The Road to San Juan, Part I

Wicho and I sit down in a patch of gravel beneath a mesa where a rickety town shines like a carnival. It’s the middle of the Mexican night and the mountain looks like a black curtain spread out across the stars. A chilly January wind gusts from the mesa’s flattop. Wicho, bowlegged, removes his shoes and the imitation Dr. Shoal’s inside fall out like a pair of dead fish. He grimaces and peels off his sweaty socks and begins rubbing his feet with cream made from snake venom. It smells like Vicks. I saw him buy this bottle from a man in a Volkswagen bus playing a schlocky recording through a bullhorn. The pilgrims flocked to him like bald men after hair tonic. I have studied the outlandish claims on the side of the bottle with skepticism.

“Look,” I say to Wicho as I hold up the cream in mock advertisement. “It even cures cancer!”

Wicho rubs his feet patiently, mopping the soles and toes with the dubious salve. His eyes focus so softly on his tired feet that I suddenly feel like I’ve trespassed on some sacred anointing ceremony. My sarcasm seems to have thudded, while the scene around us is bright and lively.

Old ladies behind food stands cook tamales and enchiladas and serve these with steaming cups of cinnamon-scented atole to the tired pilgrims. They brew hot punch of orange, hibiscus, tamarind, and apple. The peregrínos, the ones who are awake, drink and eat and huddle in groups like drunk people playing cards. There are thousands of us. I see the others splayed out before us in the mesa’s bulky shadow, many with their eyes closed, wearing faint smiles, heads resting on backpacks, heads in the dirt. I hear bursts of laughter and, behind this human sound, boomboxes playing accordion-heavy ranchera music. Someone is enjoying “Eye of the Tiger” too. It’s like the midnight Mexican Valhalla, although we are not even halfway to our destination.

Wicho lets out a bruised grunt as he reaches for his socks and slides them back over his blisters. He takes a deep breath and looks ponderously, I think, at the moon. His Spanish, which has been described to me as almost Shakespearean by those who appreciate the campesino vernacular, catches me off-guard. He says,

“There’s a shitload of cancer in the United States, right?”

“Yeah,” I say, rolling my eyes. “There’s cancer everywhere.”

“No,” Wicho says with sage certainty. “Not like there, dude.”

This question of human frailty resolved, I lay back and listen to the rascally noise of ourselves, all the thousands of us. It is a poor sort of carnival with all the rides shut down and everyone playing the games for free or dreaming under the arcade of the sky. I forget that this is a Catholic pilgrimage we’re on, and I am not a Catholic. Little burrs cling to my green sweater and I hear fireworks.

Centuries ago, the Persian poet Rumi wrote that going on a pilgrimage is a way to “find escape from the flame of separateness.” I wish I could say that I had his lofty sentiment in mind when, a moment later, I removed my shoes and socks and reached for the snake venom.