Demon Box

"You can take the best carburetor man in the whole country, say, and turn him loose in an area he isn't qualified in, and you're going to have troubles. Believe me, numerous troubles…"

This truth and his drink made him feel better. The grin returned and the ungreased whine of panic was almost oiled out of his voice by his second Seagram's and Seven-Up. By the bottom of his third he was ready to slip 'er into whiskeydrive and lecture me as to all the troubles a man can encounter along the rocky road of life, brought about mainly by unqualified incompetents in areas where they didn't belong. Numerous troubles! To steer him away from a tirade I interrupted with what I thought was a perfectly peaceful question: How many did he have with him? One eye narrowed strangely and slid over my backpack and beard. With a voice geared all the way back into suspicion he informed me that his wife was along and what about it.

I gaped, amazed. He thinks that I meant how many troubles meaning his wife or whoever meaning I'm trying to cast some snide insinuation about his family! Far out, I thought, and to calm him I said I wished my wife and kids were along. Still suspicious, he asked how many kids, and how old. I told him. He asked where they were and I said in school -

"But if I have to wait much longer for these jumping beans I'm going to have them all fly down. Sometimes you have to skip a little school to further your education, right?"

"Right!" This brought him close again. "Don't I wish my woman'd known that when my kids were kids! 'After they get their educations' was her motto. Right, Mother, sure…"

I thought he was going to get melancholy again, but he squared his shoulders instead and clinked his glass against mine. "Decent of you and your brother to take a trip with your old dad, Red." He was glad I had turned out not to be some hippy rucksack smartass after all, but a decent American boy, considerate of his father. He twisted in his chair and called grandly for the waiter to bring us another round uno mas all around, muy goddamn pronto.

"If you aren't a little hardboiled," he confided, shifting back to wink at me, "they overcharge."

He gri

By the time the drinks arrived the twitch was corrected and his look confident and roguish again. For a moment, though, a crack had been opened. I had seen all the way inside to the look behind the looks and, oh gosh, folks, that look was dreadful afraid. Of what? It's difficult to say, exactly. But it wasn't of me. Nor do I think he was really afraid of the numerous troubles on the rocky road ahead, not even of getting stranded gearless in this primitive anarchy of a nation.

What I think, folks, looking at the developed pictures and remembering back to that momentary glimpse into his private abyss, is that this guy was afraid of the Apocalypse.

The Tra

She's never been at her best, although it isn't something she thinks about. She's a thoughtful person who doesn't think about things.

She is walking barefoot along the stony edge of the ocean with her black pumps dangling from a heel strap at the end of each arm.

She isn't thinking that she had too many rum-and-Cokes. She isn't thinking about her podiatrist or her feet, spreading pudgy over the sand.

She stops at the bank of the Rio Sancto and watches the water sparkle across the beach, rushing golden to the sea. Upriver a few dozen yards, women are among the big river stones washing laundry and hanging it on the bushes to dry. She watches them bending and stretching in their wet dresses, scampering over the rocks with great bundles balanced on their heads, light little prints spi

Her ankles remind her of the distance she has walked. Far enough for a backache tonight. Looking down, her feet appear to her as dead creatures, drowned things washed in on the tide. She forces her eyes back up and watches the washwomen long enough not to appear coerced, then turns and starts back, thinking, Oh, by now he'll either be finished with the call or ready to call it off if I know him.

But she isn't thinking, as she strides chin-raised and rummy along the golden border. They saw anyway. They know that we are The Unclean, allowed nowdays to wander among normal people because they have immunized themselves against us.

"And if he's not ready I think I'll take a look around that other hotel." Meaning the bar. "See who's there."

Meaning other Americans.

The Tra

"Poor old fella's nervous" – after Chief watered two pinatas his wife had purchased for the grandchildren this morning.

"We never should have brought him," she said. "We should have put him in a boarding ke

"I told you," the Tra

So Chief has to climb along.

The map that Wally Blum scribbled leads the Tra

Burros pick their way with loads of sand and cement for the clutter of construction going on antlike all over the mountainside. Workers sleep head uphill in the clutter; if they slept sideways they'd roll off.

By the time the American and his dog reach the place on the map, the Tra

In the center of a twelve-foot sod circle a sow reclines, big as a plaza fountain, giving suck to a litter large as she is. She rolls her head to look at the pair of visitors and gives a snort. Chief growls and stands his ground between the sow and his blinking master.