El Cartero (El Comal en el desierto)

El Cartero

After giving the horse some water he turned and to make sure he had closed the flap of the mailbag. It was only one bag today, and fortunately it wasn’t too heavy. His hands still hurt, though, as he inspected it then tied it carefully to the back of one of the burros he would also be taking with him. Most mornings it was the same ritual, arriving at the small office, attending to a few people who were dropping of mail, packing items carefully after he had sorted them out (big items here, delicate items there, correspondence in another pile), and when he had a chance and wasn’t being watched, rubbing his wife’s salve into his hands to try to calm the pain of arthritis. It was getting worse and worse, and before long, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to do this job. He could use some help but for the moment, though, he wasn't about to let this be known. 

He stepped into the small office again, checking the small counter top in case he had forgotten something, making sure the drawers were closed, and the stamps put away. He hated to think he might have left a stray item out of place, a postal stamp, an ink pad or a receipt ledger, left out carelessly and calling attention to itself. You know that they say about old people, he told himself. Leave one thing misplaced, and people say he or she is losing their memory and needs to be put out to pasture. He was usually very meticulous about these things. He then checked himself in the long mirror next to the countertop, to make sure his uniform was spotless and his thin hair wasn’t too unsightly. He was stepping out to as part of official business, and he had an image to maintain. He then looked around one last time before closing the door and locking up.

It was still early enough in the morning so that the temperature was bearable. In a few hours the sun would be directly overhead and the air would be rising in simmering waves. He had lived all his life in El Comal, and temperature extremes were part of his life. He preferred the heat to the winter cold but, lately, his body seemed to make no distinction. It always seemed to ache and pain him in ways that made it difficult to move, and he found himself pausing to stretch or to rub his arms and legs, grimacing to himself silently and adding a quick sign of the cross.

He had always led an active life, and considered himself hale for his age. Many others of his generation were now planted to their chairs, moving only when absolutely necessary and then at a turtle's pace, forced to spend most of their time sitting and watching life swirling around them. At least he was still active and working. Looking out he saw that a few people were still in the dusty streets, hurrying to complete their errands. Things would soon grow very still in the pueblito, as people retired to their homes to wait out the suffocating afternoon. He wouldn’t be able to join them, however.

Things just weren’t the same, he thought to himself, as he mounted on top of his horse and led the two burros he was taking with him. Sure, the heat was the same, it would never change, and the church hadn’t changed, nor the peel of the bells that announced the call to mass. And, of course, the Brujo could still be seen up on the hill, sitting under the tree next to his shack, looking out to the south, always south, but from time to time turning to follow the movements of the people in the pueblito. People were never sure what he was looking for, but knew that it was part of his ritual, and they would wave to him out of courtesy; sometimes he even waved back. And the children of the pueblito were now in school, which was a ritual of recent introduction, one that took a little effort to take hold out here where people were so tied to tradition. By one o’clock they would be let out to scamper home and wait out the heat the way the rest of them did, in the interior of their adobe homes. A few would first linger for a while in the zocalo, of course, gathering in groups and chatting, but most were hungry by then and wouldn't wait too long. He remembered what it had been like, for he had done the same.

But there were things that had changed, though. It wasn’t just the fiery priest who had joined them almost twenty years ago, and who was always raging about the dangers of the outside world, and the loss of faith and unity among the people who he called out needed to come together and renew the faith of the martyrs. (He wasn’t from El Comal, ironically enough, and his dramatic flair gave abundant proof of this.) It was also the fact that new people were coming in, people without deep roots in the hill country who brought new ways of thinking, and insisted that others change and follow their ways.

They were merchants who had started setting up shops, a modest bodega here, a boarding house there, and even a pharmacy selling wondrous remedies from the “World of Science”. There had even been the arrival of a utility line to bring electricity to most of the small dwellings in the pueblito, with indoor lights for most and refrigeration for the few who could affort it, and new tools and wonders among which the most impressive were frozen popsicles in the summer. One of these was the big box that talked, the one that was called a “radio set” and which was said to bring in exotic voices from places far away. Father Remigio didn’t like it one bit, and warned about its dangerous influence, inveighing people to not buy them and instead listen to their inner voices, the ones that came from God. It was all moot, however, since most people couldn’t afford one, and yet it undeniably had a big impact on them. They couldn’t help but be curious, even though most of them couldn’t understand it, the voices speaking so fast, and the music being so unlike any of the slow and meandering cadences they themselves knew, accompanied by guitars and flutes and clapping. There were even people who insisted that the box harbored duendes who hid from sight, and they crossed themselves as they hurried by, trying not to pay too much attention. For the most part the older ones didn't understand what was being said, given that the voices didn't speak in the language of the pueblitos. The younger ones did, however, and often they would gather to listen to the set that was kept by their teacher in the school, or linger around the bodega to hear the programs when the owner turned on his display set.

There was also the fact that his grown children had left. One used not to see old people who were left alone, for it was a tradition that families stayed together, even if some of their members moved to other pueblitos in the hill country. However, in the past few decades, there were many families that had lost children to the outside world. He and his wife had had four in all, three boys and one daughter, and they had always thought that their children would remain in the town with them, sharing the long evenings sipping chocolate and chatting with with their parents and neighbors. They expected to be surrounded by grandchildren who would talk to them about their adventures, about their expeditions up the nearby hills, or to the river, or the things they had learned in school. The children had so many plans, and they saw things with fresh eyes that made their grandparents forget the passage of the years. However, many of the young adults had been leaving in recent years, and in his case, things had been particularly disastrous. He had lost all four of his children to the pull of the outside world.

The ones who left were rarely seen again in El Comal. They went to places east and north and even west, to the far off Pacific coast, and their absence left a dark ache that no salve could diminish. He missed his children, he missed Salvador and Joaquín and Norberto and the youngest one, María Remedios, the one who whose name ironically promised a succor that had been denied to them.

“Buenos días, don Perico, ya sale al camino?”, said an elderly man who tipped his hat as he stepped out of the bodega that was blaring a music program from far away. 

“Sí, don Emilio, buenos días, voy por el correo”, he answered.

“Ya sabe, compadre, no se vaya a tardar, ya ve que los animales no aguantan mucho, y menos nosotros, que dependemos de ellos. Me saluda después a doña Inés, y cuando guste, pase a la casa para tomarse un refresquito por la tarde”, said don Emilio, who waved his hat then walked off in his black boots down the dusty street.

Don Perico chuckled. He appreciated the words of his friend, but wondered how much longer they would be depending on animals. It seemed more and more likely that the age of the machine had come to replace them, both animals and humans alike, and before long, he thought, they would all be hiding in boxes, like the duendes who were said to inhabit the radio consoles. He wondered who would listen to them then. Maybe only the animals who wouldn’t know any better.

He didn’t want to be late for his meeting with Mr. Silva. The whole point of this trip was that they needed to meet to exchange bags, he turning over the one with outgoing mail, and Mr. Silva turning over to him the one with incoming mail. As ever, he looked forward to seeing what was delivered, even if he had to confess he didn’t quite understand the man himself or appreciate the way he was treated.

Sometimes Mr. Silva delivered big and heavy packages, and he would feel a twinge of fear in his gut. His arthritis being what it was, added to the fact that Mr. Silva never stayed to help him, he had no idea how long it might take to load the packages on the burros he had brought with him. He never despaired, however, carrying a carved saint in his satchel that he prayed to every morning before he set out, and giving thanks that he wouldn’t be traveling far from the pueblito the way he used to, when he was the one who had to make the trip through the open countryside to Las Perlas. Still, the aches pained him, and he remembered in particular an episode just a few weeks ago, in early June, when he had been unable to close his fingers and grasp the bags, and had had to spend the better part of an hour lifting his arms and smacking them against the roadsign, hoping that no one would come and see him in his agony, an old man with two heavy bags of mail, unable to load them on his animals and praying earnestly all the while.

Now, it wasn’t much of a journey out to the meeting place. It involved a trip of about three miles along the dirt road that connected the pueblito to the new interstate that had been completed just six years ago. He would usually leave after 10:30 a.m. and be there at the meeting place before noon, this place being the roadsign that announced the presence of El Comal to the world. The sign was necessary because otherwise there wasn’t much to mark the existence of the pueblito, at least to those intrepid souls who might be traveling on the interstate and couldn’t see the pueblito, encircled as it was by hills. There wasn’t much traffic on the dirt road that marked the turnoff, but that was changing. The postal truck couldn’t be trusted to navigate the road, and the volume of mail being what it was, which was still quite modest, it had been accorded that don Perico would ride out there every morning to meet the truck by the interstate. Sometimes, as he rode out there, he might see someone driving slowly to or from El Comal, and he would move to the side, escaping the choking trail of dust left by the vehicles. He didn’t mind. He had seen worse out in the open country, towering vortexes of swirling air that meandered and zigzagged wildly in the open spaces, veering off in unexpected directions and willful like a stubborn and malevolent animal. How many times he had had the narrowest of escapes! At least he knew where the drivers were heading.  

Sometime after noon, while standing next to the signpost patiently, trying to squeeze into the little shade that was offered by a meager sign that proclaimed “Los Comales”, and underneath, scrawled in smaller but very dignified letters, “somos los primeros”, he would scan the eastern edge of the road, waiting for the tell-tale shimmer in the air. There was still little traffic on the new interstate, and one might see one or two cars pass every half hour, with drivers who would invariably honk as they drove past, waving a hand out the window. People were still friendly out here, and he wondered what destiny they were pursuing, and if his children would ever make it back here, triggering a heave that he quickly suppressed. There was, however, one shimmer on the road for which he kept watch, and he never had to wait long before he was it, rising and falling on the undulating road, bearing down on him like a crazed tecolote pursuing its prey, swooping down on an unsuspecting mouse. It never took very long to reach him after the first glimpse, and soon the grey truck would slow down and stop next to the sign where he was waiting. Inside, he would see Mr. Silva, a man wearing big horn-rimmed glasses but with nothing of the wizened look of an owl. Instead, he always looked irritated, and had never been much for pleasantries.

Out of force of habit don Perico would lift his hat in greeting, but Mr. Silva almost always went out of his way to studiously ignore him, clambering out of the truck after bringing it to a stop next to the sign, then walking to the back, where he would open a few doors and look for the bags he was to leave with don Perico. Usually he was muttering under his breath, and from the little that could be understood, he gathered it was a running complaint. He hardly even looked at his colleague, and seemed to care not a whit for the meticulous care the older man took with his appearance. Mr. Silva, in contrast to don Perico, usually had his shirt half open and untucked during the summer, and was always perspiring freely, with his hair sticking up this way and that, giving the impression of having been tearing at it while in the pursuit of his prey. His shoes were also invariably untied. He was out of his element, here in the hill country, so close to El Comal, so far from civilization as he knew it.

Sometimes don Perico would offer him a drink from his leather pouch, but Mr. Silva never relented, and would rebuff him brusquely. Don Perico had never judged him at fault, however, especially since he knew that Mr. Silva came from old stock out here in the hill country, in fact from a family in the pueblito of Los Peñasquitos. He had apparently been taken by his father and raised out in Johnson Way, a town that stood at the intersection of the cattle trails and had grown fat on meat processing. He had later moved to Las Perlas, from what he had been told by others, for Mr. Silva had never shared much with him, and wasn’t a man for small talk. It must have made him surly, thought don Perico, his having been yanking out of the hill country at a young age, and missing out on the support of an extended family left behind. The outside world wasn’t too kind with people who came from little pueblitos, and he knew that they were subjected frequently to much ridicule. It must have left him unsettled, his being made to feel that everything about him was wrong, and his having no one else to share this with, no cousins or uncles or aunts or grandparents to tell him otherwise. Whatever it was, Mr. Silva made no attempt to disguise his disdain for the people of the hill country and their “backward” ways. He even made it a point not to speak the language of the people out here, insisting instead on speaking a clipped English that sounded as if he were throwing rocks at those he addressed. It was very uncomfortable for don Perico, but he tolerated it. He had to admit to himself that it made him sad, to think about his children and grandchildren who were also lost out there in the outside world, and he wondered whether they might be dealing with the same things that Mr. Silva was facing. He hoped they had fared better.

They had an unspoken arrangement, these two men, which meant that words were kept to a minimum between them. There were no pleasantries, no inquiring as to how each one’s family was doing, no talking about the weather or about the heat or about what they had dreamed last night or what their pets had done or what they were planning on eating for dinner. No, that was the type of talk that was best reserved only for people who had too much time on their hands, like those from pueblitos such as El Comal. For these two men, it was a matter of asking how many bags were being exchanged, how much money had been collected, whether or not don Perico needed any special supplies, and if there were any special packages that needed to be handled with special care. (There were still some who wanted to send, for example, a live snake to a relative in town, and it wouldn’t do not to inform Mr. Silva and fail to reassure him that the bag was quite safe, but that under no circumstance should he open it himself, and he should best leave it to Rodrigo, another refugee from the hill country who had made a life in the city but who still knew the old ways and knew what to do with a package such as this one, filled with a writhing shape. Mr. Silva’s eyes would open and shut in exasperation, and he would of course refuse to touch the bag, and tell him he was to put in in a box he kept with a key, muttering loudly and with added ferocity about the savagery of the old people, and the fact that he was going to lodge a complaint, and it would serve them right if there were reprimands issued.) Then, they would exchange bags, sign each other’s ledger, and Mr. Silva would utter a curt “See you tomorrow”, to which don Perico would answer, “Tenga cuidado, nos vemos mañana”, and that would be it. Don Perico would do his best to smile, and would incline his head slightly, watching as Mr. Silva started the truck and turned it around, eager to return to civilization. He always waited for a few minutes until the truck had faded into a shimmer in the distance before picking up the packages that had been left on the ground and loading them onto the animals. It seemed more respectful that way, to see a person off calmly and without any hurry. Old habits died hard.

Afte these encounters Don Perico always thought about his children, and about the changes he had seen. Before, when he was young and about to take over the job from his father, the father who had been the first postman for the pueblito when the new authorities swarmed over from the east during the middle of the 19th century and proclaimed the hill country part of a new nation, the job had involved making a weekly overnight trip to the nearest administrative center that had been set up on the eastern edge of the hill country. This was, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on where you had found yourself when the partition was set, the town of Las Perlas, which had been a mirror image of El Comal, except for the fact that it was located on flatter land, and didn’t have the benefit of the protection and isolation offered by the hills. As a consequence the town had changed dramatically, and about the only part of the old identity that remained was the name; pretty much everything else about it was erased and replaced.

Back then, of course, there was no interstate, and the only roads that crisscrossed the region were the trails that had been used for hundreds of years, and that had been here before the settlers from the south, his own forefathers, had arrived. He would ride out, as his father had ridden out, to the town of Las Perlas, which was located almost thirty miles to the east. It was a precarious trip, filled with many dangers in that time when swarms of greedy and unhinged settlers as well as fugitives and criminals swept west, and the community tried to weather the storm the way they dealt with heat and the cold: they hunkered down and, when necessary, hid in caves. The encroachments had been difficult to withstand, and his father had been assaulted numerous times on his weekly trips by desperate gunmen, once even being stripped of all his belongings and left with little other than his undergarments to try to find his way, barefoot and without food, water or a hat, to wend his way to help. But someone who grew up in the hill country knows where to find the things he or she needs, and he had made it through, in the middle of the heat, fashioning sandals for himself from peeled cactus leaves and finding water and eating insects where he knew he could find them. He was self-reliant, and he had taught his son these same skills himself, emphasizing the virtue of being prepared for any eventuality.

Back then, in those first few years after the imposition of the new regime, his father had been viewed with mistrust by the people of the pueblito. In those first few years, a bureaucrat accompanied by a few loafish soldiers with firearms and good aim had been sent to the pueblo to take up residence and ready if for the coming of progress. One of his responsibilities involved setting up a post office station. He had appropriated a small residence for himself, turning out the widow and her two children to take refuge with her sister down the road, and furnished it with a table, shelves and a modest counter. Next to the door he had posted a sign that read “Postal Service”, and started to take inventory of the possessions of the inhabitants, with a view towards assessing values and setting up a system of taxation. He was to be much loathed for this and for other impositions, but no one dared to express their true feelings, for the memory of the appropriation of the house was one that lingered. Besides, few people could understand him, outside of the parish priest, who in those years had been a patient man who had immigrated from Galicia and who was ever wary of English-speakers, trying always to soothe over any tensions.

The bureaucrat was in charge of setting up postal service during those first few years, and in the beginning he despaired of getting the people to recognize the value of this new service. It was simply the case that the people weren’t ready for progress, he complained over and over to the priest, and didn’t appreciate the value of the postal service and the benefits that would come from opening contact with the outside world. Now, the priest who himself didn’t believe in these benefits, and worried that the identity and faith of the people of the pueblito would prosper only if left in isolation, offered little aid to the bureaucrat, telling him that the people had no conception of things they didn’t need. He had no wish to see the people subjected to further influence from the new regime that had stormed over from the east and taken over the hill country, and he hated to admit it, but he came to miss the chaotic regime of the south that had had a healthy tolerance for isolation in these settlements to the north.

There were few people that the bureaucrat could even speak to, other than his soldiers and the priest, and in that first year, he found himself having to mimic what he considered their "primitive" language without much success, his mouth being unwilling to host the sliding and unruly sounds of a speech that he considered twisted and made for deception, and that prided itself with servile formulas of courtesy that he found intolerable, and that he was sure could only be described as savage and incapable of reaching the poetic heights of his own speech, the speech of Shakespeare. It was becoming more and more urgent that he find an assistant to train to take over as postman, and he knew intuitively that if he found a local, the people of the pueblito might be more inclined to accept it, and to start valuing the benefits of this service.

One day, while standing outside of the “casa expropiada”, as the locals called in, he was watching the men lead their animals in the early morning to the fields on the outskirts of the pueblito. As he did, he noticed one young teenager who was having trouble with a horse that kept on bucking, and that had evidently been spooked by a snake. He heard the teenager call out, as clear as the blue sky, “Come here!”, as he wrestled with the animal, trying to calm it down. Everyone knew that this horse was more temperamental than most, lacking the practical and common sense of a good burro and unwilling to listen to the boy, who his father hoped would learn to tame the animal and tame as well his own slightly rebellious nature. It turns out this was don Perico’s father, a teenager who at the time was still known by his name, Joaquín, and who had heard the phrase once while out in the open country, when he had come across a vagrant lying exhausted under a tree, unable to take another step and calling out to the boy who he half suspected was some kind of unearthly vision, desperately, “Come here! Come here!”, confusing him with a personfication of the death he so desired to put him out of his misery.

He had said it with a tone of both anger and desperation, and the befuddled teenager took it to mean, then, that it was a term used for scolding others. So, the teenager had appropriated it as his own, not knowing what it meant, but using it when he grew frustrated, which he did frequently when forced to handle this horse, which was notoriously finicky and unwilling to follow his instructions. (He had actually tried to help the vagrant, running back to town to fetch help, but by the time they had returned and found him, they had time only to hear him mutter a final “Oh, God, receive me in your bosom and help this boy” before he expired.)

Well, the postmaster, who had never known the vagrant, nonetheless took this phrase as uttered by the teenager on that street that morning as a sign from the cosmos or fortune or any other agent other than God that he had found the apprentice that he needed (he was a freethinker, after all), and he called out to the teenager, “You, come here!”, which confused Joaquin, who thought for a moment that he was being addressed once again by the vagrant, or by the ghost of the vagrant who had taken over the body of the bureaucrat who expropriated people's houses. (Which would serve him right, after what he had done to doña Imelda.) It sent a chill down his spine, but he was nonetheless a polite teenager, and one could add that it was a bright morning, so he felt a little more brave, and there were other men about, leading their animals to pasture but lingering before the home and stopping to look, and he didn’t want to lose face, so instead of turning around and running away, which was his first and instinct, he walked up to the foreigner, wishing to find out why he was being scolded. The bureaucrat took this as another sign that he had an obedient candidate for apprentice, the kind that he needed, and by with his hadn invited him in.

While inside he shared his food with him, and showed him the books he had on his shelves, and the table and the counter, and the pens and the paper and the ledgers he kept in the drawers. He treated the teenager with utmost consideration, and began to give him a lesson in the English alphabet, writing letters on a chalk tablet and having him repeat them. The men outside would look in through the open window, and they heard Joaquín repeating the sounds dutifully, over and over, and in the next few days, repeating words and expressions he was being taught. By the early afternoon he was release and given a meager coin, and dismissed to go join his parents for the siesta, being told to come back the next day.

This was tolerated by the teenager’s parents, for they also had no wish to court any difficulty with the foreigner and his soldiers, not wishing to risk the fate of doña Imelda and her house. Furthermore, the teenager had shown little inclination for working out in the fields, and even less for taming the horse that had been assigned to him. Soon, the teenager was learning the language of the foreigner, and learning as well the rudiments of reading and writing, the first youngster of his pueblito to receive any formal schooling, and he was so adept at quickly learning the speech of the foreigner that he was derisively referred to by the nickname “don Perico”, which was meant to mock him for his “airs” of superiority as well as the alacrity with which he repeated everything that was said to him.It was a nickname that would be inherited by his son, the current postmaster of El Comal and the one we had seen by the roadsign next to the interstate, but by now, after the passage of the years, the nickname had lost its sting, and was instead an affectionate term, one that had become habituated to the ways of the people. They knew, after all, when they had to accept a necessary evil and recognize it for what it was, a sign of the new era.

TO BE CONTINUED

Copyright 2014 (C) Oscar G. Romero

A Trip to the Hill Country

It has been reported that you may see strange things if you drive west on the new interstate. It was only opened up eight years ago, but already it has garnered something of a fearsome reputation. Upon hearing that you might be planning on taking your car down that route, singly and without a convoy to keep you company, and that can’t be persuaded into taking instead the venerable train that chugs along by first taking a sharp detour south before proceeding west, some people have been known to take you aside and whisper earnestly that, given you’ve something of an independent streak, it would be best to remember that you can trust all that you may see or hear. They’ve all heard stories about the road, and about the land to the west, and the stories tend to make one scratch one’s head and wonder whether some fiction writer hasn’t been spinning yarns in local taverns to keep themselves well-sated with drinks.

Some people whisper that no, they’ve incontrovertible proof, you see, and old Max down there hasn’t been right in the head since his trip two years ago, and over there, Jim Humbug was on the actual crew that built the road, and when he returned, he insisted that he had seen coyotes sitting around waving their paws at the moon, and heard ghosts that looked like Indians but were ghosts sitting on top of cactus trees, and seen lights coming out of gopher holes, and all kinds of things that might strike you as a little comical if it weren’t for the fact that it wasn’t in character for the person telling you these things. Needless to say you’re a no-nonsense kind of person, and you tell them you’re not likely to see any of those things, leave that for the artist types for those who are bored with their jobs and need what is termed a little bit of mystery in their lives. No, you’re not like that. But they may tell you to keep watch nonetheless, and don’t let yourself get misled, and if you do see something, don’t pay mind, don’t stop your car, and instead, recite the multiplication tables or the months of the year or the names of ten people named George, and chances are, you’ll be past it by the time you finish, and out of danger.

People have a way of behaving funny when mention if made of the hill country. They act as if it isn’t part of this country, as if a whole new set of laws are in effect out there, as if the constellations become moving pictures telling stories of a past that doesn’t want to fade away, but lingers still, like the people who look and live much as their ancestors did two hundred years or more ago.

Now, it is a truism that advice proffered freely is rarely valued. It may be that the person who was giving you warning about the things you may see isn’t necessarily a bad person, but also isn’t necessarily the most trustworthy of characters. You see him on a weekly basis, and he seems fairly trustworthy, filling up your car and looking it over at the gas station every few months, but he has been known to have a weakness for the drink. The same goes for the other informants. You see, the stories sound a little disreputable, and even old Charlie who always walks around with a bible and offers to quote scripture at the slightest hint of interest has been known to walk around with a little of a dazed look about him. It may be that there are certain people who need to believe in the mysteries of the hill country, for without it, life is too hard to live. But not for you, oh no, you’ve got plenty of responsibility and many investments, and you’ve always considered yourself to be a practical man, one who believes that for every problem there is a solution. No, you wouldn’t make the trip if it weren’t absolutely necessary, and no, you can’t take the train because the detour wouldn’t quite take you where you needed to go, and maybe, you have someone you’re traveling with who isn’t much for traveling with other people, and needs to be watched over very carefully, and maybe needs to go somewhere where his situation might be stabilized, so to speak.

So, you may happen to find yourself driving west on this interstate, and it may be late in the day, and so far, you’ve seen nothing unusual, and if anything it has been something of a dull ride, although for some reason you can’t help thinking of hawks and ravens and eagles, and you feeling maybe a little lighter and dizzier than you’ve ever felt, but there, it must be because you’re hungry, and you didn’t pack enough food in the basket, and as a matter of fact you haven’t eaten anything since the egg and toast you had that morning, with the toast having been slightly burnt, for some reason. It all must be hogwash, and you could sure use a good sandwich or, better yet, a steak and pie, that would hit you square and leave you just right.

Somehow, your nerves have been on edge ever since you decided that you needed to take this trip. It couldn’t have had anything to do with the breathless tales of unusual phenomena out west, no, nothing like that. It must have been the fact that this trip was coming at an inconvenient time, what with little Benjamin returning to school recently after having spent the summer in Vermont and your wife insisting that something needed to be done about the garden out back, because for some reason she suspected there might be gophers or opossoms or some such pest, and for all she knew, they were tunneling into the yard and being a nuisance, and couldn’t they call another vermin remover to come take a look and see why every morning her flower gardens were trampled and the vegetables were half eaten and the dog refused to step out back anymore? And of course your brother in law wasn’t doing much better, and had grown quite moody over the summer, and couldn’t be roused into seeing the light and getting over his wife having left him two years ago, and the fact that he couldn’t find inspiration any more for his art. Yes, life had a way of being messy sometimes.

It took a while to calm down after having left town. Things could be stressful, of course, but he was a practical man, and he knew that there was a solution for everything. There had to be, for didn’t he know about risks, and hadn’t he made his money as an insurance man? He lived in what was known as the city of progress, the Combine of the Midwest and the Motor of Industry of the prairie, second only to Chicago, of course. For others it might seem like an incongruous assemblage of steel and bricks located in the middle of golden corn field, but it was the living heart of the place, the one that gathered the streams of corn and wheat and livestock flowing from the land and pumped then in its generous and overflowing ventricles and sent them elsewhere, to the east and north and south and, yes, west, to feed the appetites of a hungry nation. There was a rhythm to the place, a steady pump and grind that came from packing houses and agricultural processing stations and even the mills that helped to produce so much of the raw material that was needed to maintain these various enterprises. The beating heart of the city was interspersed with whistles and horns and claxons, and the workers moved in reassuring waves. Things moved, and that was why they worked, even if it wasn’t necessarily a beautiful city, and the grime that collected from the belching smoke stacks of the north seemed to buildings with a soot that, in some places, lent them the appearance of gangrenous limbs in urgent need of a surgeon. But the fact that life and commerce thrived in this place and that the city both digest as well as pumped out the product of the vast plains was a testament to the desire for progress and the strength of the human spirit, so he consoled himself as he reflected on the umpteenth time that the birds must have been following him for at least the past three hours, for the shadows seemed to float over the car every few minutes or so, and what could they possibly want?

That’s what this hill country needed, a little bit of that spirit of progress. In his mind, it was all about work and, believe me, times had been hard since the crash, but that didn’t mean the system needed to be replaced. Consider it, instead, a tune up, and if you didn’t lose faith, and let yourself get carried away with this silly nonsense about changing over to socialism, things would soon get back to normal. That was one thing he heartily admired about his Heart of the Praire: there was no union agitation out there, for the business association was very careful to watch out for any troublemakers, and if any wild-eyed agitators were seen to arrive and start gathering the workers with tales of utopias back in Russia, why, then, there were patriotic enforcers who were there to clamp down on these agitators and get the workers back into line. It might take sending a few burly men to break up a few meetings, and to put the fear of god into them by letting them know that the body was weak, and maybe, if they persisted, it might take a few more sessions with more powerful arguments that would leave the workers to crawl back to their dens a little bruised but with their heads unscrambled, so to speak. He quite approved of this system.

Leaving the Engine of the Prairie one makes a right turn and heads past the old Johnson market at the edge of town and one reaches an exit that leads you to the interstate. It isn’t much to look at, although his heart skips a beat when he sees the sign that tells travellers that the proud citizens of the city appreciated their visit, and their return is awaited with an open heart. They are a hospitable people, he thinks, although in the case of his passenger, he isn’t sure whether the hospitality might not have been wasted. He thinks little of the superstitions, and thinks to himself, what stuff and nonsense!, people like to waste their time with idle stories, why should he believe them, the sun is just the same as it ever was, and the sky above is blue, with a few idle clouds floating above, and he can see a few barns already, and these actually look quite stately, with none of the (honest) grime of the city buildings he’s leaving behind. His passenger says what a pretty color, I’ve missed seeing the fields and the cows and the weather vanes on top of the barns, and the driver takes this as a good sign, as long as he doesn’t get carried away and want to wax poetic, for then, he becomes quite frankly very dull. The passenger is, after all, the reason why he’s taking the trip to begin with, and while he hasn’t told him the real reason yet, and has only told him that he’ll be staying at a place for rest and relaxation, where he will be able to paint again, and forget his wife, and maybe find a new path in life, he hasn’t mentioned the word sanitarium yet, and to tell the truth, he doesn’t like the word itself, for it will be costing him a pretty penny to keep him out there and away from his family in the Heart of the Prairie. It is for his own good, of course, a place that will be more to his liking, and didn’t he already say that he liked it better once they had found the exit for the interstate?

Up to this point, maybe he hasn’t taken the time to notice the landscape changing outside, especially if you have other things on your mind, such as the fact that your wife wasn’t quite happy with the idea of this trip, even if you had to explain it to her again and again over the past few weeks, until finally she broke down crying, and said that yes, maybe it was all for the best, maybe Henry her little brother needed medical treatment, and maybe he might be inspired out in the desert country, out past the hill country. He worried as well about his son, Benjamin, and in the darkest, most hidden corners of his mind, he worried that he might have inherited a little bit of his uncle Henry’s artistic sensibility, for he sure liked to spend his time watching other people and using figurative language, like talking about the breath of a caterpillar’s walk, and he had caught him several times listening to those fantastic and overstimulating  radio programs that serialized those dime-store adventure tales, such as those of Tarzan. These signs worried him, and that was the main reason why he had had to precipitate his decision, for it was quite plain to him that his brother-in-law could not continue living with them, even if he stayed for the most part in a wing of the house that had its own separate entrance. It was for his good and the good of his son, he told himself, even if he felt an icy caterpillar crawling inside his chest each time he thought of the sanitarium where he was taking Henry.

You’ve been driving now for over eight hours with nary a break, and Henry hasn’t stopped looking out the window once. His eyes gleam, and he pulled out a pad and started scribbling on it, long waves and swirls and circles that he says is the motion of the hawks that have been flying overhead for the past few hours. He says the light feels different out here too, more liberated, purer, more alive, he says, and maybe he isn’t imagining things, for he has noticed a difference himself, although he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. The light just seems to shimmer and evaporate, being replaced by different light, and at times he finds it painful, while at other moments, he finds himself thinking of clouds and oceans and walking over the bridge on a spring afternoon, or stepping outside on a crisp winter morning with a layer of fresh snow on the ground, although why he would think about snow at this point he doesn’t know, maybe because of the whiteness of it, the feeling that it is open and inviting, and he has a feeling that he is being invited to see inside himself. But that sounds like Henry talking again. Maybe those were Henry’s words, things he’s been saying all the while, and he hasn’t bothered to note he was talking, but the words crawled their way inside him and now he feels they are his. He shudders involuntarily.

When he looks out again he is astounded to find that the corn field are gone, melted away, and now the land is full of hills, and has taken on a more sparse and desolate look, with nary a barn or house to be found. Where is everyone? For some reason, he sees rabbits here and there on the side of the road, and once, he thought he saw a deer, but he drove by so quickly he didn’t get a clear view, and he had found himself slowing down abruptly but then caught himself in time and remembered what the credulous types had told him back in the city, to not trust everything he saw. What was he planning on doing out here anyway? Turning around to see if there was a deer back there?

He turned on the radio, hoping to be able to find his favorite afternoon program with stately band music. He confirmed once again that radio reception wasn’t much to speak of out here, and he found he wasn’t able to find his station at all, or any station to speak of.  Maybe this was due to the hills, because didn’t they interfere with radio reception? Or maybe it was because he was so far out west and it was so empty out here there were no radio stations within reach. He did manage to find one signal, but it wasn’t what he was expecting at all. Instead of the music of Benny Goodman, he heard a low pounding noise punctuated by chants that wavered up and down. He was sure about the chants, because from time to time he heart words, but he couldn’t make them out. They didn’t sound like English, but they sounded nonetheless familiar, in some strange way. When he moved to turn off the radio Henry had stilled his hand, and asked that he leave it, and he did, for all this time he had been in a solicitous mood with his brother-in-law, and maybe it was because he wanted to reassure Henry and not provoke any confrontation, or maybe it was because he was feeling more than a little guilty. The chanting had gone on for some time, and then, there had been rattles and the sounds of flutes, and the music had seemed to breathe in and out, calling up memories of things he couldn’t possibly have seen or heard or experienced himself. It was if the landscape was reaching in to speak to them.

The mountains of the west won’t be visible yet for a few hours. In the meantime, the chanting has been keeping you mind off of other things, and for a few moments you debate with yourself and try to decide whether you shouldn’t turn around and take Henry back to the city, maybe there is a different solution and maybe your wife might not be so upset either, and what will little Benjamin think when he finds his uncle missing? But you fight with these thoughts for a while, keeping them contained, wrestling within you as you hear the pounding and the chanting, and looking out and seeing the landscape bathed in a golden light, and the sun will be setting soon, and you know you won’t be able to reach the sanitarium until tomorrow, so you better start looking for the turnoff for the town of El Comal, for this was the place where you had planned to spend the night and buy gas before continuing with the journey. The music has faded from the radio and there is only silence now, and finally you can turn it off because the random hissing is a little unsettling, and it makes him think of snakes.

The light reflects from the top of the hills like some sort of signaling device, and you wonder if there might not be more hidden messages outside waiting for him to notice. By now, he is noticing that there are patches of cactus everywhere, and that the terrain is still hilly, but now, rocky as well. Some of those groups of rocks surely are not natural formations. They look like little forts, or maybe beacons, or signs that point to places that he fancies might actually be compelling if he wasn’t so occupied with the thought of getting to El Comal. He finds himself wondering about what he has been told. Is it true that lights are seen to beam out of gopher holes at night? That coyotes circle around and chant at the moon? And what would happen if he had to stop and step outside for a bit? He has just noticed  that his bladder is so full he feels it is a drum that has been stretched so tightly it is bound to burst very soon. But no, he doesn’t want to stop and walk out behind a cactus and do his business. He’s actually a little nervous out here, and he feels mysterious energies out here, as if there are things hiding behind the cacti, waiting to rush in the moment he steps out the car. He tells himself to hold on, it shouldn’t be too long now, the sign for the turnoff should be approaching, and then, they’ll travel for a mile on a dirt road and reach El Comal. There, isn’t that the sign?! No, it wasn’t. The sun is fading, and the light is playing tricks.

Some say that the land out hear is desolate because it is in fact a cemetery. Some say a few of these hills have to be burial mounds, and there are tales that were told by some old men even before the highway was built, back when people could only cross this land on pack animals and horses, that travellers would come upon caves fissures where a certain light seemed to gleam through. They told of prospectors getting their hopes up, thinking that if they dug they might find a vein of gold or, better yet, tombs filled with buried treasures from the old people. They would dig and dig, but if they ever found anything, they kept it to themselves. More than likely they returned weary and sunburnt, or some of them were said to have not returned at all, and even now, they might be found still, skeletal figures with gold fever, still digging in caves hidden by the side of certain hills that had a phosphorescent light that shone during full moons.

Old men who live in the hill country will also tell you another version, one that has to do with the reason why the place is so hilly. They say, in a more quaint and idiomatic language interspersed with Indian and Spanish words, that the hills are the result of the ardent attentions of the excited sun, who saw a smooth-skinned maiden lying on the land and who couldn’t resist her attractions, seeing as how she was arrayed in an inviting way, and he bent down to kiss her, but while doing so, set her skin to boiling, and it raised up these innumerable hills. Of course, every tale has a lesson, and it is said that it is not good to be overzealous in the satisfaction of one’s ardour, and one may very well destroy what one desires too much, and this causes one to wonder if the hill people have renounced all passions of their own, and if they are reserved because of the lesson of the sun and the earth, or whether they have seen the wearying spectacle of too many greedy outsiders passing through. It may be that the lesson is directed more towards the outsiders, who like the sun, seem greedy to satisfy their desires.

Up ahead a woebegone sign announces the turnoff for El Comal. This time it is the real thing, not some trick of the light, and he realizes how easily he could have missed it. Not only was the sign not much to look at, but there were distractions. The traveller could have sworn that there was a hawk circling high overhead, something he had been straining to discern clearly, and if he hadn’t of been careful, and if his companion hadn’t of let out a sleep snort at that moment, he would have missed it.

The sign is modest, and already seemed aged in a way that doesn’t seem to fit in for a roadway that is only a few years old. It says, “El Comal turnoff. Population 357. Somos los primeros.” Now, what was that last part? A slogan? The traveller might well find himself wondering about what it says, for he has no real expertise in any other languages than what he needs and has used all his life. What does that last part mean? Is it a welcome in the local language? Now, why would they print something that wasn’t in English? But those mysteries seem of minor concern now, the important thing is that the traveller finds a great measure of relief, for soon he’ll be able to stop the car and step outside and stretch, and the first thing he’ll do is ask for a lavatory, and take care of business. Beside him his companion is stirring, and he looks up at the traveller, who turns to him as the car bounces slowly on the dirt road, and tells him, “We’re making a stop, we need to get something to eat. I’m starving, and you must be too! We’ll stay here, shouldn’t be too long now”, and Henry gives a sleep assent, rubbing his knuckles on his eyelids in comical fashion, then fixing his attention on the road outside. It isn’t much of a road, and the land out here doesn’t have much in the way of vegetation, it seems dried out and, somehow, abandoned. At the very least, however, there are wooden posts along the side, with arrow pointing at the town, just to make sure that any visitors don’t get lost, and to tell the truth, the light is fading fast, and he could easily have found himself wandering off the road and out into the desert.

In the next fifteen minutes they find themselves approaching a set of hills that seem to encircle something, and it must be the town, for from what he can see, there can’t be much else out here, and there seems to be a power line that leads into the circle, so he knows something must be there. Also, a faint glow seems to emanate from the place, and he thinks that this is nothing to be afraid of, the old tales must have been referring to this, and it was as plain as day (which was fading fast) that the lights had to have been from places where people lived, or maybe, from lanterns that they carried around with them. Silly to think of ghosts out here, now.

They drive around a hill and see, sure enough, the outlines of a settlement. It isn’t much of a place, but he can see a good collection of adobe houses crowded around a church, and he can make out what seems to be a ditch, and also, just by chance, he happens to look up one of the hills and sees the outlines of a shack, and strangely enough, as far away as it is, he can tell that there is a person standing next to the shack, although he can’t make out very much else. He drives along the road, and he finds that it gets a little smoother once he enters the pueblo proper, and he sees a sign that says “El Comal”, painted in a homely fashion on the side of the nearest structure.

First things first. He needs to find a bathroom, and then, a gasoline station, for he needs to fill up and maybe get his bearings by talking to someone and asking about where he can find a room for the night, as well as a restaurant for it must be 5 or 6 in the afternoon by now, and they haven’t had anything to eat since they left, and he’s staring, although who knows about Henry, he’s so think he must have gotten used to getting along without food, he certainly never ate much back in the city.

He finds what appears to be a fuel station, with one or two cars parked nearby, and he stops to get gas. “Fill up the tank, and show me to the bathroom”, he says lazily to the attendant, a weather-beaten old man who  took his time lumbering out from his station. “And please tell me where I can find a lavatory”, he adds, at which the man looks at him blankly for a few seconds, and he repeats his request, “A lavatory, a loo, you know, for necessities”, and the man continues to look at him blankly, and in frustration he bursts out, “A john, a bathroom, where’s the men’s room!”, and the man then reacts and points to a shack out in the back, lit up by a small light bulb that hangs from a post, and he realizes he’ll have to use an outhouse. He should have known things would be primitive out here.

Nonetheless, it is a relief when he returns, and only then does he remember Henry, who has stepped out of the car and has walked into the building, and is staring at a group of masks that are hanging from the wall, and he seems utterly mesmerized. The masks are seems to portray animals, and he can recognize a mountain lion, and also what appears to be a rabbit, and even a bird, something like an eagle. Henry is touching and admiring them, and seems to want to pull one down and probably put it on, he would, but the traveller stops him, and asks if he needs to go to the lavatory, it’s just outside, somewhat dark inside, but it might be a good idea to go while he can, and Henry just shakes his head no, and goes back to admiring the masks as the traveller pays for the gas and a few tepid bottles of Coca Cola, and asks about a restaurant and maybe a hotel where he can find a room for the night. The attendant is chewing on something, and he looks at him carefully, and takes his time answering, and he takes so much time that the traveller begins to get a little impatient, and is about to repeat his question when he hears the answer. Yes, doña Jimena has a place where they can have a meal, it’s the best place in town, and she can probably find a room for them also, for not too many people come this way, and she always seems to have room for those that do. He points out the way, and tells them to follow the road straight past the plaza, and go to the next street, past the great big elm tree, and next to it he find a large house with basket hanging from the walls, and that will be the place where he can find what he needs.

They leave and by now the drinks seem only to have increased his appetite. What he could really use now would be a good steak with potatoes and hot buns, and a good serving of apple pie, they must have apple trees out here, don’t they?, something he can bit into and fill the ravenous hole he has in his gut. They notice people walking along beside the car, and others on horses, and they all seem to move away from them deferentially, so even if the light has faded and all he sees are lanterns being lit on street corners and dim lights from within the houses, he had nothing to fear, he isn’t going to accidentally hit anyone. It does seem very quiet, except for the sound of a dog barking far away.

The visitor spots the house, and wonders where he should park, the street being so narrow, and there doesn’t seem to be a place suitable enough, so he decides he might as well put the car in reverse and head back to the plaza, there’s plenty of space out there, and he’ll park the car next to the church, it should be safe enough there and out of the way, and they walk back about one block to the place that he had seen, what was it, doña something or other, and they see a sign that says “Pensión Los abanicos”, and they walk in the door into a spacious room, one with a big table where a group of men are sitting at the furthest end, the one next to a fireplace, drinking coffee and playing with cards. Surprisingly, it isn’t that dark in there, no, they have plenty of light, for the place is rather attractive, with displays of plates and pots filled with flowers, and many paintings on the walls, most of portraits of severe-looking men and women standing stiffly, but others a little more imaginative.

A middle-aged matron welcomes them as they step inside, and directs them to take a seat, and they sit not to close to the other men, for the traveller wants a little privacy, and he asks about if he can order dinner, oh yes, señor, bienvenidos, we have dinner for you, there is no problem, and he asks what they might have to offer, and she tells them that their tamales are very tasty, just the thing, and they have sopa as well, sopa de tortuga, it is very fresh and very tasty, and they have something esquisito, un mole de tlacuache, muy delicioso, it is their especialidad, and he finds himself frozen, not knowing what to respond, because he hasn’t caught most of the names she just used, and he asks, steak, do you have steak, and potatoes, and some bread, and she answers, yes, we have carne, we have it in a stew, no asado, but we can prepare for you in just a few minutes, and we have papas, and we have bread, do the señores eat tortillas?, no?, then we have bolillos, and let me bring you some sopa de tortuga, it is good to start with a sopa, and some limonada, and we’ll bring the bread for you, just take a seat, so happy to have you here, will be back in just a moment. And they sit down, not knowing quite what they have agreed to, but when the matron brings out a basket with bread rolls, and a dish with a rather hard slab of butter, it doesn’t matter, they are starving, and they start eating, even Henry, who now seems to confess he was starving all along, while the old men at the other end of the table murmur quietly among themselves, and when the traveller looks at them, the all dunk their heads down in a form of greeting, and say, Provecho!, and they wait while the soup is brought out, a steaming dark soup that is fragrant with spices, and maybe he should have told them he doesn’t like spicy food, but when he takes his first spoon of the soup, he is racing to finish the rest, and doesn’t stop to think about the irony of racing to consume turtle soup.

Next come the strips of thin meat with potatoes and carrots on the side, and no, it isn’t a thick beefy steak, but they find themselves cutting through the meat nonetheless and wolfing it down, and meanwhile the men on the other end of the table do their best not to look, and they ask for refills for their coffee, and the matron brings out a plate with assorted breads, they are colorful breads, and the men gaily go about finishing their card game as they take pits of bread and dunk it in their coffee, in the way of country people, and consume it at a slow and measured pace. “This is quite good, I like it”, says Henry, as he finishes the strip of meat, and he picks up a boiled potato and bites into it, “I haven’t tasted such good food in a long time, ever since the summer I spent in Texas”, he says, and the traveller has to admit he enjoyed his meal too, and before they know it, they’re being served cups of hot coffee as well, and he can detect a touch of something else in it, something like cinnamon, and they have a plate of sweet bread also, and he feels no compunction about doing what the others did, and they are breaking off bits of bread and dunking it in their coffee as well.

They finish everything, even the basket of bread, and they sit back, and they decide to wait a little bit before asking for a room, and the men in the corner in the meantime are doling out cards again, and others are walking into the pensión, a few families with children who ask for bread as well, others who ask for tortillas that they pay for with small jangling coins then carry back in cloth-draped baskets, and others just come in for drinks, and greet everyone with a small nod, and no one seems to be surprised that the place has visitors, even if they are the only ones there that night. A few people sit around on the old furniture and talk, others sit at the table, and at this point, the visitor and his companion see fit to go and sit next to the fireplace, and watch and listen even if half the conversations seem to be carried on in a language other than English.  Henry get up and starts walking around the walls, admiring the artwork and the people portrayed, and notices as well other things, such as the fact that the pottery has design work as well, abstract patterns in some cases, and he notices some of the leather handiwork, and pauses in front of the displays of carved figurines, most of them portraying animals of the hill country, some of them hawks, some of them snakes, some of them turtles, and even coyotes and skunks and even a few mountain lions.

There is one painting in particular that holds his attention, next to the carved animals, and it depicts what appears to be a coyote standing on two feet and holding a basket, and he’s talking to a group of men dressed like medieval soldiers, with metal armor and basins worn on their heads, and the coyote seems to have a tricky expression on his face, and the men are holding something out, and it seems to be that they are offering the coyote coins. And in the background, behind the coyote, they can see a group of animals huddled together, and he sees opossums, and skunks, and snakes, and rabbits and birds and even a few deer and what would seem to be bears, and they are all sitting or standing behind the coyote, who alone out of all the animals (except for the birds) seems to have mastered the art of standing on two legs, and also, alone seems to be talking to the men, and this seems so incongruous, that Henry can’t help himself, and he asks one of the men who was playing cards but who has settled back and has been chatting with his friends the meaning of this painting.

“Oh, I see you noticed that painting, it is one of my favorites too, and is it very famous. The animals around here are different, you see, and the old one, the viejitos, noticed it when they came up from the south. You see, this is a hard land to live in, and it takes a certain amount of patience, and a certain cleverness, and the old ones had to learn about this because they needed the animals to make it through those first few years. That one there is the famous Coyote, that is his name, and he still lives out here, and we have to be careful with that one. He saw how things were, and how the settlers were not going to go back, despite all that he did to try to scare them away, and he came to a decision, and tried to do something that was very noble, but also, very dangerous. Maybe you would like to hear the story?”

Henry assents eagerly, and when a few of the children as well as the adult who were standing around realized that a story was about to be told, they all found places to sit and got comfortable, and even the matron doña Jimena came out and made herself comfortable, not without first putting a log in the fireplace, and they waited while don Juan cleared his throat and settled in and began his story.

And they spent the next few hours hearing about the Coyote and the farmers and the soldiers, and they laughed at times, and they shook their heads at others, and they sighed and waved their fists and made swatting motions and even imitated the hissing of the snake and the chirp of the birds and the roar of the mountain lion and the grunts of the bears, as well as the neighing of the horses and even the exclamations of surprise and alarm of the humans, but no one found him or herself bored by the story, and the hours wiled away and before they knew it people were standing up and taking leave of each other, and thanking don Juan for the story, and the matron was showing them to their rooms in the back, well actually, one room with a large bed, and they were too tired to go out to the zocalo to fetch their luggage and put on their night clothes, and they found themselves collapsing into their beds, after undressing hastily, and the traveller in particular would have loved to wash his teeth at least, but he settled for gulping down some water from a pitcher left on a table, and by then Henry was fast asleep, and he sat on the edge of the bed and as his head hit the pillow he was already asleep.

That night he dreamnt about Coyote and about the advice he could have given him about his problem with Henry, who he was aiming to abandon at a sanitarium out west the next day.

Copyright 2014 (C) Oscar Romero

Going Home (A Paean to Summer)

(I have been writing poetry for some time, but I haven't shown my poems to any but a few close friends. This is an exception, and I was inspired to write it by the memory of all the summer trips we used to take to the beach when I was a child.)

Going Home – A Summer Odyssey

The battle is won and the waves recede,
dusky soldiers heading home in their long caravans
long rivers of flashing embers are as ever showing them the way
pulsing and winking, the heart is tired but strong as ever.

Victory brings with it a sort of peace
that lulls the mind of the sleepy warriors,
covered in sweat and grime, but of a pleasant sort,
these descendants of Odysseus plot their way home,

hard ships that ride against the wind,
what spell can lead them back to the hearth that beckons?
The 60 and 10, the 405 and the 110
91 cleaves through mountains on the way to the East,

their shields and tents and their cold caskets,
the remains to be savored, until next week
(it hurts to think they'll be locked away again)

No tunics wear they as they journey back
through grey clouds of fumes that curl slowly about them
something is burning, I can still smell it,
perhaps in the mountains, the trolls flee from fires,
and loud glittering flies swoop down upon them,
as red ants race around them, other battles still raging
but ours is over.

The ricos live in their gated communities,

way up in the hills;
they reach ever higher,
but can't outrun the fires,
it is late August, when everything burns,
even the shadows.

Sunday evening and the young ones sleep, burned but happy,
hair sticky as they clutch their trophies,
empty stained cups, bearing bright colors,
the thirst will never end, it is summer after all,
appetites can't be stilled, only dulled somewhat on long days,
the caravan snakes forward, the red eyes of Medusa
winking off and on, as they slump forward,
they can't kill it, they can only humor it,
but one day, one day, Hercules will come.

The music piles out of loudspeakers, pell-mell,
there isn't enough space, it bounces around, swirls and circles
bumping into everything, going up and down,
like a circus sideshow of musical notes circling round,
Ramon calls them out, he reels them in
open and closing, they breath in and own,
the accordion is happy but bears a stern warning,

la vida es corta, pronto se acaba,
Asi es mi norte! The soldiers cry out,
if only they could fight every day the way they fought today,
(the timeclock burns their memories).

The lights flash on and off, the chariots growl and careen forward,
banshee screeches sound as the struggle to move forward,
they feel even stickier, the feel the anger,
it is taking much longer than they could have known.
Didn't they win? Are these the spoils,
as the little ones slumber in back, they'll be in school tomorrow,
maybe it were best if they didn't make it back,
take the off ramp, go off and explore,
get lost in the night, pretend the journey will never end,
don't think they'll be caged once again, Odysseus and his men,
Cyclops will be happy to see them again.

There are waves out here too, and they beckon,
come here, we are one and the same,
the buildings breath with relief after a hot day,
they will stay warm for most of the night, and up above,
there are other lights to follow.

Would that they had wings so that they could cross the silent ocean,
without fearing the beasts from below,
would that the salt didn't pull them down,
they can see it below them as well, the shadows gleam too,
in August the voices ring clear, swirling around late at night,
there is no stillness now, no time to slumber,
they are tired, but for now, let me rest just a little more,
how quiet the sky looks.

The servants of Hermes wing overhead,
looking down powerfully, on the prowl,
I want to follow you although I know I shouldn't!
What are you hunting, you single-eyed servant of the night?
Will your prey escape from you tonight,
dare we say we could join you?

Earlier today, at the battleground, by the long open shore,
other winged creatures had been driven mad, things of an ordinary nature,
gulls and pigeons drawn by burnt offerings,
the smells reeling them in, burnt tortillas flung their way,

they dart, here and there, tormenting Odysseus’ tribe

and leave offerings of a different source,
they too can play the game. 

“Don’t go too far, stay where I can see you,

vas a ver, cabrón, si no me haces caso!

Cuida a tu hermanito, y no te vayas a meter adentro, pendejo, hazme caso!”

It was too much to ask for them to resist the call of the waves
they felt free, it was calling them forth, and they couldn't ignore it.
The dug holes in the sand, they piled it up on the shore,
they found seashells and called forth the spirits of yore,
this was their place, and they just knew it in their hearts,
they were meant to return. They came from water,
and they offered themselves once again.

Returning home, eyes and skin burning, their mouths still sticky with sugar,
the tribe of Odysseus plots to return once again,

he wheels his trireme home,
arms and hands rowing the wind,

it move forward, that big shimmering Impala,
an vessel built to hold armies,

and the tribe traces its way back.

Which is more home, this Ithaca by desert, this Thebes near the gully,
Pomona lying flat, she has had better days,
Montebello and Riverside, Corona with her sweet fruit,
wherever it is, each kingdom with its own green lawn,
a bounty of lemons, and an aguacate or two.

These caravans of land vessels promenading in triumph
like in a Frank Romero car mural, splashing colors, even in the dark,

crossing underneath the overpass, the gateways slink onward...

Caramba, was it really 110 degrees today?

They still savor the promise of summer,
they can't forget yet, the air won't let them,
the red eyes in front thin out, they are nearing home,
but it isn't any easier, so tired are they.

The memory of waves will have to do, their own private Cozumel,

stealing themselves they must, but they know they'll be back,
these roads will pull them, they always have,
that and the names, there is a special magic in them,
the Mediterranean is the wellspring, and it echoes even here,
for the realize that the journey itself is a form of magic,
the road is soaking with it,
the magic of names like the Santa Monica Bay,
Playa del Rey, Redondo Beach, San Clemente
and la aguita.

The road makes them remember that they were conquerors, too,
stalking their fortunes, accolytes of Hermes,
the abuelo had always told them, back when he was alive,

me vine para ganar dólares, porque allá, no más no la hacía.

This modern day tribe of Odysseus,

is still one and the same, and their hearts still beat with the spell,
even if their names are not Achilles, or Agamemmnon,
but Pepe and Lorenzo and Micaela and Chonchita de mi alma,

they are getting closer and closer to home, and they drift away slowly,
the memories at perhaps too sweet, the sweetest they've had,
and the final exit cleaves into view, and the traffic clears,
and they are caressed by the last wave, they hardly even want to return home
they want the spell to last just a little longer, for if you look closely,
you see that the evening light swirls around them as well.

You turn and look up and you see her,
Selena la bella, mira, nos esta mirando,

showing off her glowing earrings as she takes a rest,
she is bowing, you know it, and the stars around her,

are clapping. You're home.

Copyright 2014 (C) Oscar G. Romero

Haunted by ghosts, or Middle-Aged wanderings (Sept. 2014)

It certainly took me a long time to get around to this. A statement which is filled with ambiguity, of course, but is precisely the note I wish to hit as I begin.

It’s been more than a week since I returned from a trip to Mexico. It is hard to encapsulate what this trip meant for me, a middle-aged man who is the son of Mexican immigrants but who hasn’t been back to the country in more than thirty years. I was born in Mexico but had no memories of the country, having arrived when I was a small child. We lived in a Mexican barrio in California, and as with many such ethnic conclaves, our views of our parent’s country was suffused with a dense weave of nostalgia and sweet sadness, something that I liken at times like an intoxicating cotton candy that sustained my parents throughout their early years. It wasn’t my country, of course, for we grew up here, and all our memories were tied in with the programs and the friends and the patterns of consumption we learned here, but Mexico was a salve that was offered up to us to console spiritual cravings that only my parents had. We were always a little more diffident.

I tell myself over and over that one has to leave behind the temptation to reduce an experience to a telling word or phrase. We always knew that Mexico was an “other”, a country that was seen with suspicion if not outright disdain by many of our Anglo peers, even the more earnest sort who would ordinarily liked to think of themselves as quite tolerant. We were not prepared for school, to begin with, for we arrived chattering in Spanish, with little self-confidence or any inclination to join with our peers. At times, I remember the ridicule that was directed at us, and the taunt that we should go back to TJ (Tijuana), that our neighborhoods resembled TJ, and that if we didn’t watch out, the green IRS immigration vans would come to rround us up and take us back to where we belonged, TJ. It got to the point that we quickly internalized a sense of shame, and we sought for ways to disassociate ourselves from Mexico and our heritage, something that our parents found bewildering and disturbing, prompting them to lecture us that we needed to spend some time back in the old country, for we were in danger of forgetting what we were. We had little idea of what we were missing out on, of course, and the nostalgia that our parents expressed didn’t seem to convince us, especially not me, who dreamed with Tom and Jane and the other characters in our early readers, who lived in a much more settled and orderly world, and not in the working class barrios where we had to go from time to time to the local pantry to ask for food donations to make it through the week.

What did Mexico represent for us? I am aware that, at different times and for different generations, it represented something different. Many times, for those generations who are thoroughly assimilated to the American way of life, they may have the luxury of idealizing a country and a culture and constructing what we may view as a romanticized notion of a world that seems much more cohesive than we could have imagined. It is safe to idealize, because no one by now will question you about your ultimate identification now that you’ve lost your accent and for all intents and purposes have divested yourself of the outlook that characterized our wary, suspicious, timorous immigrant parents. But at times, when things got tough in this country, when you were still struggling to escape the violence and the culture of self-doubt and the mocking chants we immigrant kids internalized and directed against ourselves, maybe Mexico could come to seem not so much a curse but a proud statement of suffering. Like the tattoos we saw on so many young men, portraying crucified figures or demonic grinning skulls or the eternal suffering matriarch, the Virgin, an emblem that sanctified the poor suffering peasant Juan Diego, and with whom so many Chicanos seemed to identify, as they did as well with other martyrs, especially Emiliano Zapata. There has always been a symbolism associated with Chicano culture, and it is rooted in ideas of suffering and resistance, to a tragic outlook that is so much at odds with the American notion of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, and which may be rooted as much on deep psychological traumas that characterize Mexican identity as on the experience of working class life.

How to sum up a view of Mexico that has evolved, and that in many ways has come to mean different things for different generations? I would have to say that Mexico lends itself to romanticized notions that conform to the emotional needs of those who use it as a mirror upon which to project their own desires and needs. We grew up with the notion of a “barbarous” Mexico, a violent place filled with injustice and revolutionary fervor, with an authoritarian class that repressed the needs of the poor and Indian majorities as, as with the provocative title of John Kenneth Turner’s famous book, was apt for indictment. (His book incorporated a direct criticism of the Díaz regime.) Or maybe we could move to a more memorable formulation, the one that seemed to assert that Mexico wasn’t as cohesive as one believed, that there were many psychological layers as well as socioeconomic profiles coexisting uneasily, the notion of the “Many Mexicos”, this being the title of another famous work, the history written by Lesly Byrd Simpson. Or, in another formulation that was published in the early 80s, we had the notion of the “Distant Neighbors”, a title that was memorable not only for being purged of any sentimentalizing notions that had characterized early works, but because it chose to highlight what was seemingly a contradictory juxtaposition, a dynamic that asserted that the operative dynamic of fear and suspicion was operative from the other side as well. Mexico was just as suspicious and fearful of the influence of the United States as this country was of Mexico’s influence.

This was not to be my grand re-encounter with Mexico, however. I have been back several times, but usually, for short and frustrating visits that did little to reconnect me with my roots. The journeys, especially as a child, were uncomfortable ones, short stays in which we were forced to ride on buses and look out on bleak and utterly dry desert landscapes, on fragile houses on the roads and what I remember were the constant importunings of children and adults who seemed to beg us to buy something, buy some bread, buy some tortas, buy some necklaces, buy something. We would burn up two days and nights driving down weaving roads to Nayarit and Jalisco, and it was a surprise to me to see how nervous my parents would become each time we hit an official border crossing, anyplace where government employees or, God forbid, policemen were to be found, and where the shakedown was to be applied to those Mexican migrants who were trekking back on their annual visits to see their family members. My parents would scoff in disgust at these officials, and the way our few items were scrutinized by these figures, who could be appeased only with an exchange of money, for otherwise, we ran the risk of forfeiting our humble belongings and gifts. I will never forget seeing how one Mexican migrant couple, when faced with a fine or some kind of tax that was demanded of them because they were carrying with them a small black and white television set, chose to drop in in disgust in front of the official, the glass shattering noisily as they raged at how things hadn’t changed. What could we expect if sweet nostalgic view of Mexico that was cultivated so persistently by our parents in the United States crashed in front of us? Had they  been leaving out this other part for so long, the part we had dreaded because it had been intimated in all that we heard about the country from the outside?

Well, I’m no longer a child. This is not a re-enactment of a journey undertaken as a child, journeys that were not only bewildering but were frequently accompanied by a tone of crisis, as happened to so many Mexican-American children who remember sudden journeys to Mexico that were undertaken to bury a family member. There was not grief involved this time, no sense of fulfilling a family obligation, no sense that this was the last time that we would see someone, and we had best take advantage of it and be on our best behavior, cabrones! No, this was to be a different kind of journey, even if the sense of unease was still there. It was a personal and spiritual journey, to a region of the country where no family members yet lived, but it was also a way to mark a milestone. It was the sense of learning to traverse a metaphoric landscape, to catch a glimpse of where I was at this point, as a middle-aged man, having managed somehow to survive the perilous road traversed up to this point, and hoping, perhaps, to find inspiration and a new source of symbolic meaning in a landscape that was weathered but that still endured. In past journeys, I had never visited any of the archeological landmarks, and perhaps, this was all for the best, for what would they have meant to a nine year old? My cousin Rubén, the first college student in my family, had promised me he would take me when I was young. In a future visit, we would go to Mexico City, we would see the many surrounding sites, we would go to Teotihuacan. This was a promise he never was able to keep, for he was gunned down on the streets of Guadalajara over twenty years ago. I have never come to grips with his loss, and in my mind, this trip was also a journey to find him again, and to find the grandparents I never really grew to know.

It was telling as well that I should have been prompted as well by another book about loss and reconciliation, the book “The Interior Circuit” by Francisco Goldman. In the book the author, a Guatemalan writer who had taken up residence in Mexico City, details the psychic journey that he was forced to undertake after the death of his wife Aura (the name recalls another ghost, that of Carlos Fuentes' famous short story) in a tragic accident. It is structured around the idea of learning how to drive in Mexico City’s chaotic traffic, so that the metaphor of the road once again holds sway. The turmoil is complex, for he is aware of this being an adopted homeland, and of his learning to identify with Mexico, and with the pulse of history and dynamism that comes from the capital that is, also, haunted by ghosts. We have history at play here, for when we speak of Mexico City, when is it ever not manifest, it being a city of many layers, of peripheries that bound a vibrant center, of movements and the protest and the endless circulation of products, of cultural capital that is consumed far afield, by the millions of us Chicanos, for example, who have grown up “on the other side” (del otro lado). It is also a reflection on the recent dynamics not only of his tumultuous personal history, but also, on the nation’s history, and the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that has come out of the recent Narco wars in the countries, ones that would seem to have annulled the triumphalist and brief window of hope that came with the fall of the PRI (the Partido Revolutionario Institucional, the Institutionalized Revolutionary Party) and that have signaled a reversion to the worst tendencies in the country. We see a country that has elected, under the impulse in large part of these fears and the unabashed corruption of the newly re-energized party, another PRI regime, and it would seem that, once again, we see the ancient tropes resuscitated, the idea of a savage and “barbarous” Mexico, prone to authoritarian power structures, under the behest of an ever growing narco-impelled culture of corruption. It is a type of madness at play, one that intersects with the author’s own personal experience of loss, but also, his vision of wishing to escape the confines of this mindset of fear, and find the true vigor that characterizes all humanity. It was a book that I had just begun when I set out on my trip, having read the author’s description of the maddening charms of Mexico City, but wishing as I did not to be completely beholden to his perspective. I needed to see things for myself, after all.

There would be no more long and mind-numbing bus rides on Tres Estrellas buslines to Mexico, fighting with my siblings or moaning in discomfort as the inevitable turista hit, a day or two after having eating our first bites of Mexican food. I was flying into the capital, after all, so the boredom would be kept to a minimum, as I sat in my Aeromexico seat and put my headphones on to listen to Billy Joel’s album “Piano Man”. The journey was quick, a red-eye scheduled to arrive at 5 a.m., and I couldn’t help but survey my fellow passengers. In first class, men and women of European phenotype, but speaking perfect Mexican Spanish, elegantly dressed and maybe a little diffident as they look as those of us flying in economy class, most of whom were mestizos who were dressed as I was, in comfortable jeans, in off-the-rack clothing, purchase at Walmarts and Kohls and other department stores. The Europeans in the front, the mestizos in the back, both groups obviously Mexican. This was quite telling, and it was a pattern I was to see over and over in Mexico, something which was age-old, of course. Try to find a mestizo as a news anchor in Mexican programming, or lead characters who are mestizo or Indian in telenovelas, or even as hosts on the inane morning chat shows I would watch briefly every morning before I would venture out to explore the city. Mexican programming is lilly-white, and even the commercials seems to reflect this earnest vision of a type of racial deliverance, even as the country is, quite manifestly, overwhelming not portrayed on this programming. This is, once again, nothing new, for we had been aware of it ever since we were children in the US, seeing the programming that was exported by Televisa. There are some real racial hangups at play, but I hadn’t expected any different. Well, maybe I had, thinking that Mexico City programming under the impetus of the progressive regimes of AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) and Marcelo Ebrard would have been different. But commercial television is resistant to these political movements, and we have the eternal time warp at play.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Copyright 2014 (C) Oscar G. Romero