Trapped

The tinkiling of the travel alarm clock wakens me so soon, tears me from ogers and demonds who fillet me in the dark. I am about 4% rested, which is to say, not at all. Kim is rousted, glaring at me from the couch. I gather the few bags and announce we’re leaving. I can tell she doesn’t really understand what’s happening. At the truck we remove the stinking cat box, let the dog stretch and piss, then we’re off into the black of night. A violation of all the rules, Mexican night driving. What’s to keep from running into animals and people now? No body has blinky bling or reflective clothing, only dark and sordid rag blending with the night. Not another car on the road, what was a half a dozen hours ago a compaction of compacts. On we go, driving modestly. The idea is to get on the cutoff under the bridge and head out the Guatemala way, at some point circling back toward the coast. Quite quickly we reach the bridge. There is no way to turn left excepting that dirt road that might have connected to the right. Too late, past that. On the other side of the road are still 4 police cars, all their lights flashing, a dozen transmigraintes pulled over. I plow on by, steady, unwavering. This is the trap of death. The highway is separated here and there are no bandits working our side. On I go, checking the mirrors every few second for signs of pursuit. There is none. Thank god in Himmel, I have made it past the incarceration station. On we go in the black. Slamming into unseen potholes. Pass the town of Hernadaz, no blockade here either. I figure now to backtrack to an intersection 30 miles north and head west toward Mexico city. Eventually this will connect south to toll road that cuts across the southern states of Chipias and the flooded zones of Villa Hermosa. In another few miles, a massive vibration starts up back in the trailer. Reminds me of a flat, but what can I do, narrow black road, no shoulder, all outlaw land. I must go on. Presently Kim speaks, somewhat pleasantly. Oh, but don’t you hear that screeching of metal back behind us. Yes, I do, but choose to ignore it. Nothing to be done about it no matter what is the worst. On and on we go, nerves further abraded on the ends of the numb ones. Hands clutched tight to the wheel curves and hills and holes bashing mercessilly. Finally, a gas station. A Mexican State owned Permex. Light. Flat. Sanctuary. I pull in and around to the back. With out the roar of the road, it is plainly obvious iron is dragging on the road. In the back, where the gas station is still under construction, I stop. Get out and look at what’s going on back there. The tire on one side is gone. We have been driving on the rim for the last 10 miles. The rim is mashed into an octagonal shape, not a trace of rubber anywhere. The weight and loss of tire elevation has dropped the front of the trailer to the ground. It is worn away in a wedge shape, along with the bottom 3 inches of trailer jack. A spare tire used to be bolted under the trailer, but it too is gone. Ripped away from the frame by the great road dragging. Only its holding bolt remains. To the casual observer, the trailer is destroyed. There is a casual observer, a diesel pump man. Nice enough fellow, although we cannot communicate worth spit. Nessitito Mechanicio. No shit. This I get. He indicates somehow their may be hope. He calls someone on the cell phone. We gesticulat some more, of which he’s not to interested in doing, then wanders off. A hot rain sets in. Kim and I sit next to the diesel pump, under the light, out of the deluge, smoking, smoking, and watching the 3 inch cockroaches scurry about. It can’t get any worse than this, can it babe? Kim ventures to say. Though grimly true, her brief words are comforting. Nothing to do now but wait. Wait for what .. unknown.

Thankful now for the things that didn’t happen. The police didn’t drag me away (though I still fear they will find me), the trailer didn’t flip and mash the hover into particles, all the animals are still with us even though frantic to get out of their kennel, and now, the enduring mechinery of our globe slowly rotates us back to face the sun. In the grey of dawn, a well dressed Spaniard and his daughter (?) come to talk to us. He is the Mechanicio. We can communicate little, but the situation is obvious. We need dos rutas’ (two wheels). There is much hand shaking, and blubbering gracias’s from us and then they depart. What now? Waiting is the only option. Around 8 a team of 20 constrocto’s show up to work on the gas station. I have to put the thrashed rim back on the trailer and move the thing to the other side of the lot. It is hot again, as always, and we turn the truck on and off to cool the interior and roasting creatures. We haven’t eaten anything in days, just some chips, bottles of water and colas. There is no food here either, just some more chips. I have a few minor inspirations, one is to buy a map and figure out not only where we are, but how to get out of here should occasion arise. The other is to charge the hover battery off the truck for future disasters. It turns out we are 20 miles north of Pozza Rica in a town called Alamo. The local map is much more detailed than anything we’ve previously seen. This is highly encouraging. Even more encouraging is what appears to be a small freeway, a toll road, completely bypassing Pozza Rica to the west, although the actual connection to it is unclear. If we can get on this, we can wiz around the bandits. The police do not work the toll roads, that being the territory of some greater more powerful mafia.

Around 9:30 we are basting in the truck, dozing fitfully, watching the constrocto’s mix cement in their way. It is a group effort of a half a dozen piling the materials on the ground, adding water, and all stirring and flipping the stuff until the proper consistency is attained. Then it is shoveled into buckets and packed over to the wall or what ever they are making, where others fuss over the placement. I discuss ditching the hover and trailer here. Going on. Or unhooking and going into Mexico city for the wheels. Neither is a great idea. Bad ideas actually. Suddenly there is a knock on the window. Outside is a 20 something stocky fellow with a greasy torn T shirt. El Mechanico?, I venture. Si, si. We look over the damage while talking in gibberish to each other, neither understanding the other. Dos Rutas? Can Do? Jabber jabber, si. 14 inch rims? El Datsun rutas. He seems to understand this. I write the number 14 down and he is also understands this. I want to make sure we get both the tire and rim, and draw pictures accordingly. He gets it. Two. Dos. Mil con dos cintos. One thousand two hundred pesos. Each. I make that I understand. I offer him the mangled rim, so that the bolt holes will line up. No nessitio. He taps his head, indicating that all the information is up there. How long? Quanta Houra? There is some confusion about that, but he leads me to believe he’ll be right back. OK. He’s not asking for any money up front. I thank him profusely, and he jumps in his little wreck of a car missing a door and tears off. Well .. that was hopeful. What will happen now, anybody’s guess. We return to the truck cab and the analysis of the map. Wait.

In less than a half an hour, he is back. Back with two brand new tires of the right size on Datsun rims. I am agog. This is some kind of roadside miracle. I jack up the trailer and he adroitly installs one of the new tires and rim, under the precariously jack balanced trailer which can fall and mash him at any moment. Seems like fairly common practice for him. The rims are newly spray painted black. I’m wondering if there is some other fellas mini truck sitting amputated in the mud somewhere, the back tires jerked off. But, like I could give a shit, I got mine. I try to give him US hundred dollar bills, but he looks so forlorn as he fingers them. Banks are foreign to him, and not likely friendly. There is no where the money can be cambair (changed). I have all the bribe money I changed at the hotel and dig all that out. I pay him 2500 pesos. He points out the hundred overpayment, but I let him know it is for bueno service. He lights up entirely. This guy is a great Mexican. With some further handshakes, he dashes off again.

Now here we are.. fixed. Hardly even 10 AM. I can’t believe it. We can go on with all our crap. I’m a little in shock to have gotten out of that one. Ok, some final tie down and we’re off, back in the direction of Pozza Rica, but not all the way to the trap. At the first cutoff into the town of Herandaze, we cut off and into the town. Narrow streets, rutted and broken, starved dogs everywhere, people everywhere. A ¼ mile in, there is a white shirted policeman waving us over. Show him the transmigranties paperwork. He’s not really interested. He’s all about an infraction, tickito. For what? Driving off the state highway. Ok sure. 100 pesos. He is insulted. 300. I can tell he’s not really into it. A glimmer of pity for us seems to have him somewhat hesitant, non-committal. He is not in a cash frenzy like the others. I open my wallet, showing all. I have 220 pesos. I pull it all out and shove it at him. Toto. Es toto. (it is all). No no, tres cintos. No, no toto. We are poor, I say, robbed, suffering. Some of this comes across. I sympathize with him that he cannot rob us of more. Finally, he accepts it and we part friends. Passo. His side kick behind him scowls. We are instructed to go down to the end of the street, get on the side highway, and return at the main highway at the end of town. We pass another grouping of police, loitering for a fleecing, but are ignored because their confederate has just nailed us up the street. Robber etiquette. Get to the back highway. Proceed to the main. No. No. This will not do. This leads to the nest. I won’t go there. I U-turn the rig and head back up the highway in the back of town. It is out of sight of the police pods. On through the back of town, then the road climbs. Up out of town, climbing to the top of a major hill. Some indecision here of what to do, but after a pause, we continue. Now winding along to the NE along a lane and a half wide road. People with carts, herds of goats, old men hobbling along. On we go, winding through green farms, going slowly, going into the unknown. It is not on the map. After a half an hour of this, we go under a freeway. Cars race overhead. Wahooo! We found it. Although no way to get up on it. We continue on for another 10 miles, hoping we will not come to the medium sized town somewhere at the end of this. At long last there is an entrance ramp to get on, but in the wrong direction. In a mile there is a returno, a place where we can cross over the freeway and get going in the other direction. This sure as hell wasn’t in the woodchuck guide. Now we’re in the clear. At last. In an hour we are well past the cursed Pozza Rica area. Safe. Safe from THAT horror at any rate. Eventually the road ends in a toll booth. We have to scrounge coins to find enough pesos for this. What happens if you don’t have enough pesos? Do you have to go back? Just past this is a sign to the Esmerelda Coasta. Take the left. Sort of corresponds to the map in a general way. There is a checkpoint. A multitude all dressed in black. Many with masks on. Of course we’re waved over. I feel shock coming on again. The extra mean guy comes over. Hand him our transmigrante papers. No habla espanole, we explain. He has a glimmer of kindness in him. He is not the local police, but the federallie, the government police. We are nothing. Carpetbaggers. Of no interest to them. They are looking for revolutionaries now, the Chipias Resistance. We totally don’t fit the bill. He looks through the papers, then politely hands them back, and waves us on. Incredible.


We come to a larger town. We’re out of pesos, again. Need pesos. No, the gas station wont change them funny looking dollars. Have to go to the banko. Where the hell is that? A vague wave down into town. Ok. I drive the truck and trailer down into the narrow streets, looking for the bank. It is extremely dense. We pass a police man who waves for us to pull over. Don’t think so. No where to pull over. Traffic on the front and back. I drive just a few miles per hour faster than the pig can catch us walking. He walks after us for a few blocks, where we turn a corner and disappear deeper into the warren. There are a few banks. I park the huge rig half assed part way in the street, then jump out and go back to the banks. I try all three, but none will change the money. Some gibberish about politicio something. A bank that won’t change money. Assholes. Three of em. Ok, got to get the hell out of here and avoid the walking pig. I take a left down an alley and start out into a cross street. Screech, smoke, my brakes dynamited, A huge van ground to a halt in front of me. A one inch near collision with a maniac barreling down the cross street. No signs, stop, one way, right of way, nothing. How the fuck was I to know? Pissed off but unblemished, the maniac van tears on. Another 20 cars barrel past at 40 in the one lane. pedestrian packed street. Eventually I inch out, get down a few streets and find the lane out of the mess back to the highway. Ok. New rule. No more entering towns. Fuck towns. If we need to go in, we’ll park somewhere outside and walk in. We avoided the walking pig.

On we go, soon on the beach road along the coast. Everything here is for the tourists, things not so shabby, but deserted. There are no vacationers here. To get here is impossible, as we have demonstrated. Of course, now out of pesos again. Dark approaching again. No water, no food, need to stop and camp. But where? All is hotels. On the second try, I am able to change some dollars for pesos at a ripoff rate. Get water, chips, some bean dip. Seeing that we’re running out of coastline, and that the road will soon veer inland to the next rip off city of Veracruz, I pull into a hotel. It is nice. All that the urban legend of hammocks, pools, drinks with little umbrellas embodies. No. No camping there, but there is a place just a clik down the road called the Cabanas. We find this. All is well. Friendly. Cheap. Here is where the story started so many pages ago. Here is where we dry out, eat our bean dip on a blanket on the beach, where the dog runs, the cats sprawl out in the tent. Where the soft sea breeze revives us. Where the horrors of the past days can be relaxed from.