24
This early in the morning there was hardly any traffic on the bridge going to the other side. The driver paid the toll, and less than a minute later they had crossed over. On the other bridge, headed in the opposite direction, two rows of cars and trucks inched along toward the U.S. checkpoint. The pedestrian line that Socorro had used to cross over only a few minutes earlier now extended the full length of the bridge.
Up ahead, the taxi driver slowed down for the speed bumps leading to the mini–traffic light in front of the customs building. Red meant you had to pull over for one of the inspectors to look in your trunk before permitting you to drive on; green meant you were free to move forward.
“But these men need their papers to travel,” Socorro said, as the driver continued on.
“That, they can do at the bus station, and much faster, with no lines.”
Don Celestino patted her hand. “The man knows — he takes people to the bus station all the time, right?”
“Only for the last seventeen years,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror.
Away from the bridge the city buses swelled with people’s arms and faces in the open windows. The more hopeful of the street vendors were setting up for that occasional tourist who might wander over this early in the day. The homemade-candy vendors stood guard over their glass stands, shooing away the incessant flies and bees. A young man with tire shanks for knees crawled between the cars, hustling along the pavement to catch up to an arm reaching out with a few pesos. A barefoot boy, hunched over as he carried a three-foot-high crucifix on his back, searched for his next customer among the idling traffic. On this side of the street, a city worker in green cover-alls was raising a small dust storm with her thatched broom. Next to a taxi stand, a driver in a yellow muscle shirt was haggling with a sunburned tourist, while his equally sunburned wife and kids waited on the sidewalk, trying not to touch anything. A skinny woman, holding two nylon-woven bags teeming with groceries, berated her three kids as she crammed them into a packed Maxi-Taxi van. Farther down a campesino rode atop his wooden cart as his burro clomped along, both of them scornful of the honking cars and trucks behind them.
After the second block they were able to get beyond some of the congestion and speed the rest of the way down Calle Obregón, passing the restaurants, the bars, the discos, the curio shops, the occasional boutique or doctor’s office or dentist’s office, and several pharmacies other than the one they were looking for. The driver, a slight man with reddish-brown skin and a smallish head, had to keep pushing his oversize aviator glasses back up his thin nose. Once he was closer to the center of town he turned on his radio so everyone on the street could hear the cumbia playing over the sound of his muffler. He especially wanted to impress the young mother pushing the stroller near Plaza Hidalgo, but the girl paid as much attention to him as she did to the babbling coming from her baby.
Don Fidencio rolled down his window to get some air. Later it would rain; he didn’t need a weatherman to tell him this, he felt it in his knees, especially the weaker of the two. Across the street he could make out the cathedral’s conical spires rising higher and higher into the grayish sky like a pair of matching dunce caps. If they weren’t in such a rush, he would tell the driver to pull over so he could get his shoes shined at one of the stands in the plaza. These black-rubber-soled shoes weren’t the kind one would normally think to shine, but at the same time it was a good idea to make sure they were presentable before arriving in Linares. Not that anybody would’ve paid attention to what an old man had to say. If they hadn’t listened to him about the pills, what chance was there that they would stop now? Pills for his heart. Pills for his blood pressure. Pills for his cholesterol. Pills for his kidneys. Pills for his heartburn. Pills for the pain in his legs. Pills for him to make cacas. Pills for him to sleep. Pills for this pill or that other pill not to make him sick. Everybody wanted to give him a pill, whether he wanted it or not. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, they always had a pill for him. Like he might die if they didn’t force another pill down his throat before he finished his meal. The One With The White Pants used to push his cart through the mess hall like it was a hot summer day and he was selling paletas to all the kids who had been only waiting for him to ring his bell and now they were going to chase him down the street with money in their hands. Please, sir, give me just one more for my heartburn — I can feel the meat loaf coming up already. No, me first, me first. I need one for the terrible pain in my big toe. I want one for my arthritis. Me first, sir, me first. Me, me, me!!! Give me one of those big pills you would not feed to a horse! Please, sir, me first!