I was passing through the little town of Los Molinos when I came across a Pepsi seller. He had a worn out crate hanging by a leather strap around his neck. Inside were a dozen pepsi bottles. I stared at those bottles, worn from many recycled turns that had all but obliterated the pepsi emblem. The guy bore a striking resemblance to Al Pacino. (Except he was a Latin version). His hair was jet black, slicked over his head and his eyes were darker, with more intensity. On the side of his crate, was a hand painted description in white flaking paint: ‘bebida fresca’, (refreshing soft drinks).

I paid my 100 pesos and he handed me one of the bottles.

‘Where you from muchacho?’ he asked. I gave him my background.

As I had nowhere to go I stood watching the other street vendors and people walk by.

The street was narrow with vendors lined on both sides. Everything was on sale from corn in strange sizes and colours to potatoes grouped in their colours like misshaped marbles on wooden tables. The Pepsi man stood statue-like watching the movement of people. When a pretty young girl walked past, he said, ‘Ey, señorita, ceres una bebida fresca?’ (would you like a fresh drink?). The girl walked by obvious to the man’s offer.

Most people ignored him. The other street vendors were on a mission to sell their wares. They’d walk up and down the street pulling carts full of vegetables, or carry wicker baskets that they’d shove in front of people. And yet the crowds and noise didn’t bother the Pepsi man, he would wait for a lull for his turn to yell ‘Bebida Fresca!’.

*

Hours later, I was leaving my hostel room in search of local food. Some of the street lamps were on, while other lights had burnt out leaving pools of darkness. The same street that had been full of vendors earlier that day, was now empty. Crushed cardboard boxes, empty bottles and torn newspapers were all that remained.

I turned a corner looking for a restaurant. The only place I could see was a dimly lit tavern, not a place I wanted to venture into. Voices drifted from inside and I saw a man walk out. He stumbled as he stepped from the curb to the street, but managed to keep himself upright. As I walked past him he turned.

‘Ey! Muchacho!’ he yelled.

I slowed my walk, but didn’t want to stop. He came right up to me and in the dim light I realised who it was: The Pepsi man. He grinned, showing his yellowed teeth. And now he looked like a bad Al Pacino, the menacing kind you don’t won’t to mess with. He slapped a hand on my shoulder and shook my hand. I smiled, said hello. An odor of stale beer and cigarettes came over me as we drew closer. Maybe it was the warmth in his greeting, the eagerness in shaking my hand, his speaking close in – that relaxed me.

‘Tomás?’ he enquired, did I drink?

I was looking for a place to eat I told him. His face lit up, lines around this eyes appeared, framing his broad smile. He knew of a magnificent place to eat he told me. He would take me and order the best meal, it’s where the locals ate. Tourist don’t know about it.

I hesitated, tried to think of excuses of why I couldn’t, but all my attempts of refusal were washed over by his keenness. I was swept along with his burly hand again planted firmly on my shoulder. Pepsi man was already leading me in the direction of a little doorway a short distance down the street and around a corner. The eatery was little more than a woman’s kitchen, that by chance happened to spill onto one of only two main streets. We stepped onto a worn linoleum floor and Pepsi man called out Doña Carmín. The proprietor of the eatery was a short lady with wavy grey hair. She was leaning on a counter watching a small television perched on a wall. When she saw Pepsi Man, she smiled and beckoned us inside with a wave. What a sight I thought, A drunken Pepsi vendor resembling Al Pacino with a tourist walking in like two best friends. The brightness of the flluro light dazzled me as I entered.

Pepsi man found two mismatched chairs with ripped vinyl – pulled one out for me and ushered me into it with the flair of a waiter in a fine restaurant.

I sat. On the other table a man and woman with their young son stopped eating and looked up. All three stared at me for a while before continuing their meal.

Doña Carmín’s eatery was essentially her kitchen remodeled into a diner of sorts. It was made from all the things that had been in her life past and present. There was a counter with a peach coloured laminate surface which must have been her kitchen bench. To one side of it, was a small glass cabinet with pastries and cookies. Next to it were a few empty bottles of soft drinks lined up in a neat row. Behind the counter was a wall where haphazard shelving displayed other wares for sale. Apart from her cooking – cigarettes were a big seller. Even as I inspected those crowded shelves, two men had already come in to buy a pack of Lucky Strike. Leaving their coins on the laminate counter and walking back into the night just as quick.

There were basic essentials on the shelves too; eggs, flour, rice and sugar and many other dusty packages of groceries I didn’t recognise. A menu hung among these items, hand written in chalk. Apparently it wasn’t needed anyway because Pepsi man was speaking to Doña Carmín about what was available that night. In between his questions, he would turn and give me a brisk nod as if to reassure me it was all under control. Occasionally a joke was exchanged between him and Doña Carmín that would cause him to laugh loudly, slamming the laminate counter with his fist. Finally he gave me a rundown of the menu: beef stew with potatoes and corn, fish stew with potatoes and corn, or chicken and rice. Or I could have just potatoes and corn. I decided on the beef stew.

Doña Carmín nodded, wiped a hand over her grey hair and then patted down her bright floral apron and disappeared into the kitchen.

When the meal arrived, I ate while Pepsi man talked between sips of his beer.

‘Are you married?’ he asked me. I wasn’t I said. He thought about this as he drank from his bottle.

He had married he said. Said it in a way I wasn’t sure if he was reminiscing or talking about the present. He asked about my home, what did I do for work? When I explained my work, he looked at me without saying anything. It made me stop eating, I shifted in my chair, waiting, but he never said anymore. Instead he took another long sip, forming a thought. He asked me about the places I’d traveled to. The family next to us finished their meal and left. Pepsi Man leaned back watching them walk out into the street, then turned back to me. Had I seen the local life? ‘La vida locál’ he said, pointing his finger down on the table to emphasise the urgency of the matter. I had seen the markets I told him, the plaza with the street performers. No no no! he interrupted me. That wasn’t the life of the locals.

I had finished my meal. I wanted to leave right away. Pay the woman and thank Pepsi man for his hospitality and make my exit. I wasn’t scared of him, but there was something else, something wound up inside him, just below the surface that made me uneasy. I stood up to pay. He stood up too, an excited wave coming over him.

‘A donde vamos?’ he asked. Where to now?

I ignored the question and paid Doña Carmín. I was back outside in the dark, with Doña Carmín’s fluorescent light zinging haphazardly behind me. The Pepsi man was at my side, a big smile on his face and now then that reassuring pat on the shoulder. He placed a freshly bought Lucky Strike cigarette on his lower lip.

‘A donde vamos?’ he asked again, this time in a distracted way, while looking up the street, as if there was something up there that had caught his attention.

We stood like that for a while. He lit up. Blue-grey smoke escaped through his parted lips and neither of us said a word. From the fluorescent tube came that uneven buzz. He didn’t notice I was staring at him.

He kept his vigil toward that indistinguishable spot ahead. A shadow? A ghost? Or perhaps a memory had come forth from the dark, encouraged by our silence. His cigarette was becoming short. His eyes squinted from the smoke, or from his thoughts, I couldn’t tell. He threw the stub to the ground, ground his toe on it.

The uneasiness of Pepsi man’s silence prompted me to break the silence. I found myself speaking encouraging words to keep the night from ending.

‘So, where is this scene where locals go?’ I said.

Pepsi man, looked at me, his expression lost in another world. Then he snapped back to the present. To the two us standing there in that dark street. His smile illuminated his face once again.

‘Ah, si!’ He said ‘vamos.’

*

We walked along the street away from the strip of little shops. Past the main streets that I had explored earlier that day, we were among the pueblo’s little homes now. With the dusty, cracked adobe walls, their tin roofs and pot-holed roads. I remember being surprised by the extent of this town. Half an hour had passed. Pepsi man reassured me this place would be open for a drink. It was always open, he claimed. I thought how I was venturing deep into this unknown speck of a town many miles from a city.

Some time had passed, where we walked in silence. The sound of laughter was the first thing I heard. Followed by music bleeding from crappy speakers – a salsa of some kind. Lit up in the distance like an amber desert flower among the sleepy adobe homes was a tavern; a narrow building with a single doorway and window facing the street. Its mud brick walls showed long cracks. From behind this wall, floated the voices lost on late night conversation and laughter.

Before we entered I looked above the tavern’s corrugated roof at the night sky. Clouds had covered the sky for most of our walk, but now they had cleared and for the first time that night I saw the stars above. They formed an immense arc sweeping from one side of the world to the other, as if I was glimpsing part of a gigantic river flowing in infinite time.

Pepsi man stopped at the door and looked up too. Both of us stared skywards from the doorway of the little tavern, while the voices and music came from inside as if from a passing ship.

‘No se ven asi en otras partes’ No where else will you see them like this.

We entered into a room. Everyone’s gaze was directed at me. When they saw Pepsi man their expressions relaxed. I was greeted as an old friend. I watched him shake hands and meander easily through the crowd.

A man with white hair and beard to my left smiled and shook my hand. Pepsi man had already exchanged a quick word with him. That was his way, a quick word to a woman as he passed, then a wave at a man across the room and then he had his hands on the shoulders of another man, divulging a parcel of knowledge quietly as if they were the only people in the room. Everyone was greeted, even in a moment’s passing with that beguiling smile. I moved along behind him, as if by his inertia or other force, the same force perhaps that had brought me to this hidden bar in the first place. Should I be greeting everyone?

There were only two small windows in the room. Covered by yellow curtains. It was hard to tell how many people were in there, some standing, others sitting on chairs at the back of the room. The light came from two bare light globes. I could tell I was close to the source of music even though the radio was no where to be seen. The beat of conga drums and singing was rising above the chatter. and no one appeared to be concerned with the volume of the music or it’s content. Even so, a single man, moved to the centre of a knot of people – raised an arm while he cradled a glass of beer in the other hand. He danced to his own rhythm, much to the laughter of his friends.

I found myself lost. The crowd flowed around me, people asked me questions – I drank. I saw those people as if they were travelers on a strange isolated vessel, on a journey I couldn’t comprehend.All I could do was watch them pass toward their destination somewhere in a future that was at polar ends to mine. I thought by me being there I could understand that future.Pepsi man was nowhere to be seen. I became concerned how I would get back to the hostel. The man with the white hair and beard handed me another drink.

*

When I emerged from the tavern back into the stillness of the neighbourhood I had no idea how long I had spent in there. I was by myself. I set out in the direction of the hostel, at least as I remembered it. The stars were still making their drawn out cartwheel across the sky.

Once I was away from the tavern and the voices could no longer be heard, all that remained was the sound of my shoes disturbing the gritty earthen road and a subtle wind moving past me. The homes were bluish-grey in the dark. The trees too, seeped into the night sky, they swayed and shimmered like dark velvet silhouettes.

I thought about the wind that came in the night. It was unlike a breeze during the day. It came from a different place. It wasn’t cold, nor did it have the tinge of an impending storm. It felt like a hand sweeping through the streets with an edge of restlessness, pushing me onward. So I kept going in that same direction.

I came to a cross street, which ooked the same as the last cross road. I turned left. I was on another similar street, although the homes were fewer here. I felt like I was on the fringes of the town. It meant I was very far from the hostel. I turned right at the next street, hoping this time it would a familiar street. And still the homes were becoming fewer, so that more of the dry dusty ground and its trees dotted my surroundings. My feet were becoming sore, the wind continued it’s subtle push at my back. And the silence struck me like plunging into deep water. I imagined the silence in partnership with the wind. Both worked together to draw me here – to the fringes of this unfamiliar town. I lost my trepidation and let myself be drawn onward. There were only shacks now. To my left, a corrugated roof curled away from its wall, riddled with rust. Another shack’s back yard wall was now only a crumble of dry mud bricks littered in a line. I looked up, as if I would see something different out here, away from the rest of the town. The same stars formed a corridor overhead, they were lined up perfectly with the road before me. And that quietness persisted, so much so, I winced at the sound of my shoes scraping on the dirt road.

And that’s when I saw him. Pepsi man – walking some distance away. I couldn’t see his face, and the darkness only revealed a fuzzy figure, but somehow I knew it was him. I walked toward him. I wasn’t sure I was glad to see him though. He was walking slowly, effortlessly, in that same way he’d moved through the crowd earlier. I could make out a stream of cigarette smoke rising from him. He never realised I was behind. We walked in that way – me, following some distance behind like a lost dog – him, walking, meandering in his world. Gradually the homes grew closer together and more numerous, the roads narrower, we were no longer on the edges of the town.

Pepsi man turned into a street and then another, and then I recognised where we were. My hostel was only a few familiar blocks away. When he turned again I followed him, this time trying very hard to keep my presence unseen. It was a street of small houses joined together, each doorway painted a different colour.

I hid in an alcove of a doorway and watched Pepsi man knock on a door and wait. The door opened after some moments and he disappeared inside. I couldn’t hear anything else. No conversation, only the early morning silence of the street remained. The sky was turning a brilliant pink-violet, and the stars were all but extinguished. The darkness had almost completely withdrawn, revealing that dawn light rarely seen, which was now emboldened with a glimmer of violet and renewal. I no longer felt a longing to be part of this greater desert and its inhabitants. I walked to my hostel.

Later that day I was leaving the town, I was walking through the crowds and vendors on the main street. Over the din of the market goers’ haggling and vendors’ yells – I heard him – Pepsi man’s distinct voice.

‘Bebida fresca! Bebida fresca aqui!’