It was all over.
"Good-by, Gregoria!" cried Dean, blowing it a kiss.
Victor was proud of us and proud of himself.
"Now you like bath?" he asked.
Yes, we all wanted wonderful bath.
And he directed us to the strangest thing in the world: it was an ordinary American-type bathhouse one mile out of town on the highway, full of kids splashing in a pool and showers inside a stone building for a few centavos a crack, with soap and towel from the attendant.
Besides this, it was also a sad kiddy park with swings and a broken-down merry-go-round, and in the fading red sun it seemed so strange and so beautiful.
Stan and I got towels and jumped right into ice-cold showers inside and came out refreshed and new.
Dean didn't bother with a shower, and we saw him far across the sad park, strolling arm in arm with good Victor and chatting volubly and pleasantly and even leaning excitedly toward him to make a point, and pounding his fist.
Then they resumed the arm-in-arm position and strolled.
The time was coming to say good-by to Victor, so Dean was taking the opportunity to have moments alone with him and to inspect the park and get his views on things in general and in all dig him as only Dean could do.
Victor was very sad now that we had to go.
"You come back Gregoria, see me?"
"Sure, man!" said Dean.
He even promised to take Victor back to the States if he so wished it.
Victor said he would have to mull this over.
"I got wife and kid – ain't got a money – I see."
His sweet polite smile glowed in the redness as we waved to him from the car.
Behind him were the sad park and the children.
6
Immediately outside Gregoria the road began to drop, great trees arose on each side, and in the trees as it grew dark we heard the great roar of billions of insects that sounded like one continuous high-screeching cry.
"Whoo!" said Dean, and he turned on his headlights and they weren't working.'
"What! what! damn now what?"
And he punched and fumed at his dashboard.
"Oh, my, we'll have to drive through the jungle without lights, think of the horror of that, the only time I'll see is when another car comes by and there just aren't any cars!
And of course no lights?
Oh, what'll we do, dammit?"
"Let's just drive.
Maybe we ought to go back, though?"
"No, never-never!
Let's go on.
I can barely see the road.
We'll make it."
And now we shot in inky darkness through the scream of insects, and the great, rank, almost rotten smell descended, and we remembered and realized that the map indicated just after Gregoria the beginning of the Tropic of Cancer.
"We're in a new tropic!
No wonder the smell!
Smell it!"
I stuck my head out the window; bugs smashed at my face; a great screech rose the moment I cocked my ear to the wind.
Suddenly our lights were working again and they poked ahead, illuminating the lonely road that ran between solid walls of drooping, snaky trees as high as a hundred feet.
"Son-of-a-bitch!" yelled Stan in the back.
"Hot damn!"
He was still so high.
We suddenly realized he was still high and the jungle and troubles made no difference to his happy soul.
We began laughing, all of us.
"To hell with it!
We'll just throw ourselves on the gawd-damn jungle, we'll sleep in it tonight, let's go!" yelled Dean.
"Ole Stan is right.
Ole Stan don't care!
He's so high on those women and that tea and that crazy out-of-this-world impossi-ble-to-absorb mambo blasting so loud that my eardrums still beat to it – wheel he's so high he knows what he's doing!"
We took off our T-shirts and roared through the jungle, bare-chested.