Chapter 11: The Dog

Adalid arrives one Saturday morning, maybe the next weekend after getting home. We chat in my room while Kike takes a shower. Meanwhile, about two miles down the road, between the fourth and third set of speed bumps, counting from San Felipe to the turn off to Las Rosas, a couple of mangy dogs have been up since the first light, wandering around looking how they will spend the day, avoiding as many people as possible.
Kike comes back into the room and shakes his wet head. He holds out his hands and drops his head back, the universal sign for feeling good. He turns his wheelchair to pick up a shirt out of the stove cupboard, his scar on his back like a pegboard with dots of scar tissue alternating sides, back and forth. I have this urge to poke what looks like screws. I touch Adalid’s leg instead, pulling it towards mine as I sit next to her.
I am not sweating as we leave, but I know I will be before we get to the road. I choose to not wear a hat, just pulling the hood of my zippered sweatshirt, left unzippered, up over my head. It’s not really that warm, but it will be soon with the sun cooking me inside my sweatshirt. Hey, being warm is better than burnt.
This is still part of the year when the corn has not yet grown. When my time here began, the corn was tall, so tall people were afraid to walk home at night. They said thieves could easily hide and attack them as they walked home. I didn’t change my routine at all, and never had any problems. But I certainly carried two big rocks at all times. But right now, the corn is all gone and it is just sunny and nice. I know that soon the winds will start and walking away or back to Las Rosas will mean avoiding getting my teeth filled with dirt and dust. So for now, I just enjoy the nice view the absence of the cornstalks provides, and the nice cool breeze that drifts across the fields.
I support Kike’s chair as he leans back on two wheels, heading down the hill, navigating the large rocks on the steep part. He is the motor, the breaks, and the steering wheel; I am just the training wheels. We get a standard wave from the father and grandmother of the family that lives below Las Rosas, as she murmurs something in Mazahua. The little daughter smiles her adorable smile and turns away, shy. “Cjimi” we murmur back, the assumed response to whatever she said.
Adalid asks if she can push his chair as we get off the semi paved part and onto the unpaved. The day seems to be so pleasant, almost moving in slow motion, as we have nothing to do, no timeline, just out to have fun. Dealing with the hassle of the wheelchair off and on the bus or taxi seems to be less of a problem today when there is no rush. We can take all the time we need. Adalid always giggles when she pushes his chair. He makes sudden moves and turns and she gives little screams and says “Kike!” the first syllable punctuated and the second falling, when anything goes slightly wrong. The weekend always has some family out in the field, plowing. It almost looks like fun: there is usually a couple meals, people chatting and laughing, bulls or horses pulling a flat board that someone stands on and surfs across the tilled ground. Or they have a plow, which looks like much less fun. They are usually talking to the animals, softly in Mazahua.
Out there somewhere between the third and fourth sets of speed bumps, the small pack of feral dogs are rolling in the dirt, just off the highway. They bark at the cars speeding past, nip at each other, and gnaw on anything that’s not a rock. They sniff at everything, licking up anything that is or was made of organic material. One limps, having been hit by a car. This does not stop him from running out in front of cars; it just makes him a little slower. He has been limping for at least a year probably, the bone well healed but refusing to test it. Some oxen graze nearby, but they pay no attention. Oxen, unlike cars, don’t swerve or slow down for dogs. They just give swift kicks and throw their heads. They are no fun to play with. One dog doesn’t chase cars, but due to bad water and mal nutrition as a pup, has very unrefined instincts and poor response time. His situation is not unique. This can be due to inbreeding, pollution, malnutrition, physical mistreatment, or just plain bad luck.
As we hit the small uphill about 30 meters in front of the entrance to the main highway, I give Kike a running start and we hit the rocky stretch rattling. We start left landing in a flat part, swerve right popping over the small bump that shows where the water runs across the road during the rainy season, and onto a softer part of the road near where the corn field starts. He flips his chair backwards and I pull him up onto the pavement of the highway, checking both ways. Cars are easy to fairly easy to see coming down and around the hacienda, but coming the other way immediately make their way around the bend coming into view. You can hear them before you see them. But sometimes they come quite quickly. You always have to stay on the very edge, ready to get off the pavement. Kike lets go of his wheels, heading downhill towards the one lane bridge. He yells “I’m the king of pavement!” as he flies ahead of us. I start sprinting to catch him, looking back to see Adalid smiling. I am completely wasting my time trying to catch him, so I stop and turn around. I wait for her to catch up, and I take her hand and look at her eyes. “What’s your dream?” I ask. “To be here with you” she says. “What’s yours?” “To be here with you. And Kike.” I smile and she smiles. “I don’t like it when you aren’t here, because when I have to talk to you only by phone, I can’t explain things with my hands, or see what your face wants to tell me, or pinch you if you laugh at me.”
Of course that wasn’t ever really my dream until that exact moment. I guess maybe I should have clarified that it wasn’t exactly my dream, I would have liked for it to be. How could I have dreamed that? Not even in sleeping dreams can your mind invent things that you can’t imagine. And you hardly would ever think of things that you actually sleep-dream. I don’t even pretend in real life, but in my dreams I have played six times for the Sonics. With-out-question best dream. Usually I am on the bench, and the Sonics are getting drilled. I am usually watching nervously, tapping my foot or something. Nate McMillan looks down at me and throws his hand up which is the sign that he is angry at someone so I go in so that he can yell at whoever it is. I come and make like play after play on the defensive end, and dish the ball to Ray Allen who drains three after three. That was pretty much the script for three of them. One of them I am just on the bench, happy to be there. One I came in and just drill a three and then woke up. The most recent one, the Dream Sonics are still coached by Nate, even though in real life they aren’t any more, but he gets me in the game early on. I can’t remember who I am guarding, but I block his shot or strip him of the ball like ten consecutive trips down the floor. Maybe it’s Dwayne Wade. And I start getting some courage, and begin to talk a little trash which I know is dangerous because he could light me up at any moment. The dream game goes pretty fast, and I get taken out before half time and then wake up in the middle of a TV timeout. Man I hate those TV timeouts.
We catch up to Kike. The road right before the bridge heads up to Portes Hill. It is a large entrance, wide enough so that one truck could be waiting to go right, one could be next to it waiting to go left, and one could be entering from either direction as well. We stand right in the middle, so that if four trucks happened to show up leaving and entering, they would pass us on either side, two and two. This allows us to catch taxis coming from any direction. One arrives shortly, coming from the direction we came from.
Getting in a taxi is relatively easy from the wheelchair. Kike pushes it up to the door, and I hold it as he puts his head against the window, puts a hand on the door and another on the seat. He prefers the back, but takes any seat on the outside. If people are already inside, they usually have to rearrange themselves so that he can hop in. He launches himself into the car, usually leaving a decent amount of hair gel on the window. I grab the chair, pull off his backpack and hand it to him, pull the seat cover off, and pull up on the seat which allows the chair to collapse making it easy enough to throw in any trunk. If the trunk already has stuff, we usually pop the wheels off, making it even more compact. I usually get dirty, shirt pants and hands, but it is nothing compared to how dirty he gets just using it, so I learn not to mind or complain. If I do complain, he shows me his filthy hands and lines along the sides of his pants where the wheels rub. We can both pack into the front seat of any Ford Acura or other bucket seated car (standard Mexican “collective” taxis won’t leave unless there are at least three people in back, and at least two crunched into the front seat next to him). But Adalid is with us so we just all sit in the back.
Kike is chatting with the driver as we pull onto the highway, towards the hacienda and Dolores, the home of the fourth set of speed bumps. Another taxi quickly catches up behind us, and another pulls out in front as we get over the first of three speed bumps that makes up the fourth set. The taxi in front is an old beater – maybe a Chevy or an old Buick. A boat at best. Those were outlawed the second year I was down here. Or maybe they just went out of fashion. They are usually stick shift, but the stick is on the steering wheel like an automatic would be. They can fit four in back, four in the front, and I have seen two in the trunk before. Twice before. They also usually sway down the road. Making broad turns and heaving around corners. And the large front windows are absolutely always cracked.
We get over the third bump and we are off to the races with the other two taxis. There is a left corner, and then a little hill where you can see up to the left a quarter mile if cars are coming or not. But you can’t see around that corner so you go to count to like four before passing to make sure no hidden car is down in that gulley, the blind spot. We pull out to pass the car anyway, and speed past it. Sure enough, there is a car in the gulley but coming fairly slow, so we have plenty of time.
At that moment, the dog with slow wits decided it would be good to cross the road. It just felt that at that moment it needed to get across. And with our car moving quite smoothly, it watched us intently, hypnotizing, as it hustled across our lane. Its slow instincts caused it not to hear or see the other car coming in the other lane, which heaved right trying to avoid it, but wasn’t going to end up in the ditch to save the poor thing. As the dog watched us coming at him, the gramma car coming towards us smacked it in the head, making contact with its front right fender directly into the skull of the slow creature. The dog was lifted off the ground, and spun with such force that even though its body spun back into the side of the car that hit it, it hit the ground and spun twice more on the concrete. Adalid gave a screech and grabbed my arm. Kike and I both pulled our heads back grimacing. No internal parts came out (of the dog or the car), thankfully, but it was an unquestionably fatal hit.
“Do you think it’s ok?” Adalid asked, in a way that suggested not naivety but compassion. Kike and I smiled almost mockingly, nodding our heads.
And then forgot all about it.