DAY OF THE DEAD
a short story
by Angus Brownfield
***
Published By
Copyright © 2013 by Angus Brownfield
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DAY OF THE DEAD
A final necklace of sunlight outlined the westward mountain range. Some of the cars descending the long, gentle curve from the west showed headlights of varying luminosity, tired yellow to new car bright. The usual rule in those days, of not driving Mexican highways after dark, was soon to be broken. Route 2 from Tijuana to Mexicali carried a steady stream of cars and the random bus.
Overnight, crosses had sprouted along the highway’s shoulders, marking places where, in years past, hapless souls had suffered fatal accidents. Many crosses were fashioned of lath and painted white, with hand-lettered names and Christian symbols. A few crosses were more elaborate, one fashioned of wrought iron. Almost all had flowers resting against them: wild flowers, paper flowers, one or two potted marigolds.
Dusk was descending on the Day of the Dead. It seemed all Mexico was on the move, seeking family in distant towns, like ants following scent trails, scurrying, unmindful of others crossing their paths seeking other anthills. Cars and pickups with children in back carried tamales and tia Lupe’s mole, pan de muertos and the artful skulls of sugar or amaranth and honey.
The highway passed within a quarter mile of where we’d pulled off into the desert to spend our first night in Mexico, but we were shielded from view by a phalanx of desert shrubs and trees, four, and in some places, five ranks deep. Only persons in the cars coming down that long curve could have spotted us, and then they would have to know where to look. I was confident my family had the privacy we craved.
We needed the privacy. It had been a day of frustration upon frustration.
Crossing the border was time-consuming but without incident. All our papers were in order, even ones Migración and la Aduana didn’t ask for. It was the gun permits that caused the problem. The guns had to be inspected by the army—to assure we weren’t importing proscribed calibers of guns or ammunition.
No one seemed to know about this regulation. The young counter man at the Tourist Bureau shrugged. I asked a policeman on the street. He also shrugged. His shrug implied that I shouldn’t worry about permits unless challenged. I had heard horror stories about Mexican jails and, with wife and children along, was not about to learn the truth of those stories first hand.
Walking along a street of auto and truck agencies, I looked into an open garage where a half dozen polished big-rig tractors were parked. I spotted a man who could have been right off the streets of Phoenix, Arizona, or Albuquerque, New Mexico: short-sleeved sports shirt, chinos, crew cut, glasses. I went up to him and in my adult ed Spanish asked where the army held forth in the Mexicali area. He asked why I wanted them. I explained about the guns.
“What are you going to hunt?” he asked in Spanish.
“Deer, ducks,” I answered. Those were the only names of game for which I knew the Spanish.
He said in totally uninflected English, “Well, if you shoot as badly as you speak Spanish, the ducks haven’t a worry in the world.”
After humbling me (just in case I was of the arrogant asshole tribe of norteños) he turned cordial—cordial enough to explain that he’d earned a business degree from The Ohio State University, which is why he spoke English ten times better than my Spanish.
He gave me directions to the Army base south of town. They were concise. I thanked him profusely in both English and Spanish, just to show him that I wasn’t of the arrogant asshole tribe from across the border. I drove off with renewed hope.
Maybe it’s different today, back then I discovered that street signs, even in a prospering, growing city like Mexicali, are an afterthought. You will find them etched into the curbing at intersections, you will find them high up on the walls of buildings, sometimes so weathered as to be barely visible. Sometimes you will find them not at all. I circled Mexicali three times before I finally came upon the army base.
I drove onto the grounds with no one challenging me. There was a guard house at the entrance off the highway, but no one manning it. The grounds were manicured, the streets within the base free even of dust, as if a street sweeper had just come through. I spotted a group of officers coming towards me, a colonel in the lead, with more junior men a step behind. They wore what I judged to be their winter service uniforms, complete with Sam Browns and billed caps. Smart. I had an urge to salute them.
Instead, I descended the truck and asked where I might find the office in which imported firearms were inspected.
I drew four blank stares. Obviously, none of them knew of such a function. The colonel, treating my request as if he did—his rank demanded he know more than his junior officers—directed me back to the Tourist Bureau downtown. Dubious but respectful, I thanked him in the best Spanish I could muster.
That afternoon I had my first lesson in the efficiency of la mordida. It developed that there was a certain young man in the Tourist Bureau who was expert at getting firearms approved. He need only know the type and caliber of each weapon and the amount of ammunition for each. A form would be required, and a nominal fee paid. At last. An angel of mercy taking pity on an ignorant tourist.
Finally I was legal, but the entire process had taken the better part of the afternoon, and with the feast day traffic clogging the highways, my wife and I decided to mark time and start fresh in the morning. And too, a night close to “home”—meaning the US border—gave us a sense of security as we tried out our knew toys: the nifty folding table, the camp chairs, the Coleman stove. I cooked us a dinner of spaghetti and red sauce with sausages while Effie gave the kids a nature lesson, pointing out evidence of deer, wild burros, insects, arachnids, even the track of a snake.
We hadn’t sat down to eat when two Mexican boys, maybe ten or eleven, burst into our camp. The boys were almost the same age; no more than a year separating them. They were highly agitated, speaking Spanish faster than my gringo ears could understand. I implored them to slow down: “Hablen ustedes mas lentemente, por favor.” I knew that much Spanish pretty well.
But to no avail. They chattered on, hopping up and down. I finally got an inkling that they were having vehicle trouble.
“¿Necesita gasolina o agua?”
They ignored my offer of gasoline or water, but apparently wanted me to come with them, up to the highway.
“Can you finish the cooking and feed the kids?” I asked Effie.
She smiled and waved me on.
Before I went I grabbed a flashlight then trotted after the boys, weaving among the greasewood and creosote bushes, avoiding the occasional ocotillo, and at last came upon a pale blue pickup on the highway shoulder, hood up and the engine steaming. Two men, maybe the boys’ fathers, maybe father and uncle, it was hard to tell, were gazing intently at the engine and talking with the same agitation as the boys.
I asked them how I c
ould help. I asked in English and then worked out the translation to Spanish. I thought they hadn’t heard me, because neither answered. I asked again. I got close enough to be in the way and asked a third time. Neither man answered. Gesturing, spitting out words but behaving as if I weren’t there.
I looked around for the boys, to see if perhaps the men had a problem hearing, but the boys had disappeared. It was growing darker. I began to get the feeling that these men, in their typical Sonoran garb, the boots, the Levi’s, the wide-brimmed hats, were not on the same astral plane as I. It was as if I could see them and hear them—they never ceased their agitated dialogue—but they couldn’t see me.
Cars passed at regular intervals. A bus, a fancy machine, bigger than a Greyhound, whooshed past. No one else stopped, no one seemed even to notice. I finally threw my hands up, retraced my steps to our campsite, where Effie had lit the Coleman lantern, which cast an eerie white light, sending chaparral shadows in an arc around our pickup and camper.
“Were you able to help them?” Effie asked.
I shook my head.
“Really broken down?”
I said, “Damnedest thing. It was like they couldn’t see me or hear me. I tried three times to get them to tell me what was wrong, but they never spoke a word to me. They were red in the face, frantic almost. But they didn’t even say ‘hello.’ If I weren’t sober I’d say I was seeing things.”
“I thought the boys were strange enough. What do you suppose: a family of deaf males?”
“I don’t know. But I’m taking the varmint gun to bed with me.”
“Have a drink before you eat, sweetie. You need to calm down.”
*****
Next morning we were up with the sun. We breakfasted on oatmeal and bananas, Effie and I drinking our allotment of coffee. We packed up, battened down, and followed our tracks off the desert and onto the shoulder of the highway, where traffic had calmed down considerably. I stopped the truck and cut the engine.
“What gives?” Effie asked.
“I just want to see it those jokers ever got their truck started,” I said.
I walked the quarter mile to where I thought the pale blue pickup had been parked, but there was nothing in sight. Not that I’m a great tracker, but I looked carefully for signs that a truck had sat there.
Nothing.
I pulled onto the road and, a mile farther on, saw a Pemex station. I stopped to top off the tank, and while I was at it, I asked the attendant, tanned to saddle leather brown with pure white hair, if he’d seen a pale blue pickup the night before.
“They were stopped off the highway a ways back; seemed to be having a bit of trouble.”
The man gave me my change and seemed to debate whether to tell me something.
“Did they wear cowboy boots and Texas style hats?”
I said, “Yes, and they had two boys with them.”
“This size,” he said, and marked the height of the boys.
“Exactamente.”
He took in a deep breath. He looked around. Finally he looked in my eyes and his own seemed to glitter. He said, “Señor, I don’t want you to think I’m a stupid old Mexican.”
“Of course not,” I said.
“What you saw were no men, no boys. They were ghosts.”
“Truly?”
It wasn’t asked in disbelief, because that explanation had been in the back of my mind from the instant I went back to our camp. Now my eyes glittered too.
“Yesterday was El Dia de Los Muertos. Those men and those muchachos, they died ten or eleven years ago. They pull off the highway with a broken truck, and a big semirremolque plowed into them, killing all four. You are the fifth persons since that time who see them—that I know of. They return always on the Day of the Dead.”
“It was like they couldn’t see me.”
The man said, “They weren’t in this world. You got a look at the other world. It’s a gift, I think. Not many get to see that.” He reached out and laid a gnarled hand on my arm, whether to reassure me or to reassure himself that I wasn’t a ghost, I don’t know.
Back in the truck Effie asked, “What was that all about?”
I said, “We were visited by ghosts last night.”
“The Day of the Dead,” she said, and crossed herself.
“It’s enough to make your Irish hair stand on end, isn’t it.”
“Sure and begorrah, it is,” she said. Her Irish eyebrows went up for a second.