THE VILLAGE by Bill Olson

A wind stirred above the treetops, flipping and spinning leaves on the ends of their stems. A bee, her wings fatigued, flew down to the village to rest. As she passed me, her buzz was all I heard; quiescence was the king who ruled here.

Nuevo Ixcatlán was a strip of sand and gravel lined with three gray wooden buildings. In the middle of the road, a white goose marched, her chin up, her shoulders back. Earlier that day, there was great excitement as a rancher rode in on horseback. He dismounted and walked over to the goose, his arms open wide.

"Mi Amiga," he called out, and the goose honked and ran to him, her little body wiggling like a bowl of gelatin. He lifted the goose and patted her firmly. A smile glowed from between whisker-roughened cheeks.

Now the man was gone. The goose walked a proud vigil in the center of town, and the bee had flown into the surrounding jungle. The wind was above the treetops, and Nuevo Ixcatlán sat motionless, like a still pond on an empty prairie.

I sat on the edge of the porch outside the bar, not looking forward to the long, hard journey back to the university. Francisco had invited me to visit his family's ranch across the river for the holiday Día de los Muertos, which means "Day of the Dead."

Now the celebration was over. My friend said a pickup truck would eventually pass and we could hitch a ride back to civilization and to our studies at the University of the Americas near Cholula.

With another long journey ahead, I leaned back against a post and thought about the textures of the village -- the wood grains here, the corrugated metal there, the goose, the bee and the wind.

I became submissive, like a helpless victim exposing his throat, waiting for the final assault: sleep and a dream of flowers shining about me.

* * *

As if from above, I saw myself lying in an English garden, in a hammock strung between two sycamores. Bees visited flowers then visited me. They landed upon my bare arms and sniffed about for pollen in my sweat. Slowly they walked, bobbing their heads, determined to leave no spoils unfound.

I knew the bees would not sting me; we co-existed peacefully, performing our tasks – cautious, perhaps, of the other – unpredictable – animal. Yet despite an occasional shiver of fear, I loved bees. And they, apparently, loved my sweat – there was no personal reason they had visited me. And had they stung me – out of self-defense no doubt – that, too, would've been nothing personal.

I heard laughter and awoke to see Francisco and another young man standing over me looking toward the river. I looked in that direction and saw nothing but a clearing with palm trees behind it.

Sitting at the feet of my classmate and his friend, unable to catch more than a couple words of their Spanish, I felt alone and bored. I wished once again for the bees from my dream: the little monsters who stung and frightened me in my childhood, but who now sparkled like the flowers in the English garden.

"Hey, cabrón," the other man said to me – and he said something else I did not understand – but he raised up his cue stick as if it were a staff and he were a knight. Then I realized he had said the Spanish word for billiard, so I said I played it occasionally.

He and Francisco laughed.

I felt foolish, not really certain what he had asked me.

The man with the cue stick apparently noticed my shame, so in a brotherly manner, with a cheerful smile, he bent over and patted my shoulder. When he did this, his unbuttoned shirt dropped momentarily away from his hip to reveal the handle of a pistol stuck in his pants. I looked back into his eyes, pretending I had seen nothing.

Then again he and Francisco resumed talking. Though I could not understand, I assumed they spoke of common, ordinary things about relatives and mutual friends. The kinds of things that interest people who have them in common, but which bore outsiders.

Then I imagined they could be speaking of a field hand from a nearby ranch, a sweaty drunk who roared with threats over who had won a game of billiards. I wondered if such a man lay dead somewhere, perhaps in the swamp across the river with a bullet hole between his eyes.

Is that what life was like here at night? Did this bar fill with crowds who rode on horseback like the man who visited the goose? Crowds who laughed and hollered over mariachi music blaring from the jukebox? Crowds of men and women who danced across the cement floor stained with stale beer? Crowds who told dirty jokes, got into fistfights, and ignored their children who were tired and ready for bed? Crowds who carried the law under their belt?

I smelled the dust from the road, watched a bird fly into the forest. I visualized a man sitting beside a stalled tractor, strumming his guitar and singing about the gringo buried on the banks of the river by Nuevo Ixcatlán.

This was no place to make trouble, I thought as I imagined a trigger-happy field worker shooting me between the eyes. Would my body, never to be recovered by my sorrow-stricken parents, turn to darkened bones within the rich soil?

The man again patted my shoulder. Francisco shook his hand and began walking toward a pickup truck, calling for me to follow. Before I could, the young man grabbed my arm and shook my hand. His smile was cheerful and sincere, his eyes sparkled in the tropical sun, and he sent me off with another pat on my shoulder.

As I climbed into the back of the truck and watched the man waving goodbye, I waved back and decided I would like to visit here again, just to lounge about and let sparkling bees search my sweat for pollen.

- St. Paul, September 27, 1991

- Revised, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, January 9, 2001

"THE VILLAGE"