By Walter Agnew Moore II

Last week I decided to take a drive up north into Jalisco state towards Ciudad Guzman. It's only about 50 miles, and somebody told me that because it is so much higher, it gets really cool at night.

I took the old road that parallels the new toll road. It is a good two-lane that winds a little on the misty tops of the plateaus and winds a lot going into and out of the gorges. In fact, it looks like the curvy mountain road on all those car ads, except greener. It looks like you're going up into the hills in Tennesee in springtime.

I put on the Psychedelic Furs, blasted out "Pretty in Pink", and roared around the curves about as daringly as you can roar in a four-cylinder Tracker whose center of gravity is surprisingly high.

The old man was sitting at the bus stop in the middle of nowhere, someplace called "Agosto", no town, just the orange bus-stop shed. We made eye-contact, and I slammed on the brakes and went back to get him.

"Ciudad Guzman? Yeah, I'm going that way, come on." He had big boots and big hands and was bent almost double over two canes. You could tell nothing pissed him off quite as much as having to use those canes. He had a way of looking at you from under his eyebrows just like my father's father used to do.

The old man had recently suffered a stroke. It took us about 5 minutes of hashing this out for me to realize what he was saying. The stroke had really messed up his speech, making him lop off the beginnings and ends of words, and he sort of barked out what was left of the middle. It didn't help that I didn't know the Spanish word for "stroke" to start with. Finally, he a started slapping at his heart while he said the word, and I got it.

He told me all sorts of things about the countryside as we drove north, and it flattened out to fields. He kept wanting to know if I had eaten, and I said I was OK. I didn't want to spend all day at the nursing home or wherever he lived, see. I wanted to get to Ciudad Guzman and kick back, maybe meet some people my age.

We got close to the city, and he showed me where to turn off for his town, Zapotiltic. It sits underneath what's left of a big hill that has been carved up for minerals. Huge flat-bed trucks loaded with bags of cement went by. We rounded an old hacienda, went underneath a huge gate that stretched over the road with "Welcome to Zapotiltic" on it, then we were on the main street.

"We're going to eat now," said the old man, and instead of giving me directions to his house, he had me pull up at a restaurant that was open to the street. I went to help him out as he furiously tried to make his body obey him, then we went inside.

The people behind the grill were grinning at me like I was his long-lost grandson from el Norte. He would have been tall like me, once. The old man gruffly told them what he wanted while they joked with him, and then it was my turn. The specialty was little tortillas covered with diced meat and onions and cilantro, and limes to squeeze on it. I asked for three of them. The old man told them to give me five. The cook looked at me and said "If three will fit, then so will five!"

We had to share a table with a silent man in the back who was eating two plates worth. Next to us was a boy of about 10 wearing nice clothes, eating with his grandparents. The boy had a tanned face and green eyes that caught the light reflecting off the car windows as they went by outside.

The old man almost made me eat two plates before he believed I was full. It was very good, but I was full.

As we left, the cooks told us to be back tomorrow: "mañana hay lengua!"

We set off up the street. The old man was asking me if I wanted to see something, it sounded like "miija". Mi hija, my daughter? I had no idea. He kept saying it, and pointing, and then I realized he meant "mi iglesia," my church.

I was wearing scruffy shorts, and I didn't want to go to church, and I wanted to get out of there and do my own stuff. I started working out the phrase in my head of "I have to go now," then I realized, you don't have to go anywhere today, why are you going to lie to this old man that you are never going to see again?

I walked beside him as we joined the crowd approaching the church. Everybody was going faster than we were. The girls would pause and cross themselves as they walked past a shrine that was to our right, then they would pick up speed again up the steps.

When we had climbed the steps, the old man looked at me from under his eyebrows as if to say "you know better," and he snatched off his cap. I took mine off too.

At the entrance, I leaned over and said "I am going now."

He said, "Just go back out the way we came, and it will take you into Ciudad Guzman."

Then he was inside, walking up he aisle into the shadows.

Outside, they opened a gate so a hearse could drive into the church courtyard. I wonder if that is why the old man was coming up here to church.

I drove out of Zapotiltic, up the long street and under the welcome gate, out past the old hacienda. I didn't play the radio, I just let the wind blow. When I got to the road for Ciudad Guzman, I almost just went back to Colima.

I had found what I came for.