36. The Line

The line of stalled traffic was not moving. Lino had to bring the Kodiak to a full stop behind a line of several pickup trucks. A few of the occupants from the stopped vehicles stood on the side of the highway gawking up the line trying to discern what was causing the stoppage. Whatever the cause, it was not visible from the Kodiak’s place in the line. The huge sun that had filled the western sky since Lilo and Ervey left Ojinaga now lay completely below the horizon together with its halo. There was still dusky light looking west, but the line of sight was very limited. The gawkers kept looking ahead more to pass the time and relieve their anxiety than to actually spot anything, occasionally pointing forward and throwing up their hands in resignation.

Lilo spied everything around him very carefully, turning his head to every movement and squinting with every new thought that passed through his mind. Ervey stuck his head out of the cab and, when he saw nothing that explained the long line of stopped vehicles, turned to Lilo for clues about what he should think about it. Many minutes passed without any change in the situation.

"What's happening?" asked Ervey softly, partly to himself.

"No telling," said Lilo, "go ahead and ask the güey standing next to the truck ahead of us what he knows."

Ervey complied. He stuck his head out again and called to the spotter closest to him.

"Hey, what can you tell about why we're stopped?" shouted Ervey.

The man, middle-aged in a light polo shirt and khaki pants, raised his shoulders and turned out his palms to indicate he knew nothing. Lilo noted the gesture and nodded in comprehension.

"Whatever it is, there's a break in the line of communication between the travelers," said Lilo, not taking his eyes off the vehicles and the spotters in front of him, "otherwise the word would have gotten back here by now.

"But it's a lot of traffic that's affected, so has it to be some kind of collision or obstruction on the road," surmised Ervey, "probably a collapsed culvert or eroded section of the highway."

"Oh, no. Only one lane's affected. And that there's no communication with the front of the line tells me it's an organized traffic stop where they're not letting people get out of their vehicles," explained Lilo.

Ervey exhaled loudly. Lilo kept a close watch on the situation.

"Well, at least it's not a lonely road in the middle of the sierra," said Ervey.

Lilo did not answer.

"Hey, so how do you know that my people used to take slaves from El Mulato to work in Santa Bárbara?" asked Ervey, lowering his head back on the truck seat.

Lilo took a long time to answer, his eyes darting from one point to another in the view in front of him.

"Why do you think your people were the ones taking slaves and not the slaves themselves?" said Lilo, "with a face like yours that looks like it has a leaf of nopal stuck to it, I wouldn't be so sure."

Ervey grinned widely.

"Maybe so, maybe both," he said lightheartedly. 

"You think so? Then tell me if any of your grandfathers came from somewhere outside Aquiles Serdán," said Lilo.

"No. None that I know of, but maybe a great-grandfather," said Ervey.

"Let me be the one to give you the bad news. If one of them did come from somewhere else, you would know it and you wouldn't have that mien of an Indian escaped from the mine that you have," said Lilo.

Ervey chuckled and sank deeper into his seat.

"We're so mixed in Mexico today, that nobody's one thing or another anymore. Everybody's everything now," said Ervey, "it doesn't matter anyway."

"Hmm. In your pueblo aren't there families that've always been the kings?" said Lilo. 

"Yes, there are some that act like it, but that's all," said Ervey.

"And they look like you? They're related to you somehow, other than maybe as a father to some bastard child in your family?" said Lilo.

"Well, no?" said Ervey.

"And they're daughters married local boys or stayed in town after they were married," said Lilo.

"Who knows. I don't pay attention to that kind of stuff anyway," said Ervey.

There was a long silence.

"How did you come to be such a Marxist?" said Ervey, hesitating, then adding, "or a racist? I can hardly believe it."

"I don't know what that is, I hardly ever read anything since they stopped publishing the Supermachos cartoon magazine," said Lilo, "and it doesn't benefit me in any way to be racist because the only black people around here are us." 

"Speak for yourself," said Ervey, chuckling again.

"So educated and so ignorant," said Lilo, "even an unread peon like myself knows that the only spaniards that were posted out here by the military who didn't desert or weren't already mandarins were moors. Mulato soldiers from Spain. Low-ranking military officers who had no option but to marry the local women, some of them the sisters and daughters of the very slaves they marched to the mines. Now, if you think that the commanders ever let their children make families with their help, well, then you must also still be waiting for Santa Claus to answer your letters."

Ervey laughed out loud.

"But it doesn't make any difference anymore," said Ervey, his head still resting on the truck seat.

"It doesn't unless it does. Then is does matter," said Lilo, in a barely audible voice.

"How do you come to know so much about history?" said Ervey.

"From that professor you say disappeared." said Lilo, "a lot of people protested that news. Maybe that's who disappeared him."

"Even from El Mulato?" said Ervey,

"Oh, sí," said Lilo, "Mulateños couldn´t believe his story that the region got it´s name from a certain officer named Marcelo Calderón from the old presidio who was rewarded for his military service with a land grant that he and everybody else came to call the mulato´s pastureland. 

"What did they think instead? That it was named after a viking?" said Ervey.

Lilo looked over at him puzzled. 

"The point is nobody ever thinks about these things unless you have to," he said.

Ervey was about to respond, but he was interupted.

"Wait. Here comes somebody our way that'll let us know what's happen," said Lilo, nodding toward a caravan of vehicles coming toward them on the narrow highway shoulder, "seems people are turning back. Wave them down to ask them what they know about what's causing the hold up."

Ervey straightened up and perched on his seat so he could stick his torso out of the window to make sure he caught the oncoming driver's attention. He was about to come out of the window raise his arms and start waving, but he froze when the vehicle leading the caravan came into clear view. It was a yellow Chrysler festooned in chrome with four occupants-- the same one that had zoomed past them in La Mula.

Ervey looked over to Lilo, who had already glimpsed the sight and kept looking forward steadily. 

The spotter who had stepped out of the truck idling in front of the Kodiak took a few steps toward to the Chrysler and quickly retreated when he was waved back by a sombreroed man who dangled a long rifle from the passenger window. His comrades in the Chrysler held similar arms between their legs so everybody could see them. 

"Get back in your vehicle! In a moment you'll be given instructions on how to proceed!" announced a man's voice from a loud speaker on the Chrysler.

The yellow truck kept rolling past the Kodiak then suddenly made a u-turn around it, stopping barely an arm's-length away from the driver's-side window.  A white Chevy truck that was following it stopped on Ervey's side a few meters away.

"Driver, move over to the passenger side. Passenger, get out and board the back of the truck next to you," said the man on the speaker. Lilo could see that the man doing the talking sat in the middle of the cab next to the driver.

The shock of the command made Lilo and Ervey hesitate. They looked at each other.

A loud boom went off, making both men jump in their seats.

The man that had been dangling his rifle had discharged a round into the air. Now he was pointing it at Lilo's door.

"Move now or we'll shoot into your cabin!" shouted the man on the loud speaker.