Tilting at Lighthouses November 11
It takes three transit police to issue one citation to a man selling insects from his bucket. He doesn’t have the necessary permit, and this is deemed not fair to law-abiding competitors, as if there were someplace else to purchase salted crickets. Chapulines, they’re called—the bugs, not the cops. Chapuline is also the narco nickname for the dead man who sells drugs independently. The cops are called Cucarachas.
While discussing with Juan Carlos the present political climate, in which strong winds of change are forecast, I make mention of Don Quixote—chiefly, my landlord’s quixotic candidacy for municipal president in 2015, in which he actually thought he could defeat Laura Fernandez. The taxi union bosses may have been paid but the drivers weren’t, and Juan Carlos claimed that 8 in 10 of them were prepared to vote for him, despite the posters for Laura covering their vehicles. To ensure that every union member voted for PRI, each was required to photograph his completed ballot on election day. There is no evidence of vote tampering in Mexico, but there is plenty of voter tampering.
“Tilting at lighthouses,“ I quip.
“What?“
“You know, like tilting at windmills, except with lighthouses, because, well, you know—“
Juan Carlos stares blankly. I am getting nothing from him. As an engineer, he understands the mechanics of windmills, as well as the fact that our old lighthouse tilts to one side, but neither Cervantes nor my absurdist humor makes a bit of sense to him. He is a very courteous gentleman—indeed, he is much admired by the people—but he has always thought there is something not quite right about me. This conversation is confirming his opinion.
“Or tilting at Watchtowers!“ I add, as a JW couple walks by with a cart of free brochures. They seem as dumbfounded as Juan Carlos.
Watchtowers and lighthouses—one is used to see, the other to be seen—are fixtures along the waterfront in an uneasy truce.
The Jehova’s Witnesses occupy a nearby bench, per usual, waiting for the English-speaking converts that have not once come. The woman submits to the pleasant day, chatting amiably with a tourist looking for dining recommendations, but the guy seems preoccupied and distant. The missionary hammers his knee against the earth like a coke-fueled sewing machine. How is it that this man of God is so nervous? What exactly is the answer to that prayer?
Across the street, the church bell clangs aperiodically for no obvious reason.
Next to the gazebo, a bare-chested civil servant, with a towel clothes-pinned to his LA cap, wields a machete like a sushi chef, reducing a rogue palmetto tree to a palmetto stump with a half-dozen clean swipes. A one-legged mockingbird hops from side to side, dodging the vegetative debris while refusing to give up its prime downtown real estate.
Charlie Brown, the emblematic boatman of the Malecon, arrives with a large unidentified fish wrapped in butcher’s paper. Lunch time. He calls the other fellow over to join him in the shade behind the parked bicycles, where the boatman and the machete man feast with fingers like exile kings. The grilled carcass is consumed within minutes, causing the frigate birds and other opportunists to gather above—then it’s back to work for bird and man.
A young girl is thrilled to try out her new roller-skates on the wide level surfaces. Wearing a red hair bow and parading elevated black puffy feet, she resembles a Disney mouse on ice. She struggles for effortless glide, but any attempt at grace is thwarted by the hexagonal bricks. The smiling girl might as well be skating on a waffle iron. Fortunately, her mama has provided kneepads for the many inelegant dismounts.
There is no sign whatsoever that a dead man came ashore at the lighthouse a few days earlier, other than the persistent smell of an unrelated deathly rot. On the corner nearest the waterfront, this is not unusual, given the many narrow passageways and homeless creatures in the vicinity. The sickly-sweet stench is dreadful, but not as bad as the septic tanker parked outside the Casa Martin.
Juan Carlos gives me my small electric bill—about 300 pesos for the month—with the good news that only a tech geek could appreciate: We may get a wind generator for the town. Not a wind farm, mind you, a single windmill.
“So your bill may become cheaper in the future,“ he says hopefully, ridiculously, as if we were to dream, quixotically, the impossible dream. I can only respond to him with a joke.
A windmill walks into a cantina.
The bartender asks what kind of music he likes.
“I am a big metal fan.“
Nope. Nothing. I pay the bill.