I was walking along what I thought was an abandoned shoreline that lay along the west coast of the Sea Of Cortez. I was hunting for shark teeth; my eyes were on the ground and my mind was wherever it goes when it has the chance to get away.
A sudden rattle of Spanish jerked me out of my trance. On the other end of the words I’d just heard was a young face, two dark eyes, and a mouth full of straight white teeth. He was a good looking kid, maybe ten years old – the perfect point man for a hustle game. I started to wonder if I was hunting the sharks or they were hunting me.
“Como?”, I replied.
My question was followed by another burst of Spanish in which the only word I recognized was dinero.
“Ah, no. No tengo nada”, I said, tapping my pockets. “Lo siento.”
He looked mildly and momentarily deflated. He also looked like he didn’t totally want to leave. That made two of us.
“Como se llama?”, I asked as he walked out ahead of me.
“Manuel”, he answered, turning only part way around.
Another boy rode up on another bike. This one was not so brave; he kept his distance and silently eyed the back and forth that was going on between Manuel and me. “Ah, Manuel. Y este hombre esta su hermano?”, I said pointing to the newcomer. “No, esta mi amigo.” He is not my brother. He is my friend.
I turned to the boy on the bike and asked him his name.
“Emanuel”, he replied.
I tried to make a joke about meeting two Manuels in one day but they didn’t seem to get it. Their blank stares made me think I didn’t get it either.
“Tell you what”, I attempted to say in broken Spanish. “I am hunting for shark teeth. If you find some shark teeth I will buy them from you.”
Manuel needed to summarize my statement back to me until it made sense. “Cuanto pesos nos darás por los dentes?”, he asked. “How much will you pay us for these shark teeth?”
“Quien sabe? Cinqueta, tal vez cien?”, I shrugged. “Who knows? Fifty, maybe one hundred pesos?”. One hundred pesos was worth about five bucks.
He turned and excitedly ran closer to the water where the large Chocolate clam shells were lying. I kept walking my path, casting my eyes left and right, pausing to pick up the odd shell or stone. Periodically the boy would run up to me with a piece of a shell or a rock that may or may not have been a shark tooth. Each time, I would shake my head no and tell him to keep on looking.
It didn’t take long for the boys to grow tired of the hunt. They drew in closer to me, I suppose hoping that I could provide them with a small form of late Sunday afternoon entertainment. For some reason I asked them if they had been to church that day. They both nodded their heads as if to please an invisible priest. When I asked if they were going to school the next day they were non committal. I asked the question again to see if they understood. They understood but they still didn’t answer. I thought of them, young, vibrant, and strong as I considered the shrinking possibilities for them as they grew up in this small town. The sea of
money that their fathers and grandfathers had sailed was going dry and the main resource it produced now was the cash that was coming out of gringo pockets.
“Necesitan estudiar el ingles. Estan los gringos como yo que tiene el dinero.” You need to study English. It’s the gringos like me who have the money.
They seemed unphased.
“I will teach you. Listen to me”, I said to both of them in Spanish. “Let’s start with this: Nice to meet you.” I repeated the phrase slowly, articulating the foreign words for them. When they focused on me I asked them to repeat the phrase. They each did so perfectly. “Otra vez. Nice to meet you.” They said it again, this time with no trace of Spanish in their diction.
They both looked at me with the hint of a smile on their faces. It could have been because they already knew the phrase I had taught them. It could have been that they were proud of themselves for beginning the task that a strange gringo had challenged them with. Whatever they were thinking, it was clear that they were about to move on to a new adventure.
“Nice to meet you”, they said, taking turns to shake my hand while they repeated the new magic phrase one last time. Emmanual turned his bike around and Manuel gave me one more white toothed smile, the smile that was his best hope for the future. I watched them both head out into the distance, no doubt looking for another unsuspecting gringo they could try out their routine on with some brand new vocabulary.
I followed them, leaving my own tracks in their sand, knowing that the ocean would soon carry them all away.
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