Chapter 3

When I started telling Melly about the embryonic village just east of Branson I saw her eyes glitter. She became more and more excited. As her excitement grew my mood fell. I did my best to hide it. I felt that I owed her a chance at her own family. For the next month we taught her how to drive the semi and filled it full of bio diesel, as well as a home starter-kit.

When she finally left, full of hope and ambition, my life crashed to the floor. I looked around and decided that I didn't want to live there anymore. I fooled around with an old pre-world-war-two delivery van getting a needle valve installed in the side of the carburetor, fed from a hundred-pound LP gas cylinder in the back. My accelerator was a hand lever, like on a tractor. It was probably one of the first commercial engines started with a DC motor. You had to throw the gear in and out with a hand lever.

I took along with me a hand-cranked grain mill, five big seven-gallon plastic storage buckets with screw down lids filled with wheat, ready to plant. I took about forty pounds of seed potatoes. I let all the animals loose. There was plenty in the fields to support them. I considered what I'd need to take with me to bridge between my current place and where I'd end up.

I loaded up with some clothes, underwear, socks, boots, a cot, some blankets and some sheets. I had a few canvas painter's tarps and a lot of cordage too. I remembered water. I filled a fifty-gallon water buffalo and hooked it to the back of the van. I remembered to pick up some hose and a manual water pump. A new bilge pump from a marine supply place had a good transfer volume. I found a full, spare gas torpedo full of propane at the marine supply place. I laid it down in the back as a spare. I brought cases of paper towels along because most of the toilet paper had fused together on the store shelves. I took a handful of garden tools, a few boxes of nails and screws and a box full of hand tools.

Thinking about those roads and how long it'd been since they'd seen maintenance, I found four rims that would fit the van and put the best spare tires on them that I could find. I also wrapped up some light bulbs for the truck in rags before packing them away. I found a bunch of windshield wipers that had been sealed in plastic. They were in good shape. The hoses under the hood? I didn't trust a single one of them and replaced them all. I bolted a big twelve-volt winch to the frame after I cut a hole in the front bumper with a gas torch. It was my first time using a big torch like that. I damned near cut the radiator in half before I figured out that I had to take the bumper off before I worked on it.

Just before I left town I found a hard-shell case for my guitar to take it along. Since I was already in the music store I cleaned them out of nylon strings, too.

What the hell was I going to eat? I had a lot of dried baking goods stashed away, like dried eggs, powdered milk, flour, and a lot of ghee. I added sugar and salt to that, and a nice dutch oven with a lid. I looked through the coolers for meat. I double-smoked some ham, bacon and the tail end of my beef. That all got hung on hooks to further air dry in back of the delivery van.

I stopped for the first night in Villa Union, about seven miles down the road. It was a good shake-down distance. I found that I wanted a chair and a small table to sit at. That wasn't a big problem. It grew a bit, though. I found that I wanted to carry around some flatware, a bowl and a cup, a short axe, a military folding shovel and a sheath knife on my person. All the plastic backpacks on the shelves had gone to hell. I found a pile of canvas tarps that had been wrapped in plastic, deep in the back of a hardware store. I found needles and some braided fishing line that seemed sturdy enough. I made my own over-the-shoulder backpack. It took a couple of days to make but it worked well. I sewed a couple of D-rings into the corners and used a nice comfortable guitar strap over my shoulder. I found a Mexican military compound. I figured that they knew how to pack away ammunition to last. I ended up going through the wall instead of the door. It was easier. I picked up a couple of military rifles (G3M3s) with iron sights, in 7.62 NATO (close to 30 caliber). They kept the ammunition in 300-round heavy plastic packages. When I slit one open there wasn't a bit of corrosion on the shells, primers or bullets. I learned how to break down, clean and reassemble those rifles while I was there. They were pretty damned stiff before I worked on them. All the long-term stored food I found in the armory was bad. They had stored away 30-round magazines and chest harnesses to hold the magazines. I geared up and took several hundred pounds of ammunition. I had to watch my vehicle weight after that as the van was starting to drive funny. I kept the speed down.

It was desolate. Nothing moved unless the wind moved it. I drove from dawn to about ten, when it started getting hot and I came upon Escuinapa. I didn't think much of the place, so in the morning I took off again. The map showed the route to Tepic crossing and re-crossing the mountains. I took it slowly in case somebody had spun out and blocked the lanes as they were taken. I stayed in Tepic for several months, looking for something to draw me, to hold me in one place. I didn't find it.

I headed down the road to Porto Vallarta. The lure of the idea of a giant resort city drew me on. With nobody else there it was a rattling skeleton. It was an empty ghost of a whore's dream. I hardly paused there. It was too hot during the summer afternoons for me as well. There was hardly a breeze. I continued on down the coast.

Soon I came upon Melaque. I stayed there a while. I fished and foraged in the fields. Nobody came to stop me as I scavenged from the lives of others long gone. I felt bad that I did not even know the faces of those who came before me.

Nothing physical threatened me. It was only my own ill feelings that made me want to pick up and move on further down the coast. I came to Manzanillo, a strangely comforting place. I found a villa close to the city that I came to love. There was a well with an electric pump at the bottom of the shaft. I did my usual let's-make-a-generator-work magic so I had water. Everything fell together for me. I felt that this was the city in which I would live out my days. I set up a simple kitchen and wrestled all the big, useless equipment out the back door. Likewise all the rotting clothes, beds and bedding. I knocked together a simple wood frame for the bed. It was easy to find a mattress and box spring that had been covered in plastic, stored on end between others. They'd stood up amazingly well. I really had to search for bedding that hadn't gone to hell. The furniture was okay. I went through five brooms cleaning the crap out of the villa. I found a barbecue grill that I liked then stole every bag full of charcoal that I could lay my hands on. I filled most of a bedroom with the stuff. I filled the swimming pool and poured in three gallons of bleach. By the time the water warmed up the sunlight reduced the chlorine percentage to something that wouldn't give me green hair. If I was going to take a bath I may as well do it in front of God and nature. There was an outside shower I used to soap up and shower off before hitting the pool, where I could marinate like a tough cut of meat.

It was cooler there than it had been in Puerto Vallarta. The old printed tourist guides said that the beaches were littered with trash--plastic bags, dirty diapers, glass and plastic. In eighteen years nature had cleaned the place. Oh, the sharp pieces of glass were still there because it took a long time to grind it into beach sand. The charts on the walls of the fishing charter houses showed very deep water only three to five miles out, but I couldn't get there. At least, not immediately. I'd have to find a sail boat, inspect or perhaps replace the lines and sails, learn to sail (there was a nice harbor available. It should be safe if I didn't do anything stupid) and get out there. Then again, I really didn't want to catch anything big. If I couldn't eat it in one day, why try to catch the fool thing?

There was a lot of written material around town praising the local fishing, but most of it emphasized fishing charters. Follow the money, I guess. Somebody had to pay for all those pamphlets to be printed. They wouldn't have paid to have things printed that didn't make them money in return.

I sat musing over a glass of whiskey and water in an old bar down by the waterfront. I liked that bar. It had class. It wasn't dressed up for the tourists. There was a picture of The Naked Goya, one of the most classic nudes in art, above the wall behind the bar. It must have been nine feet long. I resolved to hang a generator off the ice machine in there so I could drink my alcohol with ice cubes. I mused on how my 'culture' had changed since the separation. I no longer purchased what I wanted with a synthetic good called money. Now, I purchased what I wanted by scarcity or with my skills and labors. I knew that as long as I was without any people around to goad me I was happier than I ever had been before.

The braided synthetic lines seemed to have best stood the test of time. The fiberglass rods all seemed to be falling apart. I found a few steel kiddie rods at a dollar store. they worked fine for what I wanted. I caught minnows with a big dip net and kept them in a Styrofoam bait bucket. I think nothing short of a fire would destroy those little Styrofoam buckets and beer coolers. Maybe being out in the sun would degrade them after a few years--who knows? Anyway, I did the retired old man thing and fished in the mornings and drank in the afternoons. I set up a charcoal grill right outside my bar, on the street.

I knew enough not to bathe in the ocean. The little jellyfish were almost invisible when they were in the water. When I went near the shoreline I always put on socks and leather or composite plastic boots. Things with spines that could kill you lived in the tidal waters too. I fished from the rocks and the docks. I grilled what I cooked.

It had been a busy shipping port. Every once in a while I went looking for invoices for the shipping containers. I didn't really want anything, I was just curious. When I found a container full of canvas painter's tarps, all sealed in plastic wrap I took note. I might have to make my own clothing in ten years or so, God forbid I should live so long. I found a few containers full of fry-max. They had an expiration date from hell stamped on them. Should I take a chance? I decided to take a risk. I got out one of the big five-gallon jugs, half-filled a dutch oven with it and put the whole thing on a small fire to heat. I slipped in some shrimp covered in flour and took them out when they floated to the surface. My nose, the best chem lab I had, didn't complain. I tried one. It was pretty good! I ate a dish full and sat back, waiting to see if my dinner would turn me inside-out or not. Nope. Fried fish was back on the menu. Maybe donuts too? I'd have to see. No sense getting too worked up about it. I'd be damned if I made work out of it.

Months later, I found myself walking down the coast. I didn't have anywhere to be any time soon. I'd get wherever I was going when I got there. I kept walking in the moonlight. Soon the moon went down and the stars kept me company. When I was tired I slept. When I was thirsty I went looking for something to drink. When I was hungry I looked for food. I walked on. I felt nothing. I was as nothing. The Buddhists were right. Attachment is the source of all suffering.

In the morning (Was it the next morning? The next week? My beard was a little longer.) I turned around and headed back up the beach. I had no idea what had taken me over so thoroughly. It took me three weeks to get back to my villa. I sure had dropped weight. The winter rains had come while I was away, and that's what gave me a source of water to live on. I stripped grain kernels from the grasses and rubbed it between my hands to get rid of the husks. I chewed the raw grain as I walked. Occasionally I'd come upon an old self-seeded garden or field. I found carrots, garlic and onions that way, as well as dried corn. I harvested the corn kernels, cracked them fine against a rock with the back of my hatchet and made a porridge every few days. I had my pouch at my side, and had kept my square of canvas folded over the top. That I slept in at night. I missed salt. I made my porridge with sea-water to get a little. I got tired of the rain beating down on my head but there wasn't much I could do about it. I remembered that trip for a long time, watching the gray rollers come into the beach as the rain came down. I eventually figured out how to fold the canvas into a long rectangle and used a cord to wrap around my head, holding the canvas in place. I think what kept me going was the promise I made to myself to take a long, hot bath when I got back. Maybe a good long soak in that swimming pool.