The Guadalajara Reporter

Crazy February: Too much rain, cold wind, chilly hearts, and the lessons of hard times that shape the endurance to deal with them

It had been raining most of a week. The traditionally dry month of February was living up to its ancient reputation, Febrero Loco. Unseasonably cold, with enough wind-driven rain to make it seem like the middle of the rainy season. Except that term is aimed at seasonal high winds announcing the coming of spring. It’s twined with the following month, forming the Mexican dicho, Febrero loco, Marzo mas poco.

Five o’clock Friday morning, slogging down the red mud trail from Sutano Rojas’ adobe home. I needed a can of tar mixed with rank juice that the local curer — who says he isn’t a curer — pounds out of mountain weeds. I hoped he was an early riser. ‘Tano’s best dog had a barbed-wire cut on his left hip. He kept licking off every kind of medicine I put on it. During the night he’d gnawed the wound bloody. Good dog, but self-destructive when it came to wounds. For two days I’d been taking care of ‘Tano’s property and livestock. He and his kids had taken his pregnant wife to a city doctor. She’d had a miscarriage last year and feared another.

Ahead, the trail disappeared into the sunken road where broken pieces of cerveza and tequila bottles poked through the water. I’d come along that trail the afternoon Tano left. And was rewarded with a flat tire. Tano drove out with no problem. He knew where all the broken bottles were, I guessed. Now I used the high-piled left side of that swamp to get to the pueblito called Las Guayabas. About nine tile-roofed buildings, a school and four to five stores. A single bare bulb shone on muddy stone pools in front of the school yard.

A whisper quieted a crying child as I passed a dark house. In another, snores sawed through the cracks in the door. In the lee of a canted store stood a burro. A large pale dog leapt soupy ruts of the cobbled street, trying to divide his snarling between at the burro and me. I threw a stone to turn him back. A sleepy voice called once from behind a plastic-covered window, then was silent.

Turning onto the sloshy, heroically named Calle Jesus Maria Morelos, I saw a short wide figure carrying something large on its back. Lightning, dimmed by heavy clouds, blinked, and thunder distantly grunted, promising more rain. In the flicker, Mina Vega’s rough voiced challenged me. “Quién es?”

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