August 3, 1994 - East Village - Journal Entry - Dmitri Turin

When I caught a ride with my sister Pam to attend Debbie Greer's funeral, I didn't tell anyone in New York where I was going. After the service we went to her house in Virginia. Her husband, an Army artillery major, was rightly distraught as was my sister-in-law and her family and friends and CIA co-workers. Her boss, the CIA director suffered from the same disease and there were already rumors that their illness had been caused by radio waves aimed at CIA headquarters by the Russians. The CIA agents huddled in groups and spoke secretively amongst themselves. I avoided any contact. They all looked like squares and I couldn't imagine these Ivy Leaguers skilled at anything other than transforming cocaine into crack to finance the Contra War in Central America, ordering assassinations if Muslim militant leaders, and the torture of those damned to know something about nothing. We left before the arrival of President George Bush, for whom Debbie has also worked as secretary. She was a good soul.

Her mother Zsa Zsa thanked me for coming and I said my goodbyes.

It rained all the way back to New York.

My sister dropped my at the George Washington Bridge and I caught the downtown A train.

Arriving at my East 10th Street apartment I checked my answering machine and heard calls from Rick Temerian and our Tante Jane asking me to call them. I thought that maybe Jane's step-mother had passed in Maine, but a phone call to Rick told more tragic news.

Dmitri Turin had ODed and already been waked and buried up in New Hampshire across the Connecticut River from his famed stepfather's residence.

"Dead?"

I had thought that Dmitri like myself were immortal, despite our self-destructive behavior. His had been a demon on a bike. The Russian-born son of a KGB colonel had survived numerous motorcycle accidents and had been clean for months. Dmitri was cut out of a 1960s biker movie, but never sought to join a gang, although he was friendly with the Hells Angels and every other biker in New York and Beyond. The English bike enthusiast even let me ride along with his Scottish partner Hugh on my Yamaha XS 650. He was a benevolent soul.

I met him through my East End friend Nickie Banks, a true Cockney lad, when the East Street crowd formed across from the burnt out blocks below 6th Street. My stripped down to the bones dependable Yamaha was a English bike wannabe. We called it the Road Warrior. Its top speed was 86 MPH on the after midnight rides from my place of employ, the Milk Bar, down the Westside Highway around Battery Park and north up the FDR with the East River on my left. I was free.

Inspired by Dmitri's long rides to Deadwood and bike rallies, I solo drove up to Maine on several occasions, keeping off the highways. We were all bike Buddhas, although none more than Dmitri, whose faithful canine bitch, Wilbur, rode atop his Triumph's tank.

One night the bike crew arrived at the Milk Bar minus Dmitri. Several minutes later Wilber showed up in a state of distress. Hugh jumped on his Norton and roared off to retraced their path to find Dmitri and his bike sprawled on a nearby street. He was uninjured, except for a few scraps, and blinked himself into awareness. Everyone laughed at Hugh's recounting the story, especially about his asking about Wilbur. They were inseparable.

I retreated down into the bar and drank myself into a drunken state. I drove back to the East Village the short way, right across 10th Street. I wasn't taking any chances. Indestructible or not.

In the winter of 1989 I left the faithful Road Warrior in Florida and sold my Triumph to Rick to pay my rent for a junkie subleasee during an extended stay in France. I regularly saw Dmitri and Hugh, but I was strictly a pedestrian.

The bike shop on East 6th Street flourished under the two partners. Everyone loved them for their laissez-faire professionalism. Dmitri started shipping Harley-Davidsons to Russian millionaires and was known for his writing in IRON HORSE. Everything seemed to be going his way.

Loving wife, two kids, a famous stepfather, travels to Russia, his famous stepfather's return to Rodina, but things were never what they seem on the surface.

In 1990 I traveled the world, riding bikes in Indonesia and Thailand.

I saw Dmitri the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A.

Above the bar a huge mural portrayed the Sixth Street bikers. Dmitri was immortalized for the moment. We fantasized about international sagas. London to Singapore. Across Africa from Nairobi to Dakar. East from Moscow to Kamchatka. These dreams were easy to believe on drugs. It was the 1990s and I was still in my 30s.

Every year i took off around the world. Bikes were part of the thrill. In 1994 I went to the shop with a friend seeking a vintage Triumph. Something was different. The place was more popular than ever, but the crowd was disheveled and hollow eyed. Heroin. Everyone was jacked on dope, except for Dmitri. He was proud to have been clean for months. He looked tanned and healthy for the first time in years. I had done some pink in Penang with two rickshaw drivers, but nothing since. I was almost straight after six months in the Orient, although still a drunk.

Randy bought a Thunderbird 500 cc. I bid Dimi goodbye without saying that I was going up to Boston to drive my older brother's two children to their aunt's funeral in DC. That sad affair had me dreaming of the mosques of Samarkand. Dmitri needed to hit the road. So did I.

Tante Jane told me about Dmitri being found in the bathroom by his wife. OD. I was pissed that I hadn't been at the funeral and vowed to visit his grave.

The next summer I drove to Maine the long way with Ms. Carolina, my married mistress, in her Lexus. Up along the Housatonic River along the Berkshires across lower Vermont to his grave in Claremont, NH. It was quiet. Grass covered the grave. Putney VT lay across the river. His mother lived there with his famous stepfather. The land of his exiled childhood. Funny Claremont NH had a Russian cemetery. Ms. Carolina cried. She had never met Dmitri. I shook my head. This fate awaited us all and I poured vodka over his grave and told Dmitri I was bound for the road. Destination unknown.

Drunk in Moscow, Not Idaho

In 1994 after a month long limbo in Penang I traveled from Malaysia to Paris on Aeroflot thanks to money wired by my loving mother to the Citibank in Penang.

The Kuala Lumpur-Karachi-Dubai-Moscow-Paris flight time to Moscow totaled about 24 hours. None of them were comfortable in the flimsy chairs of the Soviet era jetliner. More like lawn chairs and a fog hung over the the celing from AC condensation. After the meal not a single member of the flight crew entered the cabin.

Disembarking at night in Moscow, I discovered that my connecting flight to Charles De Gaulle had been delayed until the following morning. A Norwegian couple with whom I had traveled from Kual Mumpur were in a similar predicament and I said, "It's 10PM. What are we going to do all night?"

"Drink wine." The husband pulled out two bottles of wine purchased at the Dubai duty-free. Their flight had also been cancelled until noon.

"I have two."

"And my wife has two."

We opened the bottles and sat on the floor surrounded by hundreds of stateless travelers trapped in the aeroport. Some looked as if they had been in this limbo for weeks, if not months. We finished the wine and a refugee from Afghanistan sold us a bottle of vodka.

"I here one month. Can no go back Kabul. No go to Paris. My brother live there. Now this my home." His name was Jameer.

The vodka was homemade. The liter lasted longer than the wine. Several other Afghans fleeing the civil war joined Jameer with other bottles. They spoke in dialects. Dari adn Pashto. After two bottles of the gut-burning samogon I spoke in tongues an finally lost consciousness from the overdose of hard spirits and lack of sleep.

I awoke.

A gray dawn.

Moscow.

"Russia.

Not Idaho.

"Your flight is now." The Norwegian husband shook me hard and yanked me to my feet.

"I don't care. I want to stay in the aeroport. Life simple here."

"You have to go." He and his wife escorted me to the plane.

"Bon Voyage." I saluted them at the door of the Airbus.

Stepping on board I rejoined civilization and I stumbled down the aisle to my seat. The expression on the other passengers' face gauged my drunkenness better than a breathalyzer. No one wanted me to sit next to them. I fell into an empty row and buckled up for take-off.

Several hours later a stewardess shook my shoulder.

"We are in Charles de Gaulle Aeroport in Paris."

"Already?" I was the last passenger on the plane.

"We've been on the ground for fifteen minutes."

"Great." I rose to my feet and trudged out into the terminal. The time was 8:30. It was Bastille Day or 'le Quartoze', another day of wine ahead.

In July of 1789 Paris seethed with anger against Louis XVI and the ancien regime of the nobility.

The prison's most infamous guest was the Marquis De Sade, who shouted from the ramparts on July 2, 1789, "They are killing the prisoners here!"

The unrepentant sodomist was transferred 'naked as a worm' to the insane asylum at Charenton, but the fire had been lit and the on July 14 hundreds of workers gathered in the neighboring Faubourg Saint-Antoine seeking to seize the gunpowder within the Bastille.

Mythically recounted in Dickens' THE TALE OF TWO CITIES a tumbril loaded with casks of wine axle an axle on the Rue de la Roquette and wine flow down the gutters to be consumed by impoverished Parisians. The shadow of the dreaded upper-class Bastille prison loomed over the narrow street and someone shouted, "A la Bastille."

The Swiss Guards within the fortress defended the battlements against the mob. Mutinous royal Bourbon troops armed with artillery. The commandant surrendered the prison an freed its seven captives.

When Louis XVI was told the news in Versailles, the king asked an aristocrat, "Is it a revolt?"

His friend replied, "Non, mon Roi. It is a revolution."

Within three years after the Storming of the Bastille Citoyen Louis was sentenced to death and guillotined in Place de la Concorde before thousands of revolutionies.

I emerged from the terminal and sped in a taxi from CDG Aeroport to Paris. Traffic was light into the City of Light. THe exit lanes were cramped with vehicles as they had been for decades carrying Paris to le Grande Vacannes ie 7/14 go 8/14.

Atop Montmatre rose Sacre-Couer.

After the 1870 Commune had been quelled the Catholic Church had erected the Temple of Repression to remind Parisians that the Church ruled the Hearts and Minds of France, not the call to the ramparts by a perverse Comte.

The new Bastille.

My friend Tristam from the Musellmen Fumants waite at his apartment.

I wasn't tired, only hung over. That afternoon we watched the military parade on the Champs-Elysees.

That night we partied with friends.

I drank to Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternitie.

Hundreds sang Le Marseilles.

I cried each time.

It was good to be out of Moscow.

People drink too much there, then again so do I.

A bas le Roi__

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July 14, 1994 Bastille Day - East Village - Journal Entry

Another sweltering summer day with temperatures rising along with the tempers. No one remembers how cold the winter was. No one is talking about anything about other than the hot. At the Tompkins Square basketball court we are drowning our innards with water and juices and sweating out it as fast as we drink.

I am sticking with lemonade and watermelon, avoiding beers and Vodka-tonics since resuming the rewrite of NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. The book is rolling along fine, although I can't find the first twenty pages of the screenplay. I have to being losing my mind. I lose everything else.

Always thinking about my toy boat.

Left behind in Maine.

Like Chaney.

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Koh Samui - July 1994 - Journal

July 1993
Full moon on Koh Samui
Rising from the black sea
Lightning flashing
Inside monsoon thunderheads
40,000 feet overhead

Sitting in a beer bar
On Chaweng Beach
Aoy
Sweet
From Isaan
North
"Mother not know
"Father sick. Buffalo too
I work bar.
I like you.
I go with you."___

Her skin
Buttered silk
Smelling of Jasmine
Like the flower on the night air.

Aoy says number
"This not love
This is work."
"Go with me.
Help me.
Help family"
How can I say no?"
"Okay, let's go."

On my motosai
3 km to my crib
A bungalow
Overlooking the pla-muk boats
On the Gulf of Siam

On the curves
To Coral Cove
Slow down to 60
Aoy holds tight
Arms around my waist
Lightning flashing overhead
The moon running with the clouds
And me with the wind
With Aoy
Through the night
To Coral Cove.

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TODOS SANTOS HORSE RACE by Peter Nolan Smith

In the autumn of 1992 I worked as a diamond salesman on West 47th Street for Richie Boy and his father, Manny. Business had improved under President Clinton and customers from around the USA traveled to New York for a good buy.

That Christma Ms. Carolina had bought 2-Carat diamond studs in September. The blonde southerner and I had celebrated her purchase with dinner at La Bernadin. I never saw our long-distance affair coming and we became more than friends over that weekend.

Ms. Carolina was beautiful, but not free.

She had a loving husband below the Mason-Dixon line.

We didn't talk about him much.

Richie Boy and his father were happy for me. I hadn't had a girlfriend in years.

"“Ms. Carolina is into you. Get her to buy more jewelry.” Manny liked a lock into a good customer, but I didn’t push her into any sales. We traveled once a season. Originally from the Adirondacks Ms. Carolina enjoyed getting away from the South.

"Some of those people have small minds," she drawled with a sigh.

“Same as the people up here.”

New York was a city of the rich and whatever they said mattered, because everyone wanted to be a millionaire.

In October of 1992 Ms. Carolina journeyed up to to New England. The Red Sox were not in the World Series and I informed her of the Babe Ruth curse.

“No curse lasts forever.”

1918 to 1993 seemed forever to me and I said nothing more about the Bosox.

She loved the lobster in Bar Harbor. I told her everything that I knew about Maine. My family had lived there for generations.

On the long ride back to to the city, Ms. Carolina said, "I like traveling with you. What if we take a trip to another country?"

"What will your husband say?"

Ms. Carolina was a good person. Richie Boy had told me that her husband was a good man. I was starting to feel bad about our affair.

"He doesn't ask questions." The blonde southerner's partner was twenty years her senior. They shared some interests, but traveling to foreign countries wasn't one of them, unless it was to play golf in Scotland. Ms. Carolina touched my hand. "It will be all right."

We were approaching Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The lobster shack on Badger Island served a wicked lobster roll. I ate mine and half of Ms. Carolina's roll.

"The perfect end to another road trip."

"I want to go someplace really different next." Ms. Carolina had a rare sense of adventure.

I held up the book which I had been reading.

John Lloyd Stephens' Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán.

"The Yucatan?"

I've already been to the Mayan ruins of Tikal."

Those pyramids were lost in a jungle. I had slept atop one listening to the howler monkeys under a tropical moon.

"So where?"

"I have a hankering to see the volcanos above Lake Atitlan and the temples of Copan are right over the border in Honduras and there's this crazy horse race in Todos Santos on the Day of the Dead."

"Is Guatemala safe?"

The Castillo class had been waging a CIA-approved war against the indigenous Mayan population. The worst atrocities occurred in the 80s under Ríos Montt. This year's truce had halted most of the army's massacres of the Mayans.

"Safe as New York, no, but as long as we don't drive at night we should be fine."

According to the NY Times ruthless right-wing militias controlled the roads after dark, but I hadn't read about any recent violence directed against tourists or gringos.

"I'll book the flights."

Ms. Carolina dropped me on East 10th Street. She had a golf tournament the next day. We kissed good-bye. It was a fifteen hour drive to North Carolina. She could make it in twelve.

A month later Ms. Carolina and I flew from JFK to Guatemala City. I had packed a baseball glove, ball, and Red Sox hat. The United flight lasted nine hours. We landed at night and rented a car from Hertz. I told her that we were staying in Antigua, the old colonial capitol, and pointed the car north into the mountains.

"What about not driving at night?" Ms. Carolina looked like she wanted her .45. She was a good pistol shot and even better with a shotgun.

"It's only forty-five minutes on the Pan-Am Highway. I'll follow a car."

Within five minutes we were in a caravan of twenty vehicles."

"Safe?"

"In numbers, si?" I had to practice my Spanish.

We arrived in Antigua and booked into a hotel, which had once been a nunnery.

Ms. Carolina and I had a dinner of Pepián de Indio stew and Pollo a la cerveza along with a bottle of white wine purchased at JFK's duty-free. The dining room emptied before we finished our meal and the staff looked eager for us to leave. We were the last two customers.

"Red Sox?" asked the owner seeing my hat.

"Si."

"I like the Yankees. Time to go." He flicked off the lights.

The street was dark. No one was on it.

Ms. Carolina stood behind me.

"Stay close." I didn't open the flashlight and we treaded slowly through the night to our hotel.

Once inside we bolted the heavy iron-studded door.

"Now we're safe."

The danger of darkness was vanquished by the dawn.

Antigua was a colonial jewel unsullied by modernization. A fountain babbled in the courtyard and Ms. Carolina murmured from her pillows.

"Safe."

Flowers bloomed in every corner of the old convent.

Ms. Carolina called me to bed.

I had no power to say no.

We spent the day wandering around Antigua.

The pleasant town was filled with ex-patriates and Spanish-learning gringos.

On a back street I spotted a man getting into a classic Mercedes convertible.

"Donald Sutherland." Ms. Carolina knew her movie stars.

I called out his name. The star of MASH waved to us and drove away on the cobblestoned street.

He seemed a happy man.

"Maybe it is safe." Ms. Carolina hooked her arm within mine and we entered a small cantina to drink Gallo beer and eat Chicharrones y carnitas.

I became fluent at saying, "Una orta cerveza."

I drank more than my share of beer.

It went well with crackling pig skin.

The next morning Ms. Carolina took over the wheel and said, "Let's see the Pacifico."

"Ocean?"

"Por que no?" Ms. Carolina was picking up Spanish too.

The ride to Port San Jose passed through miles of coastal sugar cane fields. Worn men walked along the road. They all carried machetes.

Port San Jose had seen better days. The dock was warped by decades of weather and the weight of overloaded cargo. Most of it had been sugar or bananas.

"It's still Guatemala's biggest Pacific port." No other cities dotted on my Nelly map. A small swell rose from a wave's passage over a sandbar. The air was hot and I asked, "How about a swim?"

"Better you than me." Ms. Carolina liked her tropical waters crystal clear and this ocean was the color of mud.

"

Ms. Carolina waited in a rundown seafood restaurant. She befriended the staff during my short swim. A plate of jumbo shrimp waited on a table with a frosty beer. She knew what I liked.

I wore my Red Sox hat.

I still got a sunburn.

We were all smiles until she said, "I've been thinking about leaving Albert."

Albert was her husband.

"Why?" I knew the answer and she continued, "I want to live with you."

"In my one-room apartment?" The East Village apartment barely fit me.

"It's more than enough space for me."

"I don't think that's a good idea." I had no intention of breaking up a marriage.

"So you don't love me?"

"I didn't say that."

"But you never say 'you love me'."

And that was the truth.

Leaving the coast I sat behind the wheel and put on music. Ms. Carolina stared out the window, as we climbed into the mountains. Last night she had been so happy.

Now even Tommy James and the Shondells' DRAGGIN' THE LINE improved her mood.

She read a Mayan-English phrasebook and I wondered if she was searching for a magic phrase to make me love her.

We traveled the back roads to Patulul and turned north toward the Pan-Am Highway. Donald Sutherland was probably having a good time.

A man in a Mercedes by himself.

I wasn't him.

Several miles on I slowed down for a crowd of people in the road. A bus had crashed down a ravine.

I got out to help.

The Mayan faces in the crowd dated back to the greatness of Tikal and Copan.

Miraculously no one was hurt in the accident. Another bus wasn't due to late afternoon and we loaded a single family of five into the rear of the car. They spoke very little Spanish.

Probably as much as me.

A field of sunflowers lay off the road.

"De donde?" I asked the family.

"San Lucas Toliman." The husband repeated three times. It was the next town. We reached their destination in twenty minutes. The family got out of the car, saying, "Dios bo’otik."

"De Nada," said Ms. Carolina, which was the first words she had spoken since Port San Jose. Her finger punched the reject button and she put on Bob Dylan's ON THE ROAD AGAIN.

"When are we going to get it to Atitlan?"

"Soon." The sun had already dropped behind Volcan Atitlan, however there was a little of sunlight left in the day.

"Good. I could use a drink."

"Me too."

The descent from the Pan-Am Highway passed waterfalls.

The view across the lake was spectacular.

"This is beautiful. Thanks for coming." Ms. Carolina reached across the console and held my hand. She wasn't giving up on us so easy.

"Thanks for inviting me."

Our bungalow was cheap and cheerful. I opened the last bottle of white wine. We drank it on the patio.

Ms. Carolina cried a little. I held her close.

"No one ever broke my heart before."

She had once bragged to me about being an ice queen.

"I'm no good." Most of my girlfriends had left me.

"I know and I don't care."

After sunset we dined overlooking the lake. Ms. Carolina was done with tears. She ordered two double rhum and cokes made with Zacapa Centenario Rum. The waiter raised an eyebrow.

"Muy fuerta."

"Yo se." Ms. Carolina's Spanish was getting better day by day.

The drinks arrived to the table.

"Here's to the road and just because you don't love me doesn't mean I can't love you."

"To the road."

I knocked mine down. We were done driving for the day. Ms. Carolina sipped at hers.

Later after a dinner I tried Quetzalteca Rosa de Jamaica twice. It tasted like moonshine.

The next morning I woke up in Ms. Carolina's arms.

My head felt like someone had kidnapped me with a blackjack.

"Time to get up." I nudged my bedmate.

She wasn't in much better shape.

The restaurant served a Caldo de huevos broth for breakfast.

"Por le salud." We weren't the only guests dining on the consommé.

I drank every drop of the hangover cure.

After breakfast we caught the early ferry to San Pedro de Laguna with a minute to spare.

The lake was calm. I couldn't have handle a ripple.

Rich people were building big houses on the shore.

"Drug money," a mestizo passenger muttered in English.

"Guatemala is a trans-shipment destination for cocaine from Columbia," I explained to Ms. Carolina.

"Looks like business is good."

"Not for everyone."

Poor people lined the lake.

The modern world was getting farther away with every spin of the propellers.

San Pedro de Laguna was on the other side of now.

We got off the ferry, which was headed to Santiago Atitlan.

These were Mayan lands.

Corn loomed high over our heads.

"Let me take your picture." Ms. Carolina was wearing a smile.

I tried to join her mood.

My hangover wasn't having any part of it, however the clean air and high altitude cut through the haze and by the time we reached the small town I was feeling 50% human.

Two boys were playing basketball.

I motioned for a shot. They gave me the ball. Ms. Carolina signaled for a pass. I bounced it to her and she scored a jump shot.

She was a good athlete.

An old man yelled at us in front of a souvenir shop.

I had no idea what he was saying in Mayan and told Ms. Carolina, "He probably doesn't like gringos. The Guatemalan Army was very active on this side of the lake. They killed thousands and their officers were white. On my trip from Belize to Tikal I had seen three dead man at an army outpost. They held their decapitated heads in their hands."

"How long ago?"

"1989. That war was long." President Serrano had been ousted earlier in the year and the new leader de Leon had brokered a fragile peace. "But it's over now."

There wasn't much to see in San Pedro de Laguna. Most of its inhabitants were working the fields. Tomorrow was the Day of the Dead. Preparations had yet to made at the church.

We drank beers at the ferry landing.

The bar's serving girl had a shy smile.

Ms. Carolina gave her sunglasses, as the ferry approached the dock.

"Dios bo’otik." The girl showed her teeth.

"Mixba’al." Ms. Carolina was getting good at speaking Mayan.

The mother wanted my Red Sox cap. I shook my head and wished them good luck.

"Ka xi’ik teech utsil."

I was getting good at Mayan too.

Atitlan was a beautiful place to leave, but Quetzaltenango was two hours away and I wanted to get there before sunset.

Ms. Carolina stopped for vegetables along the highway.

"I love the color."

She snapped photos.

My attempts to hurry her were futile.

Women move at their own speed when shopping.

We passed another accident.

People were driving faster.

No one wanted to be on the road after dark.

A roadblock loomed ahead.

We had blown it.

Cars were stopped on the verge.

Men were kneeling on the grass.

"Who are they?" Ms. Carolina was nervous.

"Militia." I slowed to a halt and rolled down my window.

A rough-looking man walked up to the car. His soiled clothes almost looked like a uniform in the dusk and I thought of the bandit from the movie THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE. A sawed-off shotgun was in his hand.

I had a bad feeling about this.

His flashlight sliced into the car. Its beam fell on my face.

"Red Sox?"

"Si, estoy un scout looking para un Secundo baseman in Quatzaltenango. Muy bueno."

"Amo Jim Rice."

I was shocked to hear this admission. The Boston media hated the black MVP outfielder. I handed the gunman my cap.

"Mucho gracias." He waved us through the roadblock.

"Safe?" Ms. Carolina smiled in the murk.

"For Red Sox fans, yes."

We arrived in Quatzaltenango after sunset.

A white Mercedes convertible was parked before the best hotel in town.

"Looks like Donald made it too." Ms. Carolina liked being on a first name basis with everyone. "How about a beer?"

"Por que no?" It was my favorite Spanish phrase.

The autumn night was cold in the highlands and at dinner we ate Fiambre salad, a Day of the Dead speciality, Chuletas fascinante, and a hearty Pulique stew.

Between bites of the Fiambre I told Ms. Carolina a family story.

"One Halloween my mother made me eat beets before going out trick or treating. I've hated them since."

"Take a taste." She forked a beet into my mouth.

"Good, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Which goes to show you that you can learn to love things you don't love."

"I guess it does."

I knew better than to argue with a woman when she was right.

That night I dreamed about a ghost in a graveyard. The militia were shooting men. One was wearing a Red Sox cap. I woke up in a sweat.

"What's wrong?" Ms. Carolina was 90% asleep.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep." I got out of bed and checked the locks on the door. Safe was never safe twenty-four hours a day.

A little after dawn we hit the Pan-Am Highway.

Behind the ragged ridge to the north lay Mexico.

We were far away from the USA and I turned on Wes Montgomery's IN AND OUT.

Ms. Carolina liked its swing.

Thirty minutes later the white Mercedes convertible passed us.

Donald was driving the road alone.

I tried to catch up to the Benz.

"Too much power." Ms. Carolina's tone suggested that I ease off the gas. The highway was in good condition for a bad accident.

"He's probably headed to Mexico."

Oaxaca was ten hours away by car. Puerto Escondido had a great beach. I remained true to our plan.

"We're going to Todos Santos."

We turned off the Pan-Am highway. The dirt road rattled the rented car like King Kong in a rage.

A mudslide had taken out some of the road. We were used to these detours. Ms. Carolina posed by the debris. A massive rock tumbled down the slope. I backed up the car and she ran out of its path.

"Safe," she huffed inside the car.

"Siempre."

Off the road it was the 14th Century before the conquest.

A stretch of paved road led to an army base. The soldiers were protecting the 20th Century from the past.

The dirt road resumed after a quarter mile.

Ms. Carolina loved the land.

"We are the only gringos in the world."

She was right again.

We descended steep slopes into a valley. We picked up two passengers. With them in the car we couldn't make it up the hills.

Ms. Carolina had no trouble walking with our passengers.

Everyone was headed to Todos Santos. The Day of the Dead was a big day for the Mayans.

It was time to speak with Cum Hau.

He was the god of the death.

The road got steeper.

Then we hit the bottom of the valley.

We were in Todos Santos.

A white Mercedes was parked by the church.

"Donald," Ms. Carolina and I said in unison.

Mayan children greeted us with 'Ba’ax ka wa’alik'.

It meant 'what do you have to say'.

Ms. Carolina gave them postcards from Virginia.

They loved her for showing them another world.

She bought woven blanket and a straw hat.

I got a bottle of pulque.

It was the traditional drink of choice for the Day of the Dead.

And other days too.

Thunder sounded from below. The first race was on. Crowds of Mayans lined the course. Shouts spurred on the riders.

A few gringos were watching the race.

The entire scene was chaos.

"It's Donald," Ms. Carolina shouted pointing to approaching horsemen.

The blonde older man raced past us with a chicken in his hand. He wasn't Donald Sutherland, but he was happy and Ms. Carolina was happy believing that he was the movie actor.

"Go, Donald, go."

She hugged me.

"You think he won?"

"Anyone who races wins."

We drove out of Todos Santos before the last race.

Ms. Carolina was happy.

She moved closer to me.

I let her be happier.

On the Day after the Day of the Dead what other choice did I have.

Wale hun or as the Mayans say, "Maybe only one."

And one was always better than none.

Fotos by Peter Nolan Smith other than those of the Todos Santos Race from Lucy Brown.