Travelling Light

by Peter Behrens

  “Come back here!” the nurse called.

  No way. I went out and across the parking lot and started walking quickly through the town, knowing if the Mounties saw me they would stop me as a suspicious character, there on the streets past midnight. I crossed the train tracks. I walked past a row of grain elevators looming over that town like ocean ships tied to a wharf. After I got out to the highway I had to walk a few miles before I was able to hitch a ride the rest of the way to the farm.

  I got paid five days later when the crop was made. They wanted me to stay on for fall plowing but I headed back to Calgary then signed up for a seismic survey crew. We’re in the bush, working ninety days straight, nowhere to spend wages. The money piles up. When this job’s over I’ll probably go to Hawaii for a couple months. Maybe Thailand. I don’t know. Somewhere with girls and a beach.

  Back home I’d be just another poor fisherman, wouldn’t I?

  NIGHT IN A VILLAGE

  They told us to look for a metal scow and a man who would paddle us across the river. The Rio Grande was low and we could have forded it carrying our clothes, but they said it was the custom to take the scow. Strangers were not welcome in the village otherwise.

  When we came down to the river, there were men on the opposite bank, fishing. The boatman saw us and paddled across. When the scow bumped the bank, he laid down his paddle. He told us for five dollars he would take us to the other side.

  He folded the money I gave him and slipped it into a plastic purse. Then we sat down and he brought us across. We stepped out of the boat and one of the fishermen set down his line and approached us. He wore a cap with a Budweiser logo, and plaid golf pants cinched with a piece of frayed nylon rope. In Spanish he told us his name was Ramón. He told us he would guide us to the village.

  We followed Ramón along a path through the tule reeds. The path was black and moist and the pale reeds were dense and tangled. After a few minutes we broke clear and stood at the edge of the desert again. It was like being inside a photograph; there was no wind, nothing moving. A ridge of dry mountains rimmed the horizon, cool and detailed in the pink light.

  I opened a can of beer as we walked. The only sound was our shoes scraping the dry, fissured ground. I passed Calisha the beer and she offered it to Ramón.

  “Miller time!” he said. His skin was copper-coloured, and beneath the cap his face was all planes: flat forehead, creased cheeks, and small, triangular eyes. He tilted his head and drained the can as he walked. His teeth were black stumps and there was a strand of moustache on his upper lip. He smacked his lips and pitched away the can.

  Calisha wanted to take his photograph, so we stopped and he stood gazing into the camera, thumbs hooked in his belt loops. She took half a dozen photographs and we resumed our journey. Already we could see the little village ahead, a cluster of huts the same tawny colour as the desert.

  As Ramón marched us down the main street, the only people we saw were women leaning in the windows of the adobes. In front of one of the huts there was a cement terrace surrounded by an iron railing. Ramón said this was the cantina.

  We entered the terrace through a gate and Ramón disappeared inside. I lifted two chairs from a stack in the corner while Calisha stood at the railing taking pictures of the street. Ramón came out followed by a man in a wheelchair, who wore a straw hat pushed back on his head and had a thin cotton blanket spread over his legs. His face was solid and handsome and his mouth was full of metal teeth. He said he was the owner and asked what we would have to eat. We ordered tacos, burritos, and beer. A big woman with long black hair stood in the doorway with her arms crossed, watching. Ramón said something to her in his chirping voice and the woman looked at him scornfully, then turned and went back inside. Ramón followed her and returned with a handful of cans that he set down on the table, keeping one for himself.

  The light was fading and there was an early moon in the sky. Calisha leaned back in her chair and took my picture. She was wearing a white dress. The hairs on her arms were golden. “Why do you look so angry?” she said. “Why can’t you relax?”

  Half a dozen children had gathered on the other side of the railing, staring at us and whispering. When she pointed the camera at them, they shrieked and scattered like a flock of sparrows. The owner said they were afraid of cameras and that they expected to be paid when their photographs were taken. She put down the camera, and in a few moments the children had gathered again. They came closer to the railing and she began asking their names. One little girl began to cry. Two boys with huge, nervous grins stepped forward, poking their hands through the fence, holding out rocks they wanted to sell her. She told them she’d pay them a dollar each if they let her take their pictures. She got up and went out the gate. I drank beer and watched her. The man in the wheelchair said nothing.

  The little girl who’d been crying wore a torn red dress. Her hair was almost blonde with dust and sunlight. She stopped crying and accepted money from Calisha. The boys dropped the stones in the dust and crowded in, demanding their pictures be taken. Calisha made them stand aside until she could photograph each of the smaller children. The little girl with the dust-blonde hair clutched hold of Calisha’s white dress.

  When she ran out of dollar bills, the children lost interest in her and began fighting over the money. Calisha walked across the plaza and took pictures of an old turquoise bus parked there. The name of the village was written in red letters on the bus, and the driver’s window was trimmed with feathers and a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

  She returned to the terrace, and Ramón and the dark-haired woman served our food. The owner spoke harshly and Ramón scurried off to bring us more beer. The tacos were greasy and the burritos were stuffed with beans instead of meat. We heard the woman in the kitchen slap Ramón. When he came back onto the terrace, his eyes were bright and his cheeks were crammed with food. The owner sat watching us, smoking a cigarette.

  When we were almost finished, two girls wearing high heels and frilly party dresses came out onto the terrace and stood beside our table. One carried a school exercise book and a pencil, the other a sheaf of pasteboard tickets. They stood gazing at the tips of their shoes until the owner clapped his hands. Then, without looking up, the girl holding the pencil asked if we would buy tickets for the parish lottery.

  “What’s the prize?”

  The prize hadn’t yet been decided, but everyone in the village bought tickets, and whoever sold the most would be crowned Reina de Primavera, the Queen of Spring. I gave them money and they instructed me to write my address in the exercise book, so if I won I could get the prize. Ramón began clearing plates and the woman brought us coffee in tin cups. The girls hurried away, heels tapping on the cement floor.

  Calisha asked the owner if there was anywhere in the village that had music, dancing.

  “I think we should go back,” I said, interrupting her.

  “You go back if you want to.”

  “And you’ll stay here alone?”

  There was another cantina at the other end of the village, the owner said. It was owned by his brother, and if we wanted to go there, Ramón would show us the way.

  “Is it all right for women to go there?” I said.

  As long as the women were strangers it was all right, he said. It was just a poor, remote country village and things were very quiet. Everyone was related to everyone else. He and Ramón were cousins. The girls who’d sold us tickets were the children of his brother. The boatman who’d ferried us across the river was another cousin.

  “Will they mind if I take pictures?” Calisha said.

  Instead of answering, the owner stuck a cigarette between his teeth, wheeled over to the adobe wall, and pointed to a fly-specked poster. We went over to examine it. It had a photograph of the owner in his wheelchair, in the back of a pickup truck. Children sat on the tailgate, each child holding a melon. According to the p
oster, written in English, the owner had been crippled working in the melon fields across the river, and the money he earned in the cantina fed his family. The handbill was six years old.

  I paid the bill and Calisha went inside to give something to the woman in the kitchen. Ramón drained the beer cans we’d left on the table, and the owner shouted at him to lead us to the other cantina.

  Ramón stumbled, chattering with excitement, as he led us down the dusty street. The cantina was the last adobe. Ramón ducked inside and we followed him into a room lit by a lantern. A wooden bar ran from one end to the other. The bartender wore a flat-crowned Stetson. A boy was polishing glasses. A group of vaqueros, Coahuila cowboys wearing boots and spurs, looked up as we came in, then quickly looked away.

  We asked for mescal and a dish of lemons. Ramón sat beside Calisha and kept trying to remove the silver bracelets she wore on her wrists. He put his arm around her playfully and she laughed and pushed him away.

  When the bartender brought the lemons, Calisha asked if there would be music, and the bartender said there was only one old man with a guitar. He pointed to an accordion hanging on the wall that he himself sometimes took down and played for visitors from across the river.

  The boy was sent to fetch the guitarist. Calisha changed film while Ramón begged the bartender for cigarettes. The vaqueros glanced at Calisha as if she were a figure in a movie that bored them.

  “I wonder if they’ll be angry if I start taking pictures,” she said.

  After twenty minutes the guitarist had not appeared.

  We heard shouting in the street and a horse whinnying. The vaqueros took their beers and shot glasses of tequila and moved outside. The bartender came around the bar, wiping his hands on a piece of burlap. “Come out and see,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “A little show.”

  Calisha grabbed her camera and we went outside. The only person left at the bar was Ramón, filching cigarettes from a pack of Marlboros.

  In the moonlit street a horse was bucking and kicking. When the rider saw Calisha, he whipped off his straw hat and began beating it against the animal’s flanks. The vaqueros standing against the adobe wall cheered and began pitching beer bottles into the desert, where they shattered on the rocks. The rider spurred the horse harder. All along the street the adobes remained in darkness while the vaqueros howled and barked like coyotes and the horse kicked up clouds of dust.

  The rider began reining the horse in smaller, tighter circles, digging deep with his spurs. Finally, with an exhausted shiver, the animal stopped bucking. The rider kept spurring but the animal had had enough. The vaqueros whistled and yipped. The rider slid off and tied the reins to a bit of fence. I saw how young he was, no more than sixteen. He wore a pink shirt with pearl buttons and jeans tucked into his boots, and a knife in a leather sheath. Calisha took his picture, popping the flash as he brushed past us, heading into the bar.

  Ramón was gulping mescal from the bottle on our table. The bartender cuffed him and wiped the bottle. The vaqueros were slapping the young rider on the shoulders and tweaking his cheeks. He had high cheekbones and a cat’s mouth, small and neat. He took off his hat and pushed a lock of hair away from his eyes. The atmosphere smelled of warm dust and kerosene. I could see bullet holes in the chipped plaster. There was a Cerveza Superior calendar with a picture of a heavy-breasted blonde pulling herself out of a swimming pool.

  The boy who’d gone to fetch the musician had returned, pushing his way through the crowd of vaqueros, leading a frail old man carrying a big guitar case. The bartender told us the man was a famous guitarist of Coahuila who would play for us for ten dollars. The old man took out a twelve-string baritone guitar, a bajo sexto. When I held out money he ignored me, and I handed the money to the boy. The old man’s fingers were shaking and it took him a long time to tune his instrument. The vaqueros began calling out the names of songs they wanted to hear.

  The first song he played was a norteño ballad, long and mournful. A man was in flight from soldiers because he had killed the father of Palomita, the girl who was his little dove. In the mountains the hero would grow old alone, his only friends the vultures and the sky. On her hacienda Palomita would ride a grey horse and forget the love she’d once shared, and become cruel and wanton. When the hero came down from the mountains to rescue her, Palomita would kill him with her little knife.

  When the song ended, the bartender took down his accordion from the wall and started playing dance music with the guitarist. The vaqueros started dancing, hands on each other’s hips, slamming their heels on the floor and raising fine yellow dust. The young rider, alone at the bar, fingered the knife on his belt and watched Calisha as she photographed the dancers. The musicians played on furiously, faces concentrated like those of men firing pistols. The music leapt around the room, braying and cackling. There was a scent of lemons from the dish on our table. Calisha finished another roll of film, put down the camera, and took a cigarette from the pack lying on the bar. I saw the young rider offer her a light. He smiled at her and blew smoke through his nostrils.

  The boatman was suddenly at my shoulder, tugging my sleeve. “Come, come, it’s late. Otherwise you’ll have to swim across the river.” He waved at the bartender and the music stopped abruptly. The vaqueros stood with their arms around each other, still yipping and shouting. The old man immediately put his guitar back into its case.

  I took Calisha’s arm and led her out to the boatman’s truck. There were two children in the front seat, a pop song squawking on the radio. We climbed into the back of the truck and sat on some tires.

  We could hear the children singing along with the radio as the truck sped through the village, backfiring. We left the last adobes behind and started bouncing along a mule track towards the river. After a few minutes, I could smell the Rio Grande.

  Then we heard screams and hoofbeats, and a pair of riders galloped out of the darkness, spurring their horses, waving their hats. One of them was the young rider from the cantina.

  They overtook the truck and began dashing in and out of the beams of its headlights, yipping and howling. Then they dropped back and galloped alongside us, still shouting, hugging the necks of their animals.

  Suddenly the truck flew over a ledge and bounced hard, jolting us. The first horse cleared the ledge but the other one stumbled and went down in a cloud of dust, pitching its rider over its head.

  I pounded on the roof and the truck skidded to a stop. Calisha wanted to jump down but I held her arm. We could see the young vaquero kneeling on the ground, stunned. He was the one who had put on the show outside the cantina.

  His horse struggled to its feet, shook itself, and trotted away.

  The boatman got out of the truck, walked up to the young vaquero, and began slapping him on the head and shoulders. The other rider, who had pulled up his horse, watched impassively. The young vaquero crawled around looking for his hat, trying to dodge the blows. After grabbing his hat he got to his feet and started to brush the dust from his clothes. Ignoring the boatman, who was still slapping him, he limped to the other horse, grabbed the rider’s arm, and swung up behind. They wheeled and started back towards the village. The boatman spat on the ground then climbed back into his truck.

  The boy who was guarding the boat had caught a string of catfish he wanted to sell but I said I’d spent all my money. We took our seats and the boy shoved us off. There was the sound of the paddle dipping in and out of the river, then a hollow noise as we bumped the other side.

  MERMAIDS TOO

  Jay was twenty-two and just out of jail when he left for Alberta in a drive-away car with a girl called Betty. They travelled with two suitcases and a valuable 1938 Gibson guitar Betty’s great-grandmother had bequeathed her. The country was pure Canadian Shield and Jay set the cruise control for sevety-five miles per hour. There were no towns that weren’t mining or pulp towns. Ther
e were long stretches of emptiness with gas stations every few hours and narrow side roads leading into fishing camps.

  Then, just after dawn, the little red hot light on the instrument panel started blinking. Jay pulled over quickly. Betty woke up as soon as the tires bit gravel.

  Dust and coolant steam drifted around them after Jay shut down the engine. The only noise was dripping and hissing. Jay got out, threw open the hood, and let the steam flow. He looked to check if there were any burst hoses. It was all too hot to touch and he could not see what was wrong.

  Back inside the car, he found Betty scribbling postcards to her boys. Kyle was five and Duffy was four. Jay and Betty were the same age exactly, and there wasn’t much grounding them except their love for each other and for those boys. Their father was a fisherman who had deserted Betty when she was eighteen and drowned on the Grand Banks the winter before Jay met her.

  Jay asked if she wanted him to write something to the boys, but Betty looked at him as though he’d gone crazy. “It would only confuse them,” she said.

  “Did you even tell them it was me you were travelling with?” he asked. “Don’t you think it’d be better if they started getting used to the idea? Just what did you tell them, Betty?”

  She took stamps from her purse and applied them to the postcards. The boys had been left with their granny. Betty wanted Kyle to be able to finish his kindergarten in one place, and she didn’t want to separate little Duffy from his brother.

  Jay and Betty had met at a health club, where he noticed her standing at the juice bar in a blue leotard and looking like a million dollars. He’d been working out on the free weights mostly, plus running four miles in the morning and four more in the afternoon. He had started weight training in jail and was determined to keep it up. It was important to him to feel physically powerful.

  “You can’t be thinking of yourself as their father — that’s just jumping the gun,” she said, dropping the postcards into her purse. She yawned and stretched. “I’m wide awake now, and I thought I’d never be wide awake again.” She twisted the rear-view mirror so she could examine her face. “Do my eyes look terrible?”