The sky was becoming an orange-pink like color
flooding the beautiful countryside with various shades as Johnny studied
the tall cacti - kinds he had never seen before recalling his father telling
him about a rain forest of his youth and he a fourteen year old boy driving
a wagon pulled by six horses through it all and only to be stopped by a
sixteen foot long snake lying in their path and how he had to kill it among
giant blue butterflies in order to continue on his deliveries of dry goods
- stretching toward the Sierra
Madras that were glistening in the hot sun.
He spotted three figures high on a ridge leading burros along a trail and
he imagined one of them was The Humphrey Bogart, who around the next bend
would pull out his gun from a wrinkled waist band and shoot the two others,
and then turn with a Duke Mantee expression on his face to start the animals
up another trail, though much steeper, to hide his - now all his - gold
peering about him with darting eyes as The John Houston with a thundering
God-like voice told him he was a greedy no good bastard who was never going
to enjoy the stolen money and the voice sent Bogey running away with his
hands over his ears .... and as the bus, filled with a hundred people,
and the same four men who sat opposite them in the bus station with their
eyes fixed on them the whole three hour wait as Johnny projecting his own
thoughts wondered if they were not thinking to themselves if these "Americans"
were from a country that bragged it was the richest in the world how could
they allow for one child in six to live in dire poverty, ninety live chickens,
a hundred baskets of vegetables and the two gringos, Johnny and his very
pretty wife, the likes of which were never seen in this part of "Viva Zapata!"
Mexico what with Johnny being a nearly six foot tall man with a bunch of
curly hair like snakes upon his head and a woman with strawberry blond
hair and blue-green eyes napping next to him, was taking a huge curve on
half its wheels - Johnny said in a quavering voice: "Here's looking at
you kid!" which startled his wife Linda Ann to a full wakefulness; able
to see the thousands of feet drop into a gorgeous lush green valley far
far far below. Johnny awoke before they landed.