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    The Mechanic of San Martín
    The Mechanic of San Martín
    The Mechanic of San Martín
    Ebook372 pages4 hours

    The Mechanic of San Martín

    By Angus Brownfield

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    One day master mechanic Rigoberto Calderón incurs the wrath of God. He has long had two wives, one openly, one covertly. God and the good folk of San Martín look the other way. That fateful day he boasts to a gringo motorist whose truck he’s mending that two mates concurrently is superior to the US custom of serial marriages. God takes notice of Rigoberto’s boastfulness. Promptly Emma, the clandestine wife, starts making what Rigoberto believes impossible demands on behalf of their children. Then Carmen, the wife of record, dies in the arms of Shula, a gringa motorist whose car Rigoberto repairs. This leaves a second clutch of children motherless. The double dose of pressure unnerves Rigoberto, who retreats to the mountains (leaving the children in Shula’s care) to contemplate his fate. Disabled by a fall, he is delirious enough to converse with a wolf. He is on the point of dying when Cillo, a timid vagabond, carries him to a village where a shaman named Bernardo keeps him alive until Fate delivers Shula, Emma, all the children and all Rigoberto’s young apprentices to the village. Bernardo uses Shula’s allure to restore the mechanic’s will to live. The merger of the two families is effected and Rigoberto returns to his home and trade, but there are costs which may or may not balance the apparently happy ending. You decide.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAngus Brownfield
    Release dateJun 15, 2011
    ISBN9781458056061
    The Mechanic of San Martín
    Author

    Angus Brownfield

    Write what you know. I know me and I'm talking to you, reader, in the first person, not the anonymous third person, because when I write I write about me and the world that thrives around me. I wrote decent poetry in college, I couldn’t get the hang of short stories. I finished my first novel so many years ago writers were still sending their works to publishers instead of agents. My first novel was rejected by everyone I sent it to. The most useful rejection, by a Miss Kelly at Little, Brown, said something like this: “You write beautifully, but you don’t know how to tell a story.” Since then I've concentrated on learning to tell a good story. The writing isn’t quite so beautiful but it will do. Life intervened. Like the typical Berkeley graduate, I went through five careers and three marriages. Since the last I've been writing like there’s no tomorrow. I have turned out twelve novels, a smattering of short stories and a little poetry. My latest novel is the third in a series about a man who is not my alter ego, he’s pure fiction, but everyone he interacts with, including the women, are me. My title for this trilogy is The Libertine. Writers who have influenced me include Thomas Mann, Elmore Leonard, Albert Camus, Graham Greene, Kurt Vonnegut and Willa Cather. I don’t write like any of them, but I wish I did. I'm currently gearing up to pay attention to marketing. Archery isn’t complete if there’s no target. I've neglected readers because I've been compulsive about putting words down on paper. Today the balance shifts.

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      Book preview

      The Mechanic of San Martín - Angus Brownfield

      It was a number of years ago, when things were a little different in Mexico, that Rigoberto Calderón Sánchez, master mechanic and respected citizen of San Martín, walked away from his business and apprentices and families.

      This is not a figure of speech, he literally walked away.

      A man of automobiles trudging the road with a satchel, like a peddler. Who can resist a shake of the head? Who, in spite of knowing the tragedy that had struck the Calderón household of late, can avoid the thought, just for an instant, that perhaps God and the santos had found Rigoberto, señor ojos de violeta, a little too high and mighty? And therefore motorists—neighbors and customers—passing el maestro and totally ignorant of his mission, tooted and waved, grinning.

      He waved back. He grinned until his long teeth showed. They don't understand, he told himself. All I know in this world—women and autos—have turned on me. So it's not just okay to walk out of town, it's demanded.

      Defeated by two women in one morning—Emma, his collateral wife and Shula Rosenthal, that busybody from hell—he had fled Puebla like The Fiend was after him. What man, his conjones on a rock and a stone coming down, minded speed limits? He drove the old river road, ignoring dips and railroad crossings, daring his old truck to turn on him also, to break.

      But it held, lurching and swaying. The road turned to gravel, then dirt as it climbed above the river gorge, which sank deeper the farther south he went. The road ended at a great horseshoe bend where a gas pipeline crossed the gorge on its own delicate suspension bridge, the only manmade thing within his field of vision: just he and the pipe and the whine of the truck engine revving higher and higher, the gorge just there, in front of him.

      He tipped up on two wheels as he braked and turned and skid on hard pan the color of tortillas, slamming down again and lurching to a stop facing back towards town.

      He sat, panting, pale as a cadaver, the birthmark on his bald head scarlet, hands at last throbbing as he peeled them away from the steering wheel.

      "Madre de Dios," he muttered, and jumped out of the truck, leaving the door open, to urinate.

      He walked to the lip of the gorge, looked down, walked away, shaking his head, thinking, I'm not going to die on account of two women who will kick a man while he's down. Better they drive into the river.

      But by the time he climbed into the truck and slammed the door, he was as drenched in self-loathing as sweat. Oh yes, he said aloud, "the simple way. Not man enough to stand up to them, just kill them—that Shula, and mi querida... But then, I’ve already killed one woman, mi esposa. I could get good at this."

      He had such a vivid memory of the ambulance doors closing on Carmen's body, he banged his head against the steering wheel until his ears rang.

      ##

      So when he was afoot and drivers waved and grinned—a great many, for he knew three-fourths of the drivers in San Martín—he said to himself, Let them wave, let them grin. I spent half my life afoot I can go out that way.

      But, true to form, he did not walk defiantly through town, he stopped first at the bank. He'd sent all his ready cash to Emma, he'd promised to pay the rent. In his final note to her he wrote, I don't know where my steps take me, but do not count on me—anything can happen.

      But she could count on him. Rigoberto stopped to pay the rent and take care of all the others in his life: his children, "mis muchachos," meaning his apprentices, taxes, life insurance premiums—like a man with a morbid illness. When all those amused drivers learned why he trudged the highway, he would be branded as a coward, a vagrant father, a loco. So what? He did what he could, which was all you could ask of a man.

      Sr. Alfonso C. de Vaca Manzana was a vice president of Banco del Norte by virtue of being manager of the largest branch—the only branch—south of México. He wore suits in the mild December weather. He greeted Rigoberto in one of dark grey flannel, accented with a maroon, figured tie. His shoes shone as if lacquered. He was half a head taller than his client, thick hair impeccably barbered, mustache trimmed to resemble those worn by bankers, lawyers and doctors from the Río Bravo to Patagonia.

      He listened to Rigoberto's needs with his fingers laced upon the blotter of his orderly desk. Half way through the recital he reached into a bottom drawer and produced a bottle of Quervo Presidente and two silver liqueur glasses.

      "¡Salud!" The banker drained his glass.

      Rigoberto acknowledged the toast before he, too, downed the Tequila.

      Your heart—broken, the banker said.

      I've had enough for a while, Rigoberto said to the silver thimble; I need to get away.

      The same thing, came the response, and Rigoberto let it lie.

      They chatted a moment—the drought, the rising price of new autos, local politics. At which point Sr. C. de Vaca buzzed his secretary.

      She came in, a cool, sleek exterior, limp, silky blouse, the scent of a woman kept in a México penthouse.

      Ask Sr. Varga to step in. Sr. Varga was the head teller.

      "El maestro requires that certain funds be made available to certain persons, while he is away on a business trip, Luis. See that all his needs are taken care of—understand?"

      Sr. Varga clicked his heels like a Prussian officer.

      How easy to run away when you are a respected citizen. Bank managers supply you with excuses. —And a clap on the back and a Havana corona, which Rigoberto waved off in the fussy quiet of the bank.

      Back in the winter-mild sun, new bills stuffed in his pocket and more in his satchel, Rigoberto felt secure, even flush; he should have had the cigar, after all.

      He walked to the center of town, into the central market, where he wandered the stalls at random, saluted by twenty merchants, hailed by another dozen "buen’ hombres," until he had bought a hat in the style of Michoacán, guaraches that still smelled of the tanning vats, sunglasses, a canteen, a pair of carrying nets to balance on the back a kilo of dried beef, some salt, mangoes, green and ripe, and a cellophane wrapped chunk of guava jam, reduced to a confection in the Mexican style. He bought mineral water to fill the canteen. He bought a sack of parched corn. At the gunsmith's, just beyond the market proper, he purchased a Colt revolver handsome as a sports car, and two boxes of cartridges.

      He had thought nothing through, just bought what came to hand—except the pistol; he thought of that on his walk into town.

      He found a bench in a quiet corner of the park and donned sunglasses and hat, hiding his telltale birthmark and evocative eyes. He put on his guaraches, too, good sturdy ones, soles cut from tire treads. Lastly, he shifted to the carrying nets the satchel's contents and left the satchel under the bench with his work shoes. He hefted his makeshift pack, rearranged items for balance, then set off.

      On the way out of town he bought a bottle of Tequila, of a size to fit in his hip pocket, and after taking a swig, he marched north, smiling like a man who thinks he's outrunning fate.

      Chapter 2: The low road

      Secure in his disguise, Rigoberto walked at a comfortable pace without pause, except for a light lunch from a roadside bodega. The guaraches invited walking, the country air was a tonic. By mid-afternoon he had climbed into the mountains, noting the trees changing, also noting, in some places, no trees at all, for miles. He thought about trees, about peones chopping them down to make charcoal, walking farther and farther from home each dawn, until they ran into peones from other villages cutting the trees from the opposite side, and maybe they threatened each other, or actually hacked at each other's arms and legs with their heavy, hooked woodcutters' machetes, but in any case they were totally chingados without trees, sometimes trying to grow corn on land as chingado as they, or packing up pots, pans and bedding, and walking away to some town where, they thought, a strong back would bring in enough for tortillas and beans.

      He took a swig on the Tequila and thought about walking through the mountains, having left all his possessions behind, along with a mess. He remembered as a youth, when things were particularly tough and he looked for Divine intervention in his affairs, he walked from his hometown of Orizaba to a shrine dedicated to Cristo Renovado. He thought his fortunes needed resurrecting then; they really needed resurrecting now. But the Cristo with the rays of light coming from the holes left by the nails had not relieved him of either suffering or having to work like a péon to make his life a success.

      He came to a fork in the road, the pavement veering almost due west, towards people, the other fork, rutted dust, heading for the loneliness of blue peaks tipped with white. He wanted dust under his feet. He wanted no Christian claptrap, he wanted to clear his head and examine his soul by his own lights.

      The unpaved fork dropped first into a valley with a broad, shallow river flowing through it. Maybe he would come upon someone to tell him the name of the river, before he started climbing up the other side of the valley, to find a cave somewhere, near the top of a very tall mountain, where he would be safe from mountain lions, and dry and warm. There would be a waterfall nearby, where he could refill his canteen. When his dried meat and mangoes gave out, he would just gather berries, or shoot something with his pistol.

      And if he couldn't find any berries or shoot any animal, well, he had a roll of fat over his kidneys that would serve him for a long time.

      It was more important to think than eat. He could eat anywhere; he was heading for the mountains to have a good think—but not about the mess he left behind.

      ##

      His mess began to take shape when a fellow named Mike, a decent enough norteamericano—not arrogant the way most gringos are—was towed to his garage with a broken axle. Mike understood at once he was dealing with a master mechanic, a man customers addressed as el maestro.

      Mike was on a second honeymoon, headed to the Yucatán from a place near San Francisco. Only it wasn’t a second honeymoon in the sense of a romantic trip after years of marriage, it was a first honeymoon with a second wife. She was pretty but too thin, Rigoberto decided. She stayed to herself, which was okay. They were living out of a camper mounted on the truck he was fixing and he could tell she cooked well, the odors in the evening were enticing.

      After dinner, the day the truck was declared A-okay, the norteamericano carried an unopened bottle of Sauza Conmemorativo, to the garage, where Rigoberto tutored his apprentices in the fine points of grinding valves. Mike invited the workers to help him celebrate the restoration of his faithful Tortuga, as he called his truck.

      Rigoberto smiled and said, Of course, signaling his apprentices to stop working. He sent the first two to finish washing their hands, Juan and pot-bellied Tomás, up to his house, not a stone's throw away, to get glasses from his wife.

      The mechanic lit the darkening garage, switching on a drop lamp. It hung from an engine hoist lashed to reinforced rafters in the center of the old, converted barn.

      ##

      Rigoberto wrought miracles, Mike concluded. He fought this idea at first—was somewhat suspicious, in fact—because he could have replaced the Power Wagon's broken axle himself, had he the tools. But he didn't, and Rigoberto politely insisted, looking with his Ramon Navarro eyes at Mike and his wife, on having the axle welded instead of ordering a replacement through the Dodge agency in the next city, Puebla. It was cheaper, he explained, and it wasn’t a part the agency would have in stock anyway, which would mean a delay of several days.

      Welding an axle wasn’t a quick fix either—which seemed not to bother Rigoberto. Mike’s wife claimed he would keep them around until the next foreigner limped in, because he had to have a few foreigners around to amuse himself. Or maybe, as Mike suggested, the mechanic saw that the gringos needed a rest before driving on.

      In either case he was meticulous, for when he got the welded axle in place he discovered it was two millimeters longer than the original specification and insisted on taking it back to the blacksmith's shop to be done over.

      The forge was in Puebla, twenty miles southeast of San Martín, a metropolis that was the capitol of the state by the same name. Twice Rigoberto took Mike along on his Puebla jaunts, the first time to pay, the second time, when asking the blacksmith to correct his work, to scowl. Rigoberto left him at the forge and disappeared for an hour and more each time. It dawned on Mike, after cooling his heels the second time, that the visits to Puebla had not much to do with seeking the best blacksmith. It might be vice or it might be business going on in the lost hours, but it annoyed him, studying the dirt floor of the oppressive smithy while his mechanic gallivanted.

      But, on the test drive of the repaired Power Wagon, just when Mike was about to condemn, Rigoberto shook his head and clucked over the sound of the truck's engine. In a flash he pulled over, popped the hood, and adjusted the timing—by ear—at no additional cost. It was as if he were making up for the Puebla visits, balancing accounts.

      ##

      El maestro relaxed the rules the evening that Mike appeared with his Tequila. Each apprentice had a thimbleful of liquor as they toasted Tortuga's renewal. Later, they sat and listened as the two men toasted each other's country, world peace and better days for all the earth's poor. Only Pablo and Tito fooled around a little. Chino—the sad-happy one, as Mike's wife called him—drifted off into daydream.

      After the third or fourth ¡salud!, Rigoberto observed, You married late, I see.

      Oh, you mean because I'm so old and my woman is younger?

      Rigoberto, younger than Mike but with three children already in school, nodded.

      Mike explained it was his second marriage.

      Ah, a new start, Rigoberto said.

      A different journey; the other should never have happened.

      Up north, Rigoberto observed with a smile approaching superiority, you marry sequentially; down here, we do it simultaneously.

      Truly? Mike was amazed at the man's neatness of phrase, and that he had understood such fancy Spanish.

      We can't afford divorce here.

      "But if a man had two families, how can you afford that?"

      We Mexicans work like the devil.

      Mike said, No, I mean the cost here. He tapped his chest over the heart, in lieu of words.

      Sometimes, Rigoberto said, allowing the lids of his nearly violet eyes to droop farther than usual, it is the only thing in this brutal world that keeps a man sane.

      Chapter 3: Simultaneously

      "What a pendejo," Rigoberto muttered as he trudged along. He was referring to himself of course. If only he hadn’t bragged. If you are truly macho, he told himself, you don’t need to brag about the women in your life, you don’t need to spit to show you aren’t afraid.

      Yes, everyone in San Martín knew he had a second family on a side street in Puebla. But they had found out the usual way, seeing his truck parked in front of a certain house during the frequent trips to Puebla to buy items he could purchase closer to his garage. San Martín was still small enough word got around.

      ##

      Emma López Mena was the name of Rigoberto's woman in Puebla. In her mid-thirties, she was made of bones and skin only a pathologist could tell from those of Rigoberto’s legal wife, Carmen Noble, but these elements were arranged according to a different chemistry. Mother of four, never lithe, she still commanded the admiration of men. Several had tried to win her away from the ugly mechanic from San Martín. All had failed.

      For Emma loved Rigoberto. She loved him from the day of a simple kindness he’d done her after her first man died. The dead one was a poet. Never mind that he worked as a waiter, his passion was poetry—and Emma. He had swept her off her feet with poesy and enthusiasm for her flesh, and filled her belly with two jolly, slightly pudgy boys. He drank a trifle too much mescal, and wrote poetry—good poetry, Emma always thought. She still had a drawer full of it. A Sonorense with cowboy boots and a .45 insulted her poet one night at the restaurant, and added enough injury to the insult, when challenged, to effect a quick, and fatal, defeat.

      After she buried him, Emma tried to make ends meet by selling off what she could of the things they had shared. The only one of real value was an automobile, an old Dodge Aspen—after poetry, Emma and the boys, the poet's main enthusiasm. The car, with only a few thousand miles on it, was French blue with a white, vinyl top, and had not a dent or scratch.

      The day Rigoberto first saw Emma, he was buying parts at the Dodge agency in Puebla. His eyes, which spoke volumes at times, which were capable of coddling and crooning and were a force to be reckoned with, were for once speechless. He told the counter man, I'll be back, and walked over to where Emma stood with a salesman at the service entrance to the agency. This was the woman of his dreams, quite literally. This was Carmen as she was once, briefly, before the first baby. This was the Carmen he dreamed about at night, full yet still shapely, doe-eyed yet determined.

      She stood in front of the Aspen, gesturing, trying to sell it. A salesman circled it like a vulture circles a lost lamb. Rigoberto heard him make an offer barely half the vehicle's value. Rigoberto immediately sized-up the situation and caught the man's eye.

      Baby-faced but a head taller than the mechanic, the salesman excused himself and took Rigoberto's arm, walking him out of earshot. What's happening, Rigo?

      Nothing much. You going to buy that fruit dish?

      Fruit dish? I talked her down to almost nothing.

      And nothing is what it's worth, my friend. Pretty on the outside, a bag of bolts on the inside—have you driven it?

      No, but I listened to the engine. —How do you know this?

      I examined it for a friend the other day.

      You're not trying to get it for yourself, you aren't fooling me, are you?

      Rigoberto could see the salesman was drooling over the pristine exterior of the car. What would I do with this car? Cars to me are like women to a gynecologist. After you poke around inside so many of them, you can't get very excited about it.

      I suppose so, the salesman grinned, and went back to his negotiation, dropping the offer another few thousand pesos.

      When Emma broke off bargaining, because even she knew the offer was absurd, she marched over to the parts counter and placed her fists on her hips. Why? You are a stranger, why would you do this to me?

      He took her aside, loving the anger in her doe eyes, loving the smell of her—vanilla. Do not sell a horse to a horse-trader, señora, sell it to a man who likes to ride.

      She hadn't expected a proverb. The fists left her hips. The offer was too low?

      Even if it runs poorly, which I doubt, it is half what you deserve.

      "¡Caray! And it runs like

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