I untied the burro, took the mats off him, and rolled them into one pile again. I lifted them. They weren’t so heavy. I hoisted them on to the top so one end was on the top, the other on the rumble seat, where it was open, and lashed them on to the top brace. I went in the hut. Juan was tying up one more basket, the old lady squatting on the stove bricks, smoking a cigar. She jumped up, ran out the door and around back, and came back with a bone. Juana had to untie the basket again, and in it was the dog. The old lady dropped the bone in, Juana put the top on and tied it up.
I went out, took the key out of my pocket, got in, and started the car. I had to back up to turn around, and all three of them started to scream and yell. It wasn’t Spanish. I think it was pure Aztec. But you could get the drift. I was stealing the car, the viveres, everything they had. Up to then I was nothing but a guy going nuts, and trying to get started in time to get there if we ever were going to get there. But the way they acted gave me an idea. I put her in first, hauled out of there, and kept on going.
Juana was right after me, screaming at the top of her voice, and jumped on the running board. “You estop! You steal auto! You steal viveres. You estop! You estop now!”
I did like hell stop. I stayed in first, so she wouldn’t get shaken off, but I kept on over the hill, sounding like a load of tin cans with all that stuff back there, until Mamma and Papa were todo out of sight. Then I threw out and pulled up the brake.
“Listen, Juana. I’m not stealing your car. I’m not stealing anything — though why the hell you couldn’t have bought all this stuff in Acapulco where you could get it cheap, instead of loading up here with it, that’s something I don’t quite understand. But get this: Mamma, and Papa and the burro, and that dog — they’re not coming.”
“Mamma, she cook, she—”
“Not tonight she doesn’t. Tomorrow maybe we’ll come back and get her, though I doubt it. Tonight I’m off, right now. I’m on my way. Now if you want to come—”
“So, you steal my car, yes.”
“Let’s say borrow it. Now make up your mind.”
I opened the door. She got in. I switched on the lights and we started.
By that time I would say it was about seven o’clock. It was dark from the clouds, but it still wasn’t night. There was a place down the line called Tierra Colorado that we might make before the storm broke, if I could ever get back to the main road. I had never been there, but it looked like there would be some kind of a hotel, or anyway cover for the car, with all that stuff in it. I began to force. I had to go up the hills in first, but coming down I’d let her go, with just the motor holding her. It was rough, but the clock said 20, which was pretty good. Well, you take a chance on a road like that, you’re headed for a fall. All of a sudden there was a crash and a jerk, and we stopped. I pedaled the throttle. The motor was dead. I pulled the starter, and she went. We had just hit a rock, and stalled. But after that I had to go slower.
Up to then I was still sweating from the air and the work. So was she. Then we topped a rise and it was like we had driven into an icebox. She shivered and buttoned her dress. I had just about decided I would have to stop and put on my coat when we drove into it. No sheet of water, nothing like that. It just started to rain, but it was driving in on her side, and I pulled up. I put on my coat, then made her get out and lifted up the seat to get the side curtains. I felt around in there with my hand. There wasn’t a wrench, a jack, or tool of any kind, and not a piece of a side curtain.
“Nice garage you picked.”
In Mexico you even have to have a lock on your gasoline tank. It was a wonder they hadn’t even stripped her of the lights.
We got in and started off. By now it was raining hard, and most of it coming in on her. While I was hunting for curtains she had dug out a couple of rebozos and wrapped them around her, but even that woven stuff stuck to her like she had just come out of a swimming pool. “Here. You better take my coat.”
“No, gracias.”
It seemed funny, in the middle of all that, to hear that soft voice, those Indian manners.
The dust had turned to grease, and off to the right, down near the sea, you could hear the rumble of thunder, how far off you couldn’t tell, with the car making all that noise. I wrestled her along. Every tilt down was a skid, every tilt up was a battle, and every level piece was a wrench, where you were lifting her out of holes she went in, up to her axles. We were sliding around a knob with the hill hanging over us on one side, and dropping under us on the other, so deep you couldn’t see the bottom. The drop was on my side, and I had my eyes glued to the road, crawling three feet at a time, because if we took a skid there it was the end. There was a chock overhead, all the top braces strained, and something went bouncing down the gully the size of a five-gallon jug. I was on the brake before it hit the ground, and after a long time I heard her breathe. The engine was still running and I went on. It must have been a minute before I figured out what that was. The rain had loosened a rock above us, and it came down. But instead of coming through and killing us, it had hit the end of the mat roll and glanced off.
It cut the fabric, though, and as soon as we rounded the knob that was the end of the top. The wind got under it, and it ripped and the rain poured down on me. It was coming from my side now. Then the mats began to roll, and there came another rip, and it poured down on her.
“Very bad.”
“Not so good.”
We passed the church, and started down the hill. I had to use brake and motor to hold her, but down at the bottom it looked a little better ahead, so I lifted my foot to give her the gun. Then I stamped on the brake so hard we stalled cold. What lay ahead, in the rain, looked like a wet sand flat where I could make pretty good time. What it was was yellow water, boiling down the arroyo so fast that it hardly made a ripple. Two more feet and we would have been in, up to the radiator. I got out, went around the car and found I had a few feet clear behind. I got in, started, and backed. When I could turn around I did, and went sliding up the hill again, the way we had come. Where we were going I didn’t know. We couldn’t get to Tierra Colorado, or Acapulco, or any place we wanted to go, that was a cinch. We were cut off. And whether we could make Mamma’s hut, or any hut, was plenty doubtful. With the top flapping in ribbons, and all that water beating in, that motor was due to short any minute, and where that would leave us I hated to think.
We got to the top of the hill and started down the other side, past the church. Then I woke up. “All right, get in the church there, out of the wet. I’ll be right after you.”
“Yes, yes.”
She jumped out and ran down there. I pulled off to one side, set the brake, and fished out my knife. I was going to cut those mats loose and use some of them to blanket the motor, and some of them to protect the seat and stuff in back until I could carry it in there. But the main thing I thought about was the car. If that didn’t go, we were sunk. While I was still trying to get the knife open with my wet fingernail she was back. “Is close.”
“What was that?”
“The church, is close. Is lock. Now we go on, yes. We go back to Mamma.”