THE NATIVE
61
scrawled invocations to their favorite Saint, others holding scratchy,
cartoonized drawings of the bleeding Christ or an agonized Virgin
Mary. But the real spirit of the fiesta was provided by firecrackers,
as roman candles, sparklers, gunpowder caps, and all the rest of the
fireworks of a good old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration, fizzed
and popped and flashed all aroU:nd the parade. We walked alongside
the paraders for an hour or so, to make sure we were seeing the real
thing and not some preliminary festivity or some side show, and we
asked as many questions as we knew how to phrase properly. But the
answers were all inconclusive, and when we saw the "fiesta" petering
out, we dragged ourselves back to the hotel to get some rest for the
excursion we had planned the next day to some ruins of an old
Indian monument deep in the desert surrounding Oaxaca.
We had been told that the best way to get to the ruins would be
to hire a taxi for the day. So, after some maneuvering, we found a
man who owned a taxi, and we began the usual bargaining and
sparring that have apparently become a ritual of even the smallest
Mexican transaction. Everything went fairly smoothly, though, except
that our taxi-man wanted some money in advance so that he could
buy enough gas for the trip, to which we readily agreed, since we
really had no choice in the matter.
As
we were talking about the gas,
however, I noticed that one of the tires was in pretty bad shape, and
I decided to examine the other three. They all looked like the kind of
tire one picks up in our junk yards, and that is occasionally used for
a spare to get us a mile or two to a gas station. But the driver assured
us that they were perfectly all right. "Don't worry, there's nothing
to worry about," he said, in a jolly, carefree manner, so common
among Mexican men. Though we were not sure whether he meant
that we would not have any tire trouble, or that it did not matter
whether we did or not, we decided to take a chance. We told him
we were ready to leave immediately. "One minute," he said, calling
to another man, who got into the front seat with him. We wondered
why a Mexican taxi needs a co-pilot, but when we asked him he
answered with an ambiguous gesture of his hand, and we were off.
We had driven about five miles through scorched, flat country,
on a road that looked as though it were melting, when one of the
tires popped, the car bounced and came to a standstill. "Now, what
are we going to do? I told you this would happen," I said. "Don't
