El Gringo

They looked like refugees running through the Albany train station trying to catch the midnight to Chicago. Dan charged ahead of his family, carrying two suitcases and a shopping bag, and moved at lightening speed. He ran through the station, his tall thin frame weaving in and out of wandering late-night stragglers, and careening off of corner posts. Pieces of clothing stuck out of the bulging suitcases, scraped and battered and strained at the hinges with the leather-covered handles worn down to their metal forms, rusting at the edges and making metallic noises as the suitcases swung from side to side in the vortex of motion.

His wife Rena ran behind trying to catch up, hugging Beth, their toddler, tightly in one arm and a pillow under the other arm with a third suitcase, also bulging, gripped in her other hand. She kept her eye on their daughter Marsi running in front of her. Her curly mop of red hair was uncombed and the shoelace on one of her sneakers was untied and flapping on the floor with each step, which threatened to trip her up. Marsi was terrified and clung to a large pillow, almost as big as she, while she moved her five-year-old feet as fast as she could to keep up with her father. All the while Beth was loudly bawling out her distress, hurting her mother’s ears and disturbing the slumber of those stretched out on the hard wood benches waiting for one of the middle-of-the-night express connections going north to Canada or west to Oregon. Breathlessly Rena tried to speak to Beth, whispering in her ear and trying to calm her down. But Beth was irreconcilably convinced she would never see her father again.

They reached the train just as the conductor was calling “All aboard.” Dan had already boarded and went inside to find seats. Rena struggled up the metal steps, having no free hands to hold on with, and used her knees to give Marsi a boost up. Marsi climbed up each step slowly, hand over foot, and then ran into the car to find her father. Finally, breathless and in total disarray, Rena sat down just as the train pulled out. She was in the two seats at the end, facing Dan and the rest of the passengers. Beth’s sobbing had subsided, though her chest was still heaving. The tears on her face were smudged from her wiping them with her dirty hands. Her light auburn hair was wet with sweat and matted to her forehead. Marsi stood between her parents trying to decide where to sit, but one look at her father’s reddened face told her, and she snuggled in next to her mother. Rena sat with Beth curled in her lap and her arm around Marsi. She listened to the slow chug-chug of the train moving out of the station and let her breath settle. The rhythmic sounds of the train lulled the girls to sleep while Rena stared out the window at the receding landscape of New York State. Occasional towns and farms interspersed with the blurs of light at crossings or small stations receded away from her into the darkness as the train sped along. She glanced over at Dan and was relieved to see he also had fallen asleep.

It seemed impossible that it was only one week ago when they had decided to go to Mexico to live for six months. Rena thought about the speed with which Dan had reached his decision, a decision it was now too late to retract. There had been no discussion before, since it was a decision he had made on his own, but Rena went along with it anyway, keeping her doubts to herself. The week that followed was a flurry of arrangements: the Mexican visas, shots for the kids, gas and electricity shut off for six months, arrangements for the rent to be paid, shopping for the trip.

Rena let out a long deep sigh, remembering the previous week. The sigh was louder than she had intended. She looked around for fear she might have disturbed someone, but everyone was still sound asleep. Why are we really going? Why did I not protest? Rena studied her reflection in the window against the darkness outside. Her jeans were digging into her and she tried to shift her body without disturbing the girls. She managed to get more comfortable and returned to her thoughts about the trip. Her life in New York had turned into a high drama, high alert state and she hated it. She was tired of the long nights listening to live coverage on WBAI of the war in Viet Nam, while Dan got all worked up and puffed on one cigarette after another, tired of the paranoia and the endless programs on JFK conspiracy theories, tired of the fear and hate reflected in the faces of whites, blacks, cops, protesters, and “conspiracists.” No one trusted anyone and everyone was war weary, regardless of what side of the political line they were on. But Dan was always there, high on adrenaline and tobacco, throwing himself into the fray of whatever protest action was taking place—even if it wasn’t his particular cause or battle. When the SDS took over Columbia University, he, who had barely graduated from high school, was there, climbing over the high fence on Broadway to join the students demonstrating on the campus.

Somewhere in the shopping bag Dan placed on the shelf overhead was yesterday’s NewYork Post filled with headlines about RFK’s projected victory in the California primary, investigations into King’s assassination, racial tensions and riots, pictures of wounded vets, maps of Viet Nam, the SDS’ latest activities, the anti-war movement, SWAT teams in the ghettoes— an endless list that leaves little room for news about local victories or murders and other crimes. In this atmosphere, the closest Rena could come to a peaceful evening walk with Dan was the candlelight bring-our-boys-home march led by Bela Abzug, wearing, of course, one of her notable hats.

“I need a new direction for my work,” Dan had said the week before. He was struggling with a sketch for his next painting. “Being at the Belles Artes and hanging out with the expats in San Miguel might give me that.”

“Yes, but we don’t want to lose this place.”

“We can pay this rent and live in Mexico, and still spend less than we are spending now.”

“Yes, but…”

Dan held his hand up with the pencil pointing towards the ceiling and Rena knew that was the end of the conversation. It wasn’t so much that she disagreed with his reasoning, but that his reason didn’t factor her and the kids into the equation. Besides she was glad he was finally going to escape from his job in the garment district, his abusive boss, and the all-weekend headaches he got regularly from breathing in the formaldehyde fumes from the raincoat fabrics. Rena also hoped this trip might free Dan from his addiction to the high adrenaline life of protests and confrontations, and hoped that Mexico would be an oasis for both of them, a place where Dan might be infected by the mañana mind-set. She laughed to herself—Dream on, Rena, dream on—and finally drifted off to sleep.

Dan shook her awake and she grabbed his hand to stop him from waking the girls, who were still in the same position they had been in the night before. Gently she stroked Marsi’s hair and face to wake her. Marsi stretched out, yawned wide and loud, and slowly opened her eyes.

“Is it Mexico?” she asked hopefully.

“No, dear. We still have another day to go.”

“Oh,” she said as her face fell.

Meanwhile Dan was pulling down the suitcases to reorganize everything. Rena said nothing and didn’t want to get caught up in his battle, while he tried to stuff more into each suitcase than critical mass would logically allow. But she didn’t argue with him. As far as she was concerned, if he succeeded, then God bless him. Just then Beth woke up, smiled at her mother, then looked over at her father. He turned and almost smiled.

“Daddy!” Beth laughed as she reached her arms up for him to hold her.

“Not now, Squirt,” he said. “I have to finish packing before we get to Chicago.”

“But Daddy,” Marsi chimed in. “You already packed. Why do you keep doing it over?”

“Practice makes perfect,” he said, laughing to himself.

“Oh, this is just practicing.” Marsi mulled over her father’s words.

“Daddy practiking…Daddy practiking.” Beth said in sing-song voice.

“So Dad… what is perfect packing?” Marsi asked.

Dan rolled his eyes up and Rena just laughed. Out of the mouths of babes, she thought. By the time the train arrived in Chicago, Dan had the bags packed. They were ready for detraining and the six hours they would have to spend in Union Station before boarding the train to El Paso. In Dan’s defense, he did manage to pack the bags so that nothing was hanging out the edges and the family was able to leave the train with more dignity than they had when they boarded the night before.

It was a hot spring day, hitting close to ninety degrees Fahrenheit. Spending it in Chicago’s Union Station was not anyone’s ideal situation. Dan, ever the gung-ho charge-ahead crusader, went, when needed, on forages for food and drinks that wouldn’t strain their budget. Rena, bemused to observe the contrapuntal rhythm playing out between consumption and elimination, kept the girls occupied with book reading, games and forages to the ladies room. There they splashed cold water in their faces to cool off. It kept the girls from getting too cranky in the sweaty heat. On the last food jaunt Dan came back loaded with enough food for dinner and breakfast, all to the oohs and aahs of the girls.

Finally they all boarded the train to El Paso and settled in with promises to the girls of a trip to the observation deck if they behaved. Later Dan carried them both in their pajamas up to the observation car where they could see some stars overhead and the dark silhouette of the landscape whizzing by. When Dan returned with them, Beth was asleep and Marsi was nodding off.

“Thanks for taking them, Dan,” Rena said with genuine appreciation.

“Yeah sure. You looked like you needed a break.”

Again the girls slept through the night and Dan as well, with occasional bouts of loud snoring. They were all exhausted from the past week and were finally beginning to relax. Rena finally nodded off to sleep in the car filled with muffled snores and rows of worn leather seats covered with bodies stretched out or curled up at various angles to the seats. The train slid through the darkness almost silently, as though wheel-less and flying. Rena was startled awake by a loud screech and a sudden jolt forward. Beth almost fell out of her arms, though instinctively she had grabbed her even before she was aware that something had happened. The train was stopped in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in Texas. It let out intermittent sighs as it sat there in the hazy pre-dawn light with only sand, dry brush and tumbleweed blowing around.

The passengers were waking up, discombobulated and wondering why the train wasn’t moving. Marsi had banged her head on the armrest and had a slight bump on her forehead. Groggy and sleepy-eyed, she was whimpering softly as she buried her head in her mother’s arm, snuggling against her sister who managed to sleep through everything. When Dan looked over at her to see what was wrong, he saw the rising bump on her forehead and flared up.

“What’s going on here?” he shouted. “Is the conductor drunk? Did he fall asleep?” He looked around, but there were no train staff to be seen anywhere. “My daughter’s hurt. Someone has to take care of her.”

He looked around again, but no one was responding. Most of the people were barely awake and in a daze, with no idea what had just happened. Rena tried to calm him, but he ignored her, got up, and ran through the car determined to find a conductor.

While he was charging forward through the train a waiter from the dining car came from behind. Rena grabbed his arm, pointed to Marsi’s forehead and asked him to please get her some ice. He nodded and went back, returning in a few minutes with an icepack. She thanked him and applied the pack to her forehead. Rena was getting concerned about Dan. He had been gone a long time. Texas made her nervous with its history of conservative intolerance, racism and corruption. Dan had a temper, and his long red hair, sticking up like a high afro only with straight hair, branded him as one-of-those-hippies. The combination of Dan and Texas was problematic, but Rena tried to keep her mind on Marsi, whom she knew would be all right, and on Beth who was just waking up. A half hour later Dan returned with concern on his face.

“We hit a car. They told me it would probably take them about two hours to peel the car and passengers off the front.”

Rena was silent, hoping he wouldn’t talk any further in front of the girls about the car and the bodies in it. Dan fell silent and she could feel his restlessness, his need to be involved, to get off the train, go to the front and help them “peel off” the car. He was anxious about catching the Mexican train in El Paso and worried what they would do if they missed it.

“How are you going to survive in Mexico?” She finally asked him.

He glared at her. “You’re always undermining me,” he hissed under his breath.

Lowering her eyes, she avoided the confrontation he seemed to want. She didn’t want to see the wild flash of his dark eyes that let her know he was in a state of rage and she would have to ride the storm out, and she was hoping that the further from New York they got the less likely he would be to succumb. Yet a part of her wanted to stand strong and fight back. From her father’s stories about San Miguel, she knew that corruption was blatant and poverty was widespread in Mexico. Rena understood that a philosophical perspective was essential. Dan can’t just accept things as they are, she thought, and laughed to herself over all the ways he has tried to fix whatever was wrong, things or injustices, and to always be the knight in shining armor. But in truth he was more like Don Quixote, a thin wiry gaunt reed with rusted armor ever charging against windmills. And she feared she was ending up being his ever plodding companion, following behind, heavy with babies and baggage, both the traveling and emotional kind.

It was more like four and a half hours when the train finally started again. Everyone was sitting in a pool of sweat and soaked shirts or blouses. There was no more water to be had and the bathrooms were already disgusting and unusable. Rena could almost see steam coming out of Dan’s ears. He was about to explode. Even Beth and Marsi knew better than to speak to him. The silence was as thick as the hot humid air while the train finally started up again, and then sped its way south through Texas. The conductor rushed through the car, first in one direction, then in the other, without making any announcements or responding to the many complaints from the passengers. The train was hurtling forward at high speed, making it difficult to walk down the aisle and keep one’s balance.

Suddenly, without warning or announcement of any kind, the train came to a stop and everyone knew from the noise and bustle out their windows that they were in El Paso. Like Dan and Rena, most of the passengers were going on to the train to Mexico City, which apparently had been waiting for them. When the doors were opened, a crowd of Mexican boys came on the train, taking people’s luggage and speaking in broken English. “Visa… train… Mexico City…” They found themselves caught up in a rush tide of people. The border transfer was chaos at its worst. Rena was holding onto Beth and Marsi and the pillows, while Dan plowed through the crowd with all three suitcases. A swarm of Mexican boys were all over them, grabbing at Rena and the girls, grabbing at the suitcases, tugging on Dan’s arms and pants. Undaunted, Dan charged through, holding onto the bags and pushing off the boys who were practically climbing on him. Finally they made it through the visa check and made their way to the train to Mexico City. They were in Mexico.

Once they were settled in their first class seats Beth started crying and Marsi stood with her lip quivering. The boys pulling on them, the crush of people terrified them. They were just beginning to react, as though they had held their breath through the whole ordeal. Rena and Dan had gone into survival just-get-us-through-this mode. Rena had been through border scenes before, but never quite like this. She looked over at Dan in the seat across the aisle. He was sitting with a look on his face she had never seen before. She suddenly remembered that this was the first time in his life he was going outside the US borders, the first time he was experiencing a world completely foreign to his. He looked scared.

Through the long ride down to San Miguel, through the midnight crawl when every few miles the train would stop and trainmen with lanterns would walk the length of the train checking the wheels on tracks which were set precariously on steep sandy hillsides, through goat and chicken villages all looking the same, through tamale and chapatti vendors at every stop, Rena watched Dan, silent and unmoving, as he stared into the great abyss. Finally the conductor came through, announcing the next stop, the stop they were waiting for.

“San Miguel de Allende.”

Dan jumped up and quickly moved the bags to the front of the car. Rena and the girls joined him as he stood by the gate and looked out at the brushy desert landscape speeding by. But when the train finally stopped they couldn’t get off. The train was too long for the station and they were at the wrong end of the train. The metal half door and stair trap were locked.

The gate was too high for them to climb over and only the conductor had the key to unlock it. There was no way for them to get off. Dan was frantic.

“Help,” Dan shouted at the people on the platform ahead and waved his arms frantically to get their attention, but they just ignored him.

He thought that maybe the train would move up the track a little and let off the people on the back half of the train, but suddenly the train took off away from the station. Dan turned into a wild man. Everyone turned to look at him as he charged through the train shouting English expletives no one could understand and waving his long thin arms in the air, while his wiry red hair stood up or flew out behind him, Everyone moved out of his way. A low chorus of whispers rose from the people seated, punctuated with words like “el gringo loco.” Finally the conductor came towards him, approaching him as one might approach an insane person.

“Si Senor. What is problem?” He spoke very calmly, attempting a few words of English,

“San Miguel,” Dan shouted and pointed back in the direction they came from. “We need to get off at San Miguel.”

“But you did not get off, Senor.”

“We COULD NOT get off,” Dan shouted. “The gate was locked.”

“Tranquile, Senor. Do not shout.”

“San Miguel,” Dan repeated and pointed to Rena, Marsi, and Beth.

The conductor remained calm and, with a mixture of English, Spanish and gestures, he let Dan know that he would let them off at the next stop. He let Dan know that it was an unscheduled stop and that Dan would have to pay if they went beyond this stop.

The conductor escorted them towards the front of the train. Suddenly the train stopped, the conductor opened the exit gate and pulled up the grate covering the steps. They stepped down, with Dan carrying Marsi and the two pillows and Rena carrying Beth, who was clinging to her. The conductor handed down their luggage, and closed the grate and door. They heard the click of the lock, watched him wave to the driver up front and the train took off.

Dan looked desperate and scared, with no idea how to get back to San Miguel. They stood in the dirt with their baggage and looked around them. There were four small huts with dogs, goats, chickens and children either resting near the huts in the rising heat or running around on the dirt road. There was nothing in any direction as far as the eyes could see, except the one dirt road, the mountains to the east and the vast expanse of land covered with cactus and low brush. They looked down the empty dirt road.

Suddenly there was a cloud of dust preceded by a car speeding towards them. It came to a screeching hard-brake stop right in front of them. It was a beat up old car that looked like it was from a war zone. Rena held Beth close and Dan grabbed Marci and pulled her up onto his hip. They would not have been surprised if someone got out and pulled a gun on them. The driver stuck his head out the window.

“Taxi?” he asked with a big smile on his face.

Rena breathed a sigh of relief, but Dan just looked at him in disbelief.

“Quanto a San Miguel?” Rena asked.

“Por usted, special price. Solamente cinco dolares.”

“We’ll take it,” she said and tried to open the back door.

“No, no. Por favor. Let me.”

He got out of the car, went around to the back door, stuck his hand in the open window, jiggled the handle from inside and opened the door. They all climbed in, with Rena saying a silent prayer that they got there safely. The driver fiddled with the inside handle again to close the door, ran around to his side of the car, slammed his door and took off, still smiling. Rena looked around the car as they set off on the long dusty, bumpy drive to San Miguel. Both the right front door and the left back door were held closed with wire wrapped round the window frame and round the hangar hooks on the sides between the doors. The back window was covered with a metal grate and the springs in the seats were sticking out through the holes in the fabric covering where the foam was disintegrating and shedding. Dan mumbled something to her about the driver being so happy maybe he was overcharging them. Rena reminded him in a whisper of the circumstances they were just in and that cinco dolares wasn’t going to break their budget. Dan relaxed and in a rare moment seemed to allow himself something akin to a philosophical acceptance. Miracles are always possible, she thought.

The car rattled and clanked and seemed to threaten sudden failure as they climbed the road up the mountain and then hit the deep cobbled streets of San Miguel. Finally they found the house her father had arranged to rent for them. It was situated right behind the church on the main jardín at the center of town. Everyone was relieved, the driver even more so, and the girls were smiling and laughing while they danced around in a circle holding each others’ hands, Dan paid the driver and handed him an extra dollar for a tip.

“Muchas gracias,” he said sincerely grateful to the driver as he shook his hand.

“Muchas gracias, mi amigo,” the driver said, with a bigger smile than before. And his muchas gracias was spoken over and over as he retreated to his battered car. He waved through his window and then took off, hurtling down the steep cobbled street toward the desert far below.

  Later, after exploring the rooms and garden of what was to be their home for the next six months, they settled into the living room with its twenty-foot ceiling, a large-bladed fan, and its arched balcony. Rena opened the three sets of doors to the balcony, one screened, one glass-windowed, and one wood shuttered, the last opened outwards while the other two opened to the inside. She kept moving the doors, opening and closing the different layers, trying to get it so that only the screen doors were closed. She could not fathom the logic of the door arrangement. Finally she gave up and accepted, though with great incredulity and frustration, that there was no way to actually use the screen doors. She said nothing to Dan, who was relaxed and enjoying sitting under the breeze of the fan. Let sleeping dogs lie, she thought and acknowledged (only to herself) that they were now in a world very different from their own and the logic of their own world would not translate well into this one.

That night in bed she could feel his body relax a little. They were up in the mountains far from the war and racial strife.

“They called you ‘El Gringo’,” she whispered in his ear. “They also think you are loco.”

“Yeah, I’m loco alright.”

“Good night, El Gringo.”

“Good night, muchacha.”

Later, while listening to his gentle snoring, it occurred to Rena that all she had to do was open herself and let herself experience whatever came to her. She drifted off to sleep happy to be in San Miguel and dreaming of all the writing she could do.

She woke the next morning to a breeze gently cooling her forehead, and could hear the soft flutter of the bedroom curtain and the slow in and out breath of Dan’s slumber. With eyes closed she savored the stillness, until the 6 a.m. church bells began to ring in the distance on the other side of San Miguel. She was happy to have some time to herself and rose up silently without disturbing anything. She was good at that, the low profile, low impact way of being. It gave her breathing space in her life. She went to the bathroom to pee, then quietly poured a bucket of water down the side of the toilet to avoid flushing. She checked on the kids who were sound asleep. By the way they were breathing she knew they were good for another hour or so. She checked on Dan again. El Gringo was still asleep, no doubt dreaming of the next windmill for his Quixote spirit to charge. She smiled to herself, grabbed her journal and pen, and went to the living room. The sunlight was just coming in the windows and she opened the balcony doors wide to let the light fill the room.

For a long time she stood in the sunlight, looking out the open balcony doors at the big avocado tree across the cobbled street and high above the stone wall that surrounded its garden. Its branches stretched out over the walkway and some even out over the cobbled street. The branches were filled with avocados hanging heavy, some green, some turning ripe-black and ready to drop. They look so good. I should just go out and grab a couple. The owner probably wouldn’t notice. She was reminded of a scene in a movie with haunting flute and sitar music and lyrical images of a young girl climbing trees to gather illicit fruit.

Just then a field worker in white cotton pants and shirt with a small-brimmed straw hat was passing by. He didn’t see her watching him as he stopped under the tree and looked up at all the fruit hanging above him. Then he smiled broadly, cupped his wide calloused hands, and held them out. An avocado fell and dropped right into his open hands with a soft thud.