Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

32. Social Work

To get ready for his upcoming departure, Andy started buying compact backpacking foods and extra batteries for his ham radio and SureFire flashlight in Sarawiwa and Dangriga. He also solicited letters of introduction from both Gabe Mora and the consul from the American embassy.

After Andy had declared himself fit to travel, Gabe said, “I can give you a ride as far as Orange Walk, but first I will make inquiries about horse breeders there. I know that there are several. I’ll give you a letter of introduction that you can carry.”

At dinner two days later, Gabe announced: “I found you a horse breeder. His name is Pedro Hierro, and his ranch is just north of Orange Walk, not far off the Northern Highway. I hear he has some of the best horses in the district.”

Knowing that he was soon likely to depart, in the privacy of his bedroom Andy pulled out his Primus stove. Working with a screwdriver, he extracted two of the duct-tape-wrapped one-ounce gold coins and then he carefully reassembled the stove heat shield.

Andy felt bad that the checks that had been sent to Darci by the U.S. State Department were worthless. So he gave Gabe his set of bicycle tools and his big Maglite flashlight, explaining that he needed to cut down on weight for his upcoming journey. After some prayer, he also gave Darci a one-ounce American Eagle, one of his last few remaining gold coins. As he handed it to her, he said, “You have been such a blessing. You have always made me feel welcome here, and I have shared your food-with your delicious cooking-for many months. This is the least that I can do to thank you. I won’t take no for an answer.”

Their drive to Orange Walk was enjoyable. Gabe pointed out a number of sights and filled Andy in on some details about the history of the country. As they neared Orange Walk, Gabe started pointing out dozens of Mennonite-owned farms. He explained: “They started moving here in the 1950s. Good folks. When the power grid went down, the Old Order ones didn’t even notice. They don’t believe in electricity. But I’m worried about how they’ve done when the Guatemalan gangs have come through, because they don’t believe in guns, either.”

He dropped Laine off at the front gate of the horse ranch. A simple hand-painted sign read: “Pedro Hierro-Caballos Excelente.” The ranch’s pastures were enclosed in sturdy white-painted welded tubular steel fences that looked like they had taken many hours to construct. A small, stout cinder-block house overlooked the pastures and a hay field.

Gabe said, “I should just leave you here. This guy doesn’t know me, so I think it’s best that you just introduce yourself. He might be more nervous if two of us go up there.”

Andy nodded. Seeing that the gate was locked, he climbed over it. Gabe lifted Andy’s pack over the gate to him, and Andy shouldered it. They shook hands through the gate, and Mora said earnestly, “God will see you safely home.”

Andy nodded and smiled. “And you, as well. Con Dios, Gabe.” He turned to walk up the hill. He saw that there were more than a dozen mares and nearly as many foals in the pasture to his right. Just below the house was a smaller one-horse stallion corral. The horse in it was a fine-looking dark chesnut stallion with a long mane and a gleaming coat. Andy heard Mora’s car driving away.

An elderly man stepped out on the porch and eyed Laine as he approached. A woman about the same age looked on from the open doorway. The man casually cradled a double-barreled shotgun in his arms.

Andy waved and shouted, “¿Saludos! I want to buy a horse.” The man thoroughly read both of Andy’s letters of introduction. Then, even before talking about his available horses, Pedro Hierro asked Andy how he planned to pay.

Andy answered, “En monedas de oro. Yo tengo un Krugerrand. It is a one-ounce coin-una onza de oro.”

Hierro’s eyes brightened and he urged, “Come, come and see my horses.”

The horses that Pedro Hierro had available for sale were in his back pasture. He whistled them in and shook a partially full bucket of grain. The remuda of nearly twenty horses came at them at a gallop. After they were all in the corral, Hierro deftly closed the gate behind them. Laine was impressed how quickly he moved, for an old man.

Andy rested his forearms on the corral’s top rail and began to look them over. One of them looked a bit lame-perhaps a hoof problem-but all of the others looked like good, sound horses. There were a few mares, but most of them were geldings.

“Do you have any saddle-broken horses that are extra quiet? ?Bien callado, tranquilo?”

The old man pointed to a large chesnut gelding that was standing slightly separated from the herd, “Si, este caballo que esta castrado.”

To Andy, the big gelding looked like it had some strong bloodlines, perhaps Andalusian. There wasn’t a spot of white on him, which he liked. The gelding appeared to be sixteen hands or better.

Andy asked its name: “¿Como se llama?”

“Prieto.” After a pause the horse breeder added: “Prieto es muy tranquilo. He is the most quiet of all my horses. No resopla-no big snorts from this one. Also, no relinchos.”

Andy cocked his head and asked, “¿Que? ¿Que es ‘relinchos’?”

The old man explained: “A relincho you calls a ‘whinny.’”

“Oh. Muy bueno. He is well broken for riding?”

“Si, si, senor. He is four years old.”

Andy climbed into the corral and approached the horse. He looked the horse in the eye. He brushed the side of the gelding’s neck and made a soft, cooing noise. Then he chanted the horse’s name: “Prieto, Prieto.” The horse swung his head around and put his nose below Andy’s chin. Laine took a few minutes to scratch the horse on his poll, between his ears, and beneath his forelock. The gelding’s mouth made a chewing motion in response. Andy examined the horse closely.

Andy pointed out some scars and some proud flesh on the horse’s right rear flank and gaskin.

Hierro explained, “Those scars are where he was bitten by another horse when he was young. If not for those scars, I think he would have sold before now.”

“Can I give him a test drive?”

The old man laughed, and nodded. “Por supuesto.”

Andy’s “test drive” lasted more than an hour, with Pedro Hierro riding alongside on his favorite saddle mare. They rode toward the New River. Negotiating the upper banks gave Andy the chance to see that Prieto was confident on steep terrain. Crossing the river twice made it clear that he wasn’t afraid of water.

The saddle that Andy borrowed was a good fit, although Andy would have preferred a thicker saddle pad. After working out some tack fitting issues (with one stop early on, to adjust stirrup height) and learning the horse’s preferred gait, the ride went well. Andy and Prieto quickly developed a bond. The horse was obviously well trained and had good ground manners. Prieto didn’t balk at being ridden over steep ground and rocky spots. He was also just as quiet as the old man had advertised.

They returned to Hierro’s house at a trot. After they had unsaddled the horses, Andy looked the old man in the eye and said: “I like this caballo. He will do. Here is my offer: I trade you my one-ounce Krugerrand for your horse Prieto, along with this saddle, this bit and bridle, a pair of hobbles, a lead rope, and also a pair of large saddlebags.”

Pedro Hierro nodded slowly and gave a thin smile. “Show me this gold.”

When he left Pedro Hierro’s rancho the next morning, Andy had all that he had asked for, plus a collapsing canvas bucket, a grooming brush, and a hoof pick. The saddle was soon modified with a leather punch and nylon straps, allowing Andy’s backpack to be strapped on behind the saddle deck. An extra-large saddle pad protected the horse from the weight of the backpack. The pack’s position made it awkward for Andy to mount and dismount the horse, but it obviated the need to use a separate packhorse. Andy’s goal was to make a small signature when traveling.

It was thirty-five miles from the rancho to the Mexican border. He planned to cross at Santa Elena, just west of the large city of Chetumal, on the Rio Hondo. By evening he was camped in the jungle near the village of Chan Chen, just four miles short of the border. He gave the horse more than an hour to graze in a meadow while he ate his own dinner: chili, straight from the can. Then he led Prieto off into the jungle.

Andy hobbled the horse and camped on a small knoll. It was an anxious night for him. He was saddle sore and he felt cranked up. He desperately wanted to talk with Kaylee, but it was two days until his next scheduled contact. After a fitful night in his bivy bag, worrying about both the horse and the upcoming border crossing, he awoke at dawn. He had a breakfast of day-old johnnycakes and some iguana tail jerky. He was already missing Senora Mora’s cooking.

Before departing, he repacked his backpack, secreting the pistol and its accessories inside a large bundle of clothes that was secured by string. That went in the bottom of his backpack in the hope that it would be the last thing that would be searched by the customs officers.

Crossing the border was easier than he had anticipated. The Santa Elena border station was a simple structure. The sight of his horse passing through was only a little unusual.

Leaving Belize, tourists were supposed to incur a twenty-dollar exit fee, but this was waived for Andy after a glance at the consul’s letter. When he stepped across the line to the Mexican side of the station, his passport check was perfunctory. The Mexican customs agent looked bored as he stamped Andy’s new American passport. He just waved Andy through.

He had prepared himself by placing a bill of sale and a veterinary health certificate form letter from Hierro as well as his letters of introduction in the top of his saddlebag. He even had a half-ounce American Eagle gold coin in his pants pocket, ready to palm as a bribe if necessary. He was greatly relieved when it wasn’t needed.

Just a few miles past the border, Andy led Prieto into some scrub brush out of sight from the road, and retrieved his pistol. He positioned the holster in its usual spot on his belt above his right buttock. He felt more at ease, knowing that the SIG was safely cradled there, ready for quick action. It was concealed by his leather vest, which he habitually wore unbuttoned. He kept his horse off the road, following what looked like a motorcycle trail that closely paralleled the highway.

The road west toward Ramonal was almost deserted. No buses were running, and just a few local ranchers’ trucks went by. West of Lago Milagros, Andy could see that he was entering big rancho country. The soil was noticeably more sandy. In places the sand was snow-white. Barbed-wire fences now bordered both sides of the road. Still, the country seemed more like Belize than Mexico. The brush and trees were still the same. Only the truck license plates were different. Some of the fences sagged and looked comical, and Laine wondered how well they held cattle.

Andy wanted to turn north, but he knew that he first had to travel west for more than a week to skirt around the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Every day he rode toward the sunset, hoping and waiting for the turn northward. That wouldn’t come until he reached Villahermosa, three hundred miles to the southwest. Andy hoped to make thirty-five miles per day, assuming he could find plentiful food and water for his horse. Theoretically, he could be home in New Mexico, 1,750 miles away, in just two months, but that was “as the crow flies.” More realistically, he knew that it would probably take at least twice that long. There were deserts and mountain ranges ahead, and many unknown perils.

Traveling entirely at night would in some ways be safer, but he was afraid that he’d stumble into an ambush, and the mosquitos swarmed by the thousands. It took a heavy application of bug juice to discourage them. Taking pity on Prieto, Laine daubed a bit of insect repellent around the horse’s eyes before sleeping each night. He dreaded leaving the mosquito-netted bivy bag each morning.

Laine close-hobbled Prieto every night and was pleased to see that the horse rarely wandered more than ten yards away from the bivouac bag. Some nights he hardly moved at all. The sound of the horse’s breathing and the regular swishing of his tail were comforting. Andy hoped that he might give him some warning if a man or jaguar approached the camp. Andy even became accustomed to the horse’s daily pattern of urination, defecation, and flatulence. Prieto often showed signs of anxiety for the first hour after Andy settled into the bivy bag each night. Then the horse would let loose a ripping fart, let out a loud breath through its nostrils, and finally stand still, often for the full night. This routine made Andy laugh the first few times that he heard it.

He got into the routine of grooming the horse twice a day, including picking his hooves. The most time-consuming part was searching for and removing ticks. He’d often find a tick on Prieto’s belly or in one of his ears. If the horse shook his head in the middle of the day, Andy would stop, dismount, and check his ears for ticks. This was usually the cause.

Andy’s first attempt at a radio contact from Mexico was two days later, on a Tuesday night. The propagation was so poor that he couldn’t even receive Lars’s previously strong signal. He gave up in disgust.

Prieto tried to linger with his hooves in the water after watering breaks. Andy would have liked to indulge the horse’s preference, but he considered it a security risk. After all, creek and river crossings were high-risk ambush areas.

He also worried about his horse eating noxious weeds and made a point of only stopping and letting Prieto graze in grasses that he recognized. Sometimes the horse would get into a particularly tasty bunch of grass and be reluctant to move on. When that happened, Andy would have to tug quite hard on Prieto’s reins, or if he was dismounted at the time, he’d ball up his fist with his thumb extended and dig his thumb into Prieto’s chest while ordering him backward with the words, “¿Hacia atras!”

Despite Prieto’s few quirky habits, Andy was impressed with his intelligence and instincts. The horse had particularly good sense about snakes. Several times, Andy would be riding alongside the road at a trot and suddenly Prieto would come to a dead stop and lay back his ears. Each time there was a snake just a few paces ahead. If the snake was a fer-de-lance (called a “Tommy Goff” in Belize) or an unidentified snake species, Andy would simply guide the horse in a large circle around to avoid it. But if it was a large rattlesnake, Andy would dismount and tie up Prieto at a safe distance. Then he’d pin the snake’s head down with a branch and decapitate it with his pocketknife. Rattlesnakes were good eating. But Prieto was so frightened of snakes that he’d start to prance in place. Andy learned that the only way that he could get close to Prieto when holding a dead snake was if he first hid it in a sack.

Because of the space constraints of his backpack, Andy could only carry four or five days’ worth of food. By the time he reached the town of Escarcega, he was down to his last few bits of food. He saw a sign on a small masonry building with heavily barred windows: “Monedas Numismatico.”

A sign hanging inside the front window read “Abierto,” showing that the store was open. As Laine dismounted, a boy wearing a large sombrero approached and asked, “¿Le cuido su caballo?” Andy nodded affirmatively. Andy handed the boy Prieto’s reins. Expecting the wait to be twenty minutes, he told the boy, “Aproximadamente veinte minutos.”

Just as at the coin shop in Germany, Andy had to be buzzed in.

The door closed behind him with a loud click. Just inside the door was another door. To his left was a small window where an armed guard sat. The guard glanced through the window at the boy and the horse.

Andy asked, “Can that boy be trusted?”

The guard grunted: “Si, mi chico es de confiar.”

Andy saw a sign above that warned that weapons had to be checked: “Registrar Todas Las Armas Aqui. ?Sin Excepciones!” He let out a sigh, and muttered: “Okay, your house, your rules.” Under the watchful eye of the man, who was armed with an odd three-barreled antique shotgun, Andy made a show of slowly unholstering his SIG, ejecting its magazine, and clearing its chamber, locking the slide to the rear. He passed the pistol butt-first through the window and stuffed the magazine and loose cartridge into his front pocket. Then he handed the man both his CRKT tanto folding pocketknife and his Leatherman tool from his other pocket.

A second buzzer sounded, and Laine entered the main portion of the coin shop. He was surprised to see the shop was owned by a bald, wrinkled man in a wheelchair. The guard with the shotgun pivoted his stool and closely watched all that transpired.

The store was mainly lit by daylight from the windows, supplemented by some strings of white LED lights-the kind that he had previously seen used on Christmas trees. Andy surmised that the lights and door lock were solar-powered. Clever.

He asked the man in the wheelchair, “Do you speak English?”

“Yes, I do. Can I be of help to you?”

“I’d like to trade this Krugerrand for silver coins. I want to trade for whatever you think would be best for me to barter for food in my travel. Do you have some silver pesos, or maybe Onza de Plata coins? The condition is unimportant to me. My only concern is their silver content.” He handed the storekeeper the Krugerrand.

It made Andy smile when he saw the coin dealer repeat the same steps to verify the authenticity of the coin that he had seen demonstrated in Germany. Some tools of the trade, he realized, were universal.

The man looked up with a smile and declared: “I can give you forty-eight silver five-peso coins of before 1958 minting, in trade for this coin. I’m sure that you know, the five-peso coins from this time is 72 percent silver and has .6431 of the troy ounce of silver.”

Andy worked the math in his head. “Hmmm… how about fifty-five of those? That would be a more fair ratio.”

“The best I can do in the trade is fifty-two.”

Andy nodded and said: “That is acceptable to me, but only if you substitute ten one-peso silver coins instead of two of those five-peso coins.”

“Yes, I can include some of the smaller coins, but they will all be the 1957 silver one-peso Juarez. These are a very common minting but not much wear on them.”

“That is fine. We have a deal.” They shook hands.

The coin dealer counted out the coins in piles of five on a blue felt-covered tray. Andy confirmed the count. The coin dealer placed them in a small canvas sack that was printed: “First Community National Bank, Brownsville, Texas.” Seeing that sack made Andy grin. He was now feeling closer to the United States, and feeling anxious.

Andy wished the dealer well as he set aside a handful of one- and five-peso coins from the sack. This handful went loose into his pants pocket while the rest, in the canvas sack, went into his cargo pocket. After retrieving his knives and pistol, Andy reloaded and holstered the SIG. The guard gave Andy a friendly nod.

He was buzzed out the front door and found the boy standing there dutifully, still holding Prieto’s reins. Laine dug in his pocket and pulled out a silver one-peso coin. He handed it to the boy, and said, “Una moneda de plata, para ti. Gracias por su trabajito.”

The boy grinned, shouted “¿Muchas gracias, senor!” and ran off, singing.

There was a pulperia just two blocks farther west. The grocery store was half open-air, with seven rough-hewn tables beneath latticework for shade. Two bored-looking teenage guards with ancient Mexican Mauser carbines stood watch. The grocery had a surprisingly good selection. Andy bought two large bags of beef jerky (carne seca), a dozen apples, five large carrots, eight cans of chili con carne, a dozen sun-dried Spanish mackerel, six cans of chicken noodle soup, eight Big Hunk candy bars, and a sack of hard tack that was the size of two loaves of bread. After a bit of dickering, a price of one and a half silver pesos was agreed. His change was a peso coin that had been cold-chiseled in half. After seeing the prices asked at the pulperia, it was now no wonder that the boy had been so excited to get the silver peso.

It took a while to pack all the groceries into the backpack and saddlebags. As he did, Andy fed Prieto a carrot that he chomped with gusto. He nosed at Andy, hoping for another, but Andy was saving those for the coming days.

His progress through the states of Quintana Roo and Campeche was slow. He did his best to avoid large towns, but he actually did veer toward some small villages. In each he would always ask, “¿Saben si mas adelante hay bandidos en el camino?” (“Do you know if bandits await on the road ahead?”)

At the village of La Pita, he got an affirmative response. There, a potbellied man warned Andy that a bandit gang controlled the village of Mamantel, just a few miles beyond. He drew Laine a map, showing him a road that skirted around the west side of the village. Andy thanked the man for the warnings and handed him two silver pesos with the words “Gracias por su advertencia.”

Andy waited until after dark to make his circuitous route around Mamantel. The ride was nerve-wracking but uneventful except for a couple of barking dogs.

His journey northward through Mexico soon got into a rhythm. After twenty to twenty-five miles of riding, Andy would look for some woods or dense brush that would offer a secluded campground. He would scan in all directions, first with his eyes and then with his binoculars, to see if he was observed. If anyone was present, he’d let Prieto graze or he’d pick the horse’s hooves until the strangers had passed well out of his line of sight. He would then quietly lead Prieto into the woods, usually at least two hundred yards, or even farther when the woods weren’t dense. Camping alone caused Andy lots of anxiety. He was often afraid that he might be observed and followed.

Andy’s next shopping excursion was in the small city of Macuspana, in the state of Tabasco. The town was in a broad basin that was mostly agricultural, and he found a profusion of fresh produce at great prices. The thatched-roof Centro Mercado had plenty of flies, but the fruit and vegetables all looked fresh. The best bargain was a large sack of dried fish-enough to last Andy for more than a week. The sack was so large that Andy simply tied it to his saddle horn. Prieto snorted at it at first, but with some gentle correction from Andy, the horse left it alone.

Andy decided that it was best to work his way up the Gulf Coast, sticking to small roads. He had considered traveling a more westerly (and direct) route to New Mexico. But that would mean that water and the opportunities to buy food would be iffy, the terrain more rugged, and the grazing for his horse more uncertain. Traveling cautiously, he averaged only twenty miles per day. He skirted around the larger population centers like Minatitlan and Veracruz. He wanted to stay as far away from Mexico City as possible, since the city of 8.4 million residents was reportedly chaotic. Andy surmised that many of those problems must have been overflowing into its suburbs, and beyond.

On a Tuesday evening, Andy had a successful HF contact with Lars. He was thrilled to be able to use the call sign “4A/K5CLA”-with the “4A” prefix designating that he was transmitting from Mexico. The significance of the prefix was immediately apparent to Lars, but it had to be explained to Beth and Kaylee. As usual for his contacts, Andy gave Kaylee a weekly travelogue, letting her know the sights he had seen, how he was feeling, and, in this instance, a bit about Prieto’s eccentricities.

That same night Andy was awakened by a strange commotion. He soon realized that it was Prieto stomping a pygmy rattlesnake to death just a few feet from Andy’s head. Andy didn’t even bother crawling out of his bivy bag. He just ordered Prieto to back off with, “¿Hacia! Hacia atras!” Then he unzipped the bivy bag, picked up the well-trodden snake carcass behind its head, and heaved it as far as he could out of the campground. He zipped the bag back up and said “Good night, Superhorse.”

As Andy passed north of Orizaba, the population density increased noticeably. There was more traffic on the roads, with a surprising number of motorcycles and mopeds. Some of the men looked unsavory. Andy had to be much more selective about where he camped. He was increasingly afraid that someone might see where he had ducked into the forest and attack him.

He often heard bursts of gunfire in the distance. These shots were too rapid to be just hunters. Obviously there was a big crime problem in the area, and it was being stamped out ballistically.

Near Zempoala, Andy had an amazing conversation with a local teenage boy who spoke good English. The boy was armed with a pump-action .22 rifle slung on his back with a length of white clothesline cord. Andy commented to him about how peaceful things seemed on the coast. The teenager explained, “That’s because it’s open season on los canibales de la ciudad. When anyone sees them, they just shoot them. Then we burn or bury the bodies, so their friends don’t come and eat them. It’s all like something from a zombie movie.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No joke, senor. There have been hundreds from Mexico City and even some from Xalapa that we’ve had to kill. If you are ever seeing strangers with knives or machetes, and they have the bloodstained clothes, and that look in their eyes, you don’t ask questions. Do not hesitate. You just shoot them.”

“What look in their eyes?” Laine asked.

“That look. The animal look. You know it when you see it. After the first time, you recognize it inmediatamente.”

The boy’s comments made Andy shudder. Laine was dubious about what he’d been told until he heard it corroborated by a policeman in the next town. This made him anxious to get as far away from Mexico City as he could, as quickly as possible.