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chapter 29
Shortly after dark I stepped out into the courtyard to see if my clothes were dry.
"Olaf! Hello there!"
It was a woman's voice, in American English. I looked around but didn't see anybody. The courtyard was poorly lit.
"Over here!" came the voice again, laughing, apparently enjoying my confusion. A woman stepped out of the shadows.
"It's me, Wendy." She was an attractive blond with a can of beer in her hand. She wore short shorts and a halter top.
"Hello," I said.
She laughed again.
"When did you get here?" I said at last. That was all I could think to say as I stood there trying to remember who she might be.
"Ten minutes ago. That's our room over there." She pointed to a half-open door across the courtyard. Light came from inside. "And you?"
"Just got here this afternoon."
She took sip of her beer. "You're sightseeing?"
"Sort of. Heading for Lázaro right now."
"Lázaro?"
"It's a couple hundred kilometers down the coast."
"Oh, you mean Lázaro Cárdenas City?" she said.
"Yes, the locals call it Lázaro," I said. I still couldn't remember where I'd known this woman from. She'd said her name was Wendy, but the only Wendy I could think of was the girl in the Peter Pan story.
"What do you know about the road ahead?" she said.
"Only what I've heard."
"Which is?"
"Not good," I said. "How are you traveling?"
"In a jeep."
"A jeep?" I almost sighed with envy.
"And you?"
"Riding buses."
"That must be quite an adventure. Is it true that people even take their pigs and goats on board?"
"They do. But it's no big thing. After all, in the U.S. we live with dogs and cats."
Wendy laughed. "I guess it's a matter of how you look at it. Would you like a beer? I'll get you one."
"No, but thanks anyway."
She took another sip. "Sure you don't want one?"
I shook my head. Wendy looked to be about twenty-five; along with being gorgeous, she had a certain charisma. Not a person I'd be likely to forget. There seemed to be a great big blank spot in my memory, and that was both embarrassing and unnerving.
Cuauhtémoc hopped up on my arm, then up to my shoulder. He gave her an inquisitive look.
"Yours?" she said.
"Meet Cuauhtémoc. My little friend."
"He's cute! Mind if I pet him?" she reached out her hand, but the bird's neck feathers suddenly stood on end. Wendy withdrew her hand.
"Does he bite?" she asked.
"No, he doesn't. Well, not often."
She eyed him warily for a moment, then said, "You didn't used to have a rooster, did you?"
"No, I didn't."
"Where did you get him?"
"Someone gave him to me. He and I have been together for some time now," I said, and tried to smooth down the bird's feathers. He kept looking at Wendy, and she in turn looked at me thoughtfully, studying my features. "You've changed," she said.
"I have?"
"Some. Not a lot. But I guess you've been in México a while."
"Since June."
"No wonder I haven't seen you around," she said.
"Wendy!" a man's voice called out.
"Over here!" she replied.
A tall, lanky fellow with a beer in his hand emerged from the door and walked up. He wore a sport shirt and a pair of expensive-looking Bermuda shorts. That might have been what men wore at posh resorts, but here in the mountains he looked bizarrely out of place. I guessed him to be about thirty.
"This is Olaf, a friend of mine from California," Wendy told him, and turning again to me, "Meet Jeff."
"Hello Jeff." I didn't recognize him. I held out my hand.
"Hello," he said, shaking my hand indifferently.
"Olaf and his partner are headed the same way we are," Wendy said to her companion, "I was thinking we might ask them if they'd care to have dinner with us tonight."
Jeff nodded and took a swallow of his beer.
"Would you care to join us?" she asked me.
"Sure. As for my partner, I'll have to ask him, though I'm sure he'd be delighted," I said. I hadn't told her I was traveling with anyone; I wondered how she knew about MacClayne. I excused myself to discuss it with MacClayne.
"Did you bring me another beer?" I heard Wendy ask Jeff.
"You can get your own." Jeff was saying as I entered our room. MacClayne looked up from a book, and I closed the door behind me.
"There's an American couple here," I said. "From California."
"I heard you talking with someone in English," said MacClayne. "I was about to go out and say hello."
"They invited us to join them for dinner," I said.
"It might be interesting to meet them."
"Their names are Wendy and Jeff. Wendy knows me from somewhere, but the funny thing is that I can't place her."
MacClayne nodded, "That's happened to me before. It's awkward when you forget someone's name."
I changed from shorts to trousers. They were still damp, but not uncomfortably so, and they'd dry; the evening was warm. When we were ready to go, I introduced MacClayne to Wendy and Jeff. On our way out through the gate, we passed a parked jeep with California license plates.
We found a restaurant near the plaza. It had a corrugated metal roof over a dirt floor with walls only about a meter high, like the one in La Placita. From the top of the wall to the ceiling it was open to the air like a large window without a pane. Though nothing to match the place where we'd eaten that afternoon, the atmosphere was still rather nice. A banana palm grew beside where we sat, and a couple of small electric bulbs pushed back just enough of the darkness to leave us with the charm of a tropical evening.
There were four or five other customers who glanced our way, looking first at Wendy, then at Jeff whose mode of dress must have seemed strange to them. They hardly seemed to notice MacClayne and me, or the bird.
As we sat down, Wendy ordered a beer. So did Jeff.
"Better go easy on those," Jeff told her.
"It's my last one," she said, and to me, "You don't drink, do you, Olaf? How about you?" Wendy looked at MacClayne.
"No. But don't mind me, go ahead," he replied.
I hoped my bird wouldn't demand a drink, but he didn't seem to be in a drinking mood this evening. Nor was he in a very social one. Though his neck feathers weren't standing on end, they weren't quite lying flat either He was perched on the low wall beside me, eyeing our companions. Right now he was glaring at Jeff, downright malevolently.
"You allow this chicken at the table?" Jeff inquired.
I looked at Jeff, wondering if he was being deliberately confrontational. I'd noted that he slurred his words ever so slightly.
"Don't mind Jeff," Wendy said. "He's in culture-shock."
"Wendy, I wish you'd let me speak for myself," Jeff said, then shook his head and looked at his glass. It was empty. He glanced around for the waitress, then back at Wendy. "What's that damn word for beer?"
"Cerveza. And I think you've had enough."
"Don't tell me that after the way you've been putting them away!" Jeff said. "What was that word again?"
Wendy smiled with malicious sweetness. "I'll order it for you," she said, and to the waitress, "Dos cervezas, por favor."
"Dos cervezas," Jeff muttered to himself, rolling his eyes. He reminded me of a manager at a place where I once worked who got sent to one of those expensive alcohol-rehabilitation programs and then came back and drank more than ever. I wondered what could have attracted Wendy to a guy like this.
"Normally we don't drink this much," Wendy said, "but we're leery of the water here."
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched for MacClayne's reaction. He loved to scoff at tourists who were afraid to drink the water in México, and his favorite anecdotes were of motorists who brought huge tanks of chlorinated drinking water all the way from California, perhaps fearing that the wells of México were swimming with Loch Ness-sized microbes.
"It's wise to exercise caution," MacClayne offered supportively.
I smiled discreetly to myself, then glanced at my bird whose alert eyes seemed to miss nothing. He appeared to be taking the measure of these people.
The two beers came, and the food arrived soon after. Wendy chatted amicably, and MacClayne was at his charming best. It was his first occasion in a week to talk with an English-speaking person other than me. Jeff hardly noticed the food; he guzzled his beer in silence and stared out into the darkness of the night. Wendy seemed to forget about him, she was listening to MacClayne, and her eyes sparkled as he told eloquently how we'd walked the snowy mountain, descended into the rain desert of the Valley of Infiernillo, and braved the unknown.
Had MacClayne lived in some previous age, he would have been a bard who extolled the deeds of heroes and outlaws. At this moment he was, to my amazement, generously assigning full credit to me for finding our way on this journey. Then he went on to tell of my sojourn in the Meseta Volcánica, and did it far better than I could have myself. After all the cynical doubts he'd expressed during the last few days, I was astonished to hear him speak so well of me. There were times when I truly appreciated MacClayne, and this was one of them.
"You're far too modest," I cut in to say. "You are the world traveler."
"You, Olaf, are the one who's modest," he said. "You've lived more in the last half year than most people do in a lifetime."
I was at a loss for words. It was so rare that I'd ever gotten recognition for anything from anybody.
"Take credit when you've got it coming, my lad," he said with the authoritative voice of an old salt. "Do you think I would've followed you out into the midst of nowhere if I wasn't damn sure you knew what you were doing?"
"Sur-vay-sah," Jeff called to the waitress.
Wendy glanced at him and sighed. "It's pronounced cerveza."
"As if I give a damn," he retorted, then mumbled to himself. "Don't these dumb people understand anything?"
Wendy ordered another two beers, then turned to me. "It sounds like you've had some remarkable experiences. And your partner's right, I've always thought that about you too. You're definitely too modest."
"Well, I--"
"But you never wrote. You didn't even tell me you were going to México. You just disappeared!"
"I -- I guess I'm not much of a letter writer," I said.
"You could at least have sent me a postcard."
She said that last in a playful, teasing way. This whole thing was sounding absolutely unreal. Did I really know this woman? She seemed to know me quite well, but try as I might, I still couldn't remember from where, and I couldn't understand how my memory could be this poor. It was terribly disconcerting, and I tried to think of something to say. "I lost my address book," I lied.
"Really?" She smiled a conspiratorial smile, suggesting that the two of us shared an intimate secret. MacClayne was smiling to himself, perhaps suspecting we'd been lovers on some occasion. I glanced at Jeff, and Wendy put her hand on his arm, "Poor Jeff," she said. "You understand nothing."
"Uuuh?" Jeff's eyes were glazed.
"But you, Olaf," she said. "You understand."
Understand what? I wanted to ask, but was too embarrassed. At that moment Cuauhtémoc left his perch and hopped onto my shoulder. I was glad to have him close to me.
"Have you been in México before?" I said at last, to change the direction of this uncomfortable conversation. Then I remembered that I was supposed to know her, and I wondered if I'd betrayed myself.
"Several times. Last year I spent a week in the Yucatán," she said, and told about her vacation at a resort area. "It was fun, but this time I wanted to see places that tourists don't normally go."
"This is definitely such a place," I said. "I guess you know it's one of the most remote parts of México."
"Tell me. Are there boa constrictors around here?"
"Boa constrictors?" For a moment I thought she was joking, but apparently she was serious. "I haven't heard any mention of them," I said.
"How about jaguars?"
"I believe there are some."
"Are they dangerous?"
"They can be a problem to cattle ranchers, but they rarely attack people," I said. I didn't tell her I'd learned that from a TV documentary back in the States.
She went on to ask about alligators, and then other terrors that routinely occur in second-rate movies. To her fears of huge tarantulas I had no reply, so I left the explanation to MacClayne. He assured her that there was little to fear in these parts, other than severe sunburn.
It was getting late and one after another we were beginning to yawn, all of us except Jeff who sat there with drink in hand and food still untouched. I wondered if he were in a total blackout. Not that it mattered. Wendy had drunk more than he this evening, but showed no apparent effects. MacClayne and I had drunk nothing but water. Out of politeness we offered to help her carry Jeff back to the hotel, but she declined and I was glad. She ordered herself another beer as we excused ourselves.
Nothing further had been said about teaming up and traveling together, but I assumed it was still on Wendy's mind. I tried to envision what several days with them might be like. Jeff might be tolerable--if he could lay off the booze. Wendy was the one who made me uneasy.
Two hundred kilometers of boozing; that's what their trip would be. I glanced at MacClayne as he strode along beside me. This evening the drinking hadn't seemed to bother him, and yet there'd been times when I'd seen him get up and walk out the door just because someone at a nearby table had a beer.
On reaching the hotel entrance, we paused to admire the maroon jeep with California license plates. This seemed like a good time to air the subject and exchange thoughts.
"They're heading the same way we are," I said.
"I know that."
"Well, I know you know that."
"Then why do you need to tell me something I know?"
"I only was trying to introduce the topic for discussion," I said.
"You have a strange way of bringing up topics. But anyway, you have my attention. Tell me what you were going to say."
"I'm sorry I said anything."
"I thought you wanted to discuss something," he said.
"We can talk in the morning."
"Then why did you bring it up now?"
I shook my head and tried to contain my frustration.
"You get my attention, and then leave me hanging," he said. "I can't understand why you do it."
"I'm too tired for this," I said.
Well, that was MacClayne. He'd been charming all evening and even praised me in the most flattering of terms. Now he had to make up for it.
continued in Chapter 30
"Olaf! Hello there!"
It was a woman's voice, in American English. I looked around but didn't see anybody. The courtyard was poorly lit.
"Over here!" came the voice again, laughing, apparently enjoying my confusion. A woman stepped out of the shadows.
"It's me, Wendy." She was an attractive blond with a can of beer in her hand. She wore short shorts and a halter top.
"Hello," I said.
She laughed again.
"When did you get here?" I said at last. That was all I could think to say as I stood there trying to remember who she might be.
"Ten minutes ago. That's our room over there." She pointed to a half-open door across the courtyard. Light came from inside. "And you?"
"Just got here this afternoon."
She took sip of her beer. "You're sightseeing?"
"Sort of. Heading for Lázaro right now."
"Lázaro?"
"It's a couple hundred kilometers down the coast."
"Oh, you mean Lázaro Cárdenas City?" she said.
"Yes, the locals call it Lázaro," I said. I still couldn't remember where I'd known this woman from. She'd said her name was Wendy, but the only Wendy I could think of was the girl in the Peter Pan story.
"What do you know about the road ahead?" she said.
"Only what I've heard."
"Which is?"
"Not good," I said. "How are you traveling?"
"In a jeep."
"A jeep?" I almost sighed with envy.
"And you?"
"Riding buses."
"That must be quite an adventure. Is it true that people even take their pigs and goats on board?"
"They do. But it's no big thing. After all, in the U.S. we live with dogs and cats."
Wendy laughed. "I guess it's a matter of how you look at it. Would you like a beer? I'll get you one."
"No, but thanks anyway."
She took another sip. "Sure you don't want one?"
I shook my head. Wendy looked to be about twenty-five; along with being gorgeous, she had a certain charisma. Not a person I'd be likely to forget. There seemed to be a great big blank spot in my memory, and that was both embarrassing and unnerving.
Cuauhtémoc hopped up on my arm, then up to my shoulder. He gave her an inquisitive look.
"Yours?" she said.
"Meet Cuauhtémoc. My little friend."
"He's cute! Mind if I pet him?" she reached out her hand, but the bird's neck feathers suddenly stood on end. Wendy withdrew her hand.
"Does he bite?" she asked.
"No, he doesn't. Well, not often."
She eyed him warily for a moment, then said, "You didn't used to have a rooster, did you?"
"No, I didn't."
"Where did you get him?"
"Someone gave him to me. He and I have been together for some time now," I said, and tried to smooth down the bird's feathers. He kept looking at Wendy, and she in turn looked at me thoughtfully, studying my features. "You've changed," she said.
"I have?"
"Some. Not a lot. But I guess you've been in México a while."
"Since June."
"No wonder I haven't seen you around," she said.
"Wendy!" a man's voice called out.
"Over here!" she replied.
A tall, lanky fellow with a beer in his hand emerged from the door and walked up. He wore a sport shirt and a pair of expensive-looking Bermuda shorts. That might have been what men wore at posh resorts, but here in the mountains he looked bizarrely out of place. I guessed him to be about thirty.
"This is Olaf, a friend of mine from California," Wendy told him, and turning again to me, "Meet Jeff."
"Hello Jeff." I didn't recognize him. I held out my hand.
"Hello," he said, shaking my hand indifferently.
"Olaf and his partner are headed the same way we are," Wendy said to her companion, "I was thinking we might ask them if they'd care to have dinner with us tonight."
Jeff nodded and took a swallow of his beer.
"Would you care to join us?" she asked me.
"Sure. As for my partner, I'll have to ask him, though I'm sure he'd be delighted," I said. I hadn't told her I was traveling with anyone; I wondered how she knew about MacClayne. I excused myself to discuss it with MacClayne.
"Did you bring me another beer?" I heard Wendy ask Jeff.
"You can get your own." Jeff was saying as I entered our room. MacClayne looked up from a book, and I closed the door behind me.
"There's an American couple here," I said. "From California."
"I heard you talking with someone in English," said MacClayne. "I was about to go out and say hello."
"They invited us to join them for dinner," I said.
"It might be interesting to meet them."
"Their names are Wendy and Jeff. Wendy knows me from somewhere, but the funny thing is that I can't place her."
MacClayne nodded, "That's happened to me before. It's awkward when you forget someone's name."
I changed from shorts to trousers. They were still damp, but not uncomfortably so, and they'd dry; the evening was warm. When we were ready to go, I introduced MacClayne to Wendy and Jeff. On our way out through the gate, we passed a parked jeep with California license plates.
We found a restaurant near the plaza. It had a corrugated metal roof over a dirt floor with walls only about a meter high, like the one in La Placita. From the top of the wall to the ceiling it was open to the air like a large window without a pane. Though nothing to match the place where we'd eaten that afternoon, the atmosphere was still rather nice. A banana palm grew beside where we sat, and a couple of small electric bulbs pushed back just enough of the darkness to leave us with the charm of a tropical evening.
There were four or five other customers who glanced our way, looking first at Wendy, then at Jeff whose mode of dress must have seemed strange to them. They hardly seemed to notice MacClayne and me, or the bird.
As we sat down, Wendy ordered a beer. So did Jeff.
"Better go easy on those," Jeff told her.
"It's my last one," she said, and to me, "You don't drink, do you, Olaf? How about you?" Wendy looked at MacClayne.
"No. But don't mind me, go ahead," he replied.
I hoped my bird wouldn't demand a drink, but he didn't seem to be in a drinking mood this evening. Nor was he in a very social one. Though his neck feathers weren't standing on end, they weren't quite lying flat either He was perched on the low wall beside me, eyeing our companions. Right now he was glaring at Jeff, downright malevolently.
"You allow this chicken at the table?" Jeff inquired.
I looked at Jeff, wondering if he was being deliberately confrontational. I'd noted that he slurred his words ever so slightly.
"Don't mind Jeff," Wendy said. "He's in culture-shock."
"Wendy, I wish you'd let me speak for myself," Jeff said, then shook his head and looked at his glass. It was empty. He glanced around for the waitress, then back at Wendy. "What's that damn word for beer?"
"Cerveza. And I think you've had enough."
"Don't tell me that after the way you've been putting them away!" Jeff said. "What was that word again?"
Wendy smiled with malicious sweetness. "I'll order it for you," she said, and to the waitress, "Dos cervezas, por favor."
"Dos cervezas," Jeff muttered to himself, rolling his eyes. He reminded me of a manager at a place where I once worked who got sent to one of those expensive alcohol-rehabilitation programs and then came back and drank more than ever. I wondered what could have attracted Wendy to a guy like this.
"Normally we don't drink this much," Wendy said, "but we're leery of the water here."
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched for MacClayne's reaction. He loved to scoff at tourists who were afraid to drink the water in México, and his favorite anecdotes were of motorists who brought huge tanks of chlorinated drinking water all the way from California, perhaps fearing that the wells of México were swimming with Loch Ness-sized microbes.
"It's wise to exercise caution," MacClayne offered supportively.
I smiled discreetly to myself, then glanced at my bird whose alert eyes seemed to miss nothing. He appeared to be taking the measure of these people.
The two beers came, and the food arrived soon after. Wendy chatted amicably, and MacClayne was at his charming best. It was his first occasion in a week to talk with an English-speaking person other than me. Jeff hardly noticed the food; he guzzled his beer in silence and stared out into the darkness of the night. Wendy seemed to forget about him, she was listening to MacClayne, and her eyes sparkled as he told eloquently how we'd walked the snowy mountain, descended into the rain desert of the Valley of Infiernillo, and braved the unknown.
Had MacClayne lived in some previous age, he would have been a bard who extolled the deeds of heroes and outlaws. At this moment he was, to my amazement, generously assigning full credit to me for finding our way on this journey. Then he went on to tell of my sojourn in the Meseta Volcánica, and did it far better than I could have myself. After all the cynical doubts he'd expressed during the last few days, I was astonished to hear him speak so well of me. There were times when I truly appreciated MacClayne, and this was one of them.
"You're far too modest," I cut in to say. "You are the world traveler."
"You, Olaf, are the one who's modest," he said. "You've lived more in the last half year than most people do in a lifetime."
I was at a loss for words. It was so rare that I'd ever gotten recognition for anything from anybody.
"Take credit when you've got it coming, my lad," he said with the authoritative voice of an old salt. "Do you think I would've followed you out into the midst of nowhere if I wasn't damn sure you knew what you were doing?"
"Sur-vay-sah," Jeff called to the waitress.
Wendy glanced at him and sighed. "It's pronounced cerveza."
"As if I give a damn," he retorted, then mumbled to himself. "Don't these dumb people understand anything?"
Wendy ordered another two beers, then turned to me. "It sounds like you've had some remarkable experiences. And your partner's right, I've always thought that about you too. You're definitely too modest."
"Well, I--"
"But you never wrote. You didn't even tell me you were going to México. You just disappeared!"
"I -- I guess I'm not much of a letter writer," I said.
"You could at least have sent me a postcard."
She said that last in a playful, teasing way. This whole thing was sounding absolutely unreal. Did I really know this woman? She seemed to know me quite well, but try as I might, I still couldn't remember from where, and I couldn't understand how my memory could be this poor. It was terribly disconcerting, and I tried to think of something to say. "I lost my address book," I lied.
"Really?" She smiled a conspiratorial smile, suggesting that the two of us shared an intimate secret. MacClayne was smiling to himself, perhaps suspecting we'd been lovers on some occasion. I glanced at Jeff, and Wendy put her hand on his arm, "Poor Jeff," she said. "You understand nothing."
"Uuuh?" Jeff's eyes were glazed.
"But you, Olaf," she said. "You understand."
Understand what? I wanted to ask, but was too embarrassed. At that moment Cuauhtémoc left his perch and hopped onto my shoulder. I was glad to have him close to me.
"Have you been in México before?" I said at last, to change the direction of this uncomfortable conversation. Then I remembered that I was supposed to know her, and I wondered if I'd betrayed myself.
"Several times. Last year I spent a week in the Yucatán," she said, and told about her vacation at a resort area. "It was fun, but this time I wanted to see places that tourists don't normally go."
"This is definitely such a place," I said. "I guess you know it's one of the most remote parts of México."
"Tell me. Are there boa constrictors around here?"
"Boa constrictors?" For a moment I thought she was joking, but apparently she was serious. "I haven't heard any mention of them," I said.
"How about jaguars?"
"I believe there are some."
"Are they dangerous?"
"They can be a problem to cattle ranchers, but they rarely attack people," I said. I didn't tell her I'd learned that from a TV documentary back in the States.
She went on to ask about alligators, and then other terrors that routinely occur in second-rate movies. To her fears of huge tarantulas I had no reply, so I left the explanation to MacClayne. He assured her that there was little to fear in these parts, other than severe sunburn.
It was getting late and one after another we were beginning to yawn, all of us except Jeff who sat there with drink in hand and food still untouched. I wondered if he were in a total blackout. Not that it mattered. Wendy had drunk more than he this evening, but showed no apparent effects. MacClayne and I had drunk nothing but water. Out of politeness we offered to help her carry Jeff back to the hotel, but she declined and I was glad. She ordered herself another beer as we excused ourselves.
Nothing further had been said about teaming up and traveling together, but I assumed it was still on Wendy's mind. I tried to envision what several days with them might be like. Jeff might be tolerable--if he could lay off the booze. Wendy was the one who made me uneasy.
Two hundred kilometers of boozing; that's what their trip would be. I glanced at MacClayne as he strode along beside me. This evening the drinking hadn't seemed to bother him, and yet there'd been times when I'd seen him get up and walk out the door just because someone at a nearby table had a beer.
On reaching the hotel entrance, we paused to admire the maroon jeep with California license plates. This seemed like a good time to air the subject and exchange thoughts.
"They're heading the same way we are," I said.
"I know that."
"Well, I know you know that."
"Then why do you need to tell me something I know?"
"I only was trying to introduce the topic for discussion," I said.
"You have a strange way of bringing up topics. But anyway, you have my attention. Tell me what you were going to say."
"I'm sorry I said anything."
"I thought you wanted to discuss something," he said.
"We can talk in the morning."
"Then why did you bring it up now?"
I shook my head and tried to contain my frustration.
"You get my attention, and then leave me hanging," he said. "I can't understand why you do it."
"I'm too tired for this," I said.
Well, that was MacClayne. He'd been charming all evening and even praised me in the most flattering of terms. Now he had to make up for it.
continued in Chapter 30
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