© 2009 Dave Archer / All Rights Reserved

On a chilly, yet sun poached day in early November, 1965, in the San Miguel de Allende graveyard, I helped Jesus Sanchez Mendoza dig up the remains of his loving mother. I had met Mr. Mendoza some months earlier, in the San Miguel jail, when the good man shared his "outside family food" with me and we'd gotten along as only two kickin' wino's can.

 Frijoles!  Tortillas! Pharos cigarettes!

After jail, we made occasional guest appearances in the market as: El Borracho Brothers, watching each other's back. I'm not proud of it, just unable to avoid truth and make sense of life. The San Miguel de Allende market cops wanted bribes in exchange for "fraternization" between foreign and Indian winos, in the same way Safety Patrol kids overlook skipping-steps for bubble gum. I wouldn't payoff, so they wouldn't let me eat in the Indian market, where believe me, the best food in town was served. Earlier that  same day Rick Barton and I fought over nothing, as usual, ending with Barton smashing a framed photo of the two of us on the tile floor of our studio. Predictably, I yelled, "you asshole, and nothing by a Sarah Burnhardt queen," and left the house without the slightest idea I was storming directly into the annual Day of the Dead.

My life reads like a pop-up book. That morning, along with brown boots and belt I had recently dyed black to cover decrepit leather, along with an black shirt from Big Al's in San Francisco --- the "mob" shirt I'd worn with a white necktie when I was the bar-boy & doorman there --- I'd pulled on a pair of "Can't Bust 'Um,'" Frisco Jeans, also black, thus dressing completely wrong for this day for sure, let alone, the country of Mexico. Believe me, in those days it was less than uncommon to catch a "goth gringo" stalking the cobbles in Mexican desert towns. Only mariachis, priests and widows wore black.

I turned away from town, off the cobbles, ducked between some buildings, and onto a well worn desert path, eventually assuming the sleeping Mexican posture at the base of a huge cactus plant, and crying my self-piteous heart out. And right then, Jesus Mendoza walked up holding a beat-up shovel in one hand, wearing a straw hat, peasant shirt and pants, he skidded to a Road Runner stop on his tire-tread huaraches. Oh great. last guy in San Miguel I wanted to catch me blubbering. I couldn't hide it. Jesus was shocked, looking at me like he'd just tripped over Dracula himself, dying in the sun.

Then he got angry.

Alcohol-angry at my tears. It wasn't that Mendoza never cried. He got stoned and sang sad songs, and cried sometimes, well, wept at least. I'd seen him do that in the neighborhood cantina. Cantina tears though, are just that. Boo hoo fun. A man sobbing in the dirt was  intolerable. I felt ashamed. Then he started striking various Indian martial arts poses with the shovel,  and speaking loudly at me like Cantinflas playing a drill sergeant for some Mexican TV commercial: "get up out of the dirt David! ... you look like crap amigo! ... stop crying like a young boy right now!"

He offered a hand, pulled me up. "Vamaos por la panteon! Vamanos!" Insisted I go with him to the cemetery. I didn't understand the words at that time. Well, panteon for "graveyard". Immediately he took me to the nearest house and asked a lone woman to feed us, offering her  coins. She argued with him a little saying something about her husband coming home soon and he should leave.

Mendoza's sister?  Perhaps she was the woman who had brought him food in jail. Finally she told us to go sit on hard ground and wait. In jail, she gave him food through a small window, where I could not see her face. Then, she brought two bowls of beans, along with a pile of corn tortillas. The last thing I wanted was food. Jesus made me eat two entire bowls with a stack of thick tortillas until: I could swallow no more. All while stabbing prickly pear cactus fruits from plants nearby, carefully skinning them with his pocket knife, then cutting chunks into my beans. Mendoza force-fed me like a python in the zoo, insisting, "... be strong amigo!" After stuffing me with food, we went to the road where we came upon several small stands, not much more than a few sticks nailed together with boards on top, displaying candy skulls as well as other morbid treats and I realized where we were headed. At this point, my Indian mentor bought two colorful skull candies, handed one to me, half the size of a hen's egg, and insisted I eat it down right there with him. In other parts of the world kids were eating what was left of their trick or treat candy.

The graveyard was alive with activity. The Day of the Dead is highly honored in Mexico. Human sacrifice was the Aztec way, giving the Day of the Dead, deep and tangled roots. 

Aztecs recognized certain times of the year when the dead arose from their graves. Priests made ritual food offerings among the graves and burned copal at those times. After the Spanish conquest, numerous yearly rituals were absorbed into the Catholic feasts of All Saints Day and All Souls Day, on November the 1st and 2nd. Some graves that day were set out with decorations including food, flowers and candles, waiting for nightfall. Small groups were digging or simply visiting among the graves here and there. The place was medium sized, a half acre at most, surrounded by adobe walls. From what Jesus told me, yearly fees had to be maintained or on this one day, remains could be exhumed to make room for others. Walking behind Jesus, suddenly my gut snapped as tight as a drumhead as the men's eyes, followed me everywhere. Penetrating. Reading me like CIA body-language experts. Believe me, no psychic senses were needed to pick up: "Who's the weird gringo dressed like a raven. That's right, he's that morose one loco Mendoza dragged out of jail with him".

At an unmarked space near a small shrine, Jesus began to bundle tall weeds in his hands, indicating me to join him. When weed pulling was finished we took turns digging. His mother's remains were not deep, maybe three feet at most, in fairly easily shoveled earth. The plain board coffin had caved in. We cleared the final dirt away with our hands. Then with dread, Jesus reached down into that awful hole and pulled the rotted boards out. 

I could go for dark humor here and say some drunken stupidity like, "his mom was having a bad hair day" except I was sober. Mendoza's mother looked bad, okay. That's all I'll say. And Jesus didn't cry. His eyes were wet, but he held back with great strength, pointing out to me, that his tears were not allowed to fall. Jesus literally sucked his tears back inside somehow. Soon we entered the small shrine, kneeling together side by side, before a cross on an altar. Mendoza lit a candle and we prayed together in the innocent way of children, using Durer's "praying hands" mudra. After awhile, members of his family walked up behind us, showing immediate disapproval in their voices and looks.

We left.

They were right, of course, dressed as they were, better than Jesus, cleaner, plus, I rather doubt any of them had ever spent a single night in jail, or swept the town square every morning for two months, or brought a mad raven to a family Day of the Dead ceremony.

Mendoza and I were the sort of drunks who hide behind buildings and guzzle a bottle down together, then go and get in some sort of trouble. This was our trouble for the day, at least the first trouble. Nothing unusual for us. We were fairly downtrodden characters. Inwardly I mean. That is, a couple of 25 year old quick-cycling manic-depressives with no diagnosis. It was bad. Still, Mendoza had gotten to the graveyard early, with Digger O'Raven, in tow, and, he had accomplished what was arguably the most difficult part of the ceremony, opening the grave. And I think he really did that for them. Because I don't remember them with a shovel. It was like they expected him to be gone when they got there, our borracho folly. I don't remember Jesus having the shovel for the rest of the day either, so he must have left it with them.

Mendoza took us to a place not far, where we did a quick job for an older fellow. Together, we picked up and carried a rather large log, finally rolling it, to a place the gentleman wished it to be. He gave Jesus some meager coinage and off we went. Then Jesus turned away from town motioning me to follow. I finally gave up trying to get him to "let me go" back to town on my own. Mendoza took no prisoners that day, demanding I follow him. After another quarter mile we came to the edge of a large cultivated field of agave cactus, each huge plant brandishing spiked cutlass leaves.

Into the field we trudged until we had gone so far, we were completely screened from view, finally arriving at a small adobe shed surrounded by at least sixty Indian men, identically dressed in white, like Jesus. They had been drinking pulque, a fermented cactus drink imbibed by Indians only, and were in various stages of intoxication. Pulque not only contains alcohol, but psychoactive alkaloids. Inside the shack stood a 55 gallon, open-topped barrel of the stuff, with clay mugs for self service. Many of the men were upset I was there and proceeded to give Jesus a verbal lashing. He continuously defended me, strongly, while dipping large jars of pulque, nearly a quart, for each of us, then led me back outside. Everyone inside followed, then all of the men crowded around me, eager to see my reaction to the drink. There was a pulqueria in the San Miguel marketplace where I'd had my share. Some of the men recognized me from there. The cops would run me out if they saw me. Often, I took my own jug and they filled it, then took it home. Rick thought I was nuts to drink it, preferring Ron de Castillo. A pulqueria is an Indian bar. No stools. A combination urinal / up-chuck trough at one end. Pulque is sold from  open barrels. Mexicans generally scorn Indian pulque as beneath them. I liked it. Plus, I could afford it. I had a job too. Imagine that, a wino with a job at the Instituto Allende running movies in the theater. It didn't pay much, but enough for rent and the hard scrabble artist's life.

I downed the mug in one or two long drafts and wiped my lips on my sleeve. Mixed approval: SMILES, frowns.

An angry man pushed through the other men and faced me. He had tombstones in his eyes,  and was waving a machete in my face. Green with pulquethe man missed nothing. Pulque is weird that way. It heighten senses while intoxicating at the same time. Pulque addicts don't stagger around, even on cobblestones, they "maneuver". One I saw nearly everyday for a year in the San Miguel market, always had a small plastic toy airplane with him which he "flew," quite purposefully, holding the toy in his fingers next to his head.

I didn't want to die in a pulque field, so I lied.

Rather, I heard this disembodied Latin LIE, "come through me" like a spirit voice talking from a cave. A voice I have since refer to as: Universal Human Default Voice.

UHDV.

I, David Archer Nelson, speaking in UHDV, explained that my father had died, and that I expected soon to be going to the Parrocia, the Indian Cathedral in town, there to pray to his soul,  not to mention my own.

The lie being twofold, in that yes, my father had died, but, five years earlier, while I was suggesting perhaps five weeks. That, and I am not Catholic, and didn't have a lot of business in the Parrocia, other than the fact that as an artist, I loved that place. Really loved it. Barton made a beautiful lino cut of the facade. I had painted it too, Indian built, an amazing structure, as if the entire top of a European cathedral had been removed and planted there. Machete man searched my eyes like Larry David does on Curb Your Enthusiam. I was petrified. Then, the man simply changed. Sensing my grief to be real, which it was, the man simply went from an enemy to a friend, right there in the November sun. From outrage to compassion in a moment or two.

"Hombre," the man said with deep emotion, holding my shoulders in his hands, full face, machete handle pushing into my shoulder, blade near my ear. Men moved in patting my shoulders and offering condolence, and more pulque. After a half hour or so of amazingly warm camaraderie, I left for the Parrocia. Mendoza went with me back to town, leaving me at the door of the church after much hand shaking, arm shaking and shoulder shaking to go with it.

For the next year I stayed out of jail and every single time I ran into my friend, he hit me up for pesos which I joyfully gave him. In those days a peso was 12.5 to the dollar. Just one (12 1/2 cents) would buy 12 amazingly good tacos. One dollar: 120 tacos. San Miguel in those days was a great place for broke artists. The town was full of poets, movie types, psychedelic painters, unique actors, flamboyant travelers, (Stan Wilkins for one, creator of Mr. Magoo) renegade authors, (John Muir, How To Fix Your Volkswagen Bug And Be A Complete Idiot) madcap missionaries (Pierre d'Lattre) all "starving," for their art, yet quite well fed actually.

I don't know what it's like there today. Write me and tell me, okay?

PS ... when I got back to the house Rick was sitting on the bed painting a picture. Rick was always sitting on the bed painting pictures.

I said, "Have you been outside today?".

"Nope".

"Look, I know you're mad as hell at me, but listen to this. I've just had the most freakin' day in my life man, I mean, I actually helped Jesus dig his mother up in the graveyard. It's the Day of the Dead out there man! And, another guy wanted to plant his machete in my head ... unbelievable!"

"Better light some incense and candles David, sounds like a long night ahead".

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