The Camino Club

by Kevin Craig

  “Up, up, up,” Bastien says. “I’m seventy-four years old, Troy. You can do this.”

  “Don’t make me feel bad about complaining, Bastien. It helps me climb this ridiculous hill.”

  Bastien laughs, but cuts it short to catch his breath. “Merde,” he mumbles.

  “Bastien,” Meagan says, exaggerating her disgust. “You wash your mouth out.”

  “Oui, oui,” he says. But he brushes her comment away with his hand and laughs again.

  “What’s it mean? What’s it mean?” Manny says. He’s the only one not struggling on this endless hill.

  “It means shit,” Kei says. Troy’s mouth opens in a big O of shock.

  “Some genius you are, Manny,” Claire says. “And you call yourself Canadian? Even an American knows more French than you.”

  “Kei!” Troy says. He punches Kei’s shoulder, but he laughs.

  “What? It’s only shit,” Kei says. A burst of laughter goes through the whole group.

  “Troy wouldn’t say shit if his mouth was full of it,” Claire says.

  And we all lose it again. Bastien has to stop walking as he coughs out the last of his laughter. We all fall back into silence and struggle the rest of the way up the path.

  After another half hour of endless, relentless climbing, Meagan chirps, “Finally. Thank goodness.”

  “What? What?” Greg asks. “Please tell me.”

  “Alto do Poio. Now, we are highest.” Bastien says this like he’s saying a prayer. He looks as though he could pass out any minute. And I don’t think his age has anything to do with it, because I definitely feel the same way. “We are at the top of the world, now, my fellow peregrinos.”

  There’s a general sigh of relief among the group, but just when relief is setting in, it’s disrupted by Greg.

  “That’s what you said at the last Alto place, Bastien. And I was stupid enough to believe you then. You’re going to get reported, too, if you’re not careful.”

  He winks at Bastien when it’s clear Bastien’s not quite sure he’s kidding. Bastien winks back and smiles.

  “This is the other top of the world,” Bastien says. We all laugh. “Almost there, my friends. Maybe four kilometers.” He holds his thumb and forefinger together in a pinch. “Not quite. Little bit less, maybe?”

  “I’m holding you to it,” Greg says.

  We walk on until we come to a sign that says Alto do Poio – altitud 1.335m.

  “That sign’s high,” Greg says.

  Shania says, “Oh, you’re good.”

  He bows and almost loses his balance. Note to self, don’t try to bow while walking uphill.

  Soon we come to a large white building at the side of the road with a green awning that says Bar Puerto O Poio.

  “Those are magic words,” Greg says.

  “Yeah,” Gil says. “We’re stopping here, Greg. But you can just ignore the first word. If you’re lucky you can watch Bastien and me drink a beer.”

  “You’re mean,” Greg replies.

  “Yep.” Gil turns into the dirt driveway and we head toward the front door, passing a small group of peregrinos milling around outside at the tables scattered about. The red chairs all have the Coca-Cola logo across their backs, and I think that’s the best idea of the day. I’d kill for a Coke about now.

  “Gang, if Bastien and Kei will excuse us,” Gil says, looking at the two of them with an apologetic smile, “It’s time we had some alone time. Talk a few things over.”

  “Now? Can’t we stop and catch our breath first?” Greg says. He’s full-on whine now. “Can I at least get a Coke before our meeting starts?”

  “Of course, Greg,” Meagan says. “Don’t be foolish. Bastien and Kei? After we all have a bio break and grab snacks and drinks, the eight of us are going to meet back here at this table.” She sits down to claim the table in question. “You two will wait for us, right?”

  “Sure,” Kei says. He heads into the café.

  “I’ll sit with Kei. You go, you go. You have your little meeting of the criminals. Go, go.” Bastien winks and sets his eye on a table across the patio.

  “Thanks, Bastien,” Meagan says as he makes his way over to the table, drops his backpack, and slumps into a chair. He’s obviously exhausted.

  “Well,” Gil says. “Back here in five, gang. See you then.”

  There’s a Coke in there with my name on it.

  Chapter 29 — Shania Reynolds

  Friday, July 5th – Day 7 – Oh My God! Fonfría Forever! Long Live Fonfría!

  We’re here. I’m not leaving, ever. This place is incredible. It was pretty cool up in the common house. I was already happy there. With the games room and the couches and the everything else. But then we came down here, to the dining hall. I’m speechless. This is going to be a short entry. I can’t stop looking around. It’s this little stone building, just down the hill from the albergue. Completely round, with this high, high roof that looks like straw. It’s all one room.

  What’s weird is… it’s SO much bigger on the inside than it appeared to be on the outside. And we’re all sitting at this gigantic table that curves and follows the round shape of the room. Diego snagged us chairs on the inside, against the wall. He’s the best.

  Greg sits down on my other side and his presence gives me a reason to chuck my journal aside. I stick my pen in my back pocket and take a drink of water.

  “Hey,” he says. “How’s the journaling going for you? I can’t seem to keep up.”

  “I guess okay. I keep writing in it, anyway. Where’s yours?”

  “In my backpack. In my room.” I give him a strange look. I don’t even have to say anything. “Yeah. I hear ya. Loud and clear. I can’t write in it if I don’t take it out.”

  “Glad we’re on the same frequency. Exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Hey, can I have your bun?” Diego asks. He can never get enough to eat. I didn’t notice this when we weren’t so close. I guess he’s only comfortable asking me for all my food now, after we’ve exchanged saliva. I roll my eyes but I also hand over my bun. “Thanks, Shan.”

  “You never share your buns with me,” Greg says.

  “Ha ha.” Funny guy.

  We’re interrupted by this boom, followed by a loud clacking sound that makes me jump a little. At the end of the table, the hostess, Rosa, stands with a pot in one hand and an incredibly large wooden spoon in the other. It’s the decorative kind old people have on their kitchen walls, more like a paddle than a spoon. You could definitely steer a canoe across Lake Ontario with it.

  There’s a murmur from all the peregrinos, ourselves included.

  “Tonight, we dance,” she says. Her husband Paulo comes through the front door. He wheels this enormous pot in front of him. It looks like a witch’s cauldron. As he comes to a stop beside his wife, she sets the pot down on the end of the table and sticks the spoon into the cauldron.

  Paulo shrieks like a banshee, and there are more murmurs and gasps among the peregrinos. And laughter. The anticipation in the room is electric.

  Beside me, I hear Greg mumble, “Whoa.” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him sitting there with his mouth wide open, waiting.

  Something amazing is about to happen. I can feel it. I take my eyes off the cauldron just long enough to glance at Diego. His face is filled with laughter, and it makes me happy. I reach for his hand under the table, and he finds mine and squeezes. We turn our attention back to the couple, afraid we’ll miss something.

  Everyone across the table from us are now either turned sideways in their seats or have turned their chairs to face the couple; their mostly eaten suppers are forgotten.

  “But first, we make magic,” Rosa says. “And then we drink!” She begins to stir the contents of the cauldron with the oversized spoon. When she stops, she picks up an orange and
a knife and holds them above her head.

  Then, as she begins to remove the orange peel with the knife, she starts to tell us a story about the concoction she’s making. The room is a din, but I swear she says something like, “Owls, barn owls, toads, and witches.” Like a real-life incantation. This is Harry Potter stuff.

  The peel just keeps spiralling and spiralling above the cauldron, in one continuous piece. This lady doesn’t stop until the orange is completely bald. Now, that’s impressive. The peel falls away from the orange and disappears into the liquid brewing in the cauldron below. Then she stabs the orange with her knife a bunch of times and drops it in after the peel.

  Rosa says, “Demons, devils, goblins.” Then she asks Paulo for something that sounds like orujo. Paulo comes back to the cauldron with two large bottles of alcohol, holds them higher than his head, and pours. The streams fall right into the cauldron as he whoops out loud.

  I hear something about worms, vermin, witchcraft, and the tears of Mother Earth. She says something about water and goes on to tell us more about the ritual. She calls it something, but with everybody oohing and awing it’s hard to hear her. It sounds like Queimada. I think she’s saying a spell and explaining things as she goes, so it’s hard to tell which is spell and which is explanation.

  My phone is dying or I would film this entire thing. Dillon would so devour this stuff. I can’t believe I wish my brother was here, but I kind of do.

  I don’t know where Paulo puts the bottles of booze, but he dances back to the cauldron, spins around it, and drops something inside. Raisins?

  “Coffee beans,” Rosa says, smiling at her husband as he steps over to the table to grab something else. He picks up a little burlap satchel tied with twine.

  “Now you’re speaking my language,” Troy says from his seat across the table from us. He’s a coffee hound. He and Kei exchange a look and burst into laughter.

  “That man is gorgeous,” Kei says, a bit louder than I think he meant to. If I can hear it, so can everyone else around us. Kei’s hand springs to his mouth, which forms a surprised oh. He and Troy laugh some more and lean toward each other to whisper. Pathetically cute.

  He’s so right, though. Everyone in the room knows Paulo is gorgeous. He’s Black, with a goatee, and gray peppers his hair and beard. He wears a tight white V-neck T-shirt that shows off his iron-man body. Kei is not wrong.

  Rosa does the peeling thing all over again with a lemon. Then another. She talks nonstop about the ritual warding-off of evil spirits. When she says something about the clay pot and how it represents Mother Earth, it’s the first time I notice the cauldron isn’t cast iron.

  Rosa says something about Satan and Beelzebub’s inferno, burning corpses, mutilated bodies. When I hear, “farts of the asses of doom,” I turn and look at Diego. He’s already looking at me. He squeezes my hand and smirks. For a split second, we’re frozen in time. Then we burst out laughing before turning back to the show. That’s what it is, really. A show for the peregrinos.

  Paulo opens the little pouch and dumps the contents into the cauldron with a fanning of his hand, like he’s performing magic, while Rosa tells us what they are.

  “Sugar, yes. And spices we will not say. Secret spices for the evil spirits.” She winks. It’s all so over the top. I can’t stop smiling, though. It’s so awesome.

  Rosa continues with the spell, mentioning unmarried women, cats, goats, brooms, and sand. She pulls out a big-ass ladle and begins to madly stir the concoction with it.

  Paulo lights this thing that looks like one of the torches the villagers used in Beauty and the Beast when they stormed the castle. It’s all straw and crap, twined tightly on the end of a wooden stick. As quickly as it appears, he’s touched a lighter to it and it explodes into flames.

  Peregrinos gasp, hoot, and clap. I can’t believe the things that keep happening to us on this trip. Amazing. After the first peregrino leaves his chair, we all follow his lead. It’s a swarm to the front as we race for the best views of the couple and their cauldron.

  As Rosa reaches into the mixture with the ladle and hauls out a full scoop, Paulo touches his torch to it almost quicker than the eye can see. The liquid in the ladle comes to life with fire. But not just any fire, it’s all blue and rainbow-tinged and dancing up the handle of the ladle, threatening to consume Rosa.

  With just a little blow, Paulo extinguishes the torch, drops it to the floor, and kicks it to the corner of the room behind them. He doesn’t even look back to make sure it’s fully out. I bet he’s done this a million times, perfected the act.

  Everyone claps as Rosa lifts the ladle high to allow the blue-flamed potion to pour back into the cauldron. We giggle as the liquid’s surface in the cauldron bursts into flame. She scoops and pours, scoops and pours, scoops and pours over and over again.

  “Hear roars of those burning in firewater.” Her face is deathly serious, except for the laughter in her eyes that gives it all away.

  “And when we drink this beverage,” she promises in her incantation, “we’re free of the evil in our souls and of any charms against us.”

  After a couple minutes, she ends her spell with an invitation to friends to join them in their Queimada. She nods in Troy’s direction, motions for him to join her. She couldn’t have picked a better assistant. He’s bouncing up and down and practically crying with excitement. He makes his way over to her like he’s the next contestant on The Price is Right. She hands him the ladle and mimes the movements she made with it.

  Troy lifts a full ladle of the fiery potion as high as he can before tilting it and allowing it to pour back down into the cauldron. Greg has his phone out and is taking pic after pic of Troy as he ladles again and again.

  Rosa makes a motion for the return of the ladle, and Troy reluctantly gives it back to her. She invites the next person and the next. Anyone who wants to goes up and copies her ritual, and soon almost everyone in the room has taken part.

  “The fire drink that banishes evil, yes?” Rosa says once the noise has died. Then she slams the lid onto the cauldron and lifts it off almost immediately. All the flames are gone. Tendrils of smoke rise from the cauldron.

  “And now we drink,” Rosa says. From nowhere, Paulo wheels over a cart filled with clear glass mugs. Rosa begins to sloppily ladle the punch over the mugs, back and forth. She gets nearly as much on the tray as in the mugs. Soon, they’re all full. “Together,” she says.

  Greg looks around for Gilbert or Meagan and finally spots them. With one look I know he’s asking them if we can have some, because of the alcohol.

  “Just this one time,” Gil says. He tries to put on a stern expression, but it doesn’t quite work. He hasn’t broken a single blood vessel since I decided to stop swearing around him a couple days back. He’s lightweight. “Don’t think about making a habit of it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Greg says. He salutes Gil and turns back to us, all smiles. “Shall we?”

  We do. And it’s so good. The fire’s gone, but I can feel the heat of the drink all the way down to my toes. So good. What a bizarre taste. I hope I don’t forget how to describe it when I try to relive this moment for Dill. Wow. Fonfría!

  Chapter 30 — Troy Sinclair

  It’s gonna be a hard day for everyone. Not just me and Kei because we stayed up all night talking. And not just because everyone’s exhausted from yesterday’s walk.

  Every peregrino back at that albergue was pumped after the potion show last night. Even Bastien, who scoffed and called it silly hocus pocus.

  Can we pause for a moment to appreciate the fact an old man like Paulo can look so fine and dance even finer? Paulo. Insta-crush. For both Kei and me. We heard someone say they thought he’s Cuban. However he got to Fonfría, we’re just happy he got there. Paulo’s pic got more likes on my Instagram than any other pic from the trip so far. And, he’s like fifty. That’s gotta say something
.

  He taught us how to samba. After that potion, Paulo taught everyone how to move. Not just Kei and me because we wouldn’t leave him alone. We were like a couple of schoolgirls. At one point there were thirty-plus peregrinos dancing around that big room in a conga line. That just does not happen anywhere.

  Kei’s sisters missed the punch, but they got there in time for the dancing. Mia is an amazing dancer. So is Becky, actually. Kei? Not so much. I was so embarrassed for him. It was painful watching him and even more painful knowing he thought he was amazing.

  Anyway, we’re all tired and dragging our feet today. We stayed up too late. Diego’s worried because Bastien stayed at the albergue to get another hour of rest. He said he would find us later tonight, but I don’t think Diego believed him. It’s like Diego’s lost his faith in humanity.

  It’s also just the four of us. So much for walking as a group. It was nice while it lasted. Even Greg. I wouldn’t have any pics of me playing with that fiery punch if not for him. He’s really trying.

  Diego didn’t want to leave when everyone else was ready, so Shania asked if we could wait around with her.

  Claire, Greg, and Manny went with Meagan and Gil. They’re supposed to meet us here in Triacastela, but we’ve been dragging our asses all day. Diego’s clearly attempting to stall us as a ploy to give Bastien an opportunity to catch up. I’m okay with it, really. But he should just say so already.

  “Well, what should we do?” I ask. We’ve peeked inside a couple cafés. One of them, long enough to get coffee and a stamp. “You’re the boss, Shan.”

  “I don’t know. At least we made it this far,” Shania says. “If we don’t find them in the next five minutes, I say we keep going. We’ll find them in Samos. I’m sure they kept walking. You know Gil. After the first couple days with Claire, it drives him bonkers to wait. We’re probably pissing him off big time. I say we just keep moving until we get to Samos. If we see them, we see them. If we don’t, we don’t.”