Stories

     2 Men, 2 Stories

     We sit with suitcases and day packs in the waiting area. The bus for Palenque leaves in an hour.  Presently, a man enters the area. For some reason we both watch him.  He looks and moves weirdly and emits a vibe that stirs the central nervous system in the wrong kind of way.  He walks past us, looks at Mary Kaye a little too long and sits a few seats away.  My mind says, “probably no big deal but keep him on the radar.”  Waiting, we space in and space out, share an observation here or there, wait some more until we hear this guy talking loudly on his cellphone. Long winded and annoying he manages to up the ante. With a loud hack and smack he heaves a wad of phlegm on the floor in front of him. Moments later, he repeats.

    It reminded me of an experience I had a long time ago.  It was in Popayan, Colombia.  Late in the day I had entered a large, beautiful, colonial cathedral.   It was silent and completely empty.  After some time an old man, a campesino, dressed coming from the fields, entered and sat and then kneeled not far from me. I could see his feet, he had no shoes, and judging by the depth of the ravines in his calloused feet he probably never had a pair. There was a story in his  feet that spoke to my heart.  He got off his knees, sat a bit and upon standing he too delivered a huge gob onto one of the flagstone slabs from which the church floor was made.

    Like roadkill in the distance, the phlegm on the floor of the bus station caught my curiosity. Walking past it on my way to the bus, I decided to look. Lodged in the center of the glob of phlegm, like the yoke of an egg was a huge hunk of coagulated blood.  Abruptly, my curiosity disappeared and my disgust turned to concern.  We climbed on our bus, my concern short-lived.  Palenque was 2 hours away and the next morning we would be in the magnificent Mayan ruins set in the jungle of Chiapas, Mexico.  Perhaps, in retrospect, and especially considering that this was a vacation, it was best to consider the red glob of egg yolk as a bit of foreshadowing.  Maya……..blood rituals……. that’s not a huge stretch.

Ishmael is the night watchman at the hotel.  He comes at sunset and leaves at sunrise.   Last year he got fired. The owner can be difficult.  This year he’s back.  Sometimes at night his wife takes the steep walk up the driveway with one of his grandkids, bringing him a plate of food wrapped in a towel. They meet at the gate and sometimes she stays while he eats.  She never smiles. 

Every night Mary Kaye and I give him a report on whale sightings and bug him  with questions about marine life and town history. He probably doesn’t understand much of what we are saying but that doesn’t seem to matter, the sam could be said of us. Lately we have been spraying his feet with insect repellant.  Mary Kaye has been telling him it is all natural.  I don’t think Ishmael gives a hoot but he likes the stuff.  When we leave we are going to give it to him. We think of him as a revered elder even  though, my guess is, we have him by a few years.   

For most of  his adult life he worked in the local slaughter house butchering sea turtles. At the peak of the “harvest” the water in the bay at Mazunte was red with turtle blood. The Mexican government made an agreement with an international wildlife group, the slaughter house was closed and funding for a turtle museum and tourism development was made available. The ocean property that the slaughter house was on was parceled out and numbered, a lottery formed and the workers picked numbers and were awarded parcels as compensation for losing their jobs. Ishmael harvested his share.

Ishmael B

Ishmael’s wife has a small restaurant on the main street of Mazunte.  It isn’t very busy and I get the feeling she likes it that way.  A few years ago one of Ishmael’s daughter started talking about opening up her own restaurant.  So she did, right next door to her mother’s.  They built a small cement building with a palapa roof and equipped it. It took some money. 

Can you imagine entering a bank in the states and asking for a business loan?  And when asked for your business plan you told the loan officer you wanted to open up a restaurant so you could be close to your mother, same menu, same prices, same everything and exactly adjacent.  I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that.  But in fact, I very much doubt there ever was a meeting with a bank about a loan. No need, don’t judge a book by its cover,  My bet is Ishmael’s pockets are deep..

   

The dirt road is steep and deeply rutted and It’s hard to believe that a taxi would agree to navigate it, but after a couple of slow going miles and at the bottom there is a surprisingly beautiful little hotel and restaurant and an even more beautiful swimming beach named La Boquilla..It is very low key never more than a dozen people hanging out. While munching on some guacamole and hydrating with some watermelon aguas de frutas I admired a handsome Mexican couple who appeared to be in their forties.  They stopped in the restaurant and sampled some mezcal before having a cold drink and a shot delivered to them on the beach.  She bikinied and beautiful, he handsome and fit, they were lovey-dovey.

    After a very long and mindless bob in the ocean things turned serious.  Four local boys, none of them more than 15 years old, had been hanging out under a makeshift palapa near the beach.  Three of the boys left urging the fourth to join them but he refused.  He was sitting on a small rock in a shallow area of the bay with his head in his arms.  He appeared to be pouting.  With his friends gone the kid entered the water and it became obvious he didn’t know how to swim.  The handsome couple, Mary Kaye and I were watching and quickly developed a state of concern.  I walked into the water near him to help.  The picture was now clear, he was drunk.  His friends returned, pulled him from the water only to have him crawl back in.  Frustrated and drunk themselves they left him a second time.  The handsome guy and myself tried urging him out of the water but he wouldn’t cooperate instead crawling back into the surf, thrashing as if swimming and at times floating face down for way too long.   The beautiful woman pleaded with him but the kid wasn’t a little looped he was suffering from severe alcohol poisoning and way beyond the normal means of communicating.  Eventually the handsome guy and myself had had too much and we grabbed him by his armpits and pulled him out of the ocean.  We dragged him up the steep beach, his heels leaving a two-track sand record of the pull and far enough from the water’s edge that he couldn’t crawl back.  He went totally limp and for a minute I thought he was dead but I could feel a steady pulse.  We turned him on his side so that if, or more likely when, he started puking he wouldn’t choke on his vomit.  I put a sandal under the side of his head for elevation and to keep his face out of the sand.  His friends returned, they were in various degrees of sloppy drunkenness but were now more attentive.

     We had arranged with a cabbie to pick us up, it was the only way back to the paved road.  He had arrived and was waving at the far end of the beach.  We left the kids and got our stuff together.  We made eye contact with the handsome ones and nonverbally shared more concern.  We checked with the boys.  The kid was on his knees his forehead buried in the beach, sandy globs of phlegmy drool dangling from his mouth, refusing to release, and drop.  It was time to suffer.  With nothing more to do on our part we left.  There were a variety of effusive and intoxicated appreciations shouted our way but we just walked away without looking back.  I was going to remember the afternoon but I doubt the drunken kid would. 

The Mayan ruins of Tonina are 20 minutes from the city of Ocosingo. The setting is beautiful, the temples and buildings well excavated and there are very few restrictions, free to climb on and over everything and explore.  Having the place to ourselves, we were the only visitors that day, made everything all the better.

Returning to Ocosingo we waited for a colectivo. It arrived, a 1960’s Volkswagen Microbus, stick shift. Only a couple of passengers, lots of legroom. The breeze from the open windows was fresh and perfect. The ride went through a lush valley of fertile Mexican farmland and large cattle ranches. 

Approaching Ocosingo the trip took an interesting turn. There was a large group of kids and adults at the side of the road across from a school building. The driver of the colectivo stopped.  It took a bit of time and arranging as every one was loaded. When it was done the ambiance of the trip took a dramatic turn which called for a head count.  It wasn’t the easiest task but I swear to its accuracy. I counted and recounted.  There were now 26 humans of various shapes and sizes in the Micro Bus. 

This was nothing.  I recall a very slow12 hour trip by train as it wound and climbed from sea level in Northern Chile into the mountains of Bolivia. The train car so packed there wasn’t any additional space and people still pushing their way on.  My seat along with dozens of others was the filthy floor, so tightly packed that one had to sit upright, my back resting against the back of someone else.  Hygienically frightening.  Sometimes a poor sense of smell is a virtue.  There wasn’t much Spanish spoken, my fellow passengers of an impoverished indigenous stock, the women in hoop skirts, colorful embroidered blouses, fedoras for headwear, cheeks red from years in the high altitude sun. No eye contact.  As the train wound and climbed, good fortune was on my side.  Helpless and unable to shift positions much less move I could see trails of  urine as it ran my way, diverted and absorbed by luggage and clothing.   

Perhaps someone in an indigenous household in the mountains of Bolivia is recounting a similar event.  This, no doubt, is a common tale.

The drainage pipes for the shower and sink run down and out of the hotel room and provide water for cacti and scrub growing on the side of the hill below the building.  The shower has a rubber disk about a quarter of an inch thick that covers the drain hole on the floor  of the shower perfectly.  The sink has one of a corresponding size. Instructions in the room recommend covering the drains with the rubber disks when the water is not being run.  Ample life forms here, low centers of gravity, some with no legs others with many. These pipes no doubt, are highways of opportunity.

 

 The beach named Mermejita is probably just shy of a mile in length.  It makes for a nice walk and  because it is unprotected from the blazing hot sun seeing another human is unusual.  At the far end is a crude and small house made of stone with a palapa roof.  It is tucked into the side of a hill.  Surrounded by scrub and trees it’s hard to get close.  It looks unlived in but once a couple of years ago I came down on it from the hill above and I saw an elderly Mexican man with a wide brimmed hat sweeping the yard with a crude long handled broom made of a stick and bundled tree branches. 

     There was no snooping around on this day and just as I started the return journey a humpback whale breached.  As I walked the whale was off my right shoulder.  If my arm were 200 yards long I could have reached out and touched it without creating any angle.   For the moment we were moving in parallel.  It surfaced again, dove and was gone.

    This seemed to present itself as an opportunity for layman research.  The average speed of an ambulating human being is 2-3 mph.  I knew that if I kept my eyes peeled on the ocean there was a possibility that I could see the same whale breach again, determine its position relative to me and roughly calculate his/her speed. 

    Normally staying focused for long periods of time is not something I find easy but the ocean has a way of changing that.  The angle of a beach has to be dealt with but sand is for the most part predictable and forgiving and looking out at the Pacific while walking is an easy proposition and the visual possibilities a million fold. 

    Most of the time when a whale dives it stays down for a while and travels.  I knew I would be lucky to see it again but 20 minutes later it reappeared.  It breached and was only slightly ahead of me, still pretty much off my right shoulder. I did the calculations and was feeling very self satisfied until the best realization emerged.  I had just taken a walk with a whale.