stopped inviting him over, but the manager’s refusal operated with more vigor: fists raised, pounding the air; also, boorish stomping, even kicking up some dust. Even on Christmas Eve, Demetrio preferred to dine alone, perhaps so as not to recall his mother, nor his second mother, nor Renata, nor—whom else? A mental blank: a discipline of sorts: barely a blur: an oblique achievement. When New Year’s Eve rolled around, he chose to drive the pickup about three miles away from La Mena to avoid any hugs for—Happy New Year! To gaze at the stars, to glimpse vague signs … He fell asleep in the cab of the pickup, hungry by design, bundled up warmly (he’d bought loads of clothes in Sabinas), wearing—who would see him?—a thick wool hat with earflaps, and a double-knit scarf, and—of course! his privacy tripled. He didn’t even chat with Don Delfín when he came, when he handed over the weekly take: astonishing numbers—so precise! and otherwise just the stern yeses and nos, one or another sentence spoken as if to summarize a civility after hearing a particular command. So there wasn’t even a (diplomatic) Christmas embrace, nor one for New Year’s (so graceful). Who could explain his disdain?
Wise discretion peeling inner layers open.
What kinds of riddles and dissipations … other than the words?
Total devotion to work and nothing but.
And thus two months passed …
March brought a freshening … perhaps a clearing, suitable for carrying out a mission.
Suddenly Demetrio played with a happy idea: to go see Renata in the middle of the week, even though it would take him a couple of days. He left in the early dawn, right around three …
He ventured, he got lost. Since the manager didn’t know by heart the long detour that connected La Mena with the wide dirt road that in turn connected Monclova to Sabinas, he came to a graded crossing of four roads, and the mistake: he took the last one he should have taken, ending up in a hamlet called Hermanas: far far away: on the outskirts of the enormous municipality of Ocampo. So he turned around: angry: blast it! He was even angrier when he realized that, without meaning to, he’d taken yet another road that had brought him to another hamlet, called El Pino Solo: a rustic slime heap, almost spectral, because very strange people lived there, people who wanted (almost) to kill just for the sake of it. However, his vexation did not arise from his fear of being imminently and definitively killed, but rather because the pickup had by then burned more than half a tank and who knew if the gasoline would last until he arrived safe and sound in La Mena, moreover—which way? which was the shortest route? In fact, night came upon him like something grotesque. It was cold as hell in that desert without a glimpse of butte or hill. Hunger gnawed as well. It seemed like his guts were beginning to stick to his backbone: a bellowing belly, and—who the hell was going to give him something to eat? If he didn’t happen by a ranch on his way back, he had better get used to the notion of ingesting plants: creosote and lantana didn’t taste so bad and they were, in fact, quite nutritious. After sleeping, terrified, in the aforementioned cab, he continued the following day like a lost and rollicking fool full of faith. Yes, faith, for he prayed in his very own way. He never tired of repeating, more than a hundred times: God help me!, a phrase that became more and more syllabified and, deliberately, more prolonged and melodious; just once he added to his entreaty the following sentence: You know I’m a good man! and at a different point, blarney of this sort: If you help me get to La Mena soon, or to El Origen or La Igualdad, I promise I’ll bring flowers to the church in Sabinas as soon as I can. Flowers? what a magnificent gift. Perhaps God, upon hearing that such a great big being was going to give him such a colorful offering, had no choice but to take pity on him and thereby help him find his way. He reached El Origen in no time. His adventure was but a deceptive detour. The tank still had gasoline—oh!: a miracle in this region, so far removed from the progressing world. Even he, who had desperately swallowed a few handfuls of (inevitably encountered) lantana berries arrived quite