Racing With the Sun
(Paranoia on the back alleys and back roads of Mexico)

by Turk Pipkin

(I'm a huge supporter of travel in Mexico - if you take the proper precautions. But there, as back at home, things can go wrong, both physically and emotionally. And the story goes like this:)

It's been a bad day in Mexico. Late at night, I'm shivering in a cold hotel room while washing down a dinner of stale fig newtons with a jug of cheap Mexican brandy. There’s not even a glass. I’m just chugging straight out of the bottle. But things could be worse.

Ten hours ago I was hopelessly lost while searching for a furniture factory in the unmapped back alleys of Guadalajara, Mexico. Then like the total gringo fool that I am, I stopped to ask for directions. One minute later I was being led into a half-darkened building by a man who swore I’d find the most beautiful furniture in all of Mexico.

Suddenly the door closed behind me, blocking out the daylight. Then light came on; the room was empty, I mean really empty. I turned around and found four men standing just inside the door. One of them that I hadn't seen before had tattoos on his ears.

“Order your furniture here,” he told in me in Spanish. “Then make a deposit before you leave.”

To tell you the truth, I almost made a deposit in my pants. Instead I started stuttering in my best Spanglish-Italian-sign language that I’d order a whole freaking house full of furniture as soon as I got my money from the truck.

The funny thing was, the four of them looked as scared as I felt. They didn’t get out of bed planning to roll a big gringo in a fancy pick-up. He just sort of fell into their laps. Now they had to decide.

Still babbling a mile a minute, I started for the door. And no one stopped me. The hot Mexican sun never felt so good.

“That’s enough bargain hunting for one day,” I thought as I roared away with the definite sensation of a bad breakfast rising up from my stomach.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of Mexico and Mexicans alike. I drive all over the country and don't have any doubts that I'm a whole lot safer than I would be on the east side of Ft. Worth or in downtown L.A. on a Saturday night.

But when things go wrong in Mexico, they tend to go seriously wrong. The trick, I've found, is to watch for the warning signs that your luck has run out. After weeks of gleaming white beaches and sunshine without end, I knew the night before that I'd overstayed my welcome when I foolishly stopped at a notorious gringo hangout in Manzanillo.

Trying to ignore the room full of discount octogenarian snow-birds, I buried my head in a rewrite of a long-problematic novel in which things go very badly wrong in Mexico. But less than a margarita later, I was suddenly assailed by a palsied old gringo from the next table who stood up and shrieked that I was a "cock-sucker and a faker.” Whether he thought I was pretending to write or pretending to like the rubbery, overcooked shrimp, he didn't say.

"Time to get the fuck out of Dodge," I told myself, reaching into my briefcase to find a roadmap and the shortest route home.

Now, less than a day later, I was pushing the accelerator through the floor wondering why I'd been so damned determined to give moral temptation to a bunch of workers who were wondering how to keep their families fed for another week.

An hour down the road, I had a cold reminder that there’s a major league drug war going on when I was flagged down at a remote drug inspection point. Thanks to Mexico's recent switch from supposedly corrupt special drug agents to supposedly uncorruptible Army enforcement, I was suddenly staring down the business end of four AK-47’s held by pimple-faced recruits with body armor and nervous trigger-fingers. Two of them were hiding behind sand bag bunkers, peaking out in case some seriously lost Columbian drug lord decided to open fire on them.

I was truly tempted to get out of the truck and ask them how they felt about sweating off five pounds a day in the burning Mexican sun just so the American public could have a scapegoat in the long-lost war on drugs. Instead I told them I was a tourist and a good friend of both Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro (might as well cover all my bases). They let me pass.

Things got worse before they got better. Actually I’m still waiting for them to get better. An hour further on, I inadvertently cruised through a small town at twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, only to glance to one side where yet another man in a bullet proof jacket was slipping off his sportcoat. As he bent over to climb into a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Kevlar vest rose up to reveal an arsenal of weapons strapped to his waist. Without a doubt this was one of those supposedly corrupt special drug agents.

I slowed down, tried to smile as I waved, but my big red truck called to him like a flag that said, "big-time dope dealer."

Five minutes later and five miles from town, I glanced up and saw not one, but two brand new Jeep Grand Cherokees growing in my rear view mirror at an alarming rate. Both were going, I quickly realized, at least a hundred miles an hour. I signaled for them to pass. As if their two cars were joined as one, they swung into the other lane, slowed a bit and drew even with me. There were five agents in each car. The ones in the back seats all had shotguns, wedged upright between their knees. As they p;assed, they stared at me, and then at my pick-up, trying to figure out who I was or what the hell I was doing in the middle of nowhere. At the same time, I was trying to think what I’d say to them when they dragged me out on the asphalt

“Kevlar vests? Cool! I just had a hernia operation and the doctor put kevlar in my groin, so don't try to shoot me in the nuts cause I'm bullet-proof!”

And then they drove on.

Hours behind schedule, but determined to meet my friend at his hotel in the mountains, I passed up beautiful Zacatecas and my favorite hotel in Mexico - the Quinta Real which is built in a three hundred year old stone bull ring. Two hundred bucks is a lot for a room though, and I pushed on. An hour later, engulfed in darkness, I remembered that I was on an expense account that would have paid the whole tab.

Breaking the rest of my Mexico safety rules, I continued on – driving at night, alone, with no one knowing my destination. Three long hours dragged by as I made for the mountains. Paranoia began to set in. Every car in my rear-view mirror was a bandito; every coyote in my headlights a Cucabara haunting my night.

At last I turned onto the cobblestone highway that would lead me to my destination, the 8,000 foot high ghost town of Real de Catorce. There was no flagman at the entrance to the mile-and-a-half long mining tunnel that provides the only way into the town, so I proceeded with caution, expecting every inch of the way to meet another car head-on.

Coming out of the tunnel under the incredible star-lit sky of Catorce, I made my way through darkened streets to my pal's hotel where the night watchman told me that Humberto had gone down the mountain for the night. The restaurant was closed, and so were all the others in town. I walked back out into the night, and found the only open bar where five drunk Mexican hippies were watching an unfathomably stupid talk show.

Given a key to a hotel room by the watchman, I trudged up three flights of steps, not even very happy to be alive, but damn sure delighted to see a bed, a sink and a candle on the wall. Swinging open the doors to the ancient wrought iron balcony, I stepped out beneath the stars and waited for one to fall. It did not take long. Then I sat down with my bottle of brandy and started to get drunk. That didn't take much longer.

The night air is cold through my window. Far away a dog is barking, answered in brief but enthusiastic spurts by the howling chorus of a dozen coyotes. From beneath my window, I hear the clattering hooves of wild donkeys running like phantoms through the streets, chasing each other and anyone else that gets in their way. To me they seem like the spirits of long-dead miners, set loose in the black night to roam decaying streets they dreamed would one day be paved with gold.

I remember that the wooden floor of the town's ancient cathedral is comprised entirely of the coffin lids of those miners. Those that worship today literally trod upon the sarcophagi of the dead. The bells of the ancient cathedral begin to chime: twelve times -– midnight – the end of a day in which I broke all the rules and lived to tell about it.