God Having Himself a Little Chuckle

All along the highway are shrines to the Virgin, and crosses where souls passed from the earth. You come across crazy, unmarked, hairpin curves, and dips, and places where the road is washed out, sometimes all at once. I read about an old Mission, San Borja, built by Jesuits in 1759. The AAA guidebook says, "The best route to Mission San Borja is totally unsuited to travel in a passenger car...the single track road has a high crown and numerous rough and rocky spots, calling for a sturdy, high-clearance vehicle. For those with the proper equipment the trip to this magnificent mission is well worth the time and effort." Yeah.
Hahahaha. It's twenty-two miles from the highway to the mission. Four hours after turning off we were still not more than half way there. We bounced and rattled along, picking our way among boulders and cacti, tilted at crazy angles, until we were bored to death at the slow pace. Then the truck went dead.
I got out to look under the hood. The solid zinc battery clamp had broken clean in half. It hadn't just come off, it was broken in half. I put it back on, and the car started, but it couldn't be clamped, and we were able to go about three feet before it was bounced off again by the road conditions. I could have sworn, I'd packed some electrical tape that might hold it in place, but a thorough search of my tool box and the bed of the pickup and various bags and boxes revealed no electrical tape. I tried using some aluminum foil to hold it down, but about every three seconds the car would conk out. All around were wild asses, real, braying, wild asses, and I thought God was having Himself another little chuckle at me. We turned the car around, and bumped back toward the highway, the car conking out every three seconds, me popping the hood, opening the door, walking around to the front, putting the clamp back on the battery, closing the hood, getting back in the car, going forward six feet, and the car conking out again and again and again for however many miles it was back to the highway. Carlos and Miguel were despondent with boredom. About eight hours later, it was getting dark and we reached the main highway, which is much smoother, with only about a million potholes per kilometer. I only had to get out of the car to put the clamp back on about every thirty seconds or so, all the way to Guerrero Negro, Black Warrior, a mere hundred kilometers to the South.

A Landscape Designed By Doctor Seuss

We passed through the little town of El Rosario. School girls crossed the highway in their blue uniforms. The road turns inland and the desert becomes a landscape designed by Doctor Seuss, with the elephant trees and curly-topped cirios sprouting all over among the boulders. The road is narrow and winds up to the tops of ridges where the ocean is visible on the horizon. Some places you hold your breath because the side of the road drops off so precipitously. Beat up old big rigs come careening along the other way and you're sure you can't possibly both fit on the road, and the air pushes you sideways as they pass. Once we cracked side view mirrors against an RV coming the other way. Down below, the cacti look like an army assembled on the desert floor. We dropped down into a valley and came to the town of Catavina which is little more than a hotel and a gas station. We ate huevos rancheros and bought some more Tecates for the drive. I'd read about some cave paintings that were supposed to be in the area and we explored dirt roads and asked at farmhouses until we found the caves. There were suns and moons painted on the ceiling of the cave, and one of the boulders had a skullface look to it, like Munch's Scream. A window was eroded into a wall of rock and I climbed up into it to have my picture taken. The, we headed down the highway again.

Sunk Up to the Tailpipe

The next morning the tide had receded and the truck had survived unscathed. The light of day had brought a measure of sanity back to the thought process. The first thing I did was look for the spot where I'd buried my weed. It was surprisingly easy to find. The first place I tried digging, I found it.
Next, I took another look at the truck half way out of the arroyo, the back end sunk up to the tail pipe in dirt. Eureka! It came to me to use the jack. We jacked her up and pushed her back into the arroyo.
One end of the arroyo opened out onto a dirt road with barbed wire running along it. We followed this road and it came out onto the highway. We were saved!

The swishing turbulence of the water could be heard getting louder and louder

The swishing turbulence of water could be heard getting louder and louder. What the--? I got out of the truck with my can opener. A fog had settled over the area, but the full moon, hung directly above us, lighting up the truck like the spotlight on a spaceship. It seemed close overhead and cast a ring of light through the fog, with the truck in the center. Water was whushing up the arroyo as the tide came in. What geographic features made this so, I don't know, but it was already beneath the truck and getting deeper. Would it get so deep that the truck would be ruined? There was nothing to do but crawl back into the truck with the Guatemalan Insanity Pepper and wait to see what would happen.

Cops?!

"Someone's coming," said Miguel.
"Where?"
"I see some lights over there."
"Huh?"
"I think it's the cops."
Cops!? Oh, shit. I ran around in circles trying to figure out what to do with my cigarette box full of joints and finally dropped to my knees a hundred feet from the truck and buried my marijuana in the sand. I hustled back to the truck, keeping a lookout for cops and/or whoever blocked the road with all that junk. Every time we put the truck in gear the wheels spun and it sunk further into the dirt. On my belly, I used my arms to shovel dirt out from under the truck, thinking, "Rattlers, scorpions, tarantulas, oh my." Where are the clam people? Where are the cops? Where the Yohos?  An hour went by and no one came. Maybe whoever ate all those clams were watching in the darkness waiting for the right moment. I tried shoving our lawn chairs under the wheels to see if the tires would grip that, but only succeeded in shredding the lawn chairs.
"I'm starving," said the Pepper.
"How can you think about food right now?"
"I'm hungry, too," said Carlos. "I'm gonna open a can of chili."
"No, fires. They might see us." I wondered what I might hit them with.
We huddled near the sunken wheel and ate cold chili, staring into the darkness. The can opener looked like it might work like brass knuckles, in a way.
"Who threw all that junk in the middle of the road?"
"I don't know, but I think we better sleep in the truck tonight."
Carlos took the cab, because he was the shortest, and the Insanity Pepper and  I took the back under the camper shell among the boxes and fishing gear. Soon we heard noises and movements all around us. "Dude, they're coming." I grabbed the can opener.
There was cackling all around us.
"What is that, man?" the GIP whined.
"It's coyotes," I said.
"Oh, no. Can they get us?"
"Dude, it's coyotes. They don't "get" people. And they can't get in the truck anyway."
Gip groaned. All night, the coyotes circled the truck, laughing at us.
Later in the night came a worse noise.

Attack of the Clam People

"Do you think any of those lights is the camp?" I asked.
"They're pretty far."
"I don't know what else to do but pick one and head for it."
That's what we did. We went slowly picking our way across the desert floor. At times, the truck would bog down in the sand. I kept telling the guys to throw shit out, like the firewood, thinking the truck wouldn't sink so much in the sand if it wasn't so heavy. Yeah, like it was a hot air balloon or something, duh. "GIP, why don't you get out and walk along the side of the car so we don't sink in the sand so much."
"F---you, Zurn, I ain't getting out." He locked the door. "You get out."
"Dude, you're the heaviest."
He wouldn't budge. I got out and walked in front of the truck, trying to find solid looking places where the truck might not sink so much. There seemed to be a kind of a trail. Miguel followed along driving the truck with me walking in front. The trail followed along the edge of an arroyo. We came to a Volkswagen Rabbit, laying in the arroyo, utterly wrecked, like someone had stripped it clean and taken a sledgehammer to it.
"How do you think that happened?"  I didn't want to say what I thought, which was maybe banditos caught jackasses like us (me), robbed them, killed them maybe, and left their mangled cars in the desert.
Further on we came to a cinderblock shack. "Miguel, turn off the headlights," I hissed. We rolled slowly past the shack. "Who the hell do you think lives there?"
"I don't know, but let's not see if anyone's home."
The trail just vanished into the desert. It just disappeared into tentacles of ocotillo, walls of needly cholla and huge cardon cacti. We turned back, going slowly through the dark, trying to find a road. We passed the shack and the destroyed Volkswagen. Eventually we came to another road. It was pretty solid. I got back in the car and drove slowly down the road, I didn't know in which direction. The road ended a while later in an enormous, impassable pile of white clam shells. What the--? There didn't seem to be anything but desert on either side. I backed up and turned around and all of the sudden, the road was blocked by old car junk, old seats and crap.
Holy sh!t!  An Yoho ambush? Are the Clam People attacking!?
 I gunned the engine and went flying helter skelter into the desert for as fast and long as I could, bumping, grinding, sliding, skidding. We hit some more soft sand, and the wheels spun. I got out and dug and pushed. "Keep your eyes open." The Pepper put her in forward and reverse and we were able to get it moving again. Across an arroyo, the ground looked pretty solid. "Let's go down and up that arroyo. If we can get to the other side, it looks like it might be a dirt road. Let's hurry." I scanned the darkness to see if anyone was coming and hopped back into the truck. Miguel gunned it. We dropped down into the arroyo and got halfway up over the edge of the other side when the truck bogged down in the dirt. Forward, backward, the wheel just kept spinning deeper into the earth.

F*cken Zurn

The ghost was a white sheet, but this wasn't any less weird than if it had been an actual ghost. Out in the middle of nowhere, miles from any sign of man, a seven foot wooden cross was planted in the ground and over it was draped this white sheet. I looked around for any signs explaining its presence and found nothing. I trudged through the sand back to the car, I had come in a wide circle and arrived behind the truck. It was nearly dark. When I knocked on the window, I startled Carlos and Miguel. "Yah! You went up that way. How did you end up behind us?"
I told them about the sheet on the cross in the middle of nowhere.
"That's weird. Let's get out of here."
"Okay, but first..." I pulled one of the six pre-rolled j's I'd smuggled over the border among cigarettes in a box of Marlboros in my breast pocket.
"Fucken Zurn."
I drank another Tecate and smoked and darkness descended over the area.
"Fucken Zurn, let's go back and eat."
We headed back the way we came. Soon a couple of coyotes darted across our path. I tore after them in the truck, bouncing off the road, whooping and hollering, trying to keep them in the headlights, mowing over brush, crashing through thickets, bumping between cardon cacti, sliding right and left, and kicking up dust before skidding to a halt a couple of minutes later. Whoo-eee! I laughed. I think I was the only one laughing.
"Time for another beer."
"Fucken Zurn."
I downed the beer hanging out of the open door of the truck, looking around. It had gotten dark quickly. You couldn't really tell where the sun had gone down.
"Come on, Zurn, let's go back."
A high marine layer obscured the stars. "Okay. Which way do you think that is?"
"Fucken Zurn. You got us lost, didn't you?"
Far off in the distance, some lights glowed on the horizon. Forty-five degrees from there, lights glowed on the other horizon. "Uh...," I said.

Yohos That Mock and Terrify Lonely Clam-Diggers; Sandwalkers and Dune Haunters Who Were Never Properly Buried

The graveyard was supposed to be south of the little outpost with the seafood and beer. A maze of dirt trails, many of them so faint you weren't sure they were trails at all, branched out in all directions. I kept the sun in the passenger window most of the way and scoured the darkening terrain for any sign of the graveyard. After about twenty minutes we came to a high sand dune. I gunned the engine and we got about half way up the dune before we started sliding back down. "Don't get trapped," the old man's words echoed in my ears.
"Hey, Zurn," said the Insanity Pepper. "Did you hear what that old man was saying about 'yohos' or something like that?"
"Yeah. What's a yoho?"
"I don't kow. I didn't really understand him. I'm not sure how to translate some of his Spanish. It sounded like yohos were people, but..." he trailed off.
"Maybe that's the name of the Indian tribe around here."
"I don't know. He said something like they mock people or something, but he kind of seemed like he was talking about ghosts, or I don't know."
I popped open a Tecate. "I'm going to walk to the top of that dune and see if I can spot the graveyard from there."
"I'm going to stay here," said Carlos.
Miguel said, "Me, too."
I trudged up the sand. At the top, the horizon was glowing stripes of red and pink turning lilac the higher you looked. I felt a rare contentment to be seeing the world from so far off the beaten path. I began a slow three sixty to see if I could spot the graveyard---What the?
There was a--well, like a white sheet floating above the desert floor a few hundred yards below, like--like a ghost. Like an old fashioned movie ghost. No human form. A white sheet. Huh. I walked down the ridge toward it, slightly spooked.