Late August and early September 1994 brought the rains that much of the countryside expected to get in July.
Five o’clock Sunday morning, slogging down the red mud road from Gelacio Trejo’s adobe house to borrow a bottle of Mostachon for a calf getting eaten up by screwworms was like running an obstacle course with your eyes closed. It was engrossing but not entertaining. It had rained all night and there was no chance of getting my Volkswagen Jetta — purely a city car — through the river of mud and rocks that was the road at the bottom of the hill. All sensible folks in that neck of the woods drove pickups or something larger, or else rode horses, mules or burros. And there weren’t any other kind of folks around, I’d been told, just intruders who didn’t know better.
For several days I was taking care of livestock belonging to Gelacio, who had gone with his family to see a doctor in Colima about his cancer problem. It was black outside, and I wondered if I could find the house of the local, uncertified veterinarian in this dark. Rancho Santa Julia seemed to be living in constant mountain fog. Lightning, dimmed by low cloud cover, winked, and muffled thunder grunted, threatening more rain. Below in the village — a cluster of 16 or 17 tile-roofed houses — a single bare bulb shone on muddy pools in the school yard.
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