VAGO, the novel

j r hammond (c) 1981

Anti-body: 

CHAPTER 1 THE VAN

    "Inside.  We must look inside," said the policia.

    He spoke softly from the cliff's edge, looking down at the wreck.

    His partner, who did not answer, was merely wondering again--for the

millionth time--how it happened in life that great wealth piled up in some quarters and in others did not.

    Neither moved.

    The one who had spoken continued to ponder the possibility of passengers--surely the tumble down would have killed anyone within.  As they wondered and pondered--it was a long climb down--the timeless pulse of the ocean, and the sudden collapse of a wheel, combined to loosen the broken van from its setting in the rocks below.  It slipped over on its side into the water of the Sea of Cortez.  It rocked gently back and forth with the action of the waves, trapped and bruised, while the two cops silently watched.

    From a high spot on a powdery road not far away, a pair of indios coolly observed the scene.  Descended from those who were once the world's greatest long-distance runners, these ones, whose genes remembered, even if their memories could not, out-running, out-lasting really, a buck or a band of Apaches on horseback across barren desert--no desert is barren--to deliver mouthfuls of water as evidence of their warrior-hood....

    These ones considered how this van, this home, smashed upon the lap of the sea, might best be saved and put to use. 

    These ones saw the van as shelter for doe-eyed, dusty brown innocents, who would be forced by the chill of winter to sleep in a pile together under grimy blankets because the sticks and the mud and the tarpaper do not keep out the wind the way a metal car would.

    These two brown, wiry men stood silently and watched.  Then, without comment, under the phlegmatic watch of pelicans perusing the shore from ancient flight patterns, they trudged off toward the bus and another day in the mine.

    Later, from one of several police vehicles attracted to the scene with roof lights flashing cosmetically as if there was someone to warn and something to warn them of, two of the greener rookies made the arduous climb down the cliff to discover that the van was vacant.  They find no broken corpses, no bodies tossed out on the way down, no signs of violence or skid marks from brakes being applied on the surface above.

    There remains one item of peculiar interest.  A clue, perhaps.  An old shotgun lies in the grass where the van had gone over. 

    It points out to sea as if purposely laid.

    Meanwhile, out on the highway some seven kilometers to the east, a lone early-morning hitch-hiker with backpack begs a ride.  The ride he catches is headed south, but to this young man direction does not matter.

    As he climbs into the truck a thirty-year old ex-school bus passes by.  No longer the familiar yellow, it cries from faded letters on its dusty blue-gray flank: "Minas de Sal de Sonora S.A.”

    Sonora Salt Mines.

    Within the bus, two of the miners, indios, note the hitch-hiker with flat acceptance.

    "Este," says one.

    "Si, por supuesto,” nods the other.  They concur without more being said.  Of course.

It was gringo.  

Come down.

---o---