Chichifo

Yesterday we got up before dawn to drive to San Miguel de Allende. Hugo had some paperwork for the immigration office there, another favor for another friend. A thin band of seashell blue sky rimmed the mountains surrounding Guanajuato as we drove to meet Wicho at La Casa de Espíritus Alegres.

"Wicho" is what you call someone named Luis. Sort of like calling a William "Billy." Inscrutable Mexican handle.

When we pulled up he was standing in the doorway shrouded in a grey hoodie, hands in the pouch pockets. Hugo had him fetch an inkjet printer that was in the trunk of the car and we followed him inside and stood in the dawn kitchen for a minute. Stars were disappearing in the first light of the madrugada. Hugo and I drank milk and ate a piece of bread and Wicho stood there stone silent and looking like he hadn't slept a wink and was no worse off for it.

I slept for most of the drive through el cerro, the rolling hillsides of scrubby nopales cactus and ubiquitous dusty earth, as the sun rose and burned through the windows onto my neck.

In San Miguel de Allende Hugo waited in line on the steps of the immigration office. Wicho bought me an orange juice and drank a smoothie (licuado) through a green straw from a bulging plastic bag, the kind they give you when you buy a goldfish.

Later, Wicho bought some tools for his work with silver, his platería: a metal clamp and a scraping tool fit for a dentist and a pencil-size blowtorch. He uses these tools to make ornate silver earrings and, with the pointy ones, to pantomime homosexual ambushes. At other times he makes a jabbing motion with his hand in the A-Okay sign, thumb and forefinger forming a hole and the other three fingers flaring out like a rooster's crown. This is to say, "Did you get any?"

The licuado gave Wicho a stomach ache and he became reclusive.

Leaving San Miguel we passed a brick manufacturer, stacks of ladrillos in the dusty yard awaiting some further formation and hunched men building thousands of them into great ochre rectangles. This was Wicho's first job, before he became Hugo's number two -- chauffeur, chef, accountant, messenger boy, toilet scrubber, 20 year-old wage-earning manservant. A fully committed and seemingly tireless body who Hugo would die for and with a mind that is elsewhere and unattainable, always disappearing down the driveway at midnight.

Hugo bought him a can of root beer which he'd never had before and this seemed to put things right for a few minutes. He said it tasted like coffee.

I like Wicho for being a hard worker, a talented artisan and a quick study in almost anything, unapologetically adolescent leather jacket James Dean mile-long stare, never reads a book, for the toothache he had, for calling me chichifo, for the hand on my shoulder out of nowhere.

The leaves on the trees are crinkled dark green and shine. I point at the horizon where the biggest mountain is and tell Wicho that it's his, just trying out saying it. "Nah," he says.

Meanwhile Hugo is sitting in the back seat and tells me I have a bald spot. He takes a picture with his phone and shows it to me. We discuss it for a few minutes, whether I'm actually going bald. We dissect the few pixels of white scalp for evidence. He says in his squeaky trickster voice, "You're going bald, man!" His English is perfect down to the common slang and intonation, and I am learning for the first time that the word for bald is calvo.

We turn off into el campo before reaching Guanajuato, heading towards an abrupt little hat of a mountain called Cerro del Sombrero. The rocky dirt road winds through fields of burnt out corn stalks where goats and burros browse in twos and threes. A disco song from 1980 called "Sexy Eyes" comes on the radio and Hugo and I clap and snap and drumbeat the headrest and dash. "I love this jam!" I yell, even though I've never heard it before. I'm just trying out saying it. I've got one arm hanging out the window and the animals are ignoring the thumping bass like another ray of sunlight. "Yeah," Hugo shouts back. "Isn't it beautiful? It's called 'Las Cajones!'"

"No more lonely nights for me, this is how it's gonna be...sexy eyes..."

The rural village we're bouncing through is called Las Cajones, Drawers. It's wide open. We're moving as fast as a tractor passing little bright churches and box houses where they hang the wet laundry over scrappy metal fences. I wave at a young girl walking the road in her school uniform, a spontaneous greeting from the sheer excitement stirred in me by "Sexy Eyes." Wicho says something that provokes Hugo to censure him in his mock paternal voice, the one he uses to enunciate Wicho's real name, José Luis.

I have tried telling Wicho who Joe Louis was, punching the air to illustrate my point, but he barely knows who the Beatles were and just forget about "Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show."

We arrive at the little home Hugo has inherited in Las Cajones. The backyard has a clear view of Cerro del Sombrero and a glittering dam, or presa, farther off.

I say to Wicho, Vamos a tener una barbecoa aquí un día pronto, ¿no? Unas chelas, unas muchachas. He smiles like someone who just got out and says sí and puts his hand on my shoulder and we gaze at the sombrero.

Hugo says this is where we will come, he and Dean and I, with bottles of wine and paints and easels, and we will all sit out and recreate the hat. I think everyone who comes here knows what dreamy thing they would do if they came back. Hugo calls the house "Las Lomas." So many words for "hills."

So I'm going bald, apparently, and it's late afternoon as we get back in the car and head for Guanajuato. We go through Wicho's home town of Puentecillas and neither of us says anything when we pass his midnight driveway. Outside Puentecillas is a high-security prison and Hugo says Wicho used to live there.

We're listening to a saccharine Seventies ballad by the guy who sang "Lady in Red." He's pining away, "I thought I'd spend my seasons trying!" Orchestral sweep. Trying, sighing, lying, dying.

Wicho is unmoved and staring softly down the road.

I'm pretty sure Hugo was joking.