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with their
enormous Gulf clouds written across the bowl of day like fleece. Entering
Monterrey was
like entering Detroit, among great long walls of factories, except for the
burros that
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sunned in the grass before them and the sight of thick city adobe
neighborhoods with
thousands of shifty hipsters hanging around doorways and whores looking out
of
windows and strange shops that might have sold anything and narrow sidewalks
crowded
with Hongkong- like humanity. Yow! yelled Dean. And all in that sun. Have
you dug
this Mexican sun, Sal? It makes you high. Whoo! I want to get on and on this
road
drives me!! We mentioned stopping in the excitements of Monterrey, but Dean
wanted
to make extra-special time to get to Mexico City, and besides he knew the
road would get
more interesting, especially ahead, always ahead. He drove like a fiend and
never rested.
Stan and I were completely bushed and gave it up and had to sleep. I looked
up outside
Monterrey and saw enormous weird twin peaks beyond Old Monterrey, beyond
where
the outlaws went.
Montemorelos was ahead, a descent again to hotter altitudes. It grew
exceedingly hot and
strange. Dean absolutely had to wake me up to see this. Look, Sal, you must
not miss. I
looked. We were going through swamps and alongside the road at ragged
intervals
strange Mexicans in tattered rags walked along with machetes hanging from
their rope
belts, and some of them cut at the bushes. They all stopped to watch us
without
expression. Through the tangled bush we occasionally saw thatched huts with
Africanlike
bamboo walls, just stick huts. Strange young girls, dark as the moon, stared
from
mysterious verdant doorways. Oh, man, I want to stop and twiddle thumbs with
the little
darlings, cried Dean, but notice the old lady or the old man is always
somewhere
around in the back usually, sometimes a hundred yards, gathering twigs and
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wood or
tending animals. They re never alone. Nobody s ever alone in this country.
While you ve
been sleeping I ve been digging this road and this country, and if I could
only tell you all
the thoughts I ve had, man! He was sweating. His eyes were red-streaked and
mad and
also sub dued and tender he had found people like himself. We bowled right
through the
endless swamp country at a steady forty- five. Sal, I think the country
won t change for a
long time. If you ll drive, I ll sleep now.
I took the wheel and drove among reveries of my own, through Linares, through
hot, flat
swamp country, across the steaming Rio Soto la Marina near Hidalgo, and on. A
great
verdant jungle valley with long fields of green crops opened before me.
Groups of men
watched us pass from a narrow old- fashioned bridge. The hot river flowed.
Then we rose
in altitude till a kind of desert country began reappearing. The city of
Gregoria was
ahead. The boys were sleeping, and 1 was alone in my eternity at the wheel,
and the road
ran straight as an arrow. Not like driving across Carolina, or Texas, or
Arizona, or
Illinois; but like driving across the world and into the places where we
would finally
learn ourselves among the Fellahin Indians of the world, the essential strain
of the basic
primitive, wailing humanity that stretches in a belt around the equatorial
belly of the
world from Malaya (the long fingernail of China) to India the great
subcontinent to
Arabia to Morocco to the selfsame deserts and jungles of Mexico and over the
waves to
Polynesia to mystic Siam of the Yellow Robe and on around, on around, so that
you hear
the same mournful wail by the rotted walls of Cadiz, Spain, that you hear
12,000 miles
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around in the depths of Benares the Capital of the World. These people were
unmistakably Indians and were not at all like the Pedros and Panchos of silly
civilized
American lore they had high cheekbones, and slanted f eyes, and soft ways;
they were
not fools, they were not clowns; they were great, grave Indians and they were
the source
of mankind and the fathers of it. The waves are Chinese, but the earth is an
Indian thing.
As essentia l as rocks in the desert are they in the desert of history. And
they knew this
when we passed, ostensibly self- important moneybag Americans on a lark in
their land;
they knew who was the father and who was the son of antique life on earth,
and made no
comment. For when destruction comes to the world of history and the
Apocalypse of
the Fellahin returns once more as so many times before, people will still
stare with the
same eyes from the caves of Mexico as well as from the caves of Bali, where
it all began
and where Adam was suckled and taught to know. These were my growing thoughts
as I
drove the car into the hot, sunbaked town of Gregoria.
Earlier, back at San Antonio, I had promised Dean, as a joke, that I would
get him a girl.
It was a bet and a challenge. As I pulled up the car at the gas station near
sunny Gregoria
a kid came across the road on tattered feet, carrying an enormous
windshield-shade, and
wanted to know if I d buy. You like? Sixty peso. Habla Espanol? Sesenta
peso. My
name Victor.
Nah, I said jokingly, buy senorita.
Sure, sure! he cried excitedly. I get you gurls, onny-time. Too hot now,
he added
with distaste. No good gurls when hot day. Wait tonight. You like shade?
I didn t want the shade but I wanted the girls. I woke up Dean. Hey, man, I
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told you in
Texas I d get you a girl all right, stretch your bones and wake up, boy;
we ve got girls
waiting for us.
What? what? he cried, leaping up, haggard. Where? where?
This boy Victor s going to show us where.
Well, lessgo, lessgo! Dean leaped out of the car and clasped Victor s hand.
There was a
group of other boys hanging around the station and grinning, half of them
barefoot, all
wearing floppy straw hats. Man, said Dean to me, ain t this a nice way to
spend an
afternoon. It s so much cooler than Denver poolhalls. Victor, you got gurls?
Where? A
donde? ne cried in Spanish. Dig that, Sal, I m speaking Spanish.
Ask him if we can get any tea. Hey kid, you got ma-ree-wa-na?
The kid nodded gravely. Sho, onnytime, mon. Come with me.
Hee! Wheel Hoo! yelled Dean. He was wide awake and jumping up and down in
that
drowsy Mexican street. Let s all go! I was passing Lucky Strikes to the
other boys.
They were getting great pleasure out of us and especially Dean. They turned
to one
another with cupped hands and rattled off comments about the mad American
cat. Dig
them, Sal, talk ing about us and digging. Oh my goodness, what a world!
Victor got in
the car with us, and we lurched off. Stan Shephard had been sleeping soundly
and woke
up to this madness.
We drove way out to the desert the other side of town and turned on a rutty
dirt road that
made the car bounce as never before. Up ahead was Victor s house. It sat on
the edge of
cactus flats overtopped by a few trees, just an adobe cracker-box, with a few
men
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