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Fernando and Jerry didn’t notice when I slid off my bench and wandered off to inspect our surroundings. The trailer park sprawled over a half block of level, tree-studded land between two boulevards. Huatulco, a sleepy backwater tourist destination, didn’t have much traffic and sounded far away. Our host’s wife had taken their older son to his school for an event, and Jerry had charge of the newborn baby—a pickled-looking, week old girl sleeping in a portable cradle on the table. My heart clenched. This father toked bowl after of bowl of potent dope. What about the tiny life? Even their abode, an old travel trailer, was too small for a family of four.
Crafting in the Rain
I listened to the birds in the trees and watched a couple of hens peck around deserted picnic tables. Jerry’s homestead lay near one of the streets and I noticed few people on the sidewalk, but one group caught my attention. A mother hurried several children past the park, around the next corner and out of sight. It wouldn’t have been noteworthy, but on their tails came an aroma lacing the salty air I found both familiar and alarming.
“Do you smell that?” I asked the men.
“Mota,” replied Fernando and gestured an offering with the pipe.
“Malathion!” I exclaimed in English.
“No, thanks. I mean that chemical smell. What is it?” I looked over my shoulder toward the street again. A dense fog-like cloud enveloped the street, billowing toward us, and my tongue salivated with a greasy taste. What was it? Some sick Halloween joke?
Jerry looked blank for a beat as the drone of a plane approached us, “Get in your bus. Close the windows and cover your faces!” He grabbed the baby and bolted to the door of his trailer. “Don’t come out for at least forty-five minutes,” he shouted and slammed the door.
swallowingthecamel.me
The bug bomb slithered closer. Fernando appeared confused. He hadn’t understood the man’s directive delivered in English and didn’t realize that we were being fumigated. I grabbed Parsley by the scruff of her neck and pushed her into the combi, pulling Fernando in after me, “Veneno, poison!” I grabbed some towels, dampened them with bottled water and wrapped our heads.
The closed bus heated up into a stagnant swamp of sweat and dog breath. I feared that Parsley would die. Her eyes looked dull; she panted heavily and slobbered all over the towel I held on her snout.
syfy.com
An hour and a half later, the air cleared and the day returned to its warm placidity. We clambered out of the bus. The poison left a slick over everything it touched. Dead insects littered the table and ground. I saw a dead bird and I wanted to leave. Fernando wanted another toke, and knocked on Jerry’s door, but the American refused to answer. “Thanks for the tokes—we’re outta here.”
Youtube.com
What kind of town poisoned its air and citizens? A town that hosted Club Med—that’s what kind.
Club Med Pinterest
We wound into Santa Maria de Huatulco, found the trailer park and our new friend. Fernando wanted to take Jerry up on his offer of an overnight, although I wasn’t so keen on the idea. I hankered for a hot shower in a hotel in Puerto Escondido.
The tops popped off the Coronas and the three of us settled around the oilcloth covered picnic table, crowded with ashtrays, baby bottles, dishes, packaged food, books and magazines. In the open space between the trailers, vans, campers, even a boat on a trailer, the pipe appeared. My compatriot lit the bowl.
Fernando reached for the pipe before our host finished his toke, a clue as to his ‘overnight’ motivation. When my turn finally came around, the pot tasted sticky with resin and hit me quickly. I passed after a couple hits. Weed in Mexico tasted fresh, not like the harsh, dried up stuff I’d pretty much given up in the ’70s. Marijuana never was my drug of choice. I didn’t like the feeling of separation and paranoia when I smoked. I wasn’t opposed to a little recreational use, but I preferred the sociability of beer and margaritas, and by the 1990s, I’d moved out of my youthful “hippie” phase, although some might think living in a VW bus and traveling around foreign countries smacks of the freewheeling hippie caravans of the ’60s. 
I had plenty of time to see Mexico once Fernando became my chauffeur. That morning he took pride in showing me his country, stopping as often as I wanted, allowing me to photograph anything that caught my eye. While he drove, he talked. And talked. And talked. Notes in my dictionary, never far from my reach, tell me I looked up words having to do with Mexico’s history, politics and social order.
We landed on a large deserted bowl-like bay surrounded by dark green forested mountains. We drove right out onto the sand and set up camp, the only folks there on a late Wednesday morning. The wild, empty beach sloped down to the frothing surf— not your average tourist beach with gentle waves, but crashing, thunderous surf colliding with shore.
“So we’ll get out of here in the morning and go to Huatulco. Club Med. Without the Mexicans,” he said. “Hand me my book, would ya. It’s on top of the cabinet.”
I felt a little prick of hot tears at the corners of my eyes. For just a moment I missed my houseboat and my funky Schoonmaker Building office, my eclectic bunch of bookkeeping and tax clients, my family, and yes, even the almost ten years I’d shared with Sam—but that had ended when he signed up as a contractor with the DEA and left to chase drug shipments through Belize and the jungles of Guatemala. He left me behind and I’d learned to live just fine without him, thank you very much. And now I was on my own quest. But what was I looking for?
Sam craned around to watch the woman lighting a small fire of twigs. She placed a large round comal over it, propped on cinder blocks and dumped the cheap vegetable oil I’d seen street vendors using across the surface. She tossed several gleaming fish on, added the sweet green onions and left the food to cook while she scooped a handful of masa out of a blue napkin-covered bucket. She patted out fresh tortillas, cooking them around the edges of the comal then stacked them in a dingy tortilla towel to stay warm. When the fish was cooked, she piled it and the onions on a platter, added a bowl of red salsa and brought the meal out to us.
“This is Zipolite?” I looked around. A stretch of blinding white beach sloped to the surf. A few scrubby palms dotted the top of the beach and a series of hovels and animal enclosures, mostly overgrown with trumpet flower and bougainvillea vines, were strung out on either side of the road. The dense jungle crowded up against the sand. I didn’t see any restaurants. My stomach growled.
The sun shone directly overhead, filtering through the palms that faintly clacked in a freshening afternoon breeze. I lounged in my folding sling chair reading a novel, Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley—it was on the bestseller list in October 1991 and Sanborns, where I shopped in Mexico City, carried all the bestsellers—but I couldn’t concentrate. 
The orange combi remained parked at its campsite, and I had that sinking feeling in my solar plexus. Fernando was gone and I was going to be stuck with Sam forever. At least I could buy books.
Saints and Skeletons 