Innocents in Mexico

Chapter 19

            Fireworks. In Mexico, they are the rule, not the exception. If you have two nights in a row without  continuous explosions, you are lucky.  Often given to exaggeration, here I need not bother.  On the Sunday night which marked the beginning of our third week in San Miguel, the fireworks were especially long and loud.  It might have been in honor of the movie crew who had begun filming on that day and who probably appreciated the all-night diversion as much as we did, or it may have been the conclusion of the horse show that had occurred that weekend.  Or it may have just been a showy overzealous family display. 

            1:30 a.m.  Fifteen retorts in rapid progression.  Not the crisp splat of childhood firecrackers, but the solid ear-shattering report of gunfire––a giant’s shooting gallery.  It was too hot to close the heavy bedroom door to the patio, too hot for covers.  Bob lay awake itching  mosquito bites, and when I went to the bathroom for ointment, there were four already buzzing against the mirror, in spite of the fact that all of the doors and windows were screened.  I sprayed on bug spray, then rolled the tube of ointment for insect bites over my madly itching and swollen upper arms and feet.  When I went back to bed, I covered us both with the sheet, protection against bloodsuckers.  It was hard to imagine where mosquitos could breed in this dry windy expanse, but it had been raining a bit each afternoon and water was no doubt collecting somewhere.

            I slept.  I dreamed that I was back in the States, setting up an art show entitled “This Bud’s for You.”  It was my friend Linda’s idea, and I had never thought it would work,  so why was I the one setting up this show so dumb that there were only seven entries?

            As I moved to the woods to meditate over this conundrum, I discovered a whole bank of pelicans drifting along the curving bank at the side of the road––row after row of pelicans.  Then I remembered that pelicans could talk and were, indeed, good counselors. I should avail myself of their counsel while I was here in the States where I had health insurance, I thought, so I went from pelican to pelican asking which one wanted to talk to me until, still in the middle of my questioning of pelicans, two wise guy humans made fun of my efforts.

            “Oh them,” said Bob.  “Jerks. The one can’t stop talking about himself long enough to get lucky.  Picked up a girl in a singles bar, stood on her doorstep so long talking,  she gave up and went to bed.  He didn’t even notice until she’d locked the door, turned out the porch light and was almost off to sleep.”

            At 5 a.m.,  I was torn from my dream.  Explosions ripped the air like someone beating on a tin roof with a sledge hammer—fifteen loud bangs in the first progression.  I closed the window and stumbled to the bathroom to search for my earplugs, brought as protection against snores, not fireworks. 

            Born on the third of July, I had always considered fireworks to take the place of my personal totem, and I was so addicted to them that I would never have believed that there could be anything which could sour me on them;  but there I was, cursing them after just two weeks in town.  Sure, they were pretty spread against the night sky, but what fool set off cherry bombs  (I later discovered them to be cohetes or bottle rockets) by the hundreds at 5 in the morning?  With earplugs on, I could still hear them.

            They sounded like someone buckling thin gauge metal siding or like giants farting down an echo chamber.  Last night, there were marching bands,  someone on a loudspeaker, strings of cars back and forth across the empty lot and fireworks drawing streaks of color over the  black sky.  We watched from our roof.  They reminded me of what a friend with a brain tumor had once said—that it was like this every time she moved her hand—sparks in the air, flowing after it.  Beautiful.  But at 5 a.m., even through earplugs they sounded like fifteen metal doors slamming shut down the corridor in sequence.  The cat slept on.  Bob slept on.  I moved down the balcony corridor.  One way lead to the office, the other to the spiral staircase to the roof.
        The sky turned cherry red over my left shoulder.  Through the earplugs, I heard the sounds:  someone banging cooking pans or caving in  car doors with a baseball bat.  My San Miguel alarm clock:  firecrackers, then roosters, then church bells.

         They were the beginnings of a normal day for the man who stood in the spare lot across the street watching the real spectacle: a fleshy woman from el Norte in a t-shirt and skull shorts climbing a spiral staircase to watch the sunrise from her roof.

For Chapter 20, g0 HERE.