Roy was eight years old when he and his Uncle Buck, his mother’s brother, flew from Chicago to Mexico City. They were going to visit Buck’s former father-in-law, Doc Wurtzel, at his house in Cuernavaca. Roy’s cousin Kip, Buck’s son by his first wife, Doc’s daughter Juliet, had been living with his grandfather and his housekeeper, Pilar, for the past ten months, ever since his parents divorced. Kip was twelve now, and neither Roy nor Buck had seen him for a year. Juliet had had a nervous breakdown before the divorce, and Buck travelled often for his work as a structural engineer, mainly as a consultant on designing or reinforcing bridges, so Doc suggested that until a more suitable situation could be arranged, Kip come to live with him at his villa. Doc Wurtzel was a widower, a retired mineralogist; he and Buck had much in common and were fond of one another. It would be beneficial, both men agreed, for Kip to learn Spanish and to be away from his mother, whose instability prevented her from paying proper attention to her son. Buck told Doc he thought the best solution would be for Kip to be sent when he turned thirteen to a military academy; until then, Doc could provide the boy with valuable life experience.
It was January of 1954 when Roy and his uncle left freezing cold Chicago for sunny Mexico. Roy had been to Cuba, where his father had business, he spoke a little Spanish, and he looked forward to being in another Latin American country. Despite the four year difference in their ages, Kip and Roy had always gotten along well, as had Roy’s mother, Kitty, and Juliet. Both women were beautiful and smart, said Buck, but troubled.
“Your mother and Kip’s mother aren’t really suited to raising children,” Buck told Roy on the plane. “They’re too self-absorbed to be responsible for others. Kip is better off for now with his grandfather and you with your father.”
“What are we going to do at Doc’s?”
“We’ll stay at his place in Cuernavaca for a couple of days, it’s not far from Mexico City; he’s got a beautiful swimming pool lined with big white rocks, surrounded by flamboyana trees. I designed his patio and helped him build the pool. Then the four of us will drive cross-country to Puerto Vallarta and go fishing. Doc has a special place he likes to hunt for marlin. After that maybe we’ll stop over in Acapulco for a day or two.
“My mom and dad went to Acapulco on their honeymoon, I’ve seen pictures of them there.”
“We’ll rough it most of the way. Your dad tells me you’re a good traveler.”
“We once drove to Oriente from Havana, a lot of the way over mountains. It was kind of spooky sometimes. My dad kept a gun on the front seat between us, a .38. He showed me how to hold it with both hands and aim just below the target before I pulled the trigger.”
“Did you have to shoot anybody?”
“No. Dad said there were bandits in the hills but all of the people we met were very nice. They were mostly black on that side of the island, different from in Havana. There are lots of pretty girls there.”
Buck laughed and said, “There are pretty girls everywhere, Roy.”
Doc’s house was simply furnished and comfortable, with rattan chairs big enough for two people to sit in at the same time, and lots of doors to the outside that were always left open. Roy and Kip were happy to see each other again and Doc was a friendly, large man with a white beard and big hands. Kip told Roy that his grandfather could fix or build anything and that he was a championship fisherman. Pilar, Doc’s live-in housekeeper, was a short, stout young woman with very long, shiny black hair.
“Pilar grew up in a small village near here,” said Kip. “She’s never even been to Mexico City and doesn’t speak English. She doesn’t speak good Spanish, either, mostly a local lingo Doc has trouble understanding. She’s twenty-four. Doc sleeps with her sometimes, he says he does it to keep her happy because she’s never been married and doesn’t have any boyfriends.”
“What if she gets pregnant?”
“I don’t know. I guess the kid would live here with us. Pilar’s parents never leave the village. Her sister, Tentación, comes to see her sometimes. She’s only eighteen and has two kids already, a boy and a girl. Her husband, Pablo, breaks horses for ranchers around here. I’ve only met him once. He’s shorter than I am but Doc says he knows how to sit a horse better than any man he’s ever seen. Tentación told me Pablo’s busted every bone in his body at least once.”
“What does Tentación mean?”
“Temptation.”
Doc and Buck sat and talked for two days, then the four of them loaded fishing and camping gear into the back of Doc’s station wagon and headed for the west coast. The trip was uneventful but Roy enjoyed seeing what Mexico looked like. The country they drove through was not as verdant as Cuba; Doc said you had to go further south, to the state of Chiapas, to get into the forest.
“There’s some serious jungle down that way,” Doc said. “The Lacandon Indians live there and keep pretty much to themselves. They don’t welcome outsiders. I hear they’re tough folks to tangle with.”
The men traded off driving and Roy got a little nervous when Doc drove because he sipped tequila all the time, but Kip told Roy Doc’s secret to staying sober was to suck on venenoso limes while he drank. After a while Roy believed him because Doc was always steady on his feet and handled his customized, reinforced steel-bellied Willys expertly over bad roads.
“What’s in the limes that keep him from getting drunk?” Roy asked Kip.
“Poison. That’s what venenoso means.”
The fishing at Puerto Vallarta wasn’t so good. The marlin weren’t running because of what Doc said was an unexpected cold spell, but he and Buck didn’t seem to mind. All of the roads around the town were unpaved and the good weather didn’t hold. Rather than camp out they stayed at a guest house that wasn’t much more than a glorified lean-to. Kip taught Roy how to carve a resortera, a slingshot, out of a tree branch and they used stones to kill lizards. After three days of windy, wet weather and bad luck hunting marlin, Doc declared they should pack it in and make for Acapulco. There was a casino there, he said, and good restaurants.
In Acapulco, Doc decided they should check into a good hotel and clean up, then find the best place in town for martinis and steaks. After dinner, Kip and Roy walked with the men to a building next to the ocean with lots of steps leading up to the entrance.
“You boys wait here,” Buck ordered when they were halfway up the steps. “Doc and I will be back in a little while.”
The men continued up to the front door and Kip and Roy sat down on the steps and looked out at the Pacific. The sun was down but there was still a stripe of green light in the sky. The waves were gray-black and kicking up.
“Is this a casino?” Roy asked Kip.
“No, it’s a prostibulo, a whorehouse. They’re going to get laid.”
A few men went up and came down the steps while the boys sat there.
“Do you miss your mother?” Roy asked.
“Sometimes, but only when she’s not drinking, and she was always drinking before I got shipped down here to Doc’s. Does your mother drink?”
“No, not really. She says if she has more than one drink she falls asleep. She has other problems, though.”
“Like what?”
“She faints a lot. Sometimes she screams for no good reason and her body shakes. My grandmother gives her pills and puts her to bed.”
“Remember that time she showed us how to play craps on the sidewalk in front of my house and my mother came out and yelled at her and made me go inside? Your mother just laughed and picked up the dice then got into her car and drove away.”
“Her maroon Roadmaster convertible.”
“Yeah. Doc says she’s as beautiful as Gene Tierney, maybe even more beautiful.”
“Who’s Gene Tierney?”
Doc’s favorite movie star ever since he saw her in The Return of Frank James. He said she went crazy and got put into an insane asylum.”
After about an hour Doc and Buck came out of the house and walked down to where the boys were sitting. Roy and Kip stood up.
“How’d it go, Doc?” Kip asked.
“We got out alive, that’s good enough. Let’s go to the casino, I’ll teach you to play craps.”
“We know how to play, Roy’s mother taught us.”
“Kitty’s my kind of woman,” Doc said. “Don’t you think so, Buck?”
When he got back to Chicago, Roy’s friend Jimmy Boyle asked him if he’d had a good time in Mexico. They were on their way home from school, walking against a strong wind that made their faces feel like apples being sliced into by paring knives.
“I don’t know,” said Roy. “I liked being with my Uncle Buck and being in better weather than this.”
“Did anything bad happen?”
Roy didn’t answer. He lowered his head, bent his body half over and thought about the gentle breezes that ruffled the leaves of the flamboyana trees around Doc Wurtzel’s swimming pool.
When he and Jimmy got inside the front hall of Roy’s house, Roy rubbed his face with his hands and said, “Nothing bad happened, it was only that I didn’t feel like I belonged there.”
“Do you feel like you belong here?” Jimmy asked.