At
the PEMEX station (gasoline is state-owned and subsidized in Mexico) the
next morning - a car-shop with a pump in a shed, I asked the attendant
what he thought of the road to Puertocitas.
"It's
like any Mexican road. Got sand, got bumps."
"What about my tires? Are they okay?"
"Those tires take you to hell."
We took his encouragement without knowing that
we were in fact, headed north, to a place that certainly would look like
hell. Terrified, drinking warm Tecate, we crossed the sandy, rock-strewn
road across the flats with a desert tortoise's persistence. From the sand
came the wind; a rampage of desolation, dancing in its defeat of sameness
and the everyday. It was rough road, miserable, tire-popping madness.
Our one response was to keep on going and fuck everything.
Two
hours later and twenty miles along the road to Puertocitas, we passed
out of a canyon and onto a saline flat. This was the lowest, hottest,
dreariest flat: white sand, ocotillo, not even a creosote. We saw a flash
of silver in the distance - a building maybe. Some time later, we came
upon it; a strange otherworldly shanty made of ocotillo and hanging cans
of Tecate. I pulled the truck up. The sign said, "Cold Beer." This was
the first sign of man since Chapala.
