Chainsaw

4: Road Trip

The motorcycle hummed along, its chain adding a high whir to the engine’s exhaust note. The hills were frequent but not overly steep, a good thing since the weight of the two men made the small bike’s engine labor as they climbed. The pavement was worn but smooth, blackened by the tires that rolled across the asphalt. Stuart noticed that, while the road was marked with a yellow dashed line running down the center and white lines along the side, there were no shoulders--the grasses grew knee high right up to the side of the road. The trees were low and scrubby--barely more than shrubs--some darker green, apparently some sort of evergreen, maybe juniper; the leaf-bearing ones soft, round and lighter green. At a distance the terrain looked predominantly green, but closer up he could see that there were wide patches of light brown, very dry dirt barely held in place by dry grass.

“Are many of the rural secondary roads paved like this?” he asked.

“Secondary? This is primary--it’s one of the main highways through Mexico. Not too much else is paved, except roads off to other towns. We’ll take one of those pretty soon.”

“But there’s no shoulder, no fences. What do people do if they break down?” JD laughed in front of him, let off the throttle, downshifted, then turned abruptly off the road, and they bumped along, steering between the shrubs and occasional rocks.

“Jesus--okay, I get it. Give me some warning--I just about lost a nut when you bumped off!”

“Sorry!” JD replied. He slowed again and bumped back onto the highway. “They’re very proud of this road; it was pretty much a dirt track before. Lots of the roads just follow where trails went, since that’s usually the easiest path--no arroyos and less likely to wash out. You’ll see two tracks and dirt roads wind off into the hills, usually either somebody trying to ranch or some sad sack had tried mining.”

“Where does the highway go?”

“Nowhere.”

“No--really--does it go west to the ocean or south to someplace?”

“It goes nowhere. I mean it. It’s supposed to end up going over the Sierra Madres and connect up to the highway that runs near the coast, but it just peters out to a dirt track. Same on the other side--you head east on 24 and a nice road turns to dirt. I guess they’ll finish it one day. That’s Mexico for you. There’s a railway that took almost a hundred years to finish--that’s the way from Chihuahua to Los Mochis. Winding through the mountains, a shitload of tunnels and bridges. That’s quite a ride, but not on our dance card today.”

“Holy cow,” Stuart exclaimed, “we’re near the Sierra Madres?”

“Yeah. You can see them starting to rise out there.” JD raised his left arm and swept the horizon. “Okay, so you don’t soil my bike seat, I’m going to turn off on that other road down there, see?” A sign indicated San Francisco del Oro to the left, and JD leaned the bike into the turn.

Along the road, Stuart observed what he figured must be ranches--hand-hewn rail fences around whitewashed shelters, often with other larger areas fenced in with barbed wire strung along branches in the ground. He saw a number of brown and white cows or livestock in one. “Is this a big area for cattle herding or something?”

“Not so much anymore. They can’t be driven so much in the open, and the ones that sell are fatter than they can raise here. Most of what’s produced here are for the locals, along with the family cows, or an occasional dairy farm. You should see goats, sheep, pigs and chickens, too, since the smaller towns still have markets with fresh meat. We’ll get some in a bit.”

In another ten minutes, JD looked around and then tipped his head to motion ahead. “That’s San Francisco del Oro. You’ll see furrowed areas where they surface mined years ago. Look up over to the left--you see those metal towers? Those cables strung from them carry ore gondolas that cross the hills into the mountains where they mine. The company has to do it on a pretty large scale operation to make it pay. No more grizzled old prospectors sifting in a stream or striking it rich with their pick axe. Or maybe there are, but most of them get disappointed real fast and give up. I suspect some of them now work for the company here.”