Chapter 7: Theft in San Agustin

During this time of the year, there are a lot of fairs around the county. So occasionally there are few people around the pueblo. This night, San Ag was pretty much empty. Kike and I are laying there, each in our own bed, relaxing, watching TV. We are watching black and white comedy shows that borders on funny, but is securely in Not Funny with no visa and no passport, staring across the river into the promised land of Funny. I should read, I should write, I should go swim in the filth canal, anything to get away from this passive destruction of my brain.
Outside I hear sounds of a few kids playing. It gets a lot louder as apparently they come running down the hill, passing our window that faces the street, playing some loud game. We hear “get them! get them!” as they run past. The noise seems to grow and grow as if more and more people are playing. This is maybe like 10:30 or 11:00 at night.
“What is going on?”
“Who knows… crazy country folk.” Bam! Like a loud balloon popping.
“Ay, buey.”
“What was that?” I am thinking gunshot but I don’t want to say it in case just saying it might make it be true. Kike slides into his wheelchair, still in a relaxed position tipped back against his bed. He finally props himself up and opens the door and we go out to the balcony that overlooks the valley. We move close to the edge to see above us to see that there are a lot of people coming down off the hill. I didn’t even think that many people were around.
Since most of the people in that town are fair or tianges vendors of miscellaneous goods, almost everyone has a truck with only a front bench in the cab, a big bed in back surrounded by a custom frame that stretches up much higher than the truck is long, and usually a few kids hanging off the back. About 15 of these are coming down the hill, except that they have to go about 2 kilometers out of the way and back around because the road that goes all the way up the hill isn’t connected to our little dirt road that runs just a short ways past our place. Everyone has a flashlight and most people have sticks or canes. A lot of old people congregate just below where we are looking down from, wrapped up in blankets and coats. People are everywhere in the empty corn fields below, flashlights and all. Obviously some people went to bring the other people, because more and more trucks arrive. Most start plowing through the fields like useless tractors. There are people everywhere. They have broken into and are searching the unfinished house that sits down in the middle of the fields, a house that was started years ago and stopped once the owner realized there was no practical way to get electricity to the house, the lines running completely in the wrong directions. They are also above us, searching the canal of filth. More trucks arrive, each carrying like ten people in the back all with high powered flashlights. Kike looks at me and I just smile nervously.
“Let’s go down there.” I cringe but he is enthusiastic to find out what is going on.
So we go down. There are, as I said, like a dozen old people sitting on the short wall that lies below our place. They are all wrapped up talking among themselves mostly in Mazahua.
“What’s going on?” Kike asks.
“Three kids robbed the church above. They ran down the hill and disappeared. Who knows where they are?”
“What did they steal?” I am not talking at all, just looking nervous and smiling and trying not to get in anyone’s way. This is clearly a moment that the herd instinct has taken over and I am not about to get run over in the stampede.
No one answers the question. He turns to me: “probably some forks and knives and offering plates.” He laughs and I look at him and bob my head as if I am laughing but make no sound in hopes that no one will notice me. They go back to speaking in Mazahua, not ignoring us but having nothing else really to say to us; just smiling and search the fields down in the valley with their eyes. The valley is interesting because with the exception of the one unfinished house it is completely corn. There is a small river running through it, although difficult to see, and at one point to the left there is a small plateau that has been made basically by erosion. It doesn’t look natural, but it does give the otherwise plane valley some character. Oh, and then more corn. Right now there is no corn, but normally it is completely covered. Every piece of the terrain is divided into plots, all full of corn. Normally. But it has all been harvested in early Winter and has yet to start growing again. As soon as you get out of the valley up onto the hill, the houses start. As soon as you reach the first hill, just on the hill, you turn around and already feel like you are looking down onto the valley from way up above. We are like the fourth house up. It really feels like the fields are far below. Each step you take upwards you really feel like you cannot possibly get higher. Even at just the first house. The valley is like a huge oval, stretching out left to right, with hill on three sides and the highway the border for the fourth side. Like a huge oval with one long side cut thin. You can see the entire stretch of planting fields from where we stand. At least during the day you can. We can just see the outline of lights from the houses that border it.
This is not what I am thinking about. This is what I am thinking about: what on Earth are they going to do with the kids if or when they catch them? I imagine that they aren’t going to do anything too drastic because they stole from the church, so they probably will just yell at them and then forgive them and send them on their way telling them to come to service on Sunday at 1:00 AM or whatever ungodly hour they usually start the service, keeping us awake until the wee hours of the morning. Every Sunday I go to sleep to the sounds of a guitar, drums, and the dreaded keyboard that overpowers them all, stuck on the “accordion” setting.
I can stand it no longer.
“What in God’s green Earth are they going to do with the kids if they catch them?” Is what I am repeating over and over in my head, translating and memorizing it so it will come out perfect once I decide to vocalize my question.
“What are going to do kids if catch them?” is what I say. Kike understands and repeats it to them but in words they can understand. They smile and chuckle to themselves. Kike says something I don’t catch, and they respond with more things I don’t get.
The next thing I understand is one old man who smiles and says, “there was those Pepsi truck drivers who stole money from that lady who lives above the middle school. That was about ten years ago. They burned them alive.”
Another woman pipes in. “And those kids who had stolen from the store, that store about half way up. I think they scalped them.” Her words were “took the skin off their heads” but I figured maybe there isn’t a direct word for “scalped” in Spanish.
Good God. Kike laughs nervously. “No maaaanches.” I look at him, and he looks at me and squirms in his chair.
A couple of kids run up, coming from the left. One is bleeding from his forehead and they all look serious.
Kike motions with his head towards Las Rosas, and we excuse ourselves and go back inside.
Safely inside, I finally speak again. “No way. I heard that right?”
“Yep,” and then repeated what they had said, just incase I hadn’t really got it. That is one thing he is getting good at. Looking at me and affirming that I understood regardless of whether I did nor not, and then repeating it as not to patronize me but to make sure I am getting what is going on. It comes out naturally now after a lot of practice and trial and error.
We go back up to the balcony, and this time out onto the roof on one side. Now we can see down the valley and to the left and up the hill.
“Did you see that kid with the blood?”
“Yeah. That was funny. He probably just fell down and knocked his head. He wanted to look bad so he just let it bleed and ran around like that.”
“You know what we should do? The people are all down on looking for the kids. We should go up the hill and steal stuff from their houses.”
“I like the way you think.” There are probably like 400 people all over. Standing in the back of trucks, walking around doing nothing, running with flashlights, like busy dancing phantasms, across the corn milpas below.
“What is those noises we hear that sound like balloons exploding?”
“Gunshots.”
I knew it. Why did I ask?
“Yeah. Quite a few of them have guns.”
So he has been told. He also was told that it is illegal to cut down trees here. Whatever. Whatever.
“Whatever. Go get the flashlight. We’ll find these little criminals.” I run to get the flashlight from our room. I also get the pole. I actually stole the pole from a playground. It is one of those poles that you do pull ups on, or more commonly girls swing one leg around and go round and round. It was about to fall off, so I figured I’d take it to fight off the inevitable ghosts that we would encounter in our 250 year old residence (boy was I right). I scurried back looking behind me the whole way. I now had it in my head that the thieves were inside our walled Eden of Las Rosas. They had entered through the canal of filth that ran directly under the courtyard, or jumped the 8 foot walls, or more likely just come in through one of many wholes in the walls. Or had grappling hooks. In my mind they were also well armed. In my mind they think they have me surrounded, surprised, but they don’t know one crucial thing: I do know.
“Hey!”
“What?”
“Check down below in the molds room. I thought I saw something move.”
Ohh gosh. They really are here. Kike sits up there on his nice roof with one singular entrance and exit, with pieces of rebar sitting around, completely defendable, and tells me to go check below in the room with a million doors. And the flashlight batteries appear to be dying. I change course, still running at half speed, towards the ceramics molds room below. This is not the “downstairs downstairs” old general store part which you would enter and be eaten by ghosts if you entered at night (or as one friend said, “you would wake up in the morning with white hair because you have dreamt a thousand years of nightmares.”), but it is pretty scary. It makes up the fourth wall of this place, the bottom being the store and old rooms, and the other two the animal pens that are now classrooms or workrooms. It is now more scary here because I know the thieves are inside. But they won’t see me coming. I slow down so they won’t hear me coming. I am going to catch them from behind and hit them on the heads. No, that would be gross and I don’t really want to kill them, just knock them down and keep them down. Once they are there, I will yell and yell and yell and people will come running and then I will run so they won’t think I am part of the band of thieves. Or maybe I shouldn’t run because if I run they will think I am part of the band. Oh: I will yell and keep yelling and yell that I have them and that we need to haul them off to jail and not burn them alive or scalp them. Or maybe I’ll just hit them on the heads and save them being scalped. They will thank me. I speed up again as I enter the adobe building, and freeze. The first room. Of five. Actually three, but in the center room there are doorways left and right leading to small courtyards. So it’s like five rooms. The middle room is definitely the scariest. Room one, clear. Deep breathe, metal pole held high, ready for action. Middle room appears to be clear, but I cannot see into the courtyards. I dash through, ducking, and dive into the third room, slashing with my metal pipe. Scan scan scan Clear! OK, courtyard that now is to the left can be seen by Kike from above, so if anyone is there he will be able to see them and yell. And I don’t want to make a fool of myself. So just check the courtyard right, knock them all out, and back to the balcony. Go! I hurry out, turning the corner of the middle room into the courtyard to the right, and looking looking looking they are here somewhere…come out you thieves… clear!
And I’m out! Running around the courtyard and up the ramp, up to the balcony and out onto the roof where Kike is, I am breathing fast and furious and he is looking at me like I am crazy. I bob my head back and forth like I have been exercising. Nice. Nice. I sit down on the concrete roof.
“Nobody?”
“Nobody.”
“Hmmm.”
We sit in silence. I mean no one was talking. We sit there as I breathe heavily and cars drive through the corn fields and people yell here and there. Then we hear somebody shout from the top of the hill.
“They are in Dolores! Dolores! They are in Dolores!” Dolores is the small town on the other side of the hacienda, about two minutes up the road, the highway, if you were to go straight down from here to the highway and turn left. If you were to come from San Felipe, it is the fourth set of speed bumps. As you hit the hacienda on the right, you curve down to the left. It wraps back to the right and you go down, over a bridge that is over a little creek, and then you can go left into Portes Gil or right up to where we live in San Agustin. Or you go continue straight, heading down the highway. People start to yell, and all the cars turn back to the road and in minutes everyone is gone. A ghost town. Just gone. And in five minutes they are back, searching through the fields again. False alarm. Ten more minutes and we hear it again.
“Portes! Portes Gil!” That, as I said, is on the other side of the highway from us. About three times the size of our little town. Gone. Everyone. Again. Apparently everyone wants a piece of the action and no one is going to be left behind. Five minutes and they are back. Searching in the fields, the house, around Las Rosas, and wherever they feel like it. Just in front of us I see something move in the bushes below.
“Kike, what’s that?” whispering loudly. He turns the flashlight on the object below. It is an old woman squatting to go to the bathroom. She leaps up and turns to look at us. We both dive onto the floor.
“What was that? What was that?” he says, laughing, mocking me.
“Hey, I didn’t say to put the flashlight on her, I just asked what it was.” We are both trying to stifle our laughter but it is getting difficult. I could not be more embarrassed but I am just hoping the woman didn’t see us and happens to not have known or heard about the American who has been living with the wheelchair kid in the haunted house for the last few months.
I help him up and we go back and go to bed. Screw this, we are wasting our time. Nothing cool is going to happen. Minutes after turning off the light, there is a knock at the front door. The big black steel double door.
“Go get it.”
“What? Are you kidding? I am not going to the door. You go.”
“Yeah, shut up. Go get the door. I am not going to get up, pull pants on, and roll out there. Hurry up.”
“Unngg” I mumble as I pull myself up and shorts on and put feet in shoes and out door to the main door. They knock again just as I get there, and I open one door to about 15 men standing there.
Oh, what have I done. Each one is armed with something unique. One man has a cane that is not being used to help him walk. Another man has a piece of PVC pipe, a few inches in diameter. Another man has a 2 X 4 with nails through it. What have I done, indeed.
“Yes?”
“Can we come in and look? We think they might have jumped the wall.”
“I already checked.”
“Can we please come in and check?” A gruff voice that I probably should have just agreed with from the first moment.
“Uhh, yes. Come in. Wherever you want.” I go back the room, shut the door and lock it. I go to bed and pull the covers tightly up to my chin, rolling over so I am against the wall below the window. If someone throws something through the window, it’s not landing on me!

The next day there is much discussion about it among the workers. Kike is telling the stories from the night before, from the bleeding kid to the gunshots to the woman going to the bathroom, or “doing a two” as he said, word for word translation. They all said they had heard about it and were worried for us. I pretended like it had been no big deal.
Everyone had their own story:
“I was told it was six guys.”
“I was told it was nine guys, and that they are from Mexico City.”
“I was told that it was six guys that are from around here and that they are going to go get them today.”
“I was told that it was 12 guys and that they are saying that one of them is tall and light skinned.”
Nice. That’s just what I need. To be scalped.
“Just kidding.”
Jerk.

So exactly one week after that, the same thing started where people began shouting and yelling and guns going off, but in the afternoon. And farther up on the hill. We looked out, but I was too nervous to leave this time. We waited about an hour, and finally hunger forced us to leave for the nearby tienda to hunt and gather. As we leave about 40 trucks are coming down the round about road, with people shouting. We wait for them to all go by, and hike out to the small store. We get there ten minutes later, having successfully avoided riot and avoided falling in the Filth Canal. We go into the store and the old tienda woman is there.
“What is going on?” Kike asks.
“Oh, they got them.”
“They got who?”
“Those kids who robbed the church.”
Ohhhh. I cringe. But filled with intrigue.
“Where are they going?”
“Down to the other church to see what they are going to do with them.”
“What are they going to do with them?” I inquire.
“Oh, probably just burn their car, beat them up a little bit and let them go.”
“Craziness.”
“Yes, but on one side it is a good thing. About three years ago a guy came into my store. He came in and asked for a half kilo of ham. I went to get it and when I turned back around he was holding a gun. He said ‘give me all the money you have.’ For some reason I wasn’t afraid. I just said to him ‘look, you obviously don’t know where you are. Here you have three choices. You can come around and take the money, but as soon as you leave I am going to start yelling and everyone will come down the hill, and you won’t leave alive. OR you can just shoot me and everyone will hear the noise and coming running and you won’t leave alive. OR you can just turn and leave now and I won’t say anything.’ He stood there and looked at me for a minute, grabbed the ham and ran out.”
Extreme awe filled pause.
“Wow.”
Needless to say we didn’t purchase ham but we did purchase enough chips and cookies to last us the evening, and paid for every last cent.