the middle of the sky to a more comfortable yellow-red ball falling slowly towards the horizon. Still, even yellow-red it was too bright to look at directly, and Baron still had to shuffle forward squinting, his face covered with dust, his clothing heavy with the dust intermixed with perspiration. From time to time he had sipped at the bourbon bottle to cut the layers of dust in his mouth, but he hadn’t thought to bring any of the crackers or the other food from the boat, so now he felt a little lightheaded. But that was good, it made it easier to keep moving.
By sunset he had walked a full twenty-one miles due west from the sea and had not yet come to a road. As the sun edged down out of sight far away in front of him, as the swift evening closed towards night, Baron began at last to feel real apprehension. Where had he landed, on what mistaken, lost, useless, forgotten shore had he cast himself?
It took a conscious effort of will to keep from running.
When he saw the man, he at first didn’t recognize him for what he was, but mistook the seated figure in the failing light for only one more of the occasional boulders he passed. It was ahead of him, and as he came closer it seemed to him the boulder was odd somehow, wrong somehow. And then he recognized it for a man, squatting on a low rock, his rounded back towards Baron.
Baron came forward, stumbling on the stones, forgetting his count. His suitcases banged the sides of his legs, hitting the raw places where they’d been hitting all afternoon, but he hardly noticed.
In a way, he was astonished. In a way, he hadn’t actually expected ever to see another human being again.
He was so excited he made the mistake first of speaking English: ‘Hello! Where am I, where the hell’s a road?’
The other man was just as startled as Baron. He leaped to his feet, half-stumbled as he backed away. He was an old man in grey and white clothing, clean but very ragged. He had the deeply lined face of an Indian, and his eyes showed the whites in his surprise and fear.
Baron realized the mistake with the English and leaped to another tongue. ‘Wo ist die autobahn? Haben sie’
No, no, that was wrong, too, that was German. In his confusion and haste, backing away from English, he had switched automatically to his native tongue.
Spanish, that was what he wanted, Spanish, but for just a second there was none of it in his head. He floundered, then the Spanish word for road came to him camino and the rest of the language followed.
So now he said, in Spanish, ‘I beg your pardon, I did not mean to startle you. I have been walking, looking for the road.’
‘Road? You want the road?’ The old man spoke a dialect full of clicks and gutturals, so Baron could barely understand him.
Baron nodded. ‘Yes. I want to continue my journey.’
The old man waved his hand. ‘This is the road,’ he said.
Baron looked. There was almost no light left, but now he could make out the ruts, the hump in the middle, the swath across this land cleared of stones and pebbles. This was the road, he was standing on the road, the old man had been sitting beside the road.
He said, ‘Where does this road go?’
The old man pointed south. ‘Aldama,’ he said. He pointed north. ‘Soto la Marina.’ .
Neither name meant anything to Baron. He said, ‘Which way leads to a bigger road, with automobiles and trucks?’
The old man pointed north again, towards Soto la Marina. ‘At the village,’ he said, ‘you must take the road west. To Casas. To Petaqueno. To Ciudad Victoria, which is a great city.’
Ciudad Victoria. That was the first name Baron knew. He said. ‘How far is that, Ciudad Victoria?’
‘From the village, perhaps more than one hundred kilometres.’
One hundred kilometres. Sixty miles, a little more. Baron said, ‘No cars before there?’
‘Sometimes at Casas. Or Petaqueno, very often.’
‘And how far to your village, to Soto la Marina?’
The old man shrugged. ‘Five kilometres.’
Three miles. ‘Is there somewhere I could sleep there tonight?’ Because another three miles was the most Baron could walk without sleep and food and water.
The old man said, ‘In my house, near the village. I am going home now, come with me.’
‘Good.’
They started walking along the dimly seen track, and the old man said, ‘The suitcases are heavy?’
‘No. Not too heavy.’
‘They have valuable things inside them?’
Baron turned to look at him. Was this old fool thinking of robbing him? But he was too old, too frail, there couldn’t be anything to fear from him. Baron said, ‘Just some clothing and things like that. Nothing valuable.’
‘Perhaps an electric razor,’ said the old man.
‘No.’
The old man was a moron. He did plan to rob Baron tonight, while Baron slept, but he was too stupid to keep his mouth shut and so he’d given the game away.
