By Walter Agnew Moore II

Happy Halloween to you all. I couldn't get my students all that hyped up about it, they would look down and wiggle and then somebody would always say, "That's not really a Mexican thing, that's something they do in places like (and then list a couple of neighborhoods where they consider the people to be wannabe-Gringos)".

There was a faint amount of interest when I explained that the little kids out trick-or-treating are ritualistically acting out the malevolent dead who have come to extort favors from the living, and even more when I explained the classic dog-doo-inside-the-burning-paper-bag trick, but the whole idea fell flat.

Because they have the Day of the Dead here in 2 days. Trying to import Halloween to Mexico is about as profitable as selling snow to Eskimos.

At the Tec where I work, the kids have set up about a dozen altars to honor the memory of actual dead people. They are three or four levels high shaped like step-pyramids, a photo at the top of the person, a plaque next to them explaining who they were and what they loved, then lots of flowers and crepe paper decorations.

There are usually several bottles of their favorite beer or liquor, food, and I mean complete dishes of cooked chicken, sopitos, pozole, pastries, no skimping there. And little personal touches: favorite books, a soccer ball, a man's saddle and machete, a set of dominoes.

There is the smell of sawdust and flower petals as the kids arrange them into colorful patterns built around crosses.

These students, high school age, are usually bouncing around screaming in the courtyard. They are quiet and reserved tonight. I am going to go outside in a little while and see if they have lit the candles.

 

WALTER MOORE IS IN MEXICO—3 December 2003

I keep standing by the log over the little river, looking at the water roaring over the rocks. I am scared to cross that log.

I am way back up in the mountains at the end of the road, off the map. The Tracker is parked on the dirt road a few yards behind me. There are no tire tracks in the soft sand, just footprints of people and animals. There is no bridge here.

Up above I can see huge green ridges of mountains stretching all across the sky, on the other side of the river.

I want to get over there, but I am afraid of the log.

I have always been afraid of wobbly heights. I keep telling myself it is because I have my comic strip with me in the heavy little faux-leather black folder. I have been working on it for months. I have more work yet to do, lettering mostly. If I fall in the water, probably I will just get wet unless I hit my head. But if I fall with the comic, I will lose months of work.

I tromp back and forth on the river's edge, looking for another way across.
Cursing my cowardice, then cursing that I have to make it an issue of cowardice. It's just a log.

Then why do my legs start shaking whenever I start to cross?

I look at the rocks on the other side, big pink volcanic things, and think it's a shame I will never be here again.

I take the heavy little folder containing the comic, and I sling it across to the other side where it thumps in the gravel. Then I duck-walk across so fast I don't even have time to fall.

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On the way back the old men at the construction site offer me tequila. It makes me wish I still drank, not for the tequila, just because I know I will never be here again.

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On the way back out of the mountains, I give another man a ride between two villages. When he finds out that I speak Spanish, he immediately speeds up to triple speed, and over the rattle of the cobblestones, I don't understand anything he is telling me, but he is having a blast recounting the story.

We get held up in a herd of cattle, men on horses. The man is clearing them for us, leaning out the Tracker's window: "¡VACA! vacavacavaca ¡HAITCH!
¡HAITCH! Vaca vaca vaca...¡HAITCH!"