A few evenings later, I am driving Highway 2 to Playa
Bagdad, the northernmost point on Mexico’s Gulf coast. A powerful cold front
has forced its way through the soporific humidity, dropping temperatures by
fifty degrees in one day. On the way across the barren salt marshes, a
mercilessly frigid north wind batters my truck, the only vehicle on the
causeway. An early darkness falls under a leaden sky. At the end of the
highway, the thundering surf threatens to wipe out the dunes on which the beach
concessions are built. Not a light burns besides my headlights, suddenly weak
and powerless against the blackly threatening night. From the parking lot, I
catch glimpses of foam scudding across the road, probing fingers of surf
reaching the edge of light, vanishing.
At the end of the pavement, the dune road vanishes into the
surf. I turn my headlights off and step out into the night. A gust blows a
shower of salt spray over me. The waves are whitely visible in the dusk, raging
at the confines of gravity. A bolt of primal fear shoots through me, creature
of the land. A rogue wave could come out of the dark like an avenging angel and
sweep me and my truck right off this delicate spit of sand. I get back in and
make a U-turn, wheels digging a little in the sand, concentration total, keep
up the momentum without turning too sharp, turning too wide, giving too much
fuel, letting off too much. Then pavement, and the long highway back to my cold
and dreary flophouse room in Matamoros, which now seems a beacon of safe
shelter. It is snowing all along the Gulf Coast northward, icy highways for a
thousand miles; I am trapped in this ugly border town for two days at least. In
such a way do most wonderful beginnings reach their natural end.