Captains Outrageous

10

It was a short rough trip in high seas but we finally edged alongside the dock and got off to the sound of one woman praying.

The two guys with the blankets got off too and walked alongside us. They hadn’t even noticed the pitch of the sea. You would have thought they had been on a rocking horse. The price for their goods, which was in American dollars, continued to drop dramatically as we walked.

Still, no bites from us or anybody. Their wares were damn near free by the time we stepped off the dock onto land. They went away with their stuff, dissolved into the crowd as if they had never been.

Tough way to make a buck.

It felt funny standing on solid land after being at sea for a couple of days. Funny, but good.

Leonard and I walked along looking at people and sights like the tourists we were. We stopped in a cantina and had some food. When we got up to leave, I saw the woman from the boat who had lost her hat. She had her dark hair tied back and was tall and quite lovely in white shorts and a blue halter top, had one of those Audrey Hepburn necks.

On the way out I put on my best smile as we walked by her table, said, “I saw what happened to your hat.”

A string of hair had fallen out of her ’do and across her forehead. She looked up at me with dark sensitive eyes, said in a voice that even in Brooklyn would make you wince, “No shit. Who didn’t?”

Guess she wasn’t looking for love.

We went out and along the boardwalk by the sea. I had sort of hoped, foolishly, of course, that Leonard would let it slide.

“Well sir,” he said, “it’s good to see you haven’t lost your touch with women.”

Playa del Carmen is a fishing village on its way to becoming a resort spot, a kind of Mayan Riviera, but not quite. Underneath it all, behind and betwixt the new hotels, is still the small Mexican fishing village that it has always been.

We did the Tulum tour. Went out there by bus. It was about an hour from Playa del Carmen. There was lots of scrubby land and little shacks with tin roofs along the way. All I could think was there wasn’t enough shade. It wasn’t like where I came from, East Texas, wooded and wet. It was like South or West Texas. Bleak. Why had this land become populated? Had someone actually thought: Hell, ain’t this great. Let’s just stop here. To me, it looked like the spot where the devil went to shit.

Far as I’m concerned, any place you can see unobstructed by trees farther than you can throw a rock makes me nervous.

Maybe that was it. It had had trees, then some industrious types had come along, cut down the trees, killed the wildlife, fucked what they couldn’t kill, and stayed because they were too tired to do anything else. Or a wheel came off a cart or something.

We stopped at a couple of places where you could buy straw sombreros and the rare artwork of the area: little carved trinkets that said MEXICO on them. They were turned out in droves for all of Mexico and shipped across country by truck, but when you talked to anyone there, they were, to hear them tell it, the only ones who had these little items and they had of course all been made by hand, their very own hands. Since two or three feet away was another vendor with the same stuff, you had to wonder if they actually thought anyone really believed this.

They had some pretty neat chess sets carved out of obsidian, and I looked at those but didn’t buy. I didn’t need it and didn’t want to carry it. Leonard bought a sombrero. It had a big wide band that read: MEXICO. He insisted on wearing it, even on the bus. He looked like an idiot.

Tulum was neat. It was built by the Mayans on a cliff overlooking the Caribbean. It was a fortress city, and you could certainly see how it served its purpose. A mountain goat would have needed grappling equipment just to start up the side of the cliff next to the sea. Before time took its toll, the city must have been quite snug with this barrier at its back and the great buildings of solid stones all around to protect it.

There was a temple called El Castillo that had two columns depicting serpents, and a real serpent, a large lizard that looked as if he might do close-ups for dinosaur movies, was crouched on the stone floor next to one of the columns. He looked at us in that slow lizard way, seemed to say, Hey Mack, you’re invading my home.

Or maybe, like us, he was just a tourist and thought we were one of the sights.

We spent a couple hours there looking at the ruins, thinking about how the people there must have lived, then we took the bus back.

We still had a couple hours till four-thirty, so we went walking, looking at the sights, such as they were. Leonard needed to go to the local post office to buy a card and stamp so he could mail a little note to John. It was a real chore just getting one of the two workers there, a man and a woman, to come to the desk. They had a private conversation going and appeared in no hurry to stop it. They turned and looked at us like we were intruding, and went on with their conversation.

“How do you say, Hey dickhead, in Spanish?” Leonard asked me.

Finally the guy came over. Leonard made a few gestures, indicating what he wanted. The worker spoke to him in English, grinning as he did it. He then explained how to say dickhead in Spanish.

Leonard paid him, got pesos in change.

The guy said, “Someone give you the hat?”

“Bought it.”

“With your own money, senor?”

Leonard didn’t respond to that. He went over and wrote a short note to John using a windowsill as a desk. He gave it to the guy behind the desk and the guy dropped it in an out box and smiled at Leonard’s hat some more. We left.

“It’s a good hat,” Leonard said.

“For what?”

“Keeping the sun off.”

“It’s more like an eclipse, Leonard. It looks like something goes on a stick over a table by poolside.”

“You wanted one.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in something like that.”

“It’s just that I’ve got the balls to do what I want and you don’t, that’s what’s got you irritated.”

“I’m not irritated.”

“Are.”

“Are not.”

It was just one of our usual goofed-up days. We might as well have been home in the States. We were unpopular and pissed off wherever we went.

About four we went down to the dock to catch the tender back to the ship. The tender was there with our original pilot standing on the deck, helping people on board, but out in the bay, no ship. Least not our ship.

We talked to the pilot. Our Spanish sucked. His English was good. He told us the Sea Pleasure had left at three-thirty. For a moment I thought we hadn’t changed our watches, crossed a zone or something, had lost an hour. But we had the right time.

Leonard said to the pilot, “You’re sure?”

The guy, who was short and gold-toothed, said, “You see the ship you want, senor?”

Leonard took a theatrical look out at the water.

“Nope.”

The pilot shrugged.

“Could it have sunk?” Leonard asked.

“Funny, you are, senor. I got to take people out to the real cruise ship now. And whatever you pay for that hat, it is too much.”

We walked back up the dock, stunned.

“That lying little ferret,” Leonard said. “I gave him an opening and he took it and told me the wrong time. I see him again, I’m gonna beat him until he has flashbacks.”

“Of what?”

“Me beatin’ him.”

“Can I hit him a couple of times?”

“If there’s anything left, of course. You are my best friend.”