MacClayne.
"Ask him if this bus runs at this time every day."
I asked and was told it did.
MacClayne hesitated a moment, then stepped back. "I'll let it go," he said, and we returned to the park bench. "I'll stay another night here in Tecomán and take this bus for Apatzingán in the morning. I'll see you off, then I'll walk over to the beach and spend the afternoon. By the way, where is the beach?"
I inquired and we learned that the ocean was some six or eight kilometers away.
"That far?" he shook his head.
I also was surprised. I'd assumed this city was right on the water.
"Maybe I'll go with you part of the way, as far as the road goes," he said. "We might come to some isolated beach. It would be nice to spend a couple of days in the sun."
I was at least glad to hear that. Neither of us was in a hurry; we could tarry a day or two along the seashore. We went back to the hotel and got our stuff.
Buses were coming and going. I learned that some went as far as Michoacán. One had APIZA as its destination, and I looked on our map to see if that might be in Michoacán. Apparently not. But shortly after it left I was told that it would have taken us there. Well, it was gone now. This was one of those things I didn't need to tell MacClayne about, but I had a feeling he suspected it.
"Maybe we should try at a depot?" he suggested.
Several bus lines served this region, and we hunted down the depots, one after another. They were scattered over an area of two or three blocks, and at last we found one with a bus going our way, down the coast back towards Michoacán. However, it was crammed full of people, with no empty seats, and hardly even any standing room. The sun was beating down and it must have been stiflingly hot inside. Then I happened to look at the schedule which was posted on the depot wall. The bus wouldn't be leaving for another hour. I pitied those poor people having to wait for an hour in that oven.
"Let's go sit in the shade till it's about to leave," I said. But we'd gone only a few steps when the driver started up the engine and drove off. We chased after it, but it was gone.
I went to the ticket office and asked why that bus didn't run according to the posted schedule.
"Hoy es domingo," the ticket clerk told me. I'd looked at the wrong schedule, the one for weekdays. So this was Sunday? I'd completely lost track. Traveling as we were, every day was like a Sunday.
We considered hitchhiking, but, unlike the mountain villages we'd passed through, Tecomán was a fairly large city, and it didn't look like a simple thing to walk out to the edge of town to find the through traffic. Best to look for another bus. I wished Chayo were here. She would've been able to sort this out very quickly and get us on the right bus, but once again I reminded myself that that was why I needed to be doing this without her—in order to see how well I could function on my own in this society.
I continued to make rounds of the buses in the various depots. The schedules were confusing, so I concentrated on asking the bus drivers. In between I sat in the plaza and wrote in my journal while MacClayne worked on a poem. I also kept my eye on buses that went by. FARO was the destination of one that drove up and stopped. The name wasn't on our map of Michoacán, but, remembering the mistake I'd made earlier, I asked the driver, "¿Va usted a Coahuayana?"
Coahuayana was the first village inside Michoacán and I figured that any bus going that way would pass through it.
"No," the driver told me, "Voy a Faro."
So I went back and sat down beside MacClayne. "There's a city in Portugal by that name," he said. "A ship I was on docked there once." He went on to reminisce about how gloriously drunk one of his shipmates had gotten in a waterfront bar.
As MacClayne finished his story we watched the bus depart for Faro's Mexican namesake. Then he mused, "I wonder where this Faro might be?"
"It would be interesting to know," I said. "For the sake of academic knowledge."
"You might inquire. Knowledge is always good."
I got up and walked back to the nearest depot. "¿Dónde está Faro?" I asked the ticket seller.
"En Michoacán."
"¿De veras?" I said unbelievingly. "¿En Michoacán?"
"Sí."
I sighed deeply and looked again at my map. I'd asked the driver of the Faro bus if he were going to Coahuayana. Why had he said 'no'? But as I studied the map more carefully I saw what I'd failed to take into consideration--the village of Coahuayana lay several kilometers off the main road. Clearly, the bus didn't make that side trip, so I'd asked the wrong question.
Having lost three buses in a row, I felt less than competent. More than two hours had passed, and we were still looking for a bus. To be lost in a jungle would be awful enough, but I hadn't even found our way out of the city.
I thought of my forefathers and pictured a crew of Norsemen about to embark on a voyage to some faraway place, perhaps Vinland--but for the moment they are lost in the town of Trondhjem, unable to find their way down to the landing in the fjord.
There always seemed to be a bus pulling up to the curb when Chayo needed one. Could there be times when she couldn't find a bus either? A time when she couldn't even find her way out of town? No, I couldn't really imagine Chayo in a quandary such as this.
I delayed for some time before returning to the park bench, and when I did, MacClayne asked, "Did you find out where Faro is?"
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
MacClayne didn't ask the question again, but a few minutes later he said, "I think I'll just see you off, then spend the afternoon here in Tecomán."
Even Cuauhtémoc gave me a look which didn't express much confidence. I recalled that in the movie Aguirre had people beheaded for attempting to abandon his expedition, but at this moment I felt I was the one who deserved a beheading. I closed my eyes and envisioned a heavy ax blade about to descend upon my neck. End of pain, end of incompetence.
A sharp stab in my hand brought me back to eyes-wide alertness. It was the bird, who gave me a stern look, as if to say, "Shape up!"
"Tienes razón," I said to the bird, and gave him a hug. He put his head under my arm, as though in apology for jabbing me with his beak.
"You okay?" said MacClayne.
"Yeah," I said and forced a smile. "Here, you take the map. You'll need it."
He shook his head. "You keep it. You're the one who's always looking at it."
"Thank you," I said.
"You may be a while in that jungle, perhaps you'd like to take a couple of these books?" He reached into his bag and gave me several, including Sunny Days in the Tropics.
With Cuauhtémoc on my arm, I set out to make yet another round of the depots, but we'd hardly gone twenty paces when MacClayne called out to me. I didn't hear what he said, but I turned and saw a bus driving up. The destination above the windshield read LA PLACITA.
I didn't need to look at the map this time. La Placita was the village below Aquila, and had we hoofed it over the mountains from Villa Victoria, that's where we would've come out.
"This is the bus," I said, faintly hoping that MacClayne might still decide to accompany me. But he gave no indication that he would, and so I said, "You wouldn't care to come with and see La Placita?"
"No, I'll stay here and in the morning take that bus for Apatzingán."
We said our good-byes, and I got in line. Clutching Cuauhtémoc close to me, I said, "It's just the two of us now. You ready to travel the roadless road?"
The bird gave me another peck on the hand, a gentle one this time, and a look of silent determination. MacClayne was standing some distance from the bus, waving. I waved back, then boarded, and as I did so, I asked the driver my well worn question about the coastal road.
"¿Para Lázaro? Sí. Una vereda." He told me most of it was a jeep-trail. Pickup trucks got through.
"¿De veras?" I gasped, and swung around to look out the door. MacClayne was still there, raising his hand to wave a last good-bye.
"MACCLAYNE!" I called out to him in a voice loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd, "THERE IS A ROAD TO LÁZARO!"
"HOLD ON!" he shouted back, "I'M COMING!"
continued in Chapter 28
"Let's find one where the people are genial," said MacClayne.
"Sure," I said, wondering why he was suddenly making such a big deal about geniality when people had nearly always been genial anyway--about the only exception being the brain-dead miser who'd tried to sell us the stewed pears.
We sat down at the nearest stall. The proprietress was an efficient-looking woman of about fifty and seemed genial as well. There was more of a selection than usual, including tamales, enchiladas and chile verde. This was my chance to show MacClayne that I did after all know something about Mexican food. So I began patiently listing and explaining these items in some detail.
"Let's go somewhere else," he said, and started to get up.
"Why?" I asked in surprise.
"When things get this complicated I just leave."
I had to think of something fast. It would have been downright rude of us to just walk off. But the solution was simple. I asked the woman for two plates of chile verde. Turning to MacClayne, I said, "The problem's solved. I ordered for both of us."
He sat back down, apparently mollified. Argument averted.
The proprietress was assisted by two teenage girls. One had seductive-looking eyes, and when she brought us our meals she said something I didn't quite catch. I asked the girl what she'd said.
"Quejas de mí," the proprietress spoke up. "She's complaining about me."
Everyone laughed.
"Are you her daughter?" I asked the teen-ager.
"No, I'm just a worker here," she replied.
"I have three children but none of them work here with me," said the proprietress. "They're lazy."
The way she said that struck me as comical. While the woman took a pot off the fire MacClayne asked me what they were saying, and I translated it for him and he chuckled. She then turned to us again and added, "Of my three children, the oldest has just completed his studies at the university to become an engineer. The second will graduate this year in accounting. My youngest is in high school."
"It's too bad most children aren't that lazy," I said. "Actually you've done well." I knew the average kid didn't get beyond primary school. Many didn't go to school at all.
"I don't want my children to be tortilla vendors like myself," the lady said, and turned to stir a pot. Then she commented on Cuauhtémoc and asked us where we were from.
"California," I said.
The same teen-ager who'd spoken before fluttered her eyelids flirtatiously. "Will you take me back with you to California?" she said teasingly.
Grins on the faces of the other two indicated that this was in jest. So I said, "I would need permission from my fiancée."
After we'd finished our meals and left, MacClayne asked me, "Did you ask her about the road to Lázaro?"
"No," I replied sheepishly. I hated to admit that I'd forgotten all about it.
"Isn't that what you were going to be asking?"
"There's other places we can inquire," I said. We'd already said our good-byes and left on a good note. There's something about going back with afterthoughts and after-questions that damages the spirit of things.
We were still in the market, and I stopped to ask a butcher.
"¿Para Lázaro?" The man shook his head and told us there was no road down the coast of Michoacán, "You have to go to Colima City, then east through Apatzingán to Nueva Italia, and from there you can get a bus going south to Lázaro."
I thanked him for the information, though for our purposes it was useless. A few stalls down I asked another person and got a similar reply. I didn't tell anybody that Apatzingán was the ultimate object of our journey, that it was our fabled city and so we couldn't enter by the back gate. I really didn't want to tell them that we were Holy Grailers.
Back on the street, we strolled around the plaza like a couple of ordinary tourists, visiting shops, looking for postcards and asking about the road to Lázaro. The postcards were easy enough to find, but nobody had heard of any such road. Not along the coast.
"Our map doesn't show it either," MacClayne reminded me.
"Very little of what we passed through yesterday was on the map," I said. "Not every road is shown."
The sun was shining brightly, and we were standing in the shade of a palm on one side of the plaza. Nearby was a park bench, and, by tacit agreement, we sat down to think it over.
"Wouldn't the locals here know?"
"Michoacán is another state," I said, "so they don't inform themselves on roads in that direction. In addition, that area is sort of like the back woods to them, not a place they're likely to go to."
"So how far is it from here?"
"To Michoacán?"
"That's what I'm asking."
"I don't know, but it can't be too far," I said.
"Approximately. Give me an estimate."
I shook my head. In this region; it was the road conditions that made distances long or short. Presumably MacClayne knew that, but he wanted a number, so I gave him a number. "Forty kilometers," I said.
"What's that in miles?"
"A couple dozen."
"That plus 120 means we're 150 miles from Lázaro?"
"Something like that."
"And no road."
"Maybe not," I said. "But we don't know for sure."
"Isn't that what everybody's been telling us?"
"They probably haven't been there so they wouldn't know."
"Then what is out there? Tell me what we're going to find."
"The road to Apatzingán," I said. "I'm very sure of it."
MacClayne looked at me skeptically. "I'll take some convincing on that."
We gazed at the passers-by and said nothing more. This plaza was a busy place with a lot of foot traffic and from time to time buses drove up. Cuauhtémoc sat on the backrest beside me, looking over my shoulder as I took out a postcard and began a couple of lines to Chayo: "Our quest has brought us to Tecomán. . . ," I wrote. Another bus drove up; I kept writing and hardly glanced up.
"I wonder if that bus is really going to Apatzingán," MacClayne said. He'd also been writing on a postcard; now he was putting it away and looking at a large stub-nosed bus, the type we called good-road buses. APATZINGÁN was written above the windshield.
"I think it goes back through Colima. Probably on a paved road, judging from the kind of bus it is," I said. "People in the market told me of such a bus."
Cuauhtémoc turned his head to look at MacClayne. Perhaps the bird sensed something.
"I think I'm ready to return to California," MacClayne said. "But I do want to see Apatzingán. People are going to ask me about it. I know Alasdair MacAlistair will."
I wanted to remind him that he would be entering the city through the back gate, by the very route we'd rejected as unworthy. But he probably knew that.
"My bag's still in the hotel," he said. "It's just my jacket, socks, a few books. I can leave them."
I nodded but said nothing. I guess I'd been expecting something like this. He'd told me several times that he didn't want to go slogging through six days of jungle.
Passengers were boarding.
"I take it you still intend to go down the coast?" he said.
"Yes."
Cuauhtémoc had a sad look in his eye; I sensed that he'd taken a liking to MacClayne. "Maybe you'd like to give the bird a hug," I said.
It was the first time MacClayne had taken the rooster in his arms; he held him gently and stroked his feathers. The bird put his head under MacClayne's arm.
The last of the passengers had boarded the bus.
"¿Vienen?" the driver asked us.
"He's leaving now," I said to MacClayne.
"Ask him if this bus runs at this time every day."
I asked and was told it did.
MacClayne hesitated a moment, then stepped back. "I'll let it go," he said, and we returned to the park bench. "I'll stay another night here in Tecomán and take this bus for Apatzingán in the morning. I'll see you off, then I'll walk over to the beach and spend the afternoon. By the way, where is the beach?"
I inquired and we learned that the ocean was some six or eight kilometers away.
"That far?" he shook his head.
I also was surprised. I'd assumed this city was right on the water.
"Maybe I'll go with you part of the way, as far as the road goes," he said. "We might come to some isolated beach. It would be nice to spend a couple of days in the sun."
I was at least glad to hear that. Neither of us was in a hurry; we could tarry a day or two along the seashore. We went back to the hotel and got our stuff.
Buses were coming and going. I learned that some went as far as Michoacán. One had APIZA as its destination, and I looked on our map to see if that might be in Michoacán. Apparently not. But shortly after it left I was told that it would have taken us there. Well, it was gone now. This was one of those things I didn't need to tell MacClayne about, but I had a feeling he suspected it.
"Maybe we should try at a depot?" he suggested.
Several bus lines served this region, and we hunted down the depots, one after another. They were scattered over an area of two or three blocks, and at last we found one with a bus going our way, down the coast back towards Michoacán. However, it was crammed full of people, with no empty seats, and hardly even any standing room. The sun was beating down and it must have been stiflingly hot inside. Then I happened to look at the schedule which was posted on the depot wall. The bus wouldn't be leaving for another hour. I pitied those poor people having to wait for an hour in that oven.
"Let's go sit in the shade till it's about to leave," I said. But we'd gone only a few steps when the driver started up the engine and drove off. We chased after it, but it was gone.
I went to the ticket office and asked why that bus didn't run according to the posted schedule.
"Hoy es domingo," the ticket clerk told me. I'd looked at the wrong schedule, the one for weekdays. So this was Sunday? I'd completely lost track. Traveling as we were, every day was like a Sunday.
We considered hitchhiking, but, unlike the mountain villages we'd passed through, Tecomán was a fairly large city, and it didn't look like a simple thing to walk out to the edge of town to find the through traffic. Best to look for another bus. I wished Chayo were here. She would've been able to sort this out very quickly and get us on the right bus, but once again I reminded myself that that was why I needed to be doing this without her—in order to see how well I could function on my own in this society.
I continued to make rounds of the buses in the various depots. The schedules were confusing, so I concentrated on asking the bus drivers. In between I sat in the plaza and wrote in my journal while MacClayne worked on a poem. I also kept my eye on buses that went by. FARO was the destination of one that drove up and stopped. The name wasn't on our map of Michoacán, but, remembering the mistake I'd made earlier, I asked the driver, "¿Va usted a Coahuayana?"
Coahuayana was the first village inside Michoacán and I figured that any bus going that way would pass through it.
"No," the driver told me, "Voy a Faro."
So I went back and sat down beside MacClayne. "There's a city in Portugal by that name," he said. "A ship I was on docked there once." He went on to reminisce about how gloriously drunk one of his shipmates had gotten in a waterfront bar.
As MacClayne finished his story we watched the bus depart for Faro's Mexican namesake. Then he mused, "I wonder where this Faro might be?"
"It would be interesting to know," I said. "For the sake of academic knowledge."
"You might inquire. Knowledge is always good."
I got up and walked back to the nearest depot. "¿Dónde está Faro?" I asked the ticket seller.
"En Michoacán."
"¿De veras?" I said unbelievingly. "¿En Michoacán?"
"Sí."
I sighed deeply and looked again at my map. I'd asked the driver of the Faro bus if he were going to Coahuayana. Why had he said 'no'? But as I studied the map more carefully I saw what I'd failed to take into consideration--the village of Coahuayana lay several kilometers off the main road. Clearly, the bus didn't make that side trip, so I'd asked the wrong question.
Having lost three buses in a row, I felt less than competent. More than two hours had passed, and we were still looking for a bus. To be lost in a jungle would be awful enough, but I hadn't even found our way out of the city.
I thought of my forefathers and pictured a crew of Norsemen about to embark on a voyage to some faraway place, perhaps Vinland--but for the moment they are lost in the town of Trondhjem, unable to find their way down to the landing in the fjord.
There always seemed to be a bus pulling up to the curb when Chayo needed one. Could there be times when she couldn't find a bus either? A time when she couldn't even find her way out of town? No, I couldn't really imagine Chayo in a quandary such as this.
I delayed for some time before returning to the park bench, and when I did, MacClayne asked, "Did you find out where Faro is?"
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
MacClayne didn't ask the question again, but a few minutes later he said, "I think I'll just see you off, then spend the afternoon here in Tecomán."
Even Cuauhtémoc gave me a look which didn't express much confidence. I recalled that in the movie Aguirre had people beheaded for attempting to abandon his expedition, but at this moment I felt I was the one who deserved a beheading. I closed my eyes and envisioned a heavy ax blade about to descend upon my neck. End of pain, end of incompetence.
A sharp stab in my hand brought me back to eyes-wide alertness. It was the bird, who gave me a stern look, as if to say, "Shape up!"
"Tienes razón," I said to the bird, and gave him a hug. He put his head under my arm, as though in apology for jabbing me with his beak.
"You okay?" said MacClayne.
"Yeah," I said and forced a smile. "Here, you take the map. You'll need it."
He shook his head. "You keep it. You're the one who's always looking at it."
"Thank you," I said.
"You may be a while in that jungle, perhaps you'd like to take a couple of these books?" He reached into his bag and gave me several, including Sunny Days in the Tropics.
With Cuauhtémoc on my arm, I set out to make yet another round of the depots, but we'd hardly gone twenty paces when MacClayne called out to me. I didn't hear what he said, but I turned and saw a bus driving up. The destination above the windshield read LA PLACITA.
I didn't need to look at the map this time. La Placita was the village below Aquila, and had we hoofed it over the mountains from Villa Victoria, that's where we would've come out.
"This is the bus," I said, faintly hoping that MacClayne might still decide to accompany me. But he gave no indication that he would, and so I said, "You wouldn't care to come with and see La Placita?"
"No, I'll stay here and in the morning take that bus for Apatzingán."
We said our good-byes, and I got in line. Clutching Cuauhtémoc close to me, I said, "It's just the two of us now. You ready to travel the roadless road?"
The bird gave me another peck on the hand, a gentle one this time, and a look of silent determination. MacClayne was standing some distance from the bus, waving. I waved back, then boarded, and as I did so, I asked the driver my well worn question about the coastal road.
"¿Para Lázaro? Sí. Una vereda." He told me most of it was a jeep-trail. Pickup trucks got through.
"¿De veras?" I gasped, and swung around to look out the door. MacClayne was still there, raising his hand to wave a last good-bye.
"MACCLAYNE!" I called out to him in a voice loud enough to be heard over the din of the crowd, "THERE IS A ROAD TO LÁZARO!"
"HOLD ON!" he shouted back, "I'M COMING!"
continued in Chapter 28
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