The Crossing
a short story
by Angus Brownfield
***
Published By
Copyright © 2011 by Angus Brownfield
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The Crossing
A pile of broken concrete; an iguana sunning atop; a péon in white pajamas, rope sandals and straw hat stalking the iguana, crouching, single shot twenty-two at the ready. I’m unloading from the side compartment of the camper what we need for the evening. The iguana, sun-logy but not stupid, moves his eye, flicks his tongue, and, as the shot rings out, dives over the pile of concrete and disappears.
The bullet is more random. Striking a concrete block, it sings past my ear like a supercharged hornet homing in on its ultimate foe. It’s over so fast I don’t have time to move a muscle or be afraid. Still I yell, “¡Ten cuidado, hombre!”
He scowls at me, as if I’m a fool and continues stalking, reloading as he goes.
I go into the camper. Margot says, “What was that all about?”
“Damn fool shot into a pile of rubble and the fucking bullet ricocheted; just missed my ear by an inch.”
“You’re sure it was an inch.”
“Coulda been closer. Sounded like a jet fighter going by.”
She says, “There, there; want a mescal?”
“Sure.”
I sit in the bench seat while she collects the bottle and a shot glass.
I pour a shot and down it in a blink. “What if Clarissa or Sally had been there instead of me?”
“Bullet woulda sailed right over either’s head.”
“If,” I say, “it were a child standing there instead of me, he might have aimed differently and the bullet went lower.”
“So, you’ve been shot at once, run off the road once, cheated once and scared once. I’d say that was a pretty good score for driving from one end of Mexico to the other.”
“And you’ve been disappointed once: not getting to visit Uxmal,” I reply.
“And scared a lot more times than you, too.” she says.
“Really?”
“Either you’re a good deal more trusting of people than I am or a good deal more trusting in your strong right arm.”
“It’s my left, sweetie, I trust my left.”
She takes down a glass and poured a shot of mescal. As I poured myself another she sits across the all-purpose table from me. We clink glasses.
Clarissa climbs down from the upper bunk, where she’d been reading and keeping a napping Sally from falling out. “I heard you say ‘fucking’,” she tells me.
“I use that word for emphasis sometimes—not too often.”
Clarissa says, “I’m glad the man didn’t kill the iguana.”
“How do you know he didn’t?”
“I was watching out the window. —Why did he want to shoot an iguana, anyway? Was it bothering him?”
“He would have eaten it.”
“Yuck!”
“I’m told it’s good,” Margot says.
Christmas looming. We were supposed to be in Costa Rica before Christmas, but one thing and another. More interesting people than we thought we’d meet along the way. Mindless husband; patient wife. Then, rolling downhill from Oaxaca, a blown head gasket.
Now we were in Tapachula, last stop on the Ruta Pacífica before the border with Guatemala, marked by the Río Suchiate. It was Sunday, and we’d been told by friends coming back from the Canal Zone that Sunday was not the good day to cross into Guatemala. Not only were fees double, the mordida—expected kickbacks—was double as well.
We kicked back ourselves. Drank mescal, sat out in lawn chairs in the center of a horseshoe-shaped motel that had had a fire and was so obviously out of business it had no marquee—only it wasn’t quite dead. We’d pulled in, expecting to squat, but a lanky, pale-skinned youth affecting the Castilian distinción appeared instantly and invited us to rent a room at an absurd price. I countered with an offer to pay an absurdly low price to park in the overgrown grounds and have access to a bathroom. As we settled on a price, I decided I’d won the haggling contest.
Only it lurked in my mind this kid wasn’t in any way related to the motel, he was just picking up some pocket money from chumps like me.
When he completed the business transaction the youth said, “You may use any of the bathrooms with complete confidence.” The expression, completa confianza, rolled off his tongue like a pinball rolling back down the table, bouncing over the final, lisping syllable.
Later we found out why the nameless motel commanded such good prices. There was a steady traffic all night, cars rolling in, to be greeted by the pale, tireless hustler, an hour or two in one of the mildewed rooms, and the cars sped out again, always faster than they’d come in.
Once we heard a little drama enacted, almost outside the camper window. A man yelled, in a demanding, then pleading voice, “Benícia, Benícia.”
“She doesn’t want to go through with it,” Margot whispered.
“Or maybe she hadn’t a clue they were coming here,” I whispered back. I sat up and pulled the curtain aside, to see a man of perhaps thirty get into his car and spray gravel as he sped back towards town without Benícia.
“Now I understand why the kid wanted to charge us so much. I’ll bet he’s just as happy we didn’t take a room. He’d have lost money.”
In spite of wanting to be done traveling, we didn’t get away until nine-thirty next morning. It wasn’t all dawdling, we’d stopped at an agency that handled auto insurance for Central America. There we met a man who warned us about conditions in Guatemala.
“Things are pretty bad down there,” he said. “It’s like a revolution. I didn’t know about the curfew and they caught me driving down the street. This soldier had a rifle to my chest, right here—“ he gestured to the area of his heart—“and one of them smacked me. It’s pretty bad down there. I wouldn’t stop anywhere but in Guatemala City.”
He was a Mexican businessman who traveled throughout Central America.
I asked him about the roads.
“They’re fine from here to Costa Rica. In Costa Rica it’s bad from Peñas Blancas to San José, but the rest is okay. It’s crossing the frontiers is the problem, especially into Guatemala. They’re all thieves over there.”
From Tapachula the road descends to the Río Suchiate, the trees growing taller and the air becoming stiller and hotter. We were waved past the customs station halfway to the border and continued on, behind a bus and a slower truck. As u
sual, Mexican drivers passed them—anywhere: up hills, around curves, with pedestrians or cattle on the side of the road—wherever the urge took them.
Around the last curve we saw the line of cars, perhaps a hundred of them. Travelers milled around outside the station, or sat along the divider that separated the two sides of the highway, or under the canopy that stretched between the buildings at opposite sides. Venders moved up the line of cars with oranges and tangerines.
I took Margot’s passport, grabbed my briefcase from behind the driver’s seat, the one with tourist cards, the gun permits and proof of insurance, and headed up the road while Margot took the driver’s seat. Once again I had the little flutter in my gut I’d had crossing into Mexico at Mexicali.
“Maybe it’s this way every Monday morning,” Margot said.
“Is this Costa Rica?” Clarissa asked.
“Let your father get his papers, Clarissa. —Have you got everything?” She too had the jittery feeling.
“Yes, I’m off.”
“Good luck, Conrad.”
Inside the crowd was just as formidable. The Migración counter was six and eight deep with travelers. I could feel the tug of all those hopes and frustrations investing the room, like cattle first driven into a corral. A man old enough to be my father muscled past me and others, up to the counter. The trick, it seemed, was to get an immigration officer to take your passport. They took a dozen or so at a time and went to a desk to work on them, ignoring those