The Whip - Chapter 1

Oaxaca, Mexico, heartland of the Mixtec civilization, has been described as mystical and magical. Join us for a serialized short story about a "spirited" bachelor party off the beaten path.

The Whip

Chapter 1

by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta

Jeff clamped his butt cheeks together, rocked back and forth in his seat on the bus, and tried to use creative visualization to dispel the creeping nausea. The Teposcolula depot was in sight, thank god. He prayed they had a bathroom. Before the bus stopped, he started making his way to the front so he could be the first one off. His brothers, Todd and Mike, snickered.

“Hey, Jeff! You got any refried beans and mole?!” Mike called after him. Todd, embarrassed, elbowed Mike.

Mike was a jerk. Jeff and Todd only invited him to Oaxaca because he spoke fluent Spanish and they did not.

“We’ll get your bag, bro,” Todd reassured Jeff.

The bus stopped. Jeff raced into the depot. There was a line of small school children learning how to order bus tickets. He cut in front of them, “¿Baño?” he asked the woman behind the ticket counter. He knew he was using the wrong word but guessed she would understand from just looking at him. She pointed to the left. He ran to the left, unbuckling his belt. The baño was open, thank god. It was filthy, but it was a toilet: a seatless toilet with mosquitos swirling around the bowl. He lowered his pants just in time before the remainder of his dinner burst out from both ends.

When Jeff had cleaned himself in the sink (half-mildew, half-rust) and sopped up his vomit from the floor as best he could, he emerged.

“There is officially nothing left in my body,” he announced to his brothers.

“Let’s get you some grub,” Todd said.

“No!” Jeff shot back weakly. “I’m never eating again!”

“Hey, you were the fuck-up who ate the cheese,” Mike chided. “You’re not supposed to eat the cheese in Mexico.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the cheese in Mexico,” Todd argued.

“Just the cheese from last night,” Jeff muttered.

“Pardón, Señorita,” Mike stopped a young, attractive local woman. He asked her something in Spanish and they had an exchange. He flashed the charming smile that had been getting him girls—and getting him in trouble—since fourth grade. She finally left with a blush and he turned back around.

“It’s Sunday but there’s a restaurant open up the road,” Mike said.

“I’m not eating,” Jeff emphasized.

“No shit, but we are,” answered Mike.

~ ~ ~

They arrived at what looked like someone’s house, but the living room was set up as a makeshift restaurant with three small formica tables. An old man came out. Mike confirmed they were open and asked for menus. The man indicated a table against the wall. When Jeff went to sit down, Mike stopped him.

“You sit over there. You smell like a crapper.”

“He does not,” Todd defended.

“He’s going to make me vomit in my food.”

“Will you shut up?! Jeff, sit down.”

Mike and Todd sat along the wall, facing each other. Jeff pulled up a chair and sat facing the wall. On the wall was a large lithograph of what looked like a flying saucer in a field and multiple RVs pulled up to it. There was a supernatural light either shining down on the flying saucer or emanating upwards from it.

“This place is weird,” Todd said, looking at the picture.

“Yeah,” said Jeff. “Usually there are statues of bleeding saints.”

Mike read a poster on the opposite wall. “This guy belongs to a cult,” he said. “That poster’s for, like, a paranormal revival or something.”

The man came out with menus, and stood there, smiling.

“What do you want?” Mike asked his brothers.

“Nothing,” said Jeff.

“Anything but cheese,” Todd said.

Mike ordered for him and Todd, then pointed at Jeff and spoke to the man at length. The man looked sympathetically at Jeff and was about to leave when Jeff stood up and touched his shoulder. “¿Baño?”

~ ~ ~

When Jeff got back from a much milder trip to the toilet, Mike and Todd were ripping steaming tortillas and shoving the pieces in their mouths.

“Drink this,” the old man appeared magically and put a bowl of broth in front of Jeff. He was speaking English. He looked into Jeff’s eyes deeply and said, “Don’t worry. God will take care of you.”

Jeff looked at his brothers. Mike and Todd were arguing about Mexican professional football, as though the guy wasn’t there. Jeff looked back at the man, but he had vanished.

“Dudes,” Jeff said. “Did you hear that? The old guy speaks English.”

“What are you talking about?” Todd asked, dumbfounded.

“You’re trippin’,” said Mike.

Jeff didn’t care; he was suddenly ravenously hungry. He ate the soup. It was good. When the man returned, Jeff asked him in English, “What kind of broth is this?”

The man replied, “Sorry, no English.”

Mike asked him in Spanish and got a reply.

“Venison.”

~ ~ ~

When they left the restaurant, Jeff was feeling better, but tired. He suggested they check into the hotel so he could take a siesta. The town was little more than a rectangle of roads surrounding the zòcalo. Along those roads were an ornate municipal “palace” and an old church and convent which was why they left the beach resort and took a side trip to Teposcolula, in the heart of the Mixteca. Jeff, a history adjunct at a small college upstate New York, could write-off his expenses if he did some research on colonization. They walked across the zòcalo, which had tall trees and a fountain, making it refreshingly cool.

~ ~ ~

“I thought you booked a hotel,” Todd said as they stood outside the hostel which looked like a blockhouse.

“It got 4.8 on Google,” Mike replied.

“Probably because it’s cheap,” Jeff added.

The rooms were like meat lockers, but stifling. Each had two beds, but they were cheap enough that Mike got one room for each of them, for the equivalent of five dollars each. They were only staying one night. Jeff flicked on the light switch and a circular fluorescent light buzzed from the ceiling. The walls were painted cinder blocks and there was a tiny window he probably couldn’t crawl out of if there were a fire. The steel door slammed behind him. He turned off the light and collapsed onto the squeaky cot, on top of the cigarette-scented blanket. Staring at the glow from the street through the gaps around the door, Jeff fell swiftly asleep.

He had a dream of a glowing space ship landing in a field. When the door to the space ship opened, the old man from the restaurant emerged, wearing a white garment and lifting his hand, like Jesus in a lot of the pictures he had seen. Jeff woke up with a start.

It took him a second to remember where he was. He put the light on, took a shower in the mildewy tub, and went outside. His room opened directly onto the street. He walked down a bit and knocked on Mike and Todd’s doors. Nothing. He walked to the zócalo and saw Mike singing to himself loudly, and Todd on the phone with his fiancée. Jeff didn’t know who he was more angry at.

“She’s not supposed to be calling you. It’s your bachelor party,” he said to Todd.

“Hold on a sec, Morgan,” Todd said into the phone, then put his hand over the mic and addressed Jeff. “She didn’t call me; I called her.”

“After she texted you to call her, right?

“She texted me about Vinny.”

“The cat?! What’s wrong with the cat that can’t wait?!”

“Nothing. He just wanted to talk to me.”

“Cat’s don’t talk!”

Todd knew his brother was right. He got back on the phone. “Hey, hon. I gotta go. Jeff’s not feeling too good.”

Mike started to dance around the fountain, singing “Comfortably Numb.”

“Are those the last of the shrooms, I hope?” asked Jeff.

“He just bought a new batch.”

“In Teposcolula?!”

“Hey, they’re everywhere, man. That’s why he came with us to Mexico.”

Jeff looked around. He had to confront Todd about Morgan. His brother was about to join himself to her forever in marriage. She had him completely in her control, like a sorceress. But she had lied to Jeff—and to Todd—repeatedly, and Jeff suspected she even stole some cash he had on his bookshelf one day when they came over for lunch. Their mother hated her.

“So, what was wrong with your cat?”

“Oh nothing, he was just lonely.”

“You see how she manipulated you?”

“Ok, I know Morgan is the one who is lonely, not Vinny, but I’ve been away for three days.”

“That’s not a lot of time, dude.”

“She’s worried about me.”

“Stop making excuses.”

Todd started looking uncomfortable. “I’ve dated a lot of girls. She’s the one I love. I’m going to marry her. If you had real concerns, you should have brought them up earlier, not a month before the wedding.”

Jeff was about to say, “But you’ve only known her six months,” but he decided to let it rest. He had said his piece. He looked around. “Nice place.”

“Yeah.”

“You guys do anything while I was sleeping?”

“Besides buy hallucinogenics and check our messages? No—Oh, the dealer said we should check out the jail.”

“What? Like a historic jail?”

“No, the real jail. The prisoners make crafts and sell them.”

Jeff laughed. “No shit! Hey Mike, let’s go!”

Mike was standing on the rim of the fountain with one leg, balancing.

“Where we going?” he said.

“Jail.”

“Sweet.”

~ ~ ~

They looked through the iron gate of the jail, which was along one of the roads that encircled the zócalo. Inside, men poured out from dark cells around a dirt courtyard and approached with their crafts. The brothers took one step back. The prisoners stuck their arms through the bars, holding their wares, and repeated the prices: “Cincuenta pesetas,” “treinta pesetas.” Mike grabbed a small hand-woven cloth.

“¿Quánto cuesta?”

“Veinte pesetas, señor.”

Mike gave the prisoner the equivalent of one dollar.

Todd grabbed a macrame belt that could have fit an elephant. Jeff’s eyes were immediately drawn to a deer shank that had been made into the handle of a leather whip. He met the eyes of the man who was holding it. The man was removed from the rest, as though he was superior and everyone knew not to get too close.

“A hundred,” the man said in English. The other prisoners were trying to get Mike and Todd to buy more things.

Jeff gave the man a 100-peseta bill.

“Dollars.” The man smiled broadly. He had two missing teeth.

“What?!”

“You never get nuttin’ like dis nowhere.”

The guy was right. Jeff felt bad for him. He stroked the rough fur of the shank with his thumb, then dug into his wallet and gave the prisoner two fifty-dollar bills—less than what he would have spent on a real hotel room.

The prisoner nodded his thanks and said, “Try it.”

There was a sapling nearby. Jeff had never wielded a real whip before. He stepped back and lashed the whip out at the sapling. It made a loud crack and the tip of a branch dropped to the ground.

Upon hearing the whip, the other prisoners recoiled and pulled their arms back inside the gate. They looked at Jeff and then at the whip-maker, who was nodding approval. The other prisoners suddenly withdrew into the courtyard and headed back to their cells. The last one to leave muttered something to Mike. The whip-maker extended his hand through the grate. Jeff shook it. The man then pulled his straw cowboy hat further down his brow, put his hands in his jeans pockets, and sauntered back to his cell.

“What did that guy say?” Todd asked Mike when Jeff rejoined them.

“El Ciervo has escaped.” Mike translated.

Jeff looked at the whip in his hand wondering what he had just bought for a hundred bucks.

To be continued….