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Chapter 40
The walk to Caleta couldn't have been much more than a couple of kilometers, but it seemed terribly long as the excitement of my frightening experience wore off. That, and the lack of a good night's sleep were weighing heavily on me, and at each step I wanted to just drop in my tracks. Finally, buildings replaced the brush on either side of us, and I vaguely realized that we were walking down the streets of a town.
Somehow we made it to the hotel. I was so tired that when the clerk showed us our room, I just lay down on a cot and fell asleep at once, leaving MacClayne to take care of the arrangements.
When I awoke, I was disoriented. I sat up and looked around to get my bearings. It was night, but light from the courtyard entered through a fairly large window. MacClayne lay on the cot next to me, breathing softly. On the backrest of a chair was Cuauhtémoc, roosting with his head under his wing. We had to be in the town of Caleta, but I wasn't absolutely sure. The only thing I remembered clearly was the river. That swollen river which had tried to wash me and my bird out to the deep sea.
The raft of logs and branches still seemed to be chasing me, even as I sat there on the edge of the cot. This was not a vision and I knew it wasn't happening, but strangely enough, I couldn't shake the apprehension. The feeling of terror I'd avoided while in the river was now catching up with me. It didn't go away, but I was still very tired and I lay back down, hoping that sleep would make it disappear. I hadn't slept much during the storm of the night before.
But each time I closed my eyes, the river seemed to rise up and swirl about me, and I'd awaken in a fright. At last, from sheer exhaustion, I fell into a fretful sleep, and found myself once again on the river.
Cuauhtémoc was at my side; we were on a log raft. The sky was gray and a cold wind blew. The water was choppy; we rose and fell with the waves. This wasn't the river any more; we were out in the open sea. Land disappeared from sight, and in every direction I saw only whitecaps.
Our raft started breaking apart. I was in the water, clinging to a log, and the bird was on another log. The distance between us was too great for the bird to fly to me. I knew I had to let go of my log and swim to the one where my bird was, but I hesitated. And while I delayed, our logs drifted even farther apart.
Soon Cuauhtémoc was just a tiny figure which appeared and disappeared as the waves between us rose and fell. Gray was the color of everything, the sky above as well as the water below. Even my bird was gray, his magnificent reddish brown plumage leached out by the increasing distance between us; the sky and the sea were already claiming my bird as their own.
And still I hesitated...
I awoke with a jolt, and sat up. Sunlight was entering through the windows. The bird bounced onto my lap. "¡Mi gallito!" I hugged him, and he put his head under my arm. Perhaps he'd also dreamed that dream together with me, for he seemed as glad as I that we were both alive and together. For a moment it was a joyful reunion, but within seconds I was overcome by the awful realization that I'd done nothing in my dream to rescue him. He kept his head nestled under my arm, perhaps to let me know that everything was okay, but I could not dismiss my actions during that dream as anything other than cowardly desertion.
"¡No te meresco!" I don't deserve a friend like you! I said, tears welling up in my eyes. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw MacClayne sitting on a chair. He'd been reading a book which now lay on his lap, and he was looking at me.
"¿Amaneciste bien?" he asked.
"Si, muy bien," I replied, trying my best to make my voice sound calm and strong, but it came out more like a frog's croaking.
I couldn't let MacClayne see me crying. I bit my lip and looked away to hide my face. Nowadays it was supposed to be okay for men to cry, even real men, but I certainly didn't want to get caught doing it.
Out on that ocean I'd abandoned my bird, and here I was trying to cover up and not look wimpy. Even at this moment I wanted to look good. Façade. How can I be thinking about façade at a time like this? Despicable!
"How could I have ever abandoned you," I said to my bird in a whisper. But in spite of everything, the bird snuggled up beside me, giving me a feeling of companionship and comfort.. Was he forgiving me? Or maybe he was not aware of anything to forgive.
It had all happened in a dream, and I knew it was a dream, very different from the events of the actual crossing of that river. My mind went back to that crossing, and, as I turned it over in my mind, it seemed I'd done reasonably well. But it was the dream events which seemed most real, and they conjured up these powerful emotions. It was just a dream, I told myself, but the dream seemed to tell me something about myself. I didn't know what. Perhaps that I was really a coward.
I lay back on my cot, took deep breaths through my mouth and stared up at the ceiling. It was plastered and coated with white paint. In it I began seeing ships and then faces in the patterns; one was a likeness of MacClayne. Then my eye went to another pattern and when I again tried to find the one of MacClayne, it didn't seem to be there. That's the way patterns in ceilings are, a bit like clouds and dreams.
My thought about the bird sharing my dream brought me back to my suspicions of a possible dream crossover with MacClayne. I'd been speculating during these past days that I'd somehow intruded into MacClayne's nightly drinking bouts with his lost shipmates.
The ships that were blown out from under him had been part of a war that ended some years before I was born. I knew of that war only from books and movies, and, as a child, it had seemed to me a time of larger-than-life characters who did everything in a larger-than-life way. In my childhood estimation it had been an heroic age, an occurrence to be compared with the Trojan war.
I could picture MacClayne sailing for home after sacking Troy and bound for further adventures as a crewman of Ulysses' ship. Had MacClayne lived at that time, he would have been part of it. In still another era he'd have been a court poet. He might have arrived at the magnificent hall of King Hrothgar as an itinerant bard, or just as likely, as one of the fourteen warriors accompanying Beowulf from across the sea to do battle with Grendel. In Elizabethan times he would have visited the Globe Theater, between voyages with Sir Francis Drake and other pirates.
Was I a child of a lesser age? Or maybe this too was in its own way an heroic age, still peopled and chickened with personalities like MacClayne and Cuauhtémoc. And Chayo. She was the shaman woman, ageless and eternal.
"Are you awake?" MacClayne said.
"Yeah," I said and sat up on the edge of the bed. My voice sounded better now, and the tears seemed to have dried up.
"You looked pretty beat there," he said.
For a long time I didn't say anything, I just sat there looking around. MacClayne set his book aside; I couldn't see the title. Finally, some irrational urge drove me to confess.
"I abandoned my bird," I said.
"You-- You what?" He looked startled. Then his eyes turned to the rooster who was in my arms.
"It was in a dream," I said. "But it seemed so terribly real, like something I'd actually done."
"A nightmare?" he said.
"Yes."
"I could see you were disturbed by something. Maybe you'd care to tell me about it. Sometimes that helps. If you want to," he said. "I'm here to listen."
Normally I wouldn't have told him my dream, but at this moment I needed to unload the experience. My voice faltered when I came to the part where I lost Cuauhtémoc.
"I saw you in the river yesterday morning and you did very well," MacClayne said when I'd finished. "You kept your head and saved both yourself and the rooster. But yes, I can understand how you feel. I've had dreams like that."
"You have?" I said. Somehow I wasn't surprised to hear that.
"It was during the war," he said, and related a dream he'd had shortly after his ship went down. In it, he'd gone around collecting all his shipmates in a gunnysack.
"In a gunny sack?" I repeated. It struck me as funny and for a moment it was hard for me to keep a solemn face.
"Yes," he said. "And then I put them below deck and locked the hatch so they couldn't escape when the ship sank."
"But it was just a dream," I said.
He nodded. "Just a dream."
For a while neither of us said anything. Finally I spoke again. "Maybe you felt guilty about coming back alive when so many of your shipmates didn't," I suggested. "I've heard of survivors being haunted by the very fact of their survival."
"I think that's why, now as I look back on it," he said. "You know I've never told anybody about this before."
"No?" I said. "As you yourself said, it can help to share such experiences."
"It does. But often you can't."
"I know," I said. "A lot of people don't seem to understand. Or maybe we ourselves are the ones who don't understand."
"Yes, maybe we're too hard on ourselves."
"I think so," I said. "When I was in the river with the log jam coming straight at me, you turned back to rescue me even though you're not a good swimmer. You tried to save me."
"Yes, I tried. But you saved yourself."
"You put yourself in danger for me," I said. "That's the important thing. And it's the daytime reality that counts. I forgot to thank you."
"Thank you for telling me that," he said.
"And I'm sure you would've done the same for your shipmates. But the fact is, there was nothing you could have done for them."
"No, it wasn't my fault that my shipmates went down, and I know that, or at least I should know that. But in a way I somehow felt I should have gone down with them. When they died I wanted to die with them, and if they went to hell, I wanted to go there too. Maybe not really, but there was some part of me that did."
"I think it's incredibly strange that our dreams sometimes show us doing the very things we don't do. It's not fair."
"We ought to complain to the dream master," said MacClayne.
* * *
It was already well into the afternoon of the next day; we'd slept almost around the clock. Hotel Yritzi was the name of the place we were staying in. The building was made of concrete, but our room was rather nice inside, tastefully painted and with fly screens on the windows. We even had a private bath with shower, washbowl and mirror. For us this was unaccustomed luxury.
I shaved in front of the mirror and saw my face for the first time in days. Do I look like that? I could hardly believe how sunburned I was. Cuauhtémoc hopped up on the edge of the washbasin to preen his feathers as he usually did at a pila while I shaved. But this time he also saw himself in the mirror and cocked his head from one side to the other.
I went in the shower and turned the water on. There was no hot water faucet, but the water wasn't uncomfortably cold. On emerging, I realized I didn't have any clean clothes. The ones I had were not only caked with dirt and river mud, they reeked of smoke from our campfire. So I went back in the shower and washed everything; the fire smell diminished, but didn't disappear. I put on my wet shorts and a wet T-shirt. By now I was used to this.
MacClayne did likewise, and then we set out to see the town, both of us in drippy duds. Only the bird was dry. But it didn't matter. Nobody around here was likely to know us.
"I hope Wendy and Jeff have left," I said and glanced around as we passed through the courtyard. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the place.
"I didn't see them when we arrived yesterday," MacClayne said. "But their jeep was parked here. It seems to be gone now."
"Good," I said. "But let's make sure."
"Does it really matter?"
"Yes, it does," I said. "I don't feel comfortable with Wendy around."
"You're not still blaming her for the death of the white bird?"
"No, not really. That is, I don't think she intended to kill the bird. But she does seem to have a poisonous touch," I said. And, part of the truth was, I also felt embarrassed over the way I'd acted towards her when the bird died, but I didn't mention that.
We stopped by the office and I asked the clerk if an American couple had been here. "The woman is blond and always has a beer in her hand," I said.
"They left this morning," the clerk said. "They were here several days."
I wondered what name Wendy had used in signing the register this time, but I couldn't think of a discreet way to ask. It didn't really matter, because we probably wouldn't be seeing them again.
"So, they're out of our lives," I said as we began our way down the unpaved street. It was full of mud puddles. There were few vehicles and not many pedestrians. A weakly shining sun peered through the clouds. Rain seemed likely to resume at any time. A raw wind whipped about and lashed at my clothing.
This settlement was built high up on a bluff, and a short walk took us to the edge of a cliff which had a lighthouse perched on it. From this vantage point we could look down and see a horseshoe-shaped bay, which was about a kilometer across. The water was full of skerries, and from one of these rocks a stream of water spouted upwards at intervals like from the blowhole of a whale.
Also in the bay was a schooner riding at anchor. I wondered if it might be the same one I'd seen at Maruata a few days before.
A lengthy stairway of concrete steps took us down the cliff face to a beach inside the bay. A large number of fiberglass launches were drawn up on the sand, and fishermen were working on them, but nobody seemed to be out on the water fishing. Here as elsewhere, the storm had apparently driven the fish away. This beach was protected by promontories which jutted far out into the water at both ends, and so the waves which washed up onto the sand were gentle. It looked like a nice place to swim, but not under today's cold sun.
It was still early for supper and so we took our time, chatting with fishermen and then looking at the geology. The cliffs appeared to be composed of ancient lava flows which I guessed were contemporary with the shale and limestone we'd been seeing along this coast. Probably Cretaceous--belonging to the age of dinosaurs.
Finally we climbed back up the steps and strolled down the windy street till we found a restaurant. It was made of concrete but was attractively done, and I was glad to be going into a place with four walls to keep out the cold wind. As we walked in the door we were greeted by a shrill voice:
"¡Chulo! ¡Chulo! ¡Chulo!" Pretty! Pretty! Pretty!
"It's a parrot," said MacClayne, and then I saw it myself. It was green, and perched not far away. Cuauhtémoc gave the loquacious avian an annoyed look as we sat down.
"¡Arre burro!"
"What's he saying?" MacClayne wondered.
"The bird seems to be a mule skinner," I told him. "What he said was 'Get moving, jackass.'"
We ordered the usual plates of beef and pork with beans and tortillas, and as we ate the bird periodically shouted commands to burros.
"He's probably getting back at the human race for taking him out of his home in the jungle," MacClayne said.
"Somebody ought to teach him to say 'Pieces of eight'," I said.
The walls were painted with murals depicting Mexican historical and religious themes, both Catholic and pre-Hispanic. The parrot fit in as part of this and added a certain charm of its own. If only it hadn't been for the screechy, ear-piercing quality of its voice.
"¡Chulo! ¡Chulo! ¡Chulo!" went the bird again, and Cuauhtémoc eyed him skeptically. He had to be thinking to himself that if he were able to talk, he'd certainly have something better to say than that.
We'd finished our meals and were drinking coffee when MacClayne, who sat facing the door, looked up in surprise. I turned to see what it was, and in the door strode Wendy.
"Hello there," she said, with some reserve.
"Buenas tardes," MacClayne responded warmly and pulled a chair over from another table. "Have a seat."
"¡Arre burro!" shrilled the parrot. Wendy ignored it and eyed me for a moment. "Hello Olaf," she said rather coolly.
"Hello," I said, trying not to sound embarrassed. "Please do sit down."
"You were rude to me the other day," she reminded me and put her hand on the backrest of the chair, but remained standing.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be," I said. "The white bird died and I was upset, but I shouldn't have directed it at you."
Wendy pursed her lips.
"I hope you'll accept my apology," I said. "Let me buy you a drink."
"Okay Olaf, I forgive you. But make it a soft drink," she said with a slightly twisted smile and sat down. I asked the waitress for a soda pop.
"¡Chulo! ¡Chulo! ¡Chulo!"
Wendy glanced at the bird and smiled. "Isn't that parrot lovely?" she said, and got up and went to the bird and gave it a piece of food. "Chulo," she said; the bird responded with "¡Burro!." When her soda pop arrived Wendy sat down again.
Cuauhtémoc appeared a bit miffed at not being the center of attention, and he finally clucked his annoyance.
"How's the rooster today?" Wendy said, finally turning to notice him. But despite the bird's desire for attention, he didn't seem inclined to be friendly. He seemed to have taken a dislike to Wendy from the start, perhaps distrusting her as a woman who might try to steal me away from Chayo.
"I didn't see you at the hotel," I said. "We thought you'd left for Acapulco."
"We did," she said. "We got to a river and it was swollen because of the storm. People there told us it would subside after a while and we could drive across. We waited all day, but it never did. Finally we gave up and came back here."
"What river is that?" MacClayne said. "You don't mean there's still another one?"
"I think they call it the Río Chuta," she said. "It's about twenty miles to the east of here."
MacClayne told her about our days on the beach, the storm, and our river crossing. We passed an hour or more with Wendy, chatting amicably. Everything I'd seen of this woman indicated that she was bad news, but she had a charisma that defied logic. Only Cuauhtémoc seemed unmoved by Wendy's charm; he glared at her. I wondered where Jeff was this evening, but Wendy didn't say, and I didn't ask.
"¡Arre burro!" the parrot's screech cut into my thoughts. I glanced up at the green-feathered bird, and this time he seemed to be looking right at me. "¡Arre burro!" he shrilled again and again.
"I have some things to attend to," I said, wanting to get away from Wendy. "I hope you'll excuse me."
I figured that MacClayne might wish to stay longer, but for whatever reasons of his own, he chose to go back to the hotel with me. Darkness had fallen, and the street lights were on. It felt like a long time since we'd last been in a place where they had electricity, and it seemed like a novelty to be walking down a lighted street.
"She's a very nice person," said MacClayne as we walked back.
I didn't know how to respond to that. Raindrops were beginning to fall. I wondered if the storm were going to resume.
I flicked the switch as we entered our room; it felt good to have electric light to read by, to be once again in a place where we didn't have to go to bed with the sun and endure twelve long hours of darkness. The very quiet of this place was a luxury, without the ocean breakers pounding incessantly, making even simple conversation difficult. We decided to read stories aloud to each other. We hadn't been able to do that while camping on the beach.
MacClayne must have had a dozen books with him. One was an anthology of short stories titled: The Adventures of Shipping Clerks.
We began with a story about a retired fellow who recounted his memories of the day he took a girlfriend to a carnival where they rode the Ferris wheel. The motor broke down and left them high up in the air, and they sat and shivered in the cold evening breeze for over an hour before it was finally repaired. Nothing dramatic happened during that uncomfortable hour, but the gist of the story seemed to be that the poor guy had lived such an uneventful life that this was the most memorable experience he could recall.
There came a rap at our door, and MacClayne went to open it. It was Wendy and she appeared upset. MacClayne invited her in. "Has something happened?" he asked as she entered.
"Jeff's drunk."
There was a moment of awkward silence. It seemed to me that Jeff was always nearly drunk and I wondered what could be significant about this particular binge.
"Are you okay?" MacClayne said. "He didn't hit you or anything?"
"He's passed out," she said shaking her head in disgust. "And he's lied to me for the last time."
"Lied?" I repeated.
"Yes, lied," she said. "After that wild ride of his, he promised me to never, never touch a bottle again. He'd finally seen the light, and gave me his word."
"I see," I said, trying to say it in a tone that expressed commiseration.
"It isn't that I'm against drinking," she added, "but Jeff is one of those people who can't handle booze. Well, you saw for yourselves."
MacClayne and I both nodded.
"And to be supportive of him, I gave up drinking too. I told him that as long as he didn't drink I wouldn't either. That was my pledge to Jeff. You noticed I wasn't drinking beer at the restaurant tonight? Then, shortly after I returned to our room, he came stumbling in, drunk on his ass."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" said MacClayne sympathetically. "Do you have a place to stay?"
"No, I don't," she said. "I was going to take another room, but I think they're all occupied."
MacClayne turned to glance at me. "What do you say, Olaf?"
I hesitated a moment, seriously doubting that the hotel was even half full, but MacClayne had already offered. There was no way out of this without being offensive. "Sure, fine with me," I said.
"Oh, could I?" she said. "I hate to impose on you like this. It's so kind of you!"
Having offered her room space, we now had to decide where she was going to sleep. We only had two beds; and so it looked like somebody would have to sleep on the cold concrete floor.
"There's an extra bed in my room," said Wendy. "Could I ask you to bring it over here. You needn't worry about Jeff. He's out of it."
It seemed to me like a horrible idea, but I followed Wendy and MacClayne to the other room. I could hear Jeff snoring somewhere in the darkness, and I was quietly tiptoeing past when Wendy flicked on the light and said in a voice that seemed to echo from wall to wall, "That bed over there. Do you think you can carry it?"
Fortunately, Jeff snored on, remaining oblivious to our presence. The bed he was sleeping on was small, and would've been easy enough to move, but the empty one was a huge, king-sized monster.
Finally we decided to take just the huge mattress and haul it over to our room for the night. MacClayne took one end and I took the other while Wendy held the door. I nearly tripped over Cuauhtémoc, who then hopped aboard the mattress for a free ride across the courtyard.
"¡Bájate de allí!" I demanded in a whisper, but the bird just looked at me and clucked. MacClayne laughed good-naturedly, and Wendy was delighted with the bird's antic.
The courtyard was wet, but fortunately it wasn't raining right then. When we finally manhandled the monstrous object into our room, there was barely enough floor space and we had to jam it up against my cot.
Then we brought in Wendy's ice chest, which was quite heavy. I wondered what might be in it; soft drinks perhaps. She herself carried a single suitcase. "I travel light," she said, and dug a beer from the ice chest. "Feel free to help yourselves. There's also guava juice."
MacClayne gave the beer a thirsty look, but took a can of juice.
Wendy popped her can open, took a sip, then glanced at the pile of books on the table and picked up Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. I guessed that Wendy was probably wondering what it was; I somehow imagined her intellect as being restricted to TV soap operas and sitcoms.
"We've been reading aloud to each other," said MacClayne. "Maybe you'd like to join us."
I groaned silently. Why does he even bother to ask her? She'd be bored.
"I'd love to," she said. "I'll read if you'd like."
"Please do," he said. "That's our library, such as it is. Choose the one you like," he said, and glancing at me: "That okay with you, Olaf?"
"Sure."
"Then how about Moll Flanders," she said, holding it up. "It's been a couple years since I last read it."
Seating herself cross-legged on a chair, she opened the novel to the first page and began, "My true name is so well known in the records at Newgate prison and in the Old Bailey court . . ."
Wendy read with feeling and personality that brought the female protagonist to life. Even her voice took on an accent appropriate to 17th century London, a perilous world which many of Moll's companions left "by the steps and the string."
Here Wendy paused to glance at us, doubtlessly to assure herself that we knew the meaning of steps and string. MacClayne said, perhaps for my benefit, "the gallows."
Wendy read on. She accomplished with the prose of Daniel Defoe what MacClayne did with the poetry of Robert Burns. Even Cuauhtémoc dropped his hackles and softened his normally hostile stance towards Wendy as he listened to her melodious voice. She'd even seduced my bird, it seemed.
When she paused to moisten her lips and throat, she clutched her beer in quite the way I would have expected of Moll herself, and I said, "I feel as though I were hearing Moll in the flesh, returned to life and telling her own story."
"Well put," said MacClayne. "Wendy, you do read like few I've heard."
"The story is one of my favorites."
"That I can well believe," I said. "And you sound like you've had a lot of practice reading."
"Yes, I have," she said. "Reading elocution was part of my drama studies. I minored in acting and theater."
"You're also an actress?"
"In a way, yes, you might say I am," she said with an ironic smile. "I majored in business, but to do anything in the business world, one must first of all be an actress. Selling real estate is an act. When I'm trying to sell a property, I'm on stage. The buyer is the audience and if he doesn't buy my act, I don't make that sale."
I nodded.
"Life itself is an act," she added.
"I suppose so," I said.
"As a matter of fact, I like stage acting for its own sake. It's an interest I continue to pursue. In amateur theater productions of course."
"What roles have you played?"
"Lady Macbeth is my favorite. In The Crucible I was the witch, and in Craig's Wife I was the selfish virago. I also played Clytemnestra in Agamemnon. I do enjoy those Medusa type characters, but I'm pretty versatile. I've been acting all my life, ever since I was a little girl. In a children's Christmas pageant I played the part of Mary, and I got all kinds of compliments on how well I did at the rehearsals. But two days before it was to be presented, I got replaced by a girl who had absolutely no talent for the part. It was so unfair! And that was all just because they found me in a broom closet with the kid who was playing the archangel Gabriel."
It was all I could do to suppress a smile, but MacClayne found words that expressed sympathy and condemned the unfairness with which children are treated. MacClayne was a great commiserator when he was in the mood for it.
"It's true," she said. "Children are not treated right. I like plays which dramatize fairness and morality, where justice wins in the end. One of my roles was Hamlet."
"Were you the queen mother?" I asked.
"Could you see me in that role?" she said, grimacing. "A woman who slips into another guy's bed within a month of losing her husband. Just sort of passively amoral."
I bit my lip, knowing there was nothing I could say here that would come off well.
"A bit amoral, perhaps, but not passively so," said MacClayne with his consummate charm.
Wendy laughed. "I was Hamlet."
"You were who?" I said, thinking I'd heard wrongly.
"Hamlet, princess of Denmark."
"Princess?" I repeated.
"Does that seem so strange to you? It was only a matter of changing a few pronouns, otherwise it was basically the same. The stabbing. The killing. Women can take revenge too, you know."
Wendy continued, "That scene where Hamlet stabs the wicked king with the poisoned sword--I twisted that sword and then plunged in my dagger and then turned it and turned it, and the audience loved it. People told me afterwards that they could practically see the blood flowing! Everyone said it was the best scene in the production. The women loved it because women love to see a woman getting even. The guys loved it because it turns guys on to watch a woman doing that kind of violence."
She set her beer aside and returned to Defoe and the rogues of 17th century England. It was many pages later and close to midnight when our eyes began to droop.
"I think I have to call it a night," MacClayne said at last and stepped over to his cot. "I hope you'll excuse me if I undress here?" he said to Wendy.
"Not a problem," she smiled, and glanced away but watched him out of the corner of her eye as he unbuttoned his shirt and then took off his trousers before getting between the sheets wearing just his T-shirt and shorts. Although he was fifty, he was well built and in good shape. Young women still seemed to find him attractive, and I guessed that Wendy did too.
MacClayne closed his eyes and fell asleep at once. Wendy stepped into the bathroom to change. When she came back out, wrapped in a beach-towel, she stopped at the ice chest to get another beer. But, as she was holding the can in one hand and pulling the opener with the other, her towel fell to the floor. She was wearing absolutely nothing.
I immediately closed my eyes and turned my head away.
"Olaf," she said sweetly. "You're such a gentleman."
I was so embarrassed I didn't know what to say. Wendy was laughing.
MacClayne didn't stir; I was glad he wasn't awake to witness this. I could feel my face turning red, and hoped Wendy wouldn't notice. She was now rolling out her sleeping bag on her mattress. When she was finally in bed, I turned out the lights. Then I took off my jacket and shorts and lay down on my cot; a moment later I got up and put them back on because of the slight chill. The hotel had sheets but no blankets, this being a tropical region where it rarely got cold. Despite the stormy weather of these last couple days, it wasn't really cold tonight either, but I could have used a blanket.
Rain was pattering softly on the windows, and I lay there listening to it. I could also hear MacClayne snoring, not loudly. Just his usual deep breathing. Wendy, whose large mattress was on the floor beside my cot, also seemed to be asleep.
"Olaf?"
"Yes."
"Are you awake?"
"Yes."
"Ever go sailing?"
"Actually, I have."
"What kind of boat?"
"A tiny sloop, hardly bigger than a rowboat," I said. "But I learned some basics, how to . . ."
"How to tack against the wind, come about . . ."
"Yeah, stuff like that."
"Fun, isn't it."
"It is," I said. "Sound like you've done some sailing."
"A little. I used to be in a club. We sailed around in San Francisco Bay," she said. "Ever been on a schooner?"
"No. Have you?"
"On the Hispaniola . . ."
Somewhere about there I dozed off. I dreamt I was standing on the deck of a schooner, with Wendy at the helm. Our sails were full and the ship was moving along nicely. Then I looked for Cuauhtémoc, but I couldn't find him anywhere. He didn't seem to be aboard, and while I was still looking for him, I realized we were near the rocky coast. All around us were skerries. Huge waves broke on them, throwing mist high into the air and over our ship. I could feel the chilling dampness.
Directly ahead was a promontory with a lighthouse on its crest, and Wendy seemed unable to come about and steer our ship away from it. Just as we were about to smash into the rocks, I realized I didn't have any clothes on. Absolutely nothing. I wanted to rush below deck and get my clothes, but Wendy was asking me to stay with her.
"Don't leave me!" she pleaded, and at that instant our ship slammed into the rocks below the promontory.
As the waves dashed our ship against the jagged rocks and ground it to pieces, I took Wendy by the hand and we floated through the air, landing high up on the promontory by the lighthouse. I still didn't have any clothes on, and Wendy wasn't wearing anything either.
"Let's go inside," she said. We were standing right in front of the lighthouse, by the door.
"No, let's not!" I said.
But the door opened, and there stood Chayo and Cuauhtémoc.
continued in Chapter 41
Somehow we made it to the hotel. I was so tired that when the clerk showed us our room, I just lay down on a cot and fell asleep at once, leaving MacClayne to take care of the arrangements.
When I awoke, I was disoriented. I sat up and looked around to get my bearings. It was night, but light from the courtyard entered through a fairly large window. MacClayne lay on the cot next to me, breathing softly. On the backrest of a chair was Cuauhtémoc, roosting with his head under his wing. We had to be in the town of Caleta, but I wasn't absolutely sure. The only thing I remembered clearly was the river. That swollen river which had tried to wash me and my bird out to the deep sea.
The raft of logs and branches still seemed to be chasing me, even as I sat there on the edge of the cot. This was not a vision and I knew it wasn't happening, but strangely enough, I couldn't shake the apprehension. The feeling of terror I'd avoided while in the river was now catching up with me. It didn't go away, but I was still very tired and I lay back down, hoping that sleep would make it disappear. I hadn't slept much during the storm of the night before.
But each time I closed my eyes, the river seemed to rise up and swirl about me, and I'd awaken in a fright. At last, from sheer exhaustion, I fell into a fretful sleep, and found myself once again on the river.
Cuauhtémoc was at my side; we were on a log raft. The sky was gray and a cold wind blew. The water was choppy; we rose and fell with the waves. This wasn't the river any more; we were out in the open sea. Land disappeared from sight, and in every direction I saw only whitecaps.
Our raft started breaking apart. I was in the water, clinging to a log, and the bird was on another log. The distance between us was too great for the bird to fly to me. I knew I had to let go of my log and swim to the one where my bird was, but I hesitated. And while I delayed, our logs drifted even farther apart.
Soon Cuauhtémoc was just a tiny figure which appeared and disappeared as the waves between us rose and fell. Gray was the color of everything, the sky above as well as the water below. Even my bird was gray, his magnificent reddish brown plumage leached out by the increasing distance between us; the sky and the sea were already claiming my bird as their own.
And still I hesitated...
I awoke with a jolt, and sat up. Sunlight was entering through the windows. The bird bounced onto my lap. "¡Mi gallito!" I hugged him, and he put his head under my arm. Perhaps he'd also dreamed that dream together with me, for he seemed as glad as I that we were both alive and together. For a moment it was a joyful reunion, but within seconds I was overcome by the awful realization that I'd done nothing in my dream to rescue him. He kept his head nestled under my arm, perhaps to let me know that everything was okay, but I could not dismiss my actions during that dream as anything other than cowardly desertion.
"¡No te meresco!" I don't deserve a friend like you! I said, tears welling up in my eyes. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw MacClayne sitting on a chair. He'd been reading a book which now lay on his lap, and he was looking at me.
"¿Amaneciste bien?" he asked.
"Si, muy bien," I replied, trying my best to make my voice sound calm and strong, but it came out more like a frog's croaking.
I couldn't let MacClayne see me crying. I bit my lip and looked away to hide my face. Nowadays it was supposed to be okay for men to cry, even real men, but I certainly didn't want to get caught doing it.
Out on that ocean I'd abandoned my bird, and here I was trying to cover up and not look wimpy. Even at this moment I wanted to look good. Façade. How can I be thinking about façade at a time like this? Despicable!
"How could I have ever abandoned you," I said to my bird in a whisper. But in spite of everything, the bird snuggled up beside me, giving me a feeling of companionship and comfort.. Was he forgiving me? Or maybe he was not aware of anything to forgive.
It had all happened in a dream, and I knew it was a dream, very different from the events of the actual crossing of that river. My mind went back to that crossing, and, as I turned it over in my mind, it seemed I'd done reasonably well. But it was the dream events which seemed most real, and they conjured up these powerful emotions. It was just a dream, I told myself, but the dream seemed to tell me something about myself. I didn't know what. Perhaps that I was really a coward.
I lay back on my cot, took deep breaths through my mouth and stared up at the ceiling. It was plastered and coated with white paint. In it I began seeing ships and then faces in the patterns; one was a likeness of MacClayne. Then my eye went to another pattern and when I again tried to find the one of MacClayne, it didn't seem to be there. That's the way patterns in ceilings are, a bit like clouds and dreams.
My thought about the bird sharing my dream brought me back to my suspicions of a possible dream crossover with MacClayne. I'd been speculating during these past days that I'd somehow intruded into MacClayne's nightly drinking bouts with his lost shipmates.
The ships that were blown out from under him had been part of a war that ended some years before I was born. I knew of that war only from books and movies, and, as a child, it had seemed to me a time of larger-than-life characters who did everything in a larger-than-life way. In my childhood estimation it had been an heroic age, an occurrence to be compared with the Trojan war.
I could picture MacClayne sailing for home after sacking Troy and bound for further adventures as a crewman of Ulysses' ship. Had MacClayne lived at that time, he would have been part of it. In still another era he'd have been a court poet. He might have arrived at the magnificent hall of King Hrothgar as an itinerant bard, or just as likely, as one of the fourteen warriors accompanying Beowulf from across the sea to do battle with Grendel. In Elizabethan times he would have visited the Globe Theater, between voyages with Sir Francis Drake and other pirates.
Was I a child of a lesser age? Or maybe this too was in its own way an heroic age, still peopled and chickened with personalities like MacClayne and Cuauhtémoc. And Chayo. She was the shaman woman, ageless and eternal.
"Are you awake?" MacClayne said.
"Yeah," I said and sat up on the edge of the bed. My voice sounded better now, and the tears seemed to have dried up.
"You looked pretty beat there," he said.
For a long time I didn't say anything, I just sat there looking around. MacClayne set his book aside; I couldn't see the title. Finally, some irrational urge drove me to confess.
"I abandoned my bird," I said.
"You-- You what?" He looked startled. Then his eyes turned to the rooster who was in my arms.
"It was in a dream," I said. "But it seemed so terribly real, like something I'd actually done."
"A nightmare?" he said.
"Yes."
"I could see you were disturbed by something. Maybe you'd care to tell me about it. Sometimes that helps. If you want to," he said. "I'm here to listen."
Normally I wouldn't have told him my dream, but at this moment I needed to unload the experience. My voice faltered when I came to the part where I lost Cuauhtémoc.
"I saw you in the river yesterday morning and you did very well," MacClayne said when I'd finished. "You kept your head and saved both yourself and the rooster. But yes, I can understand how you feel. I've had dreams like that."
"You have?" I said. Somehow I wasn't surprised to hear that.
"It was during the war," he said, and related a dream he'd had shortly after his ship went down. In it, he'd gone around collecting all his shipmates in a gunnysack.
"In a gunny sack?" I repeated. It struck me as funny and for a moment it was hard for me to keep a solemn face.
"Yes," he said. "And then I put them below deck and locked the hatch so they couldn't escape when the ship sank."
"But it was just a dream," I said.
He nodded. "Just a dream."
For a while neither of us said anything. Finally I spoke again. "Maybe you felt guilty about coming back alive when so many of your shipmates didn't," I suggested. "I've heard of survivors being haunted by the very fact of their survival."
"I think that's why, now as I look back on it," he said. "You know I've never told anybody about this before."
"No?" I said. "As you yourself said, it can help to share such experiences."
"It does. But often you can't."
"I know," I said. "A lot of people don't seem to understand. Or maybe we ourselves are the ones who don't understand."
"Yes, maybe we're too hard on ourselves."
"I think so," I said. "When I was in the river with the log jam coming straight at me, you turned back to rescue me even though you're not a good swimmer. You tried to save me."
"Yes, I tried. But you saved yourself."
"You put yourself in danger for me," I said. "That's the important thing. And it's the daytime reality that counts. I forgot to thank you."
"Thank you for telling me that," he said.
"And I'm sure you would've done the same for your shipmates. But the fact is, there was nothing you could have done for them."
"No, it wasn't my fault that my shipmates went down, and I know that, or at least I should know that. But in a way I somehow felt I should have gone down with them. When they died I wanted to die with them, and if they went to hell, I wanted to go there too. Maybe not really, but there was some part of me that did."
"I think it's incredibly strange that our dreams sometimes show us doing the very things we don't do. It's not fair."
"We ought to complain to the dream master," said MacClayne.
* * *
It was already well into the afternoon of the next day; we'd slept almost around the clock. Hotel Yritzi was the name of the place we were staying in. The building was made of concrete, but our room was rather nice inside, tastefully painted and with fly screens on the windows. We even had a private bath with shower, washbowl and mirror. For us this was unaccustomed luxury.
I shaved in front of the mirror and saw my face for the first time in days. Do I look like that? I could hardly believe how sunburned I was. Cuauhtémoc hopped up on the edge of the washbasin to preen his feathers as he usually did at a pila while I shaved. But this time he also saw himself in the mirror and cocked his head from one side to the other.
I went in the shower and turned the water on. There was no hot water faucet, but the water wasn't uncomfortably cold. On emerging, I realized I didn't have any clean clothes. The ones I had were not only caked with dirt and river mud, they reeked of smoke from our campfire. So I went back in the shower and washed everything; the fire smell diminished, but didn't disappear. I put on my wet shorts and a wet T-shirt. By now I was used to this.
MacClayne did likewise, and then we set out to see the town, both of us in drippy duds. Only the bird was dry. But it didn't matter. Nobody around here was likely to know us.
"I hope Wendy and Jeff have left," I said and glanced around as we passed through the courtyard. There didn't seem to be anyone else in the place.
"I didn't see them when we arrived yesterday," MacClayne said. "But their jeep was parked here. It seems to be gone now."
"Good," I said. "But let's make sure."
"Does it really matter?"
"Yes, it does," I said. "I don't feel comfortable with Wendy around."
"You're not still blaming her for the death of the white bird?"
"No, not really. That is, I don't think she intended to kill the bird. But she does seem to have a poisonous touch," I said. And, part of the truth was, I also felt embarrassed over the way I'd acted towards her when the bird died, but I didn't mention that.
We stopped by the office and I asked the clerk if an American couple had been here. "The woman is blond and always has a beer in her hand," I said.
"They left this morning," the clerk said. "They were here several days."
I wondered what name Wendy had used in signing the register this time, but I couldn't think of a discreet way to ask. It didn't really matter, because we probably wouldn't be seeing them again.
"So, they're out of our lives," I said as we began our way down the unpaved street. It was full of mud puddles. There were few vehicles and not many pedestrians. A weakly shining sun peered through the clouds. Rain seemed likely to resume at any time. A raw wind whipped about and lashed at my clothing.
This settlement was built high up on a bluff, and a short walk took us to the edge of a cliff which had a lighthouse perched on it. From this vantage point we could look down and see a horseshoe-shaped bay, which was about a kilometer across. The water was full of skerries, and from one of these rocks a stream of water spouted upwards at intervals like from the blowhole of a whale.
Also in the bay was a schooner riding at anchor. I wondered if it might be the same one I'd seen at Maruata a few days before.
A lengthy stairway of concrete steps took us down the cliff face to a beach inside the bay. A large number of fiberglass launches were drawn up on the sand, and fishermen were working on them, but nobody seemed to be out on the water fishing. Here as elsewhere, the storm had apparently driven the fish away. This beach was protected by promontories which jutted far out into the water at both ends, and so the waves which washed up onto the sand were gentle. It looked like a nice place to swim, but not under today's cold sun.
It was still early for supper and so we took our time, chatting with fishermen and then looking at the geology. The cliffs appeared to be composed of ancient lava flows which I guessed were contemporary with the shale and limestone we'd been seeing along this coast. Probably Cretaceous--belonging to the age of dinosaurs.
Finally we climbed back up the steps and strolled down the windy street till we found a restaurant. It was made of concrete but was attractively done, and I was glad to be going into a place with four walls to keep out the cold wind. As we walked in the door we were greeted by a shrill voice:
"¡Chulo! ¡Chulo! ¡Chulo!" Pretty! Pretty! Pretty!
"It's a parrot," said MacClayne, and then I saw it myself. It was green, and perched not far away. Cuauhtémoc gave the loquacious avian an annoyed look as we sat down.
"¡Arre burro!"
"What's he saying?" MacClayne wondered.
"The bird seems to be a mule skinner," I told him. "What he said was 'Get moving, jackass.'"
We ordered the usual plates of beef and pork with beans and tortillas, and as we ate the bird periodically shouted commands to burros.
"He's probably getting back at the human race for taking him out of his home in the jungle," MacClayne said.
"Somebody ought to teach him to say 'Pieces of eight'," I said.
The walls were painted with murals depicting Mexican historical and religious themes, both Catholic and pre-Hispanic. The parrot fit in as part of this and added a certain charm of its own. If only it hadn't been for the screechy, ear-piercing quality of its voice.
"¡Chulo! ¡Chulo! ¡Chulo!" went the bird again, and Cuauhtémoc eyed him skeptically. He had to be thinking to himself that if he were able to talk, he'd certainly have something better to say than that.
We'd finished our meals and were drinking coffee when MacClayne, who sat facing the door, looked up in surprise. I turned to see what it was, and in the door strode Wendy.
"Hello there," she said, with some reserve.
"Buenas tardes," MacClayne responded warmly and pulled a chair over from another table. "Have a seat."
"¡Arre burro!" shrilled the parrot. Wendy ignored it and eyed me for a moment. "Hello Olaf," she said rather coolly.
"Hello," I said, trying not to sound embarrassed. "Please do sit down."
"You were rude to me the other day," she reminded me and put her hand on the backrest of the chair, but remained standing.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be," I said. "The white bird died and I was upset, but I shouldn't have directed it at you."
Wendy pursed her lips.
"I hope you'll accept my apology," I said. "Let me buy you a drink."
"Okay Olaf, I forgive you. But make it a soft drink," she said with a slightly twisted smile and sat down. I asked the waitress for a soda pop.
"¡Chulo! ¡Chulo! ¡Chulo!"
Wendy glanced at the bird and smiled. "Isn't that parrot lovely?" she said, and got up and went to the bird and gave it a piece of food. "Chulo," she said; the bird responded with "¡Burro!." When her soda pop arrived Wendy sat down again.
Cuauhtémoc appeared a bit miffed at not being the center of attention, and he finally clucked his annoyance.
"How's the rooster today?" Wendy said, finally turning to notice him. But despite the bird's desire for attention, he didn't seem inclined to be friendly. He seemed to have taken a dislike to Wendy from the start, perhaps distrusting her as a woman who might try to steal me away from Chayo.
"I didn't see you at the hotel," I said. "We thought you'd left for Acapulco."
"We did," she said. "We got to a river and it was swollen because of the storm. People there told us it would subside after a while and we could drive across. We waited all day, but it never did. Finally we gave up and came back here."
"What river is that?" MacClayne said. "You don't mean there's still another one?"
"I think they call it the Río Chuta," she said. "It's about twenty miles to the east of here."
MacClayne told her about our days on the beach, the storm, and our river crossing. We passed an hour or more with Wendy, chatting amicably. Everything I'd seen of this woman indicated that she was bad news, but she had a charisma that defied logic. Only Cuauhtémoc seemed unmoved by Wendy's charm; he glared at her. I wondered where Jeff was this evening, but Wendy didn't say, and I didn't ask.
"¡Arre burro!" the parrot's screech cut into my thoughts. I glanced up at the green-feathered bird, and this time he seemed to be looking right at me. "¡Arre burro!" he shrilled again and again.
"I have some things to attend to," I said, wanting to get away from Wendy. "I hope you'll excuse me."
I figured that MacClayne might wish to stay longer, but for whatever reasons of his own, he chose to go back to the hotel with me. Darkness had fallen, and the street lights were on. It felt like a long time since we'd last been in a place where they had electricity, and it seemed like a novelty to be walking down a lighted street.
"She's a very nice person," said MacClayne as we walked back.
I didn't know how to respond to that. Raindrops were beginning to fall. I wondered if the storm were going to resume.
I flicked the switch as we entered our room; it felt good to have electric light to read by, to be once again in a place where we didn't have to go to bed with the sun and endure twelve long hours of darkness. The very quiet of this place was a luxury, without the ocean breakers pounding incessantly, making even simple conversation difficult. We decided to read stories aloud to each other. We hadn't been able to do that while camping on the beach.
MacClayne must have had a dozen books with him. One was an anthology of short stories titled: The Adventures of Shipping Clerks.
We began with a story about a retired fellow who recounted his memories of the day he took a girlfriend to a carnival where they rode the Ferris wheel. The motor broke down and left them high up in the air, and they sat and shivered in the cold evening breeze for over an hour before it was finally repaired. Nothing dramatic happened during that uncomfortable hour, but the gist of the story seemed to be that the poor guy had lived such an uneventful life that this was the most memorable experience he could recall.
There came a rap at our door, and MacClayne went to open it. It was Wendy and she appeared upset. MacClayne invited her in. "Has something happened?" he asked as she entered.
"Jeff's drunk."
There was a moment of awkward silence. It seemed to me that Jeff was always nearly drunk and I wondered what could be significant about this particular binge.
"Are you okay?" MacClayne said. "He didn't hit you or anything?"
"He's passed out," she said shaking her head in disgust. "And he's lied to me for the last time."
"Lied?" I repeated.
"Yes, lied," she said. "After that wild ride of his, he promised me to never, never touch a bottle again. He'd finally seen the light, and gave me his word."
"I see," I said, trying to say it in a tone that expressed commiseration.
"It isn't that I'm against drinking," she added, "but Jeff is one of those people who can't handle booze. Well, you saw for yourselves."
MacClayne and I both nodded.
"And to be supportive of him, I gave up drinking too. I told him that as long as he didn't drink I wouldn't either. That was my pledge to Jeff. You noticed I wasn't drinking beer at the restaurant tonight? Then, shortly after I returned to our room, he came stumbling in, drunk on his ass."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" said MacClayne sympathetically. "Do you have a place to stay?"
"No, I don't," she said. "I was going to take another room, but I think they're all occupied."
MacClayne turned to glance at me. "What do you say, Olaf?"
I hesitated a moment, seriously doubting that the hotel was even half full, but MacClayne had already offered. There was no way out of this without being offensive. "Sure, fine with me," I said.
"Oh, could I?" she said. "I hate to impose on you like this. It's so kind of you!"
Having offered her room space, we now had to decide where she was going to sleep. We only had two beds; and so it looked like somebody would have to sleep on the cold concrete floor.
"There's an extra bed in my room," said Wendy. "Could I ask you to bring it over here. You needn't worry about Jeff. He's out of it."
It seemed to me like a horrible idea, but I followed Wendy and MacClayne to the other room. I could hear Jeff snoring somewhere in the darkness, and I was quietly tiptoeing past when Wendy flicked on the light and said in a voice that seemed to echo from wall to wall, "That bed over there. Do you think you can carry it?"
Fortunately, Jeff snored on, remaining oblivious to our presence. The bed he was sleeping on was small, and would've been easy enough to move, but the empty one was a huge, king-sized monster.
Finally we decided to take just the huge mattress and haul it over to our room for the night. MacClayne took one end and I took the other while Wendy held the door. I nearly tripped over Cuauhtémoc, who then hopped aboard the mattress for a free ride across the courtyard.
"¡Bájate de allí!" I demanded in a whisper, but the bird just looked at me and clucked. MacClayne laughed good-naturedly, and Wendy was delighted with the bird's antic.
The courtyard was wet, but fortunately it wasn't raining right then. When we finally manhandled the monstrous object into our room, there was barely enough floor space and we had to jam it up against my cot.
Then we brought in Wendy's ice chest, which was quite heavy. I wondered what might be in it; soft drinks perhaps. She herself carried a single suitcase. "I travel light," she said, and dug a beer from the ice chest. "Feel free to help yourselves. There's also guava juice."
MacClayne gave the beer a thirsty look, but took a can of juice.
Wendy popped her can open, took a sip, then glanced at the pile of books on the table and picked up Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. I guessed that Wendy was probably wondering what it was; I somehow imagined her intellect as being restricted to TV soap operas and sitcoms.
"We've been reading aloud to each other," said MacClayne. "Maybe you'd like to join us."
I groaned silently. Why does he even bother to ask her? She'd be bored.
"I'd love to," she said. "I'll read if you'd like."
"Please do," he said. "That's our library, such as it is. Choose the one you like," he said, and glancing at me: "That okay with you, Olaf?"
"Sure."
"Then how about Moll Flanders," she said, holding it up. "It's been a couple years since I last read it."
Seating herself cross-legged on a chair, she opened the novel to the first page and began, "My true name is so well known in the records at Newgate prison and in the Old Bailey court . . ."
Wendy read with feeling and personality that brought the female protagonist to life. Even her voice took on an accent appropriate to 17th century London, a perilous world which many of Moll's companions left "by the steps and the string."
Here Wendy paused to glance at us, doubtlessly to assure herself that we knew the meaning of steps and string. MacClayne said, perhaps for my benefit, "the gallows."
Wendy read on. She accomplished with the prose of Daniel Defoe what MacClayne did with the poetry of Robert Burns. Even Cuauhtémoc dropped his hackles and softened his normally hostile stance towards Wendy as he listened to her melodious voice. She'd even seduced my bird, it seemed.
When she paused to moisten her lips and throat, she clutched her beer in quite the way I would have expected of Moll herself, and I said, "I feel as though I were hearing Moll in the flesh, returned to life and telling her own story."
"Well put," said MacClayne. "Wendy, you do read like few I've heard."
"The story is one of my favorites."
"That I can well believe," I said. "And you sound like you've had a lot of practice reading."
"Yes, I have," she said. "Reading elocution was part of my drama studies. I minored in acting and theater."
"You're also an actress?"
"In a way, yes, you might say I am," she said with an ironic smile. "I majored in business, but to do anything in the business world, one must first of all be an actress. Selling real estate is an act. When I'm trying to sell a property, I'm on stage. The buyer is the audience and if he doesn't buy my act, I don't make that sale."
I nodded.
"Life itself is an act," she added.
"I suppose so," I said.
"As a matter of fact, I like stage acting for its own sake. It's an interest I continue to pursue. In amateur theater productions of course."
"What roles have you played?"
"Lady Macbeth is my favorite. In The Crucible I was the witch, and in Craig's Wife I was the selfish virago. I also played Clytemnestra in Agamemnon. I do enjoy those Medusa type characters, but I'm pretty versatile. I've been acting all my life, ever since I was a little girl. In a children's Christmas pageant I played the part of Mary, and I got all kinds of compliments on how well I did at the rehearsals. But two days before it was to be presented, I got replaced by a girl who had absolutely no talent for the part. It was so unfair! And that was all just because they found me in a broom closet with the kid who was playing the archangel Gabriel."
It was all I could do to suppress a smile, but MacClayne found words that expressed sympathy and condemned the unfairness with which children are treated. MacClayne was a great commiserator when he was in the mood for it.
"It's true," she said. "Children are not treated right. I like plays which dramatize fairness and morality, where justice wins in the end. One of my roles was Hamlet."
"Were you the queen mother?" I asked.
"Could you see me in that role?" she said, grimacing. "A woman who slips into another guy's bed within a month of losing her husband. Just sort of passively amoral."
I bit my lip, knowing there was nothing I could say here that would come off well.
"A bit amoral, perhaps, but not passively so," said MacClayne with his consummate charm.
Wendy laughed. "I was Hamlet."
"You were who?" I said, thinking I'd heard wrongly.
"Hamlet, princess of Denmark."
"Princess?" I repeated.
"Does that seem so strange to you? It was only a matter of changing a few pronouns, otherwise it was basically the same. The stabbing. The killing. Women can take revenge too, you know."
Wendy continued, "That scene where Hamlet stabs the wicked king with the poisoned sword--I twisted that sword and then plunged in my dagger and then turned it and turned it, and the audience loved it. People told me afterwards that they could practically see the blood flowing! Everyone said it was the best scene in the production. The women loved it because women love to see a woman getting even. The guys loved it because it turns guys on to watch a woman doing that kind of violence."
She set her beer aside and returned to Defoe and the rogues of 17th century England. It was many pages later and close to midnight when our eyes began to droop.
"I think I have to call it a night," MacClayne said at last and stepped over to his cot. "I hope you'll excuse me if I undress here?" he said to Wendy.
"Not a problem," she smiled, and glanced away but watched him out of the corner of her eye as he unbuttoned his shirt and then took off his trousers before getting between the sheets wearing just his T-shirt and shorts. Although he was fifty, he was well built and in good shape. Young women still seemed to find him attractive, and I guessed that Wendy did too.
MacClayne closed his eyes and fell asleep at once. Wendy stepped into the bathroom to change. When she came back out, wrapped in a beach-towel, she stopped at the ice chest to get another beer. But, as she was holding the can in one hand and pulling the opener with the other, her towel fell to the floor. She was wearing absolutely nothing.
I immediately closed my eyes and turned my head away.
"Olaf," she said sweetly. "You're such a gentleman."
I was so embarrassed I didn't know what to say. Wendy was laughing.
MacClayne didn't stir; I was glad he wasn't awake to witness this. I could feel my face turning red, and hoped Wendy wouldn't notice. She was now rolling out her sleeping bag on her mattress. When she was finally in bed, I turned out the lights. Then I took off my jacket and shorts and lay down on my cot; a moment later I got up and put them back on because of the slight chill. The hotel had sheets but no blankets, this being a tropical region where it rarely got cold. Despite the stormy weather of these last couple days, it wasn't really cold tonight either, but I could have used a blanket.
Rain was pattering softly on the windows, and I lay there listening to it. I could also hear MacClayne snoring, not loudly. Just his usual deep breathing. Wendy, whose large mattress was on the floor beside my cot, also seemed to be asleep.
"Olaf?"
"Yes."
"Are you awake?"
"Yes."
"Ever go sailing?"
"Actually, I have."
"What kind of boat?"
"A tiny sloop, hardly bigger than a rowboat," I said. "But I learned some basics, how to . . ."
"How to tack against the wind, come about . . ."
"Yeah, stuff like that."
"Fun, isn't it."
"It is," I said. "Sound like you've done some sailing."
"A little. I used to be in a club. We sailed around in San Francisco Bay," she said. "Ever been on a schooner?"
"No. Have you?"
"On the Hispaniola . . ."
Somewhere about there I dozed off. I dreamt I was standing on the deck of a schooner, with Wendy at the helm. Our sails were full and the ship was moving along nicely. Then I looked for Cuauhtémoc, but I couldn't find him anywhere. He didn't seem to be aboard, and while I was still looking for him, I realized we were near the rocky coast. All around us were skerries. Huge waves broke on them, throwing mist high into the air and over our ship. I could feel the chilling dampness.
Directly ahead was a promontory with a lighthouse on its crest, and Wendy seemed unable to come about and steer our ship away from it. Just as we were about to smash into the rocks, I realized I didn't have any clothes on. Absolutely nothing. I wanted to rush below deck and get my clothes, but Wendy was asking me to stay with her.
"Don't leave me!" she pleaded, and at that instant our ship slammed into the rocks below the promontory.
As the waves dashed our ship against the jagged rocks and ground it to pieces, I took Wendy by the hand and we floated through the air, landing high up on the promontory by the lighthouse. I still didn't have any clothes on, and Wendy wasn't wearing anything either.
"Let's go inside," she said. We were standing right in front of the lighthouse, by the door.
"No, let's not!" I said.
But the door opened, and there stood Chayo and Cuauhtémoc.
continued in Chapter 41
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