The Noel Stranger Read online

  Andrew gave me a rundown of the town’s history as we drove. Todos Santos was founded in the seventeen hundreds by Jesuit missionaries who came to establish a farming community with the intent of providing food for the nearby city of La Paz. The success of the community led to the founding of the Santa Rosa de las Palmas mission. Later, as its population grew, the town became a major sugarcane producer. It was also the site of the last battle of the Mexican-American War.

  We drove north along Highway 19, a narrow, winding desert road that runs along the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur. The drive was pretty, with desert landscape, Joshua trees, and brightly colored flowers and cactus. There wasn’t much traffic and Andrew and I talked the whole way.

  “Todos has a town motto,” Andrew said to me as the town came into view. “ ‘Nothing bad ever happens here.’ ”

  “I definitely should move here,” I said.

  “I’m seriously considering it,” he said. “In the last few decades it’s become an artist colony. Artists, writers, and musicians come here from all over. It’s a little bit ironic: they came here because it was cheap and private, then their coming drew the public, making it not so cheap and private.” He looked at me. “The tortured life of an artist.”

  “Are you an artist?” I asked.

  “People used to say I was an artist with money,” he said. “But what I really wanted to be was a novelist. That was the dream.”

  “What happened to your dream?”

  “It got woken by the cold plunge of reality.” He looked at me. “What about you? Any artistic pursuits outside the kitchen?”

  “I’ve painted some.”

  “Are you good?”

  “Do I still have a day job?”

  His brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”

  “You sound like Carina.” As we drove into town, I said, “Deep inside, do you still have that dream of writing?”

  He looked reflective. “I think I have stories to tell.” He looked at me and smiled. “I don’t know if anyone will want to read them, but I have them.”

  “I’ll read them,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll tell the publishers I have a reader.”

  The town of Todos Santos was old and picturesque. The mission church reminded me a little of the Alamo, at least the pictures I’d seen of it, and the cobblestone streets were overhung by colorful flags draped from the buildings that lined them.

  The small town, like most tourist attractions, had an inordinate number of restaurants. Andrew called it a “foodie mecca,” which was good because this week I was unleashing my inner foodie. I was definitely going to gain weight.

  “One of the best places for lunch is a food truck run by two women friends,” he told me as we walked toward town. “A few years ago Condé Nast Traveler did an article on them that made them world famous. One of the owners is a well-known Mexican actress and the other is a chef. They claim that their truck always has the freshest fish in town because the local fishermen are smitten with the women’s beauty.”

  “We definitely need to eat there,” I said.

  “I’ve never been disappointed.”

  “With the food or the women?”

  He smiled. “Either.”

  We found the food truck parked near the main park. It was fittingly called La Chulita, which in Mexican slang roughly translates to “li’l sexy mama.” One of the famed women was there, Daphne. She was pretty and dressed in retro clothing, her dark hair pinned up in a fifties-style hairdo. The truck specialized in ceviche; some claim it’s the best in Mexico. We ordered two kinds: the first with clams, scallops, and marlin with corn, poblano chilies, and avocado; and the second with shrimp, mango, and pineapple. Both were excellent.

  We spent the afternoon walking along the town’s main thoroughfare, stopping in three different art galleries and two different bakeries.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked, eating a sweet cream-cheese pastry.

  “I read about it in a travel book,” he said. “It was my third or fourth visit to Cabo. Sometimes the resort life gets a little staid. I came here by motorcycle.”

  “That sounds adventurous.”

  “Driving in Mexico is always adventurous,” he said. “But back then, I was just trying to be a rebel.”

  “Were you?”

  “Still am,” he said. “I just need a cause.”

  Andrew continued to tell me about the places we walked by, usually in remarkable detail. Finally, I asked, “How do you know so much about this place?”

  “I’ve thought about moving here.”

  “You were serious, then. About your dream of retiring on the sea?”

  He nodded. “There’s a little hacienda on the beach just south of town. It even comes with a fishing boat. I’ve thought of buying it.”

  “With your Christmas tree profits.”

  He smiled. “Exactly.”

  “But if you bought it, you’d be down here—”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “And I’d be up there. In the snow.”

  His brow furrowed. “That would be a problem.” He looked at me. “But not one that would be hard to remedy.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. “I’d like to see your dream place.”

  “I’ll take you by it on the way home.”

  We just wandered around the town until late afternoon, then Andrew took me to see the hacienda. There was nothing around it for miles. It was a charming little cottage painted coral pink with a large back porch for sitting and watching the sea. It was still for sale. The boat was gone.

  “She must be out to sea,” Andrew said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The boat. She’s called El Sueño.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He smiled. “The dream.”

  We started our journey back to Cabo with a side trip to Cerritos Beach, about ten miles south of Todos Santos. The road to Cerritos was a little rugged and a lot bumpy. Fortunately, Andrew not only knew the way but assured me that it was worth the rough ride.

  It was. The beach was spectacular, and maybe it was the hour, but it wasn’t crowded like any of the other beaches we’d been to. There were only a few local surfers and some fishing boats in the distance.

  “I think that’s her,” Andrew said, pointing out to the horizon. “El Sueño.”

  I changed into my bathing suit in the car and we went out for a swim. As the sun touched the horizon, Andrew laid out a towel and we sat on the beach and watched the sun set. For more than fifteen minutes neither of us spoke. It was too serene to ruin with words. When the sun was half drowned, Andrew put his arm around me. “I could do this every night. It never gets old.”

  Me too, I thought.

  “It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow,” he said.

  In the crush of our activity, I’d actually forgotten. “Do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Mexico?”

  “Some do. It’s a US holiday, but it’s becoming more popular.”

  “Do we have plans?” I asked.

  “I always have a plan,” he said. “Not always a good one, but at least it’s a plan.”

  “Are you going to tell me about it?”

  “No.”

  I lay back onto his lap. “Okay.”

  We stayed nearly an hour after the sun was gone. We got back to the condo at around midnight and went straight to bed.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-Seven

  I’ve heard many people speak about putting the “thanks” in Thankgiving, but today, Andrew showed me how to put in the “giving.”

  —Maggie Walther’s Diary

  “Good morning,” Andrew said, pulling up the blinds in my room.

  I opened my eyes to see him standing next to my bed, silhouetted by the morning sun.

  “Good morning. What time is it?”

  “Almost ten. I thought I’d better wake you.” He walked over to the table and lifted a tray. “I brought you breakfast.”

 
“You brought me breakfast in bed?”

  “I’m sorry; you can have it in the kitchen if you like. Or on the patio.”

  “Don’t apologize,” I said, laughing. “No one’s ever brought me breakfast in bed.”

  “It sounds great,” he said, “but the truth is, it’s hard to eat. I mean, you can’t really move around, and you’re worried about spilling your juice and coffee the whole time.”

  “That’s what Clive always said. It was his excuse for not ever doing it.”

  Andrew had brought me a bowl of yogurt with raspberries and blueberries, sliced melon, and a unique pastry I’d never seen before. “What’s this?”

  “It’s a concha,” he said. “That’s Spanish for seashell.”

  “It looks like a seashell.”

  “It’s very popular here. It’s like a cookie baked on top of cinnamon bread.”

  I took a bite. Not surprisingly, it was delicious.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

  “Happy Thanksgiving. You said we have plans?”

  “I have a Thanksgiving tradition. I hope you don’t mind me commandeering the day.”

  “You’ve commandeered every day since we got here,” I said. “I’m not complaining.”

  “Good. Then as soon as you’re ready, we’ll go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “A bendecir vidas,” he said, then walked out of the room.

  I took a quick shower and dressed, then walked out to the kitchen. Andrew was on the couch reading a thriller.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Where to?” I asked again. “In English this time, por favor.”

  “Back to the mercado.”

  “We’re shopping for Thanksgiving?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “We should make a list,” I said.

  “I already have.”

  As we walked inside the mercado, the woman Andrew had spoken with on our first day embraced him. He followed her over to the register and she handed him a piece of paper that had handwriting on both sides. He examined the paper and then gave her a credit card, which I thought was curious, since we hadn’t purchased anything yet.

  After he signed the bill, she handed him a set of keys. Andrew turned to me. “We’re done here.”

  “But we didn’t buy anything yet.”

  “They took care of everything.”

  We walked out of the store. Instead of walking to our car, Andrew walked toward a small delivery truck with the name of the mercado printed on the side.

  “We’ve changed vehicles,” he said. “Hop in.”

  “We’re taking a truck?”

  “We need the space,” he said. “And where we’re going, the car would be an insult.”

  “Where are we going?”

  A large smile crossed his face. “We’re delivering Thanksgiving.”

  “To who?”

  He held up the sheet of paper that the woman at the mercado had given him. “To the list.”

  We drove east, passing from the lush, gated communities and manicured yards of the tourist side of Los Cabos into a poor area of town, revealed in steadily declining buildings and neighborhoods.

  The poor section of Los Cabos was only a few miles from the yachts, golf courses, and luxury resorts, but a universe away for the locals.

  “This is San José del Cabo,” Andrew said.

  I looked around at the graffiti-strewn walls and abandoned buildings. It looked like a war zone. “Is it safe?”

  “It’s safe for us,” he said. “The gangs usually leave American tourists alone. But especially us.”

  “The gangs know you?”

  “It took a few years,” he said.

  He pulled the truck into a neighborhood that had all the makings of a refugee camp. Dozens of poles stuck up from the ground with electric cables crisscrossing in a nest of wires.

  “When they built the resorts, no one took time to plan out where the workers would live, so these communities sprouted up.” He turned off the truck. “This is what a town looks like without urban planning.” He opened his door. “Come on.”

  I met Andrew at the back of the truck as he opened the cargo doors. The truck was stacked nearly to the top with boxes, dozens of them. He pulled out a box that was smaller than the rest. “I’ll have you take that. It’s for the children.”

  I looked inside the box. It was filled with Hershey’s chocolate bars. Andrew grabbed one of the large boxes, then shut the doors.

  As we walked to the first home, the door opened and a woman holding a baby emerged. “Señor Colina, me da gusto a verle. Pásele por favor.” She held the door open for us.

  “She invited us in,” Andrew said.

  We walked inside. The home had dusty concrete floors and painted plastered walls, though the paint had mostly faded and much of the plaster had flaked off. On one side of the house was a kitchen and dining area with an old wooden table and a cupboard next to it. A wooden pallet fastened to the wall held aluminum pans hung from twisted, rusted wires. A blanket hung on the other side of the room as a partition, giving a scrap of privacy to the bedroom behind it, which had a single wide bed raised off the floor on cinderblocks. A naked lightbulb hung from the center of the room, its wires exposed.

  In contrast to the concrete and plaster were colorful woven blankets and pictures hanging on the walls, bringing a sort of chromatic brilliance to the dusty room. The largest picture was an image of the Virgin Mary positioned next to a wooden cross icon with a crucified Jesus.

  At the side of the room two dirty-faced children sat on a faded red couch next to a young girl who was nursing a baby. She looked too young to be a mother. The children’s eyes were wide with excitement, and they sprang from the couch when they saw us.

  Andrew set the box of food on the table, saying to the woman, “¿Cómo está, Señora Abreyta?”

  “Estamos bien. Mi hija ha regresado a vivir conmigo. Esta es su hija.”

  “¿Ella es su nieta?”

  “Sí.”

  “Ella se parece a usted.” Andrew said to me, “This is her granddaughter.”

  “Bella,” I said.

  She smiled, then said in a thick accent, “Thank you.”

  The children were now standing in front of us, staring at the box I held.

  “They remember that box from last year,” Andrew said. “You can give them some chocolate.”

  I reached into the box and handed them each a chocolate bar. It might as well have been gold bullion for the excitement on their faces.

  “¡Gracias!” they shouted. They ran back to the couch and peeled open their treats.

  “Que Dios le bendiga, Señor.”

  “Ya lo hizo.”

  The woman kissed Andrew on the cheek, then she kissed me as well. “Por favor comen con nosotros.”

  “Gracias,” Andrew said, “pero no podemos. Tenemos que visitar a otros.” He turned to me. “She’s asking us to stay. They all will. We should go.”

  “Cuidense mucho,” he said to her and the rest of the family.

  “Adiós,” I said.

  I preceded him out, carrying the box of candy. As soon as I got in the truck, I began to cry.

  Andrew climbed in the other side of the truck, buckled himself in, and looked over at me. “Are you okay?”

  I turned back to him. “I can’t believe I’ve felt so sorry for myself.”

  “One Thanksgiving I realized that the day had become meaningless to me. I was ungrateful and unhappy. That’s when I realized that I was unhappy because I was ungrateful. That’s when I started doing this. It benefits me more than them.”

  “How many years have you done this?”

  “Six,” he said. “A few years ago I missed a year. It’s probably when I needed it the most.” He marked the first name off the paper using a stub of a pencil. “One down.”

  “How did you get your list of people?”

  “Rosa at the mercado helped me. When I first started, I asked he
r to put together a list of people who could use some help. The first year there were only three families.”

  “Your list has grown.”

  Andrew grinned. “Word gets out. It’s hard to say no.”

  Andrew put the truck in gear and we drove just a few blocks to the next home. We spent the next two hours visiting homes, slowly depleting our truck of its contents. The homes were all different but, in one way, the same—humble, makeshift structures cobbled together with whatever materials their inhabitants could scavenge or afford at the time. As Andrew had predicted, every one of the families invited us to stay and eat with them, which Andrew politely declined.

  As we neared the end of our deliveries, Andrew pulled the van into the middle of an open dirt lot. We were immediately surrounded by a group of tattooed, rough-looking youths. To my surprise, Andrew turned off the engine. He glanced over at me and said, “Don’t be afraid. We’re okay,” then got out.

  One of the larger and older youths approached him. To my surprise, he and Andrew embraced. Then, followed by the others, they walked around to the back of the truck. Soon several of the men walked past me, each carrying a box, going his own way. About five minutes later Andrew opened the driver’s door. “That’s the last of it.”

  “We’re done?”

  “Not quite,” he said. He looked at me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. That just scared me a little.”

  “I wouldn’t have put you in danger.” He started up the truck. “We’re going to have dinner with one of the families we left food with. It was the fourth home we stopped at. The Villaltas.”

  Andrew drove back to one of the neighborhoods where we’d started our distribution. We stopped in front of a house we’d already been to. Before we could get out of the truck, a short Mexican man emerged from the house. “Bienvenido, amigo.”

  Andrew quickly got out. “Señor Villalta, regresamos.”

  “Señor Colina, mi amigo, mucho gusto a verle de nuevo.” The men embraced. Then he looked at me. “Tiene una compañera. ¿Es su esposa?”

  “No. Solo una amiga.”

  As I got out of the truck, the man said to me. “¿Habla español?”