Page 31 (1/1)

Codi dear,

I’ve been driving the way you’re supposed to here, like a bat out of hell, the wrong way out of hell whenever that’s possible I’ of outlawry You’d be proud I burned up the road till around La Cruz and then slowed down enough to enjoy the banana trees going by in a blur The tropics are such a gaudy joke: people have to live with every other kind of poverty, but a fortune in flowers, growing out of every nook and cranny of anything If you could just build an econorowing out of the glutters and a banana tree co up under the kitchen sink I swear There were soooses You would knohat they are I’ain You knowwild and fifty feet tall I keep thinking about 626-BUGS and all those sad ladies trying to grow zebrinas in an arid clihway as far as Nayarit, where it gets rugged, but I paid the price for that little adventure (Doc Homer would say: I paid a dollar for my shiny dime) I broke, not bent but flat out busted an axle in Tuxpan and spent two days waiting around while a ht in a new one from Guadalajara The only hotel was a two-story pension with live band (euphe onpelicans dive-bo our trip to San Blas Remember those pelicans? If you’d been there, in Tuxpan, it would have been fun I couldn’t bringproductive-there were people I could have talked to about crops and the refugee scene, but instead I spent one wholeshrimp door to door, He had a pole over his shoulders, with the bucket of shri of water Every time he sold a kilo of shrimp he’d pour out that much water and drink it, to balance the load I watched hiht, I want to be like that Not like the ive myself over to utility, with no waste

But I was useless, lying around those two days Saving etSaw an awful lot of dead cropland in the interior, and I knoill be worse in Nicaragua War brings out the worst in production agriculture

Tomorrow I cross the border, but it’s hard to say where the border is, because this whole part of Chiapas where I a day I drove horrible ee camps, one after another like a dream They say the Guaten, so people co across the border with the clothes on their backs and their hearts in their throats and on a good day the Mexican cops don’t bother them On a bad day, they make them wake up the kids, take down their hammocks, and move into somebody else’s district It’s a collective death A whole land-based culture is being relocated out of its land-like a body trying to s survive The women have their backstrap looms and woven clothes, like you see sometimes in import stores All those brilliant colors in this hopeless place, it kills you

Right thisfor the uy with his Fanta truck) and watching four barefoot kids around a cook fire The one in charge issticks while these da thes out and roll thee You live your life in the States and you can’t even picture soe of a safe life

I know you’re worrying but you don’t have to, since we’ve established that I’h I don’t feel like it I’ll write from Nica next I’m sure I’ll be happier once I’m put to some use I miss you, Codi, write andslave-for-life,

Hallie

The ending was an old joke: in our letters we used to try to outdo each other with ingratiating closures The rest of the letter was pure Hallie Even in a lethargic ony and ecstasy Especially agony She ht as well not have had skin, where eht over into her flesh For exah a newspaper and take note of the various disasters, and then Hallie will read the same paper and cry her eyes out She’ll feel like she has to do so, it’s to run hell for leather in the other direction Maybe it’s true what they say, that as long as you’re nursing your own pain, whatever it is, you’ll turn your back on others in the same boat You’ll want to believe the fix they’re in is their own damn fault