“Ah crud,” Louis said when he turned the ignition and nothing happened. He tried it again, one more time, and a third before Freddy and I thought to breathe and completely redacted all the positive things we’d just said. “I don’t suppose I can call a mechanic out here, hehe.”
“Crud,” Freddy said.
“No problem, no problem. I will get a jump. The archeologist’s truck is right over there.” Popping the hood, Louis exited the SUV and went over to ask the archeologist if he could get a jumpstart from the archeologist’s pickup truck. It was then that I was happy to have not climbed on top of the historic artifacts. Such an act might have made the archeologist think twice about helping us.
Thankfully, the archeologist drove his pickup around and parked it in front of Louis’s SUV, where Louis was waiting with a frayed strand of black wire.
“What’s he going to do with that?” Freddy asked, watching Louis hold the frayed black wire out to the archeologist, stripping some bits of rubber from the wire with his keys.
“I think he’s going to use it as a jumper cable,” I said.
“He’s what?”
Before Louis pressed the frayed wire to the pickup’s battery, Freddy shot out of the SUV and rolled to the sandy ground. I guess he thought the SUV was going to explode or something. Knowing that the worst that would happen would be Louis exploding, I just sort of ducked behind the seat and covered my ears.
Instead of a loud explosion, the only thing that happened when Louis pressed the frayed wire between the two vehicles’ batteries was a few sparks flew from the wire while the radio turned on for a brief, hollow second.
“You girls don’t have a spare battery up your shirts do you, hehe?” Louis asked the fat Argentineans, probably using English so they wouldn’t understand the creepy question.
“No worries. We can take the truck in. Right?” Louis asked, then made the same question in Spanish to the archeologist, who was looking as fascinated as I was that Louis had survived the attempted frayed wire jump. Perhaps in respect for the man not exploding, or pity for his stupidity, the archeologist agreed to take us to a nearby town.
“Okay, then. Load them up, hehe,” Louis said, ushering the mother and daughter, and then the fat Argentineans, to squeeze inside the pickup truck’s front seat.
After securing the girls, Louis lowered the bed of the truck for us to get inside. Now, normally I would have no problem with riding in the bed of a pickup truck. It would actually be kind of fun with the uniquely stunning landscape around us. But the archeologist had one of those metal covers on his truck, which was great for storing tools and equipment but bad for passengers.
Louis squeezed inside, literally, his fat pressed against the narrow opening between the open tailgate and the metal cover. I rolled in as well, ducking down and trying to find a place to sit. You couldn’t sit fully upright for the canopy, and the ground was dirty. I found a tiny block of wood that was, oddly enough, cleaner and more comfortable than the truck bed and used this as a cushion.
“Come on Freddy, he’s getting ready to go,” I insisted when Freddy hesitated.
“I don’t want to ride in that,” Freddy said, trying to negotiate in his mind what the ride to Lima would be like in a truck like this.
“You sit on my lap. I’ll make you nice and comfortable,” Louis said, patting his belly.
I have no idea how serious Louis was and the proposition actually made me consider joining Freddy outside.
“Look Freddy, just get in,” I said instead.
“It smells like there’s a dead animal in there,” Freddy replied.
“It’s gonna be dark soon, Freddy, and I don’t think you want to be out here after dark. Do you have any idea what kind of ghosts will be in this place?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Alright. Then have fun telling that to the ghosts. Especially after you fell in one of their graves. Oh, and say hi to Louis’s ancestors for me.”
The archeologist revved the truck’s engine then, stirring Freddy to leap inside before he’d be left behind. Honestly the prospect of being haunted by Louis’s five thousand years dead ancestors wasn’t all that enticing, and so I helped pull Freddy inside the truck’s dead animal-smelling bed.
We then had a long ride through very, very rough terrain. The same cross-country trip that was enjoyable from the comfy seats of an SUV was torturous from the windowless truck bed. Every bump sent our heads hurtling toward the ceiling and every twist and turn sent Louis hurtling toward us. Not to mention the heat of that bed was driving us to negotiate the safety of opening the tailgate despite the guarantee that one of us would fall out at the first bump in the dirt road. Considering it was likely Louis would be that person, Freddy and I came close to calling those good odds.
Fortunately for Louis, and us I suppose, the truck did not travel all the way to Lima. We had been confused about the interchange, but apparently the archeologist told Louis he would only take us to a small town nearby and not Lima. It took about a half hour to drive there and when we got out it looked like Freddy and I had been wrung through some kind of dirt and sweat maelstrom.
Freddy and I both fell wobbly onto the streets of the small town when the truck pulled to a stop. The wooden block I’d been sitting on had turned my backside into one concentrated pain, like I’d been shot repeatedly in the same spot on my rear end with a large caliber pellet gun.
“Okay,” I said after popping my back to see if it would make my body remember it was supposed to stand upright, “So what do we do now?”
“I’ll go see if I can get us a car,” Louis said as the archeologist drove away, happy to be rid of us, “Stay here with the girls.”
There was a brief exchange in Spanish between the girls and Louis but neither Freddy nor I caught any words. I imagined it being some sort of heroic conversation where the skinny mother, who was obviously Louis’s very awkward girlfriend, told Louis, “Don’t go. It’s too dangerous. What will we do without you?” With Louis replying, “It’s okay. I shan’t tarry. ‘Fore the sun sets I shall return hence with transport to see us home.” In my imagination Louis speaks with a very classic English accent. And he’s not Louis.
“Can you even rent a car in this town?” Freddy asked, looking around.
“I have no idea,” I said, suddenly breaking out of my medieval fantasy and realizing that the fat Argentineans weren’t damsels in distress but fat Argentineans. The revelation was as distressing as the sight of the town itself.
We stood in the main square of a town that spread from one long street. There was a brick cathedral at one end of the square, with similarly plain buildings surrounding a park that was the central feature of the square. Inside the square itself there was some sort of carnival going on. Rides that were little more than chunks of rusted metal being twirled about by a clattering, leaking engine operated by a drunken, apathetic worker attracted bustles of children who didn’t know any better. In this way it was a lot like the carnivals you’d seen in a small town in America. The main difference was that when one of the children fell off a ride and screamed in pain, they screamed in Spanish.
What bothered me was not the dinky carnival or the obviously poorly-constructed architecture surrounding me. What bothered me was the looks we were getting from the large number of pedestrians milling about the square. Every single Peruvian looked at us in shock and confusion, making sure to keep their distance as they walked by. One passing mother actually held her child close to her and darted to the other side of the car-riddled street so she could stay as far from Freddy and I as possible.
“I don’t like this,” Freddy said.
“Yeah. Do you ever wonder what goes through people’s heads right before they’re made into human sacrifices?” I said.
“What?”
“I’m definitely getting sacrifice-wanting looks from people.”
“What kind of look could someone possibly give you that would make you think that was going thro
ugh their heads?”
“They said at Caral there were human sacrifices.”
“That doesn’t mean there will be human sacrifices here.”
“I’m not saying that either. I’m just saying we should have a contingency plan if they suddenly come upon us and want to sacrifice us to their Caral demon or something.”
“The only plan is to get out of here as soon as possible.”
“That plan is not going so well,” I said, pointing toward Louis, who was standing about a block down the main street. Several busses and vans had passed us by while we’d been waiting. Many of them were public transportation or for-hire buses. Louis was talking to one of the vans at the moment, but was quickly waved away as the van’s driver laughed at him and drove off. Louis quickly asked another van, who also laughed at him.
“Do you remember how to get back to Caral?” I asked.
“What? No,” Freddy said.
“I think I might. Like, follow the river or something. There was a gift shop there with candy bars and stuff. We make a run for it, follow the river to Caral, hole up there until morning. Then we steal the archeologist’s car and drive to Lima.”
“What the blazes are you talking about, Joe?”
“This is our contingency plan if they decide to sacrifice us.”
“They’re not going to sacrifice us.”
“I know that but I’m trying to get a contingency plan in case they do.”
“Why would we go to Caral anyway? I thought you said there were ghosts there.”
“I thought you said you don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I don’t.”
“Well I don’t believe in human sacrifices either but in case these people have differing opinions on the subject I’d like to be prepared.”
“They just don’t like foreigners, Joe. Probably don’t see that many,” Freddy said. A few minutes passed as he stood in silence, thinking. “How would we even drive to Lima? We don’t know the directions.”
“One thing at a time,” I said.
We stood in that square for about an hour, waiting for Louis to come back with a car. It was hot and I was running out of reasons to think that the locals didn’t have a desire to kill me. When the skinny mother pointed out Louis and jumped up in excitement, I thought our trial was over. But Louis simply walked up to us, huffed, and said, “We should get some dinner.”
Louis led us to a hole in the wall restaurant in this hole in the wall town. Dust covered the threshold of the building and we had to pass through the proprietor’s living room before entering the restaurant itself. An old lady was sitting in the entryway watching some Peruvian TV show that showed a bunch of scantily-clad women dancing in a party. A man wearing a very frilly dress hosted the show and to this day I wonder what the show was about.
We were the only customers at the restaurant save a couple of Chinese men sitting smoking in the corner. They had food before them and were eating, talking, and smoking very slowly. They looked up, once, to acknowledge us, and I had the sudden realization that perhaps our stranded predicament was not the worst position in which to be.
Louis ordered for us, since Freddy and I had no idea what the menu said and did not trust anything we picked to be free of cockroaches, or at least mostly free of cockroaches. And so, exhausted from the heat and the walk and remembering suddenly that I’d had almost no sleep the night prior, we waited over an hour for food while drinking warm glasses of Inca Cola. They only had Inca Cola. And I suppose it’s not so terrible if that’s all you have to choose from besides red-colored water.
After eating, our meal consisting of fried chicken that was cooked deeply enough it didn’t matter how many roaches were in it, Louis stepped out into the rapidly approaching darkness to once again try his luck at getting a car.
There’s boredom. And then there’s a kind of trapped boredom. It’s the boredom of being at summer camp and hating it. It’s the boredom of sitting in timeout at school. It’s the boredom of having too much peanut butter and no idea what to do with it. This was like that boredom. Except in this instance there was another layer of absolute hair-pulling stress that you might be fully stranded in this tiny town and forced to find a hotel. I wondered if they even had hotels here.
To distract myself from worrying about hotels, and a complicated contingency plan should I need to escape from said hotel if people broke into my room to offer me in sacrifice, my imagination growing more and more convoluted, especially once it started involving pirates, I started to watch the strange TV show with the old lady. I could just barely see the television in the other room from our spot at the table, and continually wondered why those scantily-clad women liked the man in the frilly dress so much, or why the old lady watching found the show so entertaining.
Finally, Louis returned.
Walking out into a darkness that seemed to set the oppressiveness of the locals to a level that near made me revert to one of my now many contingency human sacrifice escape plans, Louis walked us to a waiting taxi. This was one of two. The first one’s driver nodded at Louis, but the second driver walked over and started yelling at Louis. They were arguing over something.
“Is he negotiating?” I asked.
“He’s what?” Freddy echoed.
“I think he’s negotiating. He finally gets a couple cabs to agree to drive us to Lima, lord knows how in a town this small, and he’s negotiating over the price!”
Apparently the price was not acceptable, because the second cab driver drove off.
“What the…no!” I said, watching the cab drive away. There was certainly not enough space in the remaining cab for our entire group, and I wondered with rising fear if we’d be forced to wait as this one cab made a round trip, taking the girls first and Freddy and I many hours later.
“It’s okay,” Louis said with a smile, “I’ll just find another one.”
“Oh man, Joe, I don’t think I can take this anymore,” Freddy said.
“He’s gonna find another car. He got us one, he’ll get another,” I insisted, though I began to wonder if stealing a car might be the safer option.
About twenty minutes later Louis waved down a passing cab, actually got the cab to stop when he asked for a ride to Lima, and proceeded to negotiate the price. The cab drove off in a matter of seconds.
“No! No!” Freddy said, stamping a foot.
“It’s okay, Freddy, hold on,” I insisted, though I said it through grinding teeth.
“It’s not okay. Just pay what they want and let’s get out of here.”
Louis came over to us and smiled. “I am losing so much money on this trip as it is, hehe,” he said, laughing off the problem, which he could do because no one was looking at him like he was a white person who deserved a good bludgeoning.
When for a third time Louis chased off a cab, I had to hold Freddy back from attacking the fat hostel owner. Only the miracle that was a fourth cab stopping and agreeing to Louis’s negotiated price stopped me from joining Freddy in a totally deserved assault. Instead of committing manslaughter, we simply committed ourselves to the back of the cab.
The cab driver greeted us as Freddy and I got in the back. Louis, the little girl and her mother got in the first cab and the fat Argentineans joined us in ours. One fat Argentine went in the front, and the other one sat in the right window seat. Since I was skinniest, I had to ride in the middle seat, with Freddy squeezed into the left side. The cab was a hatchback, and I considered going into the trunk. But when I looked back there I found a very small boy looking up at me with a portable MP3 player in one hand and a small knife in the other. He hissed at me so I sat right back down.
“What?” Freddy asked, seeing my look of worry as the cab’s engine started.
I considered telling Freddy that this was a terrible idea, that we should just brave it out in the small town. But oddly enough the cab, tiny knife-wielding hisser behind me and all, actually seemed the safer option. “Nothing. Let’s go,” I said.
&nbs
p; Thankfully I’m positive the knife-wielding boy was crushed to death from the cab’s immediate acceleration as it pulled onto the highway toward Lima. I was sandwiched between a fat Argentinean woman and Freddy Baxter, with no place to put my feet, knees shoved against the back of the gear shift, and could not help but wonder which of the five bodies present smelled worse.
None of this mattered, of course, due to the heart-stopping fear of hitting hair-pin turns at 150 kilometers per hour along a mountainous desert highway in a shakily-constructed cab with no seat belts being driven by an angry cabbie who refused to play anything but crappy disco music on his blown-out radio.
A sudden turn nearly sent us plummeting five hundred feet and shoved me so far into the fat Argentinean’s bulbous arm I think I left an impression of my nose in her skin. All the while, Boney M’s Rasputin assaulted our ears as it repeatedly blared through the cab’s tinny speakers.
Freddy screamed not quite loud enough to be heard over the dancing tune detailing Rasputin’s sordid life as I nearly crushed him with a sudden turn the opposite direction, sparks flying out of the bottom of the cab in the sudden cresting of a desert hill.
“Please God! Please! Please have a different song be playing when we die!” I shouted.
And so the sirens of Boney M sang our inevitable deaths in that cab as the driver blazed a fiery trail to Lima.
Three hours it took. Three hours crammed in that cab. Three hours of disco music and near death experiences. And yet we survived. We made it back to the hostel in Miraflores where Freddy and I collapsed in our rooms. I’d never been happier to see a crappy bed in my life.
“Hey Freddy,” I said after crashing, not bothering to change clothes.
Freddy made some sort of whimpering sound of acknowledgement. He’d not even made it to the bed and was laying on the dust-covered carpet.
“Don’t forget,” I said, “We go to Machu Picchu tomorrow.”
Chapter 6
Imagine the same scene of the previous day, Freddy and I lumbering down the winding steps to get terrible instant coffee and stale bread. Instead of hung-over delirium, this time Freddy and I attacked the rolls and jelly with a voracious anger that was only compounded by our quickly approaching time of departure.
Joe Stevens Mocks a Llama Page 7