In 1992, planning to build a new bodega, Nacho Lara invited his cousin and me to survey those villages near the Lake where adobon – home-made bricks – were created. “Adobon” was the word once used to identify large local red clay bricks. They measured 36.6 centimeters long, 16.5 centimeters wide and 7.5 centimeters high. Made of clay and cow dung, low-fired in simple pyramid brick kilns, they cost 500,000 pesos a thousand. In 1973. adobon cost 1,000 pesos per thousand. That was a clear marker of Mexico’s uncontrolled inflation. The price was called “crazy” by most Mexicans, especially when talking to foreign associates, and especially by sane local albañiles (masons).
“Go down there until you come across a broken plow. You will see a tree with a black sow tied to the lowest branch,” said a woman wearing a Mac Truck cap, a long faded dress and split huaraches. “Right there lives a quick-working albañil, Adalberto. He is my cuñado (brother-in-law).”
Introductions made, we shook hands, digesting this unexpected information. Nodding, she said, “Adalberto is down there with his ovens now. But he’s mean today. One of his sons, Celestino, left two days ago to work in Guadalajara. The first person in that family to do anything other than make and deal with adobe walls, or farming. The boy wanted to work in a city restaurant. Adalberto called him a cluster of names. And Concha and Angel – you know his wife and his brother, no? – had to keep him from beating the boy. He did hit him with the pick handle before they could stop him. The commotion echoed for days.” She said much more. Nacho and his primo were fascinated by the story. I abruptly said, “Bricks!”
“Uhh! ‘Hurry’ is a disease of pale races,” Nacho said as we went looking for the pig tied to a tree.
“You want to get that bodega started before the rains begin?”
Nacho glanced at me ruefully, and hailed a sturdy woman trying a turkey by one leg to a cluster of shrubbery.
No, the señor wasn’t there. The stocky woman spoke placidly, with no indication there was any turmoil in her life. Yes, there were bricks for sale. Yes, at the price of 500,000 a mil, plus 50,000 for the flete. Yes, a very dear price. And she didn’t know when they could be delivered. The señor had driven off in the morning and probably would not be back until some time after eight-nine o’clock. Who knew?
Nacho and Chuy agreed we would be back at eight. “I wonder what cantina Adalberto went to?” Nacho said knowingly.
“Who?”
“The brick-maker. His anger was blistering at his younger son, his whole family, actually. That’s the way he goes. He will be at a cantina, or a burdel. With a bad temper.”
“A little early for a brothel,” I suggested.
“Maybe he went to a friend’s house,” Chuy offered.
“No. Adalberto went to friends’ houses when it first happened, but now doesn’t want to share it over and over,” declared Nacho. He also said “we should go to a cantina in a nearby pueblo; one where he used to hang out in his truly hard-drinking days, evidently not long ago.”
Sure enough the brick-maker had been there. Nacho grinned. But, said the cantinero, he had gone off with a fisherman friend to check the man’s nets.
At the lake, we drove to the hard-packed beach, looking at the few boats we could see from the sturdy shoreline. Far down the beach, we saw a boat being rowed onto shore by three men. We walked to the water’s edge. Oars creaked sharply against the wooden locks, and the men breathed hard.
“Looks like they’re pulling in a whole island of lirio,” Chuy said.
Something seemed to be caught in the fishing net, bobbing heavily among the lirio.
When the boat scraped bottom, one of the fishermen, pants rolled high, leaped out, pulled it farther up onto the wet sand.
Adalberto put down his oars and gripped the net. Two fishermen helped him pull the heavy green lilies onto the shore. In the middle there seemed to be a round pale sphere. As the greenery bobbed closer, it appeared to us to be the distended stomach of someone.
“A drowned one,” said Nacho as we helped pull in the netting. Adalberto then splashed into the shallower water with his boots still on. The person caught in the lirio and the net had no eyes. But what was left of his face seemed young.
“Blown down this way from Chapala or Ajijic by the wind, El Mexicano,” said one of the fishermen. “It’s what the pescadores this year are calling the ‘Easter runoff.’ This is the third in this week. The first was a joven hit in the head and thrown into the water, the police said. Who knows.”
Adalberto washed his hands vigorously some distance away along the shoreline.
“I saw another one two days ago on my way out to clean my net. The police make trouble when you bring a drowned in. I let someone else do that. Unless it’s someone I know. This one was really stuck in my net. A boy. Probably drinking too much at some fiesta in Chapala or Ajijic, and got in an argument. Showing off stupidly in deep water.”
“Maybe he just fell out of a boat,” Nacho said.
All of us pulled hard on the line to beach the body. There finally came the sweet decomposing odor of death.
Adalberto spat as if to clear away the closeness of the aroma. “That could well be my crazy son.”
“No.” a fisherman said gently.
I agreed. “Celestino went to Guadalajara to become a waiter in one of those rich restaurants he was always talking about. He wasn’t going to settle for anything else.”
“How do I know where he went?” Adalberto stared at the eyeless, disfigured young corpse, angrily shaking his head. “I should have done more to make him stay at home.”
“No,” said the fisherman pulling on the line. “You shouldn’t have been so mad at his ambition. You shouldn’t have hit him. It does no good at that age.”
“Yes,” Adalberto said with a harsh-edged voice, scowling down the beach, away from the body. “That is true, too.”