The raindrops drumming down on the Suburban’s hood made it hard to hear.
“Tepic.”
“The capital of Nayarit?” I shouted over the noise.
“I didn’t know there was another one.”
“That’s a long ride.”
“I was hoping to sleep on the bus.”
“Get in,” I said.
“It’s dangerous to pick up hitchhikers in Mexico, Nick.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said, and unlocked the passenger door.
6
“You should put this on the roof rack,” Sarah said, immediately starting in with the surf advice.
When Sarah dove into the Suburban from the downpour, she had hit her head on my Red Fin, which I had slid up between the seats.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” I said.
“That’s how they get dinged. Surfboards are instruments. You need to take care of them.”
“I will,” I said, hoping to dodge the lecture on the care and feeding of a Red Fin from the former champ. “What’s in Tepic?”
“Great health care,” Sarah said.
“Better than in Puerto Vallarta?”
My Suburban hummed along at about eight miles to a gallon. A run up to Tepic and back would cost fifteen hundred pesos.
“Vallarta’s for medical tourists looking for overnight face-lifts,” she said. “I’ve got endometriosis.”
I tried to appear sympathetic as I braced myself for the horror story that was probably heading my way.
“It’s a female issue,” she continued.
“I’ve had them,” I said.
“This quack in the States told me I got it from having too many abortions. But I’ve never had an abortion. Ectopic pregnancies aren’t abortions—they’re miscarriages. I didn’t even get a real chance.”
I was trying to calculate how much over-sharing Sarah could do during the next hundred miles.
“It’s like having tumors. But benign.”
“Thank god,” I said. I was trying to keep it short.
“I’m seeing a specialist,” Sarah continued. “World-renowned. I was lucky to get an appointment. He’s usually booked a year out, but one of his patients died.”
“That’s not a good sign, is it?”
“It was a heart attack,” Sarah said. “You can’t really die of endometriosis. Unless your husband murders you for bitching about it too much.”
Sarah laughed, but she was mostly sad.
“I’m sorry I’m always telling you my life story,” Sarah said. “I know it can be creepy when someone tells you personal stuff—I know I do it too much. But I’m lonely.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know what lonely is.”
“And not getting laid sucks.”
But I only nodded—there was no way I was going to pull the pin out of that grenade.
“I was lucky to get an appointment,” she said again. “I’m grateful. The guy is world-renowned.”
“Do you need surgery?”
Sarah shook her head. “Surgery is for doctors and butchers,” Sarah said. “This treatment is noninvasive.”
“This world-renowned guy isn’t a doctor?”
“A Huichol priest,” Sarah said.
“A priest?”
“A high priest,” she said. “Like the heaviest shaman they’ve got.”
And I readied myself to hear about the awesome effectiveness of chanting cures.
“He’s perfected the peyote douche.”
But I had underestimated her.
“It’s like tea, but you have to take it differently,” Sarah continued.
“I would imagine,” I said.
The Huichol are native Mexicans known for worshipping deer while high on mescaline. Their magical kind of thinking has been hijacked by new age gringos and less sympathetic locals who exploit this primitive beauty by hawking wax Bambis covered in plastic beads and absurd cures for anxiety and menopause.
“And it has to be done during a full moon—which is why I need to get up there,” she said. “The moon raises our healing energy, just like it does high tides.”
I was trying to sort through all the questions I wanted to ask about this undoubtedly ancient yet suddenly revolutionary cure, but I settled for just one.
“How much does a peyote douche cost?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Sarah said. “He was supposed to give me an estimate, but his cell phone battery ran out.”
Sarah closed her eyes and fell asleep in about two minutes. I turned on the AM radio and searched through the white noise for something worth listening to.
7
I filled up at the Pemex just outside of La Peñita. I figured I could make Tepic in a few hours if we didn’t run into any roadblocks or get stuck at a checkpoint. I don’t like to drive too far north in Mexico. And I never like to drive north at night. It can get a little sharky. Not sharky in the great white way but in the surf-speak way, like sketchy.
The drug wars and cartel violence are pretty overrated if the only information you get is from the US press. A lot of those stories are all about trying to make Mexicans look like bloodthirsty lunatics so Americans don’t feel guilty about paying immigrants shit wages to cut their lawns and make their beds.
But still. Nobody’s head looks good on a stake.
There are about forty-five minutes of stomach-turning switchbacks on the way to Tepic that you have to share with all the bus and truck traffic on its way to Guadalajara, a boomtown of six million people and a symbol of where Mexico is going. Tepic is just a couple of hours away from the big city but much poorer, stranded in the old economy. One hundred pesos a day is the average wage—which is about six dollars.
There aren’t any BMW dealerships in Tepic. It’s hard to find good sushi.
Every few miles of this switchbacked section of Highway 200 is memorialized with homemade crosses that mark fatal accidents. By the really sharp turns with cliffs or at the bottom of steep hills, the number of crosses stuck in on the roadside increases because of accidents with higher body counts. They’re like hazard signs—caution: three-cross turn ahead. So I snuck in another bump to stay extra-alert.
We arrived at the outskirts of Tepic, and I nudged Sarah awake. It took me a while. Her sleep apnea must have shut off some oxygen, and she was sleeping like she was in a coma. I nudged her again, this time a little harder.
“Hey,” she said, and then surfaced. She blinked. “Did I sleep?”
“Three hours,” I said.
Sarah smiled into a yawn. “Nice,” she said, and then slid her hand down the rail of the Red Fin.
“I have a Red Fin,” she said.
“You do?” I was a little disappointed. I thought I had the only Red Fin in the area. Maybe even in Mexico.
“Mike Hynson is a friend of mine,” she said. “He gave it to me for doing him a favor.”
“It must have been a big favor,” I said.
“It was,” Sarah said. “I told him how to invent the down rail.”
I let out a breath. This was gold-medal bullshit. Hynson was the star of The Endless Summer, a classic surf documentary filmed in the ’60s. He’s also credited with perfecting the down rail, which is the soft slope shaped into a hard edge at the back half of a surfboard.
The harder rail helps the board carve into steeper and hollower waves, like down in Puerto Escondido or over at Pipeline on the North Shore. Before Hynson figured out down rails, pulling into a barrel was more about big balls and dumb luck than skill.
“You don’t believe me?”
“That’s a lot to believe.” I shrugged. I felt sorry for her, and she knew it.
“Well, it doesn’t matter what you believe, Nick,” Sarah said, and then scraped a little wax off the Red Fin with her fingernail. She tasted it.
“There’s a gringo over at Litibu beach who makes biodegradable surf wax,” Sarah said, spitting wax out the window. “This shit is poison.”
“I’ll chec
k him out,” I said. “Where to?”
“It’s called Litigoo,” she continued, ignoring me. “Made from beeswax so it doesn’t wreck the ocean.”
“Okay.”
“Or stick to the reefs,” Sarah said.
“I get it,” I said.
I was ready for another toot, but I’d have to offer one to my hitchhiker, and she was already chatty enough. Sarah pointed out her window.
“Turn right, up there,” she said.
There was a blinking yellow light at an intersection with a dirt road that crisscrossed about half an acre of stacked Detroit iron. Dozens of old, rusted cars and trucks.
“You can drop me off.”
“Here?” I said.
“It’s the Huichol Reserve,” she said. “Sacred ground.”
“It’s a junkyard.”
“I’m an optimist,” Sarah said. “Honk your horn.”
I pulled over and honked, and after a moment a tall man in traditional Huichol dress stepped into the headlights. He was wearing pure white, top to bottom, with a beaded belt pouch, a straw derby, and embroidered sandals exactly like Sarah’s. On the cuffs of both his sleeves was a rainbow weave of dancing deer.
“Is that the high priest?”
“One of them,” Sarah said.
“He’s pretty tall,” I said. Huicholes were among the shortest people on earth, second only to Guatemalans. This guy was six three, easy.
“He’s a convert.”
“You can do that?”
“He had to,” Sarah said. “He’s from San Francisco.”
“So there’s a California branch.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. I’m in pain.”
Sarah got out of the Suburban and walked to the shaman. They bowed at the waist, and I could see that he had a blond ponytail. He looked about thirty. Seemed kind of young for a high priest, if you ask me.
He gently lifted Sarah’s chin so she could see the moon, and then he placed a hand across her stomach. The clouds had cleared, and for some reason I was relieved.
Sarah walked back to my side of the Suburban. I had already rolled down the window.
“This is going to cost more than I thought,” she said. “But what’s relief worth, right?”
“Depends how long it lasts.”
“I need five thousand pesos,” Sarah said.
“Did you tell him you’re a frequent flyer?”
“Shut up—and it’s only two hundred and fifty dollars, moneybags,” Sarah said.
“That’s all I got.”
“It’s a loan.”
I took ten five-hundred-peso bills out of my wallet and handed them to her. “Good,” I said. “I’ve got kids to feed.”
“You want an eight ball for collateral?”
“I’d rather trust you than me, thanks.”
“Smart,” Sarah said, and then she leaned down and pecked me on the cheek.
“Are you okay to drive home?”
“I drove you up here, didn’t I?”
“You’re precious cargo, lovey,” she said and threw me a shaka. “Don’t forget that.”
I threw one back.
Sarah walked over to the knockoff Huichol in the straw derby. He handed her a candle and they disappeared into the night. She was braver than I was.
8
It was about an hour before sunup, and I had already made it down through the switchbacks. The “prevent” defense seemed to have worked—my pre-seizure sense of lunacy had been degaussed. I was feeling good. My epileptic curse had been pushed back to the future.
And I was proud of myself for going out of my way—by two hundred miles—to give Sarah a ride. Despite her claims to fame, there was still a sad mystery to her, and I could relate. Very few foreigners move to Mexico to escape success.
I tapped my fingers on the nose of my Red Fin and made an instant decision to drive due west and surf Bichos for an hour or two. I had to take the highway a little farther north to get there, which meant that the drive wasn’t going to be as safe. But if Bichos was still getting the scraps of that southwest swell we had snagged at Gagger’s, it could be a great morning.
I looked out at the palm trees. Not a frond was stirring. It was going to be a windless morning at a mysto break. I felt blessed, and still a little buzzed.
Until a small group of men stopped me at a roadblock—they were wearing black ski masks and carrying machine guns. But their camouflage pants gave me hope, and I could see that some of these guys were wearing combat boots. There was a chance they were military and not with the cartels.
Or they could be the Mexican seguridad policía secreta, the Grupo Marte—a very badass undercover outfit that was originally organized to target left-wing Americans and Mexican socialists. But the locals will tell you that today, the SPS is just in charge of disappearing people.
I wasn’t sure enough to make the call about who these guys were, so my immediate strategy was to play dumb.
I rolled down my window.
“Bono days,” I said, intentionally overmangling my typically mangled Spanish. “Me, surfino. El gordo olas at Bitchens. Yes?”
I smiled, proud as hell of my ability to play Doofus Kook from SoCal on his first surf trip to Mexico. If there were such a thing as a Mexican Academy Award, I would have just won one.
The man closest to me pulled off his ski mask and shouldered his machine gun. He looked at me with a little disgust. He was about thirty years old, with black eyes and a shaved head. There was a tiny hangman’s noose tattooed under his left eye. I couldn’t tell if he had any rank, but it was clear that he was el jefe.
“Don’t bullshit me. I speak English,” he said with an accent so crisp it sounded nearly British.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“You just figured I’d go easy on an idiot tourist.”
Okay. So the boss had me dead cold. I decided to let him lead. I nodded.
“I’m going to ask you a couple of questions.”
I nodded again.
“But first I need to tell you that it is very important that you tell me the truth.”
“I will,” I said.
“Don’t answer so fast. I want you to think about that. I want you to understand how important they are.”
“The questions?”
“The answers.”
I didn’t nod this time. I just stared back at him.
“What’s your name?”
“Nick Lutz,” I said, but then I couldn’t hold this guy’s gaze. “Nicholas. Sometimes they call me Pirata.”
“Who does?”
“My amigos,” I said.
“Because of the patch?”
“I hope that’s why.”
I looked down at my hands. They were gripping the steering wheel as if it were a trapeze.
“What happened?” he asked, pointing to the patch.
“I got hurt at work,” I said.
He turned my head so he could see the round scar on the back of it. If he knew what an exit wound looked like, he didn’t show it.
“Do you have a passport?”
“Not on me.”
“Are you a US citizen?”
“I have an FM3,” I said, and nodded. “Yes.”
I could see that about half the guys wearing camo were also barefoot. I’d never heard of barefoot soldiers. And the secret police probably all wear shoes. So maybe this was a cartel kidnapping, after all.
“Do you have it with you?”
I nodded and reached for the glove compartment. When I opened it, Winsor’s bag of dope fell out. I grabbed at it.
“Don’t touch that,” he said. “Just get me the FM3.”
I got the FM3 and handed it to him.
“It’s expired,” he said.
“No way,” I said, faking surprise. “Really?”
But the performance wasn’t very believable. I might have to return my Oscar.
“Yes, really,” he said.
“Is there
anything I can do to fix this?” And I immediately regretted giving all my cash to Sarah.
“Are you offering me a bribe, Pirata?” El Jefe asked, and then smiled. “Remember—the answer is the important part.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“Correct answer.”
He handed me back my FM3.
“Just two more questions,” he said.
“No problema, señor,” I said, and then grimaced an apology. “No problem, sir.”
“Who is the president of México?”
“You’re kidding?”
“I’m not,” he said, as if he had been trained in interrogation by my ex-wife. “If you are a Mexican resident, you should know who our president is.”
“I do,” I said.
“So?”
And somehow I remembered.
“Peña Nieto.”
God bless this cocaine. It must have been cut with Adderall.
“¡Profe!” El Jefe called out to one of his soldiers, and laughed. I could see that he might even have been a little impressed. Then he turned back to me.
“Are you ready for your Final Jeopardy question?” he asked.
“It’s called the Final Jeopardy answer,” I corrected, and then instantly regretted it. “At least up in the States, I mean.”
“But we are not in the States,” he deadpanned.
“I know.”
He squinted slightly.
“Do you have any drugs, Mr. Lutz?” he asked.
I glanced over at Winsor’s bud-filled baggy, which had landed on the passenger seat. I picked it up and handed it to him.
“Just this,” I said. “It belongs to a guy I surf with.”
He sniffed Winsor’s pot and put it in his pocket. “So, no drugs?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Positive.” And for the first time, I was able to hold his gaze.
“Okay.”
I started up the Suburban, but El Jefe reached through the window and shut it off.
“Not yet,” he said as he removed the keys.
Then he clapped his hands, and a very large and very white German shepherd appeared from the back of a canvas-topped truck that I hadn’t seen parked in the shadows. As I squinted, I could see that it was a 1979 Dodge Power Wagon, jerry-rigged into a troop transport.
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