Look under the Mercedes. Still room between the differential and the central hump of the road. That is good. That means I stopped spinning the wheels before they dug themselves too far in. That means it will probably only take a couple of people pushing on the car, lifting the rear bumper, to get those rear wheels up out of the holes.
Straighten up and look around, fish a pack of cigarettes out of my shirt pocket. The road runs along the side of a mountain. On the driver's side, the mountain humps up and away from me, can't see its top. On the passenger side, the ground falls away to a riverbed, then rises steep again on the other side. A small creek runs down the mountain and across the road, right where I’m stuck.
Climb up on the trunk of the Mercedes and lean back against the rear window. It won't be long.
It isn't long. I toss the cigarette butt over the side of the road and I hear voices coming around the bend of the mountain behind me, from the direction the Mercedes is heading. I jump down off the car and go around.
"¡Hola!" I say, raising my hand to wave.
The three men stop in the road and stared at me and my car. They are dressed alike in loose white linen trousers and tunics, barefoot. Each carries a farm tool; two hoes and a shovel.
"Mi carro," I say, "es astacado."
They nod and smile. They looked old, wrinkled, baked in the sun, but they are probably my age. One is rounder, smiling, the other two are thin, sad-faced. The round one nods at me to get in my car. I get in and start the engine. Push in the clutch and put it into gear. In the rear view mirror, I see the three men bending to grab hold of the back bumper. The round one in the middle. He nods again and I let the clutch out, giving it a little gas. The rear wheels come up out of the mudholes and bump onto dry dirt.
I stop to lean out the window and wave and say gracias, but the three men have already shouldered their tools and are walking away, as if I had never been there.
That's just how it’s been, every time I get stuck in a Colombian pothole.
* * *
In a small town outside Medellin, I stop for lunch. A soaking rain has just ended, and steam is rising from every flat surface in the sun. Slow bright clouds returning to the blue sky. I sit at a table near the square, eating the local version of a blue plate special; beans and rice and a sort of thick stew containing some kind of unidentified meat. The food is bland and filling and satisfies my hunger. The tortillas have a special flavor, though, and are very fresh. I watch a round-faced woman in an embroidered blouse making them, slapping the dough back and forth in her hands. Laying them out on a flat sheet of iron propped on stones over a stick fire.
I am just soaking up the last of the stew with the last of a tortilla when I hear it coming. Squeaking squalling rattling chugging like an old steam engine that has crashed into a wagon carrying pots and pans and pigs and peacocks and is bringing the whole pile into town to show everyone. What comes around the corner fits that sound almost exactly, only instead of the steam engine, the wagon, the pots and the pans and the pigs and the peacocks it is a jeep that has crashed into a paint store and then a glue factory and finally a religious artifacts store. It sways to a stop by the central fountain and the dust train that it has been pulling crashes into it and causes a pileup.
The wheels are painted like a daisy would look if every petal is a different color and the dark center part is a chrome moon hubcap. The fenders have tinsel streamers, the kind where thousands of short golden tinsel is attached to string like a metallic boa. The tinsel streamers are glued all along the edges of the fenders and they shake and bounce light like a million tiny flash bulbs. The Virgin Mary is on the hood. Really it is a whole bunch of Virgin Marys all over the hood but the main one, right in the center of the front of the hood is about a foot tall and painted with gold paint. Most of the other Virgin Marys are maybe two or three or four inches tall and are white, but the middle Virgin Mary is gold and has a gold foil picture of Christ on the Cross hung around her neck. The doors have gold plastic crosses glued all over them. Some of the crosses are just crosses but some of the crosses are Christ on the Cross crosses and those have glitter on them. Each of the front fenders has a plastic electric candle stick with an orange flame candle bulb instead of turn signals and the bulbs blink in unison on and off and on and off.
A tall, thin woman wearing a long fringed western dress and cowgirl boots steps out of the jeep, a brocaded cowboy hat hangs on her back by a cord around her neck. She looks like Dale Evans only with some extra weight and braided blond hair. Dale Evans walks to the back of her jeep and lets out a call that sounds like I'd heard once on a National Geographic special about Africa. Shrieks sound all over the village, and women and girls come running from all directions to surround Dale Evans and the Holy Jeep. The woman who made my tortillas gets herself up from the ground. It looks like the woman who made my tortillas is floating over to the jeep, her dress is so long I can't see her feet. Dale Evans is handing out white paper bags, checking yellow tags and people’s names and taking money in return. The woman who made my tortillas comes back with her nose in her Avon bag. The woman who made my tortillas goes inside.
A late model Ford Bronco, high on huge mudder tires, rolls into the square. Women and kids and pigs and chickens get out of the way shouting and laughing and squealing and squawking. The Bronco pulls up to the Holy Jeep and four young men jump out. Three of them have closed tough faces and guns. Security Guards, I say to myself. The fourth man, the driver is smaller, with a quick smile.
The driver walks over to Dale Evans, his head high and his neck stiff. His chest out before him and his hands hooked into his belt. His friends look over the square, their hands hold guns, maybe Uzis kind of loosely, like the guns are just accessories.
Two of the guards spot me at the same time and they look at each other. The one with the mustache nods to the other, and the second one comes in my direction. I stand up and check the path to the door of the restaurant. Maybe I can duck inside if things get tight.
"What are you looking at?" The guard without the mustache says in Spanish. His piggy little eyes dangerous below thick eyebrows.
"Nothing, my friend," I say, "Just the view, the cowgirl."
"What are you doing here?" the guard says.
"Having lunch," I say, "on my way South, just passing through."
One of the other guards is inspecting my car. He opens the back door and pulls out my luggage. Dumping my clothes in the muddy roadway. My guard looks over that way.
"Is that your car?" the guard says.
"Yes, " I say, "it is not very good. It is a little sick."
He looks at me, one eyebrow up, laughs a short laugh, like a bark.
"¡Manolito!" a voice says.
It’s the boss, the leader, the man they are protecting. A part of me watches him take eight big white paper bags from Dale Evans and put them into the back of his Bronco. Another part of me is sweating and another part of me wants to melt into the dust until they go away.
The leader walks over neck still stiff, chest still out, smile on lips but not in eyes. He wears a white shirt under a black vest, jeans and snakeskin cowboy boots. He pulls a small cigar from his shirt pocket and sticks it between his teeth, lips curled back.
He is a short man, my height. His hair is long slicked back hair and his mustache a tiny mustache. His lips are thin lips and his eyes are black hard eyes like stone. His eyebrows are thick short eyebrows, and they walk all over his forehead when he talks.
"What have you found here, eh, Manolito?" the leader says. "A little rabbit from the north? A little rooster?"
"He is CIA." Manolito says.
"No, hey, wait a minute, that's wrong," I say in English, "I'm just a tourist, not CIA. Turista!"
"Just a tourist?" the leader says in English, smile not touching his eyes, "No, my friend, whatever you are, you are not simply a tourist."
"Well," I say, "I'm not a drug agent."
Which is entirely the wrong thing to say.
Manolito and his boss look at each other, stiffening up. Manolito clutches his Uzi a little tighter and swings the barrel toward my stomach. I feel my muscles there get tight, like they are scrambling all over each other to get out of the way.
"Where is your passport?" the leader says, in Spanish again. He sounds like a policeman. I fumble my wallet out of my pocket. The wallet holds my drivers license, some phone numbers and twenty American dollars which can be construed as a bribe, or not. I hope in this case it will suffice.
The small man looks at my license photo, then at me. He goes over my license like he is an immigration officer. He looks through my wallet. Gives it all back to me. I put it away without checking to see if the money is still there.
“Well, my friend,” the leader says, “I think you have some explaining to do, no?”
“Explaining?” I say.
“Si,” the leader says, “that is correct, explaining. Like what the hell are you doing in my town?”
I look at him. Look at Manolito and the Uzi. Look at Dale Evans and the Holy Jeep, but she’s packing up and leaving his town.
“Well,” I say, “It’s kind of a long story.”
“We’ve got time,” the leader said. He sits down and waves his hand across the table. “Sit, please,” he said.
I sit. Manolito goes around behind me. I feel a very Uzi-like hardness on the back of my neck. I try not to move. I tell him my story.
I tell the real story, because even though the real story makes no sense to most people, at least it is the honest to God truth and the way my stomach is feeling, I don't think I can lie. The leader watches my face the whole time. When I am done, he sits there a moment, still watching my face.
"Ah," he says, "A kind of vision quest! Yes. I understand. But surely you realize that you can never make it all the way."
"I want to try, anyway." I say.
"My friend, I admire you." he says, "How many of us can say that we have followed our dream? How many of us can follow in the footsteps of the man of La Mancha?”
He puts one hand on his chest and the other out to the side.
“To follow that dream, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far!"
He sings.
The Uzi barrel is quivering in the back of my neck. The leader has rather a fine voice and not a bad sense of pitch.
"My friend,” he says, “I am Omar José Martà Domingues dela Ballesteros, at your service!"
Omar sticks out his hand and we shake. His hand is firm and dry within mine, solid palm against palm. I find I am smiling.
Omar smiles back at me and waves Manolito away.
“Bring us Cervesa,” Omar says to Manolito. He waves at the other guards, his hand sweeping away crumbs in the air. The other guards sit at surrounding tables and watch the rest of the town. Manolito brings back Negro Modello. Two bottles. Puts them on the table in between me and Omar. Omar holds his bottle up to toast.
"To impossible dreams!" he says.
"Unreachable Stars." I say. I lift my beer.
We clink bottles and drink. My mouth is so dry, I can't stop. I drink the whole bottle.
Ballesteros smiles at me as I put my bottle down.
"Mi amigo nuevo y loco," Omar says, "You must accept my hospitality, and be my guest at my humble hacienda."
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