These stories I am about to tell are true stories (or so I have been told) from San Juan Cosala, the small Mexican pueblo where I have lived for 21 years. Those foreigners who live in the village would say, perhaps, that I am not really a part of it, and maybe it is true, for in truth I live on the mountain a half mile or more above the town, and perhaps that is why, although I am told they are stories everyone knows, I heard this one only today. Thanks, Kristina, for adding to the rich collection of stories of the pueblo that I have heard over the years. One was. the story of the death of the town vet that I told you two days ago. Now, I am going to tell you more—one a day—until I run out of them or people stop telling me new ones.

The Caguama*

“I’d sell my soul for a caguama!”  People heard her utter the pledge as she stood in the  street that they had seen her traverse so many times in search of someone who would provide her with her compulsion: beer, or if she was lucky, perhaps tequila. Those who were standing near her then saw her look down, and there at her feet was a 20 peso bill-—enough at that time long ago to buy the quart bottle of beer she had just said she desired.

So she bought the bottle of beer she had wished for and, unable to wait to drink it in the privacy of her own home, she sat on a bench near the store where she bought it to drink it. But from that time on, or so the often-repeated story goes, she wandered the streets talking to herself, and she was never the same. It was as though she had lost some part of herself. A sad story, but then that was the bargain she had made.”

*The Spanish word for a  loggerhead sea turtle–caguama–is also Mexican slang for a 32 ounce bottle of beer, the connection being, presumably, that the farther down the bottle one drinks, the more it comes to resemble its aquatic namesake.

Tomorrow: “The Time that Death Came to San Juan Cosala.”