Osprey
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3694
Registered: 5-23-2004
Location: Baja Ca. Sur
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Good Baja Cop/Bad Baja Cop
Maybe I can balance Mike's bad cop story with one about a good cop.
Fernando was killed by a calf. Later, some would argue it was two calves. The truth was that Fernando was killed by two calves and his cousin Juan.
The rancher, Fernando, asked his cousin Juan to help him take some small cows to market. The rusty one-ton stake-bed truck was getting old but had
been fairly reliable on the ranch for many years. When the first two cows were loaded, pushed to the front of the bed, it looked as though there was
room for at least one more, maybe two and a couple of bales of hay.
The two men had made the same trip dozens of times, with few mishaps, delivering Fernando?s cows or calves from his ranch near San Bruno to the
market in La Paz. The rancher was getting old. Fernando was a fit but grizzly 61 years of age while his cousin Juan was only 48.
Before this asphalt ribbon of a road was pressed into the sand and rocks of the trail over the mountains, a trip to market would be slower, maybe
safer. Ranchers would lead the animals down the dusty trace to be sold in Ciudad Insurgentes, walk or ride their horses or burros back the way they
came. The caravan would be a loose chain of people, horses, cows, spread out in a thin line in the dust of the highlands. This new method put all
the creatures together, compressed them into a smaller unit, increased their communal mass -- all inside the rusty truck. Now, moving, all together in
this fragile package, they had become subjects of the vagaries of imbalance and inertia that can, at times, have killing effect.
The left front tire threw most of its tread which slapped noisily against the wooden stakes that held the cows in the truckbed. The big, black piece
of rubber spooked the calves. The sudden imbalance twisted the truck to the left, sent it spinning, side, top, side, bottom, side, down the steep
embankment. The second rotation of this unlucky unit tossed the two men in the cab together; the top of Juan?s head smashed into Fernando?s lower
jaw; the driver?s head was smashed against the door frame, the rocks and the cactus. The cows were ejected, squashed beneath the truck, one on the
first rollover, the other three on the next. No slow-motion. Everything happened in real time; tire blew, truck careened, rolled over and over.
Maybe six seconds, start to finish.
Then the silence made time stand still. Smell of gas and oil, dust. Finally, the buzz of bees played a quiet white noise behind the silence of the
desert. Then the strident scream of what sounded like a woman in pain. Two women being tortured? The cows began to regain consciousness, began to
cry out for their Mamas to let them know just how badly they were hurt, began to thrash about spraying blood, urine, cow chit.
Slowly a distant drone began to build. The sound of a car coming up the mountain from Loreto; ebb and flow of engine sound, rubber grinding on the
curves as the car and the sound wound through the creases and canyons. The car, a rental full of gringo tourists from Loreto, was just ahead of
Charco?s Dodge police truck. The vehicles reached the accident scene within a minute of each other.
The tourists were off the road, sliding down to the truck when Charco pulled his pickup to the shoulder, honked the horn, got out to call them back
up to the roadside. This was police business.
Charco motioned Cam to stay with the truck while the big cop slipped and jumped and skidded down the sandy slope to the truck. He found that one man
was dead, the other badly injured and bleeding from a wound on his temple. The big cop crawled and scrambled back up to the truck, sat on the edge of
truck seat, used both radios to call for help. The student surmised that one either didn?t work or they were out of range, the answer on the other
was not good news for the injured man.
The cop indicated that Cam should go back down to the wreck of the truck with him, help him with the injured man. The student?s mind was not yet
focused on the whole scene when he asked himself ?how did so many flies find this place so fast?? The air was alive with them already; they burst
upward in clouds from the widespread gore as he crashed down the slope. The whole desert seemed redolent of the coppery smell of blood, the acrid
mixture of the stench of things dead or dying. The ground was so steep and uneven, sandy and rocky, it was impossible to transport the man gently up
the hill. Perhaps this rough trip to safety was tearing his internal tissue, causing more bleeding.
The policeman gave Cam a clean cloth from the truck, showed him how to apply it to the serious wound in Juan?s temple. Cam would ride in the bed of
the truck with the injured man, try to staunch the flow of blood while they raced to the hospital in Ciudad Insurgentes some thirty miles southwest.
The student would later learn that the ambulance usually stationed in Loreto was in Mulege, the closest Angel Verde, emergency road service vehicle
was between Constitucion and La Paz when his cop friend used the radio. The cop made the decision to get the man to a hospital as quickly as possible
-- Loreto was closer in miles but the route back north was slow going through the mountains. It was a rail-straight highway southwest to Insurgentes;
a smoother, faster ride for all of them. There was some self-serving expediency in the decision. What the hell, why go back to Loreto -- they were
headed south anyway; south to La Paz where Charco would finally be able to get behind the wheel of Julio?s sturdy blue beast of a pickup.
The police department bathroom in Insurgentes had a filthy toilet, no sink. One of the officers pointed out the back door of the simple concrete
building at a hose lying on the ground watering some banana trees. Cam and Charco finally got a chance to wipe and scrub away the dirt, blood and
filth from their arms and hands and faces. Charco went back inside to finish his cursory report on the accident, the delivery of the injured man to
the hospital.
The report would be completed later by whoever had the dirtier job of killing and/or disposing of the animals, bringing in the body of the dead man,
having the old truck hauled into the police impound yard.
It was almost two o?clock when the two travelers were once again headed south toward La Paz. This part of the desert is a sere and vacant place
before the seasonal rains. Charco left the police radio on; the squawking, squealing irritation was somehow better than the silence sitting like a
block wall on the seat between the two men ? even if they could speak the same language what kind of conversation could they have? What easy
commonality could the student drum up? ?How bout dem Diablos??, ?What?s the community college system look like down here??, ?What firewalls do you
guys use down here for your police computers??
La Paz was alive. A dustbreathing, noisy hive of activity. Loud and raw, a place where everything seemed to be in motion. The police truck found
its way through a maze of dusty streets and alleyways to the house of the Pickup Man, Julio. He was not home. His wife allowed Charco to inspect the
truck. She was used to his visits, this being the third. He opened the hood, stepped up on the cowcatcher grill, pulled his massive frame up and
over the big engine, looked down at the heart of the beast. This was not a wimpy, low-slung muscle car, this was a thing one could respect; respect
and appreciate and fear.
This blue beast was not a vehicle, it was Charco?s preordained persona, it had been waiting for him, only him. Like Excalibre it would never be the
firebreathing marauder it was built to be, unless Charco was behind the wheel, his dog barking menacingly in the back. As he looked down upon the
sleeping giant of an engine, the cop could feel the wind ripping through the hair on his left arm, the one resting on the window frame. He could feel
the cool of the ubiquitous liter of beer between his legs, pressed up against his scrotum; a magically Mexican configuration, power and freedom all
lined up in the fleeting, all too seldom opportunity for selfish willfullness ? a few minutes of things I feel like doing right now weighed against
years of doing what I need to do, what I have to do, what they tell me to do.
The college boy was leaning on a fender in detached interest in the truck, the purchase. He did not make the connection that on the way back north,
he would be behind the wheel of the blue beast. He would be the guy whose arm rested on the window frame, whose genitals would be growing numb from
the big, cold bottle of beer. He would be the one to feel the power of unharnessed energy and the incredible fear that comes from having to play
catch-up and slow-down with the madmanherocop in the blur of a white truck racing the wind back across the mountains to Loreto.
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Fatboy
Senior Nomad
Posts: 716
Registered: 6-28-2005
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Great story!!! Thanks!! If I could only write 1/2 as good....
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Mike Humfreville
Super Nomad
Posts: 1148
Registered: 8-26-2003
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Great story!! I hold Your vocabulary in awe. More por favor
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lindsay
Nomad
Posts: 189
Registered: 9-9-2003
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Another Jewel
I echo the others' sentiments, Osprey. For this story, I could imagine all the senses that you weave into your writing. It was also eerie for me to
read because on my last trip in April we were just minutes behind a fatal accident with a Mexican family in a van rollover (posted on this board
titled Lessons from the Road). Your descriptions just brought all the rawness of that day into focus.
I hope others read your story because your contributions are a real jewel on this board. Hope that all is well in La Ribera and thanks again for your
incredible writing here.
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