Part 18 (1/2)
”What you see here is for the harvest, so the crops will be good,” the driver explained. ”Every year for as long as I can remember, they have made the festival in the months of July and August.”
They drove over a low-water crossing made of concrete and wide enough for only one vehicle to pa.s.s at a time. On either side of the flat crossing, stones that once lined the creek lay now like dead fish washed upon the sh.o.r.e. From there they climbed up the embankment and found a paved road leading toward a church and then a fountain that appeared as if it had been dry for several years.
”That was about when it happened,” Don Fidencio said. ”July or August, I remember now.”
”What if I drive out to the country like we were going to the dam?” the driver asked, glancing at his fuel gauge. ”Maybe then the name will also come to you.”
For some time they traveled the same highway the bus had traveled earlier. On the road they pa.s.sed a peanut field budding with hunched-over workers. The rising sun cast these truncated shadows in the direction of the road and the pa.s.sing cars. A Ford car dealers.h.i.+p gleamed brightly in the distance, followed by a larger farm-implement business displaying various tractors and combines. They reached a crossroads where a tall chain-link fence separated the edge of the road from two large factories, each with its own smokestack pumping grayish clouds into the sky.
”And those?” Socorro asked.
”In one, they make cereal for people to eat in the morning,” the driver said, ”and in the other one, they have a dairy - the two of them, the cereal and the milk, right next to each other.” He pointed back and forth at them. ”We only cared that they brought work.”
”So they hired many people?”
”The ones who hadn't left already.”
Don Fidencio gazed out at the cinder-block houses and small lots, hoping to see something that might stir his memory. One woman appeared to be was.h.i.+ng clothes in a white bucket, but then pulled out a goatskin and wrung the discolored water back into the container. At the next house a s.h.i.+ny new truck with Michigan license plates was parked sideways in the front yard. Two men were setting fence posts and looked up when they heard the approaching car. They waved to the old man in the pa.s.senger seat, but it seemed more out of curiosity from seeing a taxi so far from town. He was beginning to think he might not ever remember the name of the ranchito, or maybe his grandfather had never actually mentioned it.
The driver coasted around a wide curve and brought them in the direct path of the sun. He pulled on the visor, but it came unhinged before he could put it back in its original spot. ”And can I ask why you are looking for this ranchito?”
”We wanted to see where our grandfather was from,” Don Fidencio said. ”When he was only seven, the Indians came and stole him from his family, took him to the north.”
”They used to tell stories like that when I was a young boy.”
”After the Indians crossed the river, they left him there, and from then on he lived with another family over on that side. This was back about eighteen fifty, more or less.”
”Right around the time when it became the other side.”
The driver slowed down when they came upon a man riding in a cart. The wide brim of his straw hat cast a shadow across the hindquarters of the gray mule. When the driver reached the cart, he stopped along its right side, but then had to put the car into reverse when he realized the farmer had no intention of stopping.
”Excuse me,” the driver inquired, craning his head out the window, ”but would you know where we could find El Rancho...”
”Capote,” Don Fidencio said.
”El Rancho Capote, sir. These people want to find El Rancho Capote.” He was having trouble guiding the car backward in a straight line and not dropping off into the ditch or, on the other side, hitting the mule.
”El Capote?” the farmer repeated without looking down, as if the words had suddenly crossed his mind. He was an older man, with sunken cheeks and a dark mustache that angled out from the corners of his mouth. When he s.h.i.+fted his weight in the cart, his tan pants rode up his leg a bit and revealed ankle-high boots, only recently s.h.i.+ned by the looks of them. A young boy sat next to him, dressed almost identically.
”Yes, El Capote.”
”Never heard of that one.” He shook his head and then so did the little boy.
”Then what about El Rancho Papote?” the driver asked, jerking the wheel to the right when the car hit a pothole.
”Even less.” The mule swished its tail as if to agree with the farmer and the little boy. ”Tell them they should look for something easier to find.”
”These men and the young lady have come from the United States and are looking for the home of their grandfather - the men say that the Indians took their grandfather.”
The farmer allowed his vision to drift away from the dirt road so he could peer into the taxi, the front and then the back, and then the front again.
”You say it was their grandfather who the Indians took?”
”He was a young boy when it happened, only seven,” the driver explained.
But the farmer was leaning over at the time, listening to something the little boy was telling him. When he finished, the farmer sat back up and twitched the reins to make the mule go faster. ”Why not take these people to the munic.i.p.al offices, where they know more and could help them?”
”Yes, I told them,” the driver replied, ”but today is also Sat.u.r.day.”
”What they should have done was come a day earlier.” The farmer was now looking only straight ahead. ”Who would think to come on a day when people are supposed to be resting?”
The driver parked in the taxi zone and quickly stepped out of the car to unload the luggage, forgetting they had only a backpack and a plastic shopping bag. With little else to do, he came around and helped the old man out of the front seat and up the three marble steps leading to the front desk. Hotel Los Laureles came with the driver's highest recommendations. They would be near the center of town and just across the street from the munic.i.p.al offices, which they would want to visit first thing Monday morning.
”Here I am bringing you these travelers from the United States,” the driver announced with a wink. The clerk had been sleeping in an overstuffed recliner behind the counter and was now using his fingers to comb his hair back into place.
He pushed a clipboard and registration form across the counter. ”Your information, please,” the clerk said, pausing halfway through so he could yawn.
The hotel lobby was attached to a women's shoe store, which s.h.i.+ned brightly through the adjoining entrance. A little boy sat on a purple sofa in the lobby, watching cartoons on a wide-screen television. His younger brother rode a Big Wheel around and around the sofa, changing his direction only when his mother yelled at him from the doorway of the shoe store.
This time Don Celestino made sure the two rooms he reserved were on the ground floor, next to each other. He paid the fare and added an extra twenty pesos for the man's efforts.
”Then I will leave so you can rest,” the driver said once they were checked in. ”If you need anything else, you can find me around the corner at the taxi stand. Just ask them for Isidro.”
After resting from their bus ride and misadventure through the countryside, they headed out to a restaurant the taxi driver had recommended. Socorro walked between the two brothers, holding on to each one by the arm and slowing down enough for Don Fidencio. Along the way they crossed in front of the munic.i.p.al offices and only glanced toward the darkened windows. A security guard leaned back with his foot against one of the columns outside the two-story redbrick building. He was smoking a cigarette and chatting with a young woman who had stopped as she was walking by with her groceries in hand.
A pair of splayed goats roasted over an open fire in the front window of the restaurant. The hostess showed the lady and two gentlemen to a table in the center of the empty dining room. After having seen the open fire, they decided to share a large order of cabrito, which the waiter later brought out on a hibachi that he set up on a metal stand. Other than a light breakfast and what they had snacked on during the bus ride, this would be their first actual meal of the day.
”Please,” the old man answered when Socorro asked if she could serve him. ”I don't know how long it has been since I had cabrito. Sometimes me and Petra would go across to the other side to eat.”
”I remember you used to go on Sat.u.r.days,” his brother said.
”It must have been for our anniversaries, when we still celebrated them. We would go to the Matamoros Cafe because she liked a group that played there. Not that I really liked to dance so much, but you know how it is. That was the last time we went together, when we were still married, before she died on me.”
”How long were you married before she pa.s.sed away?” Socorro asked.
”First she left, then she died years later, but for me she died the day she took her valises from the front door and left. Like that, I thought of her.”
”It must have been hard, no?”
Don Fidencio continued chewing the meat until he could swallow. ”Maybe it was,” he said. ”But to tell you the truth, her leaving is one of those things I don't remember so good anymore. Not that I would want to, but that's how it is. G.o.d doesn't give me the choice of what I can remember and what to forget. In that way I was lucky, to not remember the things I could never change.”
Socorro waited for him to finish eating.
”And of what you can remember, what would you change?”
”Nothing,” Don Fidencio said, and set down his fork.