Grateful Deceivers
by Garrett Quentin Smith
Chapter 1
The roadhouse was an unlikely place in Mexico to stop for a beer. It had none of the gringo-only
glamour of a cliff side disco in Mazatlan, nor the sophisticated quaintness of a plaza-front café in baroque Guanajuato. It was, quite frankly, a revolting locale oppressed by filth and populated by flies. The proprietors would have starved to death long ago if they had depended on repeat business. The isolation of the roadside eatery was its salvation and the bane of travelers unlucky enough to arrive there with urgent hunger or thirst.
Highway traffic was stopped for a bicycle race. I stepped off the second-class bus, entered the cafe, and ordered a cold Corona despite a prominent and poorly-lettered sign that read, in Spanish, that beer was only to be served with meals. It hadn’t occurred to any of the other passengers to step down from the boxed-in vehicle, even though we were all being slowly cooked by the stagnant air of the bus and marinated with the unsavory aroma of sweaty humans.
The waitress brought me a somewhat cool beer in a bottle. She was middle-aged and wore a badly stained apron. Her cheap rubber sandals slapped against sluggish feet. I asked her in Spanish for a glass, salt, and lime. She hesitated, deciding whether to acknowledge my request, because she had already started the painful shuffle toward a corner chair that was her throne of indolence. Attending me was clearly an inconvenience. Reluctantly, she picked up a clay dish of salt and brought it to my table.
“There are no limes,” she said bluntly and shuffled off. The glass remained unmentioned and never would be brought. It would have meant going outside to get water to wash one of the dirty ones lying piled up in back.
Outside, a popsicle vendor was arranging his inventory. He was getting ready to push his small white cart through the stalled traffic and make a killing.
The beer was fine. It cooled me off enough to recover from the hot and crowded bus. I ordered another.
The bicycles were out of sight, but I could hear them whizzing past. I considered ordering a third.
Then, a gringo stood up from a corner table and walked over. “I noticed you speak Spanish,” he said to me in English.
“Sí,” I answered.
He sat down uninvited. The stranger was dressed in stale business clothes. His shirt was only half tucked in, and he needed a shave.
“I noticed you speak Spanish,” he repeated. It was as if he had rehearsed that phrase in his mind and had already decided that it was to be the opening in our conversation. But what was the response he expected from me?
“Yes, I speak Spanish,” I admitted.
“I’m Roger Panker,” he said, extending his hand.
I took his hand in mine, just naturally, the way I would take anything that was handed to me.
Outside, I saw at least ten hands with money desperately reaching out the window of the bus toward the popsicle salesman. “I’m sorry I’ll have to owe you the coconut,” I heard him say.
“How long have you been here?” it occurred to me to ask my unwelcome table mate.
Roger turned around to study a calendar on the wall that featured an exploitative photo advertisement of a blonde model.
“I got here yesterday,” he said. He looked more tired than drunk, but it was evident that he had been drinking. “My bus pulled over to let out a woman, and I followed her off.”
“She must have been good-looking.”
“She was handsome. She and her baby girl shared the seat next to me, and I grew to feel so tender towards them just by having them sit beside me. I mean, the incidental physical contact was divine. We had an entire courtship just by pressing our hips into each other. At first, it was her thigh that invaded my space; then my thigh kept invading her space until she gave up trying to pull her leg away. Our legs rested smack against each other like that for hours. I only wish I would have spoken to her. Nothing had occurred to me to say to her when we boarded the bus in Nogales, and later, it seemed awkward to just start talking. I wasn’t sure if she spoke English.”
“You can’t say, buenos días?”
His furrowed forehead suggested the idea was a novel one. It saddened Roger to have nullified his justification for inaction, but he quickly fell back into rapture just by invoking her description. “The woman had a classic face: high cheek bones, exotic skin tone, and large red, shiny lips. Her hair was long and dark, and hung straight down behind her. I even tasted it, once, when she drifted off to sleep. It tasted like pumpkin pie.” He took time to sigh before continuing. “She’s lost to me now, but it has taken me a while to reconcile myself to it. In the time it took the driver to unload my luggage, she had disappeared. I swear next time I’ll travel light. It sucks to have so much luggage.” He motioned to a small Matterhorn of suitcases in the corner. “But, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t really get off the bus because of her. It’s because I can’t go through with it.”
I said nothing. Some of the drivers were restarting their motors. The popsicle salesman was saying to someone, “Do you want your strawberry popsicle milk-based or water-based?”
“I can’t go through with it because I’m afraid,” Roger said, and then asked me, “Have you ever thought about teaching school in Mexico?”
“No,” I answered, motioning at the same time to the waitress that I was ready to pay.
“I have my exchange assignment right here,” he said, pulling a folded business-size envelope from his back pocket.
“Six pesos,” said the waitress.
The smallest bill I had was a twenty and I begrudged the necessity of waiting for my change. This gringo was depressing me. He was obviously not a well-adjusted expatriate and it wasn’t my job to make him one. In fact, it wasn’t my job to do anything in Mexico. I had come down for the purpose of perfecting the technique of idleness. Even conversation was a chore. Lifting a beer bottle from the table to my lips seemed a superfluous exertion.
“You should catch a north-bound bus and go back home. You look very unhappy,” I said.
“I will. I will. I assure you. It’s just that I have an obligation to this school.” He indicated the envelope. “I need a substitute. Can you help me find one? Can you please help me?”
By that time, I was standing in the doorway watching my bus advance in traffic. The indolent waitress passed my change to me through the gringo who continued to beg for my assistance.
“But I don’t know anyone who could take your place. I don’t know anyone in the whole country,” I said.
“Please say you’ll help me,” he pleaded. “You’ll be here in Mexico, but I’ll be long gone. I’m leaving very soon.”
It happened that he handed me the envelope, and I took it from him. Like an ugly Christmas gift, I neither wanted it nor felt comfortable just tossing it away. I shoved it in my pocket as I ran to catch up to the bus. My seat was no longer vacant, however. It had been taken by a salesman of patent medicine. It was his turn now, to look at me smugly, while I stood in the aisle.
Ahead, on the highway, I could see the last-place cyclist. She was advancing slowly, but with determination. She was exerting every possible effort to complete a task that for her had turned out to be quite difficult.