Strung Along Captive

by Joel Pomerantz
written April 1994 (posted 2002)

I was forbidden to call you when I was in Los Angeles for my first time ever, though I felt your presence. My captors were fighting amongst themselves, so quietly and yet with strong wills. It seemed without purpose to me: they ended up taking me South of the Border with no plan, no alterations from the original non-plan, no coherent description to me about what they had in mind. I decided early on that it was best for me to nullify any expectations and try to calmly, patiently deal with whatever came.

I'd never been in Mexico, nor Long Beach, for that matter, and the transition from the one, super-affluent, commerce-stricken land to the other, the mange, the open dump, was enough to set me aloof, as some kind of -ologist touring a land of spoiled lore.

We traveled down the coast until we reached Maneadero, a large town on the southern outskirts of Ensenada with dirty half-built hovels of concrete and concrete block. Every street in town had a few buildings sprouting tall weed-patches of rebar reaching upward from the tops of the walls and roof, as if another level was to have been built, as if some grand supplier of funds or materials had suddenly whisked out of town during an abortive construction boom. Or as if the chance to build was so precious that all must be prepared at any time.

In what came to be the most strangely enticing and inexplicable jaunt of a thoroughly inexplicable journey, I was taken to a place where there was a quirky cave near the surf's edge. Each time a swell would drift in from the infinite Pacific, the air inside would be compressed through a small aperture. From this would blast a thunderous jet of droplets a dozen meters into the air. My captors, acting as if our arrival here had been the result of a wrong turn, quickly hustled me back into the car and again to Maneadero.

We stopped at a small store, received directions to a local and decidedly non-tourist hotel where we took a couple rooms as the only guests. The rooms were bare and cold, though an attempt had been made to freshen the place up, with clean towels and a pitcher of water I refused to drink from.

Night came and I heard myself begging for the small supply of food and water that I'd cached under my seat in the back of the car. I was instead provided a greasy plate of food and ice water by a proud cook who was clearly unprepared for the special arrangements that my hosts had requested. In repayment for his culinary shortcomings, our server proudly and boldly arranged for us to meet a man he called The Director. He took us into the back room and pointed out pictures of himself with a grey-goateed, fierce-eyed, but impotent-looking gent. We were instructed to go to a small town to the west to a place indicated by a small roadside placard saying, "THEATER."

The elderly white man refused to speak with my captors, only speaking with me after the bizarre all-English "performance" in the "theater" from a script that could not have been written in California Norte within the last few decades. It was called "Murder at the Howard Johnson's" and was greatly lacking in clues as to why I was out on this odd mountainous hook of land, spending a beautiful evening sitting above the ocean in a half-built box with no doors, furnishings or flooring, in an expatriate community of middle-aged gringos who laughed as if drunk at baudy fart jokes.

At intermission, the room emptied out, actors and audience, to the front open-air hall of the building where each person lit a cigarette or cigar while complaining that smoking in the stage room, not to say auditorium, was forbidden. The Director took me aside and harshly spoke the following words, which I took to be some kind of code to which I could not respond without grave risk: "I'd much love a taxi with her." My attempt to treat his remark as idle conversation brought an uncomprehending glare and The Director walked back inside. At the end of the show, I was quickly propelled toward our waiting car in which we were driven in silence back to our quarters.

o-o-o

At the sound of a dozen fighting dogs in the street below, I leapt out of bed and to the balcony. My guard was still sleeping and impervious to the howls and growls of what must be a nightly street ritual among these semi-domesticated mangy beasts. I could not, however, contemplate an escape under these circumstances, fearing attack by the wildly frothy and cavorting dogs.

Later, a different and more pleasant sound awoke me: roosters. I scanned the empty street and seized the opportunity to make my break, but found the guard standing at my side, suddenly, in the stone-walled courtyard. She insisted, with a wink, that I was merely stir-crazy and that she had planned all along to take me on this very same early morning exercise walk. We walked for almost two hours along the hillside of shacks and outdoor washpits. I tested the limits of my captivator's control over me by suggesting sudden changes in our course that took us closer to the inland edge of town, along the hills, where I thought I would be best able to make my own way unnoticed. I didn't manage an escape, though I developed a rapport with my guide. After viewing the awakening town to the accompaniment of a searingly bright sunrise, we ended up back at our motor transport.

We spent the rest of that day watching a storm come in as our grunting car pulled itself up the mountainside. We passed large rocks alternately painted with visions of the Virgin Mary Guadelupe and political slogans inciting the prospect of PRI victory in the coming national elections. The rain was strangely comforting in its vertical calm, but it did soak my hopes of making a dash for freedom.

o-o-o

It is again rainy, but windy, as I sit here in my San Francisco home looking out into the garden remembering the sounds of that windless patter. I even think fondly of that little room we hurried to and then from at Rancho Agua Caliente, deep in the hills of the Baja coastlands.

That lost ago morning, I was awakened too early by our frantic driver who was shoving all our things into a bag, gasping with that kind of panic-breath that wards off any argument from her already obedient companions. It had begun more raining upon us, wrinkling the smooth warm surfaces of the thermal spring pool, and she was afraid the corduroy road we had navigated into the ravine would become impassable. For my part, I wasn't concerned about the already-wet road. I had spent enough scrutiny during our descent to notice that only a literal few yards of the seven kilometers' crumbly-chunky sand surfacing was prone to mudding up. I had no choice and not enough sleep, and with a beautiful dripping sky and wafts of steam from the agua caliente, where I would so rather have bathed, we climbed back up from the river to the paved road and headed to the inland plateau of Ojos Negros.

By the time we reached the arid central highlands, the dense herds of tangled yellow and white plastic bags that overpopulate the coastal areas diminished to a nearly green naturescape. From Ojos, we drove north, stopping only once to pay respects at a small mausoleum in a rocky rural graveyard. The miniature mud house had two altars which I could see by craning my neck into the one small window. The damp inside was decorated with red and green christmas tinsel and a dozen lit votive candles, yet there was no one vital visible nearby to have lit them. This absence seemed at once disappointing and uninteresting to my companions (as that is how I was coming to view them).

As we drove into the border town of Tecate, I was beginning to discern feelings of friendliness and true compassion from my previously terse entourage. Maybe it was my infectious sense that we had laughably managed to fail every test and had not come even close to whatever it was that had been the goal set for this mission. (What that goal might have been, I can never know.)

There had been a turning point, just after the encounter with The Director. I felt a softening of the crude handling techniques that had been used to control me to that point. I think that I must have solved some question as to my identity or usefulness by my reaction to his taxi comment. I now recall a brief whispered conference as I was pushed ahead up the hotel stairs. It seemed to bring the end of any expectations for my role in their adventure. I assume that is why the guard treated me with such humor upon "catching" me in the act of an escape that next morning.

The Tecate border crossing was a cinch and we toasted our return to the States with a sip of clean water at the Civic Hall of Nixon's San Clemente and without grudge against our common confused fate.

Since my flight back from L.A. (to which I was hurriedly ushered by my erstwhile masters), I have seen only one of those strange travel partners. It was unexpected, at a crowded party of a work acquaintance. The one with whom I had walked, under the sunrise, before the rain, was there in the crowd. She came over to me, bulky brown coat in hand, and spoke softly, looking directly into my eyes, "Shall we to the taxi?"