Friday, April 28, 2006

You Won't Find Any Cheeseburgers Here

As the sun set behind the extinct volcanoes across the plain, we pulled out of Jose's dirt driveway, full of thanks. We headed for a campground south of San Vicente, called Muelle Viejo (Old Pier), where an English Colony had failed two hundred years earlier, leaving behind the ruins of a mill, some old pier pilings still sticking up from the lagoon, and a graveyard. We found the turnoff down a washboard-tough dirt road and followed it guessing at each fork which was the right way to go. We came to a little, round, white-washed adobe building with a thatched roof on a ridge over-looking the lagoon. You could smell fish grilling and through the door was a shelf with bottles of booze. We found stone firepits. Carlos went off in search of a suitable shit-taking place.
"I'm starving, Zurn, let's eat," said the Pepper.
"I don't think they have any cheeseburgers here, dude."
"I'm so hungry, I could eat fish."
"I want to go take some photgraphs of this graveyard I read about before it's too dark."
"What do you want to do that for?"
"I don't know."
An old man came shuffling out of the shadows selling firewood. "We'll buy some when we get back," I said in Spanish.
"Where are you going?" asked the viejo.
I told him we were going to look for the cemetario. He made a moaning noise. "Why do you want to do that?" he asked in Spanish.
"Why not?"
He made the moan again. "Tal vez llegan a ser atrapados." You might become trapped.
"Okay, viejo, we'll be careful not to get trapped."
He shook his head.  "Hay llojos."
Yoho's?  "Que son llojos?"
"No se debe ir en la noche."
Carlos came back. "I'm starving let's eat."
"Fucking Zurn wants to go to some graveyard."
"Oh my god."
I got in the truck and started the engine. The GIP and Carlos climbed in cussing and muttering. "Stay here then, ya pussies."
"We're not going with you; we're going with the truck."
We motored into the twilight, the old man's moans falling behind us. "Ahorita regresamos," I said to the old man.  We would never see him again.

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