Almost Home

“Su boleto, por favor, senor”

“Su boleto, senor” the man says, tapping Richard’s arm with the single-hole puncher. 

“Oh, si. Lo siento,” Richard passes the man, 6 inches shorter than him, his bus ticket. Before getting on the bus, Richard looks back hesitantly, like a lover who doesn’t want to risk bursting into tears with a reluctant yet necessary goodbye, at a town that has become a home to him for just over 3 years.  He rubs the shells in his pocket that he picked up from the beach a mere 20 minutes ago to hold onto as keepsakes, adding to his miniature collection of all the places he’s lived. He’s learned by now that his life would always be transportable, even though his heart yearned to settle somewhere.     

“Su bolsa, Senor.”

Richard hands him his suitcase and climbs up the stairs onto the bus with the familiar groan of yet another journey. 

“Oh, good, this bus has got air conditioning,” Richard thinks, relieved by the lucky break that one gets once and awhile with the Mexican transportation.  “At least something’s working for me,” he’s adopted the national attitude of appreciating the rare blessings of comfort when they are offered.

He sees a woman in the 8^th row looking up at the t.v. screen then down and sideways, not sure whether she should tell the driver that something must be wrong because she’s never traveled on an air-conditioned bus with t.v.’s before while paying the regular fare price, yet she’d be damned to take an 8-hour trip on one of those buses with rusty holes in the flooring.  Richard has seen so many Mexicans from the campesinos shocked like this when they got on one of these new buses for their first time. These simple modern luxuries were part of normal living back in America.

Richard finds a seat by the window in the 11^th row, one where he can lean his head up against it without the partition getting in the way.  He’s praying to Santa Maria that he gets to ride this trip alone, so he can sprawl out his long legs diagonally in front of the  passenger seat beside him, instead of scrunched up with his knees banging into the metal plate on the back of the seat in front of him.

Ten minutes before they leave. Remarkably the buses here are the one thing that stays on time. Richard snuggles into his seat, tilting his hat overtop of his head, ready to zone out into that space where people around here find some kind of peace and freedom from worries or “preocupadas” as they call them. 

“Hey, is this seat taken, SAY-NNNOR?”

Richard overhears the ever-familiar botched Spanish and rolls his eyes under his hat. “Oh el Christo,” Richard mutters.

“The problem with Mexicans,” Richard thinks, “is everyone feigns politeness.”  He’s realized that it’s their way of preserving the face of dignity in this country that is known for uprisings, drug deals and criminal hijackings.  Especially when an American tourist is in the midst, people are wanting to show that Mexicans have a uniqueness far richer than what the American dollar can offer, despite everything the news tells them.

“Hey, is this seat taken?”

Richard lifts his hat. “Oh shit. He’s looking at me.”

“No, buddy, it’s all yours,” Richard gestures, moving his legs but staying in his slouched posture, with his head leaned up against the window.

“Good to see there’s another gringo on this bus.”

Richard pulled back his eyes from the momentary contact he made with the man with white shorts and white socks pulled up to his knees.  He pulls out the folded El Dia newspaper from his moth-eaten cloth bag, opening it up so the right side divides him and the Yankee next to him. “El Gobierno se mata 20 personas Indigenas en las Montanas.”  Richard used to be sickened and horrified by the atrocities against the Indigenous People in Mexico, but it’s now become such a part of life to read about these things – as normal as eating tortillas with cilantro and chili pepper salsa along with a cold beer in the middle of the afternoon. 

“You can read that shit?” the white-socked man says to Richard.

“You mean Spanish?” Richard retorts with the arrogance of a man who knows he’s more respectable in the eyes of the locals. “Ya. How ‘bout you?” Richard challenges.

“Don’t have time to learn that kinda stuff.”

“Well what are you doing here then if you can’t speak Spanish?” Richard says, hoping the white-socked man will get the hint that his tourist status only takes him so far inland--there are common rules around these parts and, despite what most Americans like to think, English isn’t the commodity that people are after these days.

Richard looks proudly at his deeply tanned skin and pulls on the leather and stone bracelet he’s been wearing since the first day he arrived in Puerto Angel given to him by a chance meeting with a local street vendor who Richard helped when the guy had to go take a piss.  That was the first shock for Richard when he landed – how trusting Mexicans were when they liked you and somehow they had honed that instinct pretty well. Guess it comes with the trade – these guys have seen every trick to thievery and have learned not to be fooled by appearances but also won’t let a little misfortune get them down. 

“My name’s George. How’d you do?” the man puts his hand out to shake Richard’s.

“Richard,” he shakes the man’s hand once, with hardly a grip.

“What brings you to these parts?” George says, with the strong Texan accent.

“Long story. Been living here for 3 years and now I gotta go find somewhere else to be.”

“No kidding?! Three years! Lucky man. How’d you manage to make that happen?”

“Didn’t really. It just sorta happened,” Richard responds, really not sure how he ended up spending three years in Mexico, yet knowing that there’s something about the place that charms Time to pass by with the haze of the lulling waves.

“Where’re you from?” George asks.

“The States,” Richard replies.

“What part?”

“Depends on why you’re asking.” Richard usually tries to avoid giving the details of his life, and will first figure out the story of the person who’s asking to give the answer that makes them feel at ease.  Most people wouldn’t understand his life and the only ones who would are those who don’t care much for knowing the truth anyways.

“What? You one of those guys who runs to Mexico because the big guns in America are after ya?”

“If only I were so glorious,” Richard smirks. He likes keeping people guessing about him—he likes seeing their faces change when they see him as tougher than he looks.

“Whatchya doing taking the bus from the coast to the city by yourself? Don’t you know it’s dangerous for tourists on the highways?” Richard says, looking out the window, feeling the bus tilt as it edges around the bend of the mountain. “See all them crosses and flowers? They’re memorials for dead folk from driving these roads,” Richard points. “In Mexico, you gotta get real comfortable with death. It’s at every turn.”

Richard would do this all the time at the resort he worked at -- show this face of calmness about death – as if he had mastered it.  They’d always be awed by how he handled the scorpions and black widow spiders in their rooms. “Ladies – welcome to Mexico. Just count yourself lucky if you return back home alive,” he’d say, sweeping them away without breaking a sweat. This bravado would usually score him at least one lady for the evening.

“I’m here to take pictures of the cactus plants that grow 6’ or taller for the magazine I work for,” George responds earnestly.

“Oh great. A journalist. Just what locals hate. To be romanticized while they struggle just to get clean water. No one will pay them for the pleasure of their seemingly innocent smile,” Richard grits his teeth, withholding what he’s thinking.

“Have you journalists ever thought about paying the people you take pictures of in foreign countries?” Richard couldn’t resist.

“Well, they’ve set new journalism standards and they are considering this along with many other things,” George explains while polishing his camera lens, “and I really don’t think anyone would mind me taking a few pictures. It’s a good image for their country.”

Richard remembers a man he met who carried buckets of water every day up the mountain when he first came to Mexico. This man told him that he made 20 pesos for each 2-hour trip up. “Poco a poco” he said with a look in his eyes that told Richard how people around here have accepted that life is a struggle and one must take whatever they can get. The mountain loomed around them, teaching that each step could easily falter by a swoosh of a mudslide. The man pulled a half-chocolate bar out of his pocket.  “Para mi y para ti”, he said, splitting the chocolate in half. Richard never would have done this for a stranger when he slept on the streets in Pennsylvania. 

“People just need help around here, George. They really don’t care about the rules that much,” Richard said with all his heart.

George went silent.

Richard pulled his hat down over his eyes and leaned against the window, letting the droning of the bus lull him to sleep.