Riders on the Niño Storms

By L. H. May

"... it's a novel about Americans in Peru in the sixties, with ephemera from the Summer of Love against a background of Andean sunsets." L.H. May, Riders on the Nio Storms, author's preface

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456764968

L. H. May

L. H. May was born in Cincinnati, Ohio; was educated in public schools there; received his BA, cum laude, from Yale College, where he majored in English and minored in philosophy; and was strongly influenced by the synthesis of those two disciplines suggested by the groundbreaking lecture of Jacques Derrida at Johns Hopkins in 1966, introducing deconstructionism to the United States and expanding the scope of literary criticism beyond its previously narrow scholastic bounds. After graduating from college, May worked as a newspaper reporter before attending law school, receiving his JD from Indiana University. He then lived and worked in Peru, Lima, Arequipa, and Ayacucho, learning Spanish and researching international law, before returning to the United States to practice law in the Midwest while continuing to write fiction.

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© 2011 L. H. May. All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 05/03/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-4326-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-4327-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-6496-8 (e)

Printed in the United States of America

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Ayacucho, Peru

(Population 21,531)

Alt. 8,412 ft

June 19, 1969

In the Andean dusk a motorcycle was descending the road to the provincial capital of Ayacucho, trailing clouds of dust that became visible in its headlight when it slowed at the switchbacks, as Jim Hiram watched it from the roof of the Hotel Colmena. The Colmena was the second best of the two hotels in town, and was where most of the other American grad students were staying in Ayacucho that summer. At night they congregated in the Colmena bar, which was where Jim heard the California anthropology contingent talk about Frank Mathiessen, hero or fool depending on who you listened to. Frank had decided to ride his classic Harley-Davidson motorcycle from California to Peru on the Pan-American Highway, and the betting among the crowd at the Colmena was about three to one against him ever making it to Panama. His plan was to drive the Harley Hog down, then sell it in Peru at the end of the summer at a big profit, thus assuring himself a higher standard of living next Fall than his grant and paltry TA salary provided. The older grad students who knew the road conditions in Central America, the local propensity for feudal bureaucracy, and the guerrilla activity in Guatemala and Nicaragua, were skeptical of him ever making it past Mexico.

That evening the rumor circulating in the Colmena Bar was that Irv Cohen, their faculty advisor, got word over shortwave that Frank had been stopped at a border checkpoint in Guatemala, where the guardia had confiscated the Hog after Frank expressed some anti-government sentiment. Everybody nodded that this was typical Frank behavior, and they had no idea when or if he’d show up in Peru that summer. But when Irv came into the bar to get a couple of hard boiled eggs for breakfast next morning—Irv wasn’t a heavy drinker like the others but he came in to check up—he denied the Guatemala rumor and told Jim that he got word yesterday morning from Frank that he’d crossed into Colombia from Panama two days ago and was approaching the Ecuadorian border at Tumbes. Jim had put thirty bucks at five to one on Frank making it all the way down on the Hog, and he only had twenty in his pocket at the time, but he excused himself from Irv, went in the bar and put it down with the same odds.

Hate to take your money, farm boy, said Miller, the class bookie and built like a bouncer, large enough he could have worked security at Altamont. He called Jim farm boy, even though he’d grown up in Cincinnati, because he was from the Midwest and because he was in Peru on an agrarian reform study sponsored by the Land Tenure Project out of Wisconsin, which involved taking surveys of rows of potatoes.

Irv was still in the foyer of the bar telling a joke to the owner, so Jim stopped to listen to that and the latest news of the lunar expedition, since Jim seemed to be the only other American with much interest in it. The others thought the money should have been spent rebuilding the ghettos that burned.

So how’s the gang tonight? Irv said. Are they roaring yet?

They’re meek as lambs, Jim said. No need to check on them.

So you put some more money on Frank arriving? Irv said.

Yeh, would you mind not mentioning about Frank getting into Tumbes? Jim said. That Miller has a little edge on him when he’s loaded.

No problem, Irv said. He’s leaving for the ceja de montaña tomorrow. We’ll let him sleep sound.

After that Jim went up to the roof, dodging over clotheslines to climb to the parapet, where he spotted that single headlight descending the Ayacucho plain. He could hear faint rumblings of that mythic Hog thunder echoing out of the draws, washes and quebradas. Jim strongly suspected that this was Frank Mathiessen, coming in like a long shot winner at the track, and he had the added joy of scooping the hip Cal gang and nicking oafish Miller for another hundred bills.

When twenty minutes later the rhythmic, guttural roar of the motorcycle filled the street below, Jim went down to check things out, and so began his friendship with Frank Mathiessen that summer of 1969. The Harley was just being bumped over the threshold of the night door by an obviously exhausted Frank with a hotel attendant assisting him, when Jim descended the courtyard staircase and observed a second rider, a young woman in leathers rimed with gray dust. She took off her helmet and goggles, shook out her hair, and did a wide, slow, tired pirouette around the courtyard. This was Liz Teris, the project photographer Jim learned in the process of introducing himself, also from California and also obviously Frank’s partner. The Cal grad students may have mentioned her before, but because she wasn’t in their doctoral program, she was on the periphery of their universe.

The three of them, Frank and Liz and Jim, shuffled around the Harley like it was a hot stove in a Vermont store, or some strong Polynesian tiki entrancing them. Yes, Frank replied when Jim asked him about his trip, there had been some problems on the way down, especially with Central American Customs, but the good news was the Hog was eating up the road all the way down until it began stalling out sporadically a couple hours back at the last pass at twelve thousand feet. Delivering this news as he paced in a circle about the machine, Frank had paused like a distracted lecturer shuffling his notes, considering possible theories and mumbling something about cleaning the air filter and not wanting to adjust the carburetor. Then, as if a question about the meaning of existence was posed, Frank sat down on the hotel stairs silently to meditate it alongside his cycle. Wanting to make talk, Jim mentioned the grad student betting pool, but Frank harrumphed and got up to resume the peripatetic diagnosis of his machine.

I’m sorry, Liz apologized for him. He thinks most of the other students in his program are a pain in the ass.

That’s being charitable, sweetheart, Frank said, continuing the inspection.

He’s beat from the ride, Liz said. I’m sorry. Frank’s just gotten to hate office politics. So are you new in the Cal anthro program last quarter? We haven’t been to a single department party this year.

No, I’m not in anthro at all, Jim said. I’m in law school in Ohio. I just got a summer grant with the Land Tenure Project. They needed somebody to do maps, not that I knew a hectare from an acre before. It’s just me and one other person on the project, so the Cal students adopted us, or sort of did, like poor cousins. I think there must be seven of them down here. Before you, that is.

A lawyer? Frank said.

Not quite yet, Jim said. A few more hoops to jump through.

How’d you decide to come down here? Liz said.

It’s a long story, and I know you’re tired, Jim said.

I need to wind down anyway, and Frank won’t go to sleep until he puts his Baby Hog to bed, she said, patting him on the shoulders.

I was a McCarthy supporter last year, and through that, I met Jane—she’s the other one here on the project, Jim said. She told me about the Wisconsin summer program in Peru, so I filled out an application. What decided it for me, I was sitting in a barbershop, waiting to get a haircut, reading a Field and Stream article about trout fishing in the Andes while Walter Cronkite was on the TV talking about the body count in Nam. It was kind of like a carrot and a stick. Did I want to stay home, work construction for less money and be depressed, or take a flyer and come down here?

You say you like to fish? Frank said, his interest piqued.

Oh yeh, I brought tackle carry-on all the way down here, Jim said. Poking people in the butt on airplanes and apologizing to them in bad Spanish.

My tackle got confiscated when they impounded the bike in Guatemala, Frank said. We stopped in Lima and I tried to find a rod and reel, but we were already two weeks late to be here.

Hey, I brought down both a spinning and a fly-casting outfit, Jim said. You can have the one I’m not using.

Hell, it’s Saturday tomorrow, Frank said. We could go out in the morning early. Like five or six, can you make it up by then?

Dawn or dusk, that’s when they bite, Jim said.

You wouldn’t mind if I went out tomorrow, would you, Liz dear? Frank said.

I don’t care what you do, Liz said, not with an attitude but just stating a fact. After four thousand miles eating dust, I’m booked to sleep in all tomorrow. All I want now is something hot to eat and a clean bed to crawl into. If you’re crazy enough to get up and go fishing tomorrow, that’s your problem.

So it looks good for tomorrow, Jim, Frank said.

Oh yeh, this is like a dream to have a cycle to get out on, Jim said. The only line I wetted so far was on a river on the way to Huanta, but it was right near the road. Nothing doing.

How can guys be so crazy? Liz said.

She’s never understood fishing, Frank said. And I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried. Nature, the spiritual side. She just has no concept.

How about the concept of hunger? Jim said, sensing they were on edge with each other after a long trip down. The Colmena’s grill is about to close. We could all catch a bite and chew the fat.

You go ahead, Frank said. I’ve got to pull the air filter. I may need to tweak the carb. When she hit the cordillera in Colombia, I adjusted the mixture and she ran like a charm. Maybe all I need to do is clean the air filter. We were kicking up dust the last three hundred miles.

Yeh, I saw you coming in by your dust, Jim said.

Come on, Frank, Liz said. Give it up. You’re beat.

No, just order for me, Frank said, leaning back to look at his machine. You know what I like. Get it to go.

So Jim and Liz went next door to the Colmena’s restaurant and lingered late talking over dirty plates so that at some time past ten the owner finally had to kick them out. They’d hit it off well and Jim felt a deep sense of gratitude to his college History of Art prof who had been progressive enough to consider photography an art form and had included a section that featured Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams and Avedon. It enabled Jim to banter a few cant phrases he recalled about each of those artists, while Liz and he enjoyed their Lomo a l’España, a cutlet topped with onion, tomato and a fried egg in the Hapsburg tradition of the schnitzel, the entrée at the top of the menu at the Colmena. Coincidentally it was one of those fleeting moments that Jim realized his college education had a definite value besides teaching him to drink and getting him into law school. They stayed to talk and had a glass each of Ocucaje cabernet sauvignon as a nightcap, but it was obvious Liz wasn’t going to need much help getting to sleep that night. When Jim got back after paying the tab and getting Frank’s dinner order to go, he found her asleep sitting straight up in her chair. He put his hand on her shoulder and gently shook her to bring her awake. She lurched and then clung to him, like she must have been clinging to Frank over all those many hundreds of winding miles down from California every time their cycle bumped or swerved when she was half asleep. She’d opened her eyes but it was obvious she was disoriented and didn’t immediately understand where she was or who he was. She looked at him and it was like another soul at the end of a telescope suddenly realizing it was him and she knew him.

Oh, it’s you, Jim, Liz said. I must have fallen asleep. It wasn’t that I didn’t find the conversation fascinating. I did. I’m just very, very tired. It’s been a long day. Where did we start this morning? Was it Jauja? Cajamarca? Chachapoyas? That can’t be right. It’s just a word in my head. I’d better go to bed. I’m starting to babble.

She stumbled getting up from the table and Jim caught her to keep her from falling on the tile floor. She almost fell again right away after he let go of her, so he kept his arm securely around her as they walked out of the restaurant onto the street together. It had begun to drizzle and the temperature which had been near sixty with sweater and blouse weather for the chicas promenading the square that afternoon, had dropped precipitously to near freezing. The dim streetlights and the hotel lights went off when the generating station shut down electric power to the town at ten. Even with the lights out the sierra moon illuminated Ayacucho like the legendary star did the little town of Bethlehem in traditional Christmas card images. The moon was surrounded by a grand corona extending over a third of the sky’s arc, down through which they could see the mist crystallizing. It was only a couple of yards between the restaurant exit and the hotel entrance, but they made the distance slowly because they were pausing to look at a scene like a Utrillo canvas, a cobblestone street with stucco-faced stone walls on either side dusted with powder snow encroaching from the mountainside.

Jim looked around in the hotel courtyard as he helped Liz across to the stairs, trying to see if he could see Frank, because he was toting his carryout dinner on his free arm. But Frank and his Harley were nowhere in sight in the courtyard. So Liz and he mounted the stairs slowly, like some elderly couple on a sentimental journey to a monument or a cemetery or just a place they’d known in their youth. As they shuffled down the second floor hall toward her room, they passed somebody playing a radio with cumbia music. There was laughter inside that room and it sounded like two businessmen drinking and talking. In the next room along it sounded like somebody speaking Russian or Portuguese, but Liz and he kept on going until they located her room at the end of the hall. It was a solid door of palo duro, and it opened easily with the key she gave him.

Jim helped Liz into the bare, cement-walled, ten by twelve room with two cots and a bed cabinet between them with a candle in a tin can on top of it. As Jim was lighting the candle, Liz slumped down on one of the cots and began to lie back. Frank wasn’t upstairs yet and it was obvious Liz wasn’t far from the land of dreams. He assumed they were staying together and didn’t want to lock Frank out, but also didn’t want to leave Liz asleep with her door open. So Jim puttered around the room, and set Frank’s carryout dinner on the writing table by the window. It was the same as every other room Jim had seen in the hotel, with a heavy worsted blanket at the foot of the bed and pale blue ceramic bed pan. The chamber pots were a standing joke with the students, but they beat walking in the dark barefoot on freezing tiles the length of the hall to the common baño after several quarts of beer. Jim helped Liz off with her boots and helped her roll back over to the other side of the mattress so he could turn the bed down. She was sinking fast, offering minimal cooperation when suddenly she revived and rolled quickly away, bringing him over beside her.

Mmm, she said, feeling his body pressing against hers.

Sorry, Jim said, rolling back away, but the swayback cot brought her right back against him. I was trying to get your feet under the covers.

Mmm, show me the way to go home, she sang in a thin, high, drunken voice, lifting her feet daintily, then collapsing precipitously, causing her to roll back further against him so her cheek was against his. It was obvious she was plowed on one glass of Cabernet after the severe exhaustion of another long day being jounced around on the back of the Hog. She moved again, but it only brought her cheek against his and then her lips brushed against his and her arm rested on his chest. He tried briefly to roll away but she was wavering between consciousness and dreamy oblivion, so he stayed still beside her a moment while she fell asleep. It was a good moment for him, expanding beyond seconds and minutes into one of those altars of memory which seemed to exist in the alcoves of eternity, some good experience you could come back to when you were down, lonely or disheartened. He might have stayed there a lot longer but he heard somebody moving in the hall outside, so he got up to put the other blanket over Liz.

After he’d tucked her in, Jim snuffed the candle and sat on the other cot for a few minutes waiting for Frank to show up. Finally he decided to lock the door, take the carryout with him, stop by his own room for a flashlight and find Frank. When he was coming out of his room, he ran into Jane, the other grad student with him on the land tenure project, and the one of them who could really speak Spanish, in her bathrobe and carrying her own flashlight.

Well, they stole my toilet paper again, Jane said.

The bums—but ‘be prepared’ is my motto, Jim said, ducking back into his room and emerging with a fresh roll of Ariel papel higenico. I bought extra at the store today. Accept this as a token of my profound appreciation.

Thanks, you’re a godsend, Jane said. This Atahualpa’s Revenge is vicious.

You’ve got to stop eating the salads, Jim said. They fertilize with manure up here.

I just crave something green, Jane said.

And you always get ice cubes, Jim said.

I know, Jane said. I can’t stand warm Coke.

Then you choose your suffering, Jim said. Got to go now. You know that Frank Mathiessen the Cal students were always gossiping about?

Yes? she said.

Well, he made it here, Jim said

I thought they said he was stuck in Guatemala, she said.

He got here tonight, Jim said. I’ve got to go give him his room key.

Let me pay you for the TP, Jane said.

Forget it, Jim said. I just won the betting pool. I wonder if Miller is still in the bar.

That boor, Jane said. He got drunk and fell asleep on the way back from Vinchos, and took up three seats. I had to ride in back.

He’s a piece of work, Jim said. He must have some special talent, which remains hidden to me. Maybe he’s bookie for Bay Area academic gambling addicts.

Or he’s got the campus cocaine concession, Jane said.

Oh, the Regents give those out, like the Queen gives her seal for marmalade or boots? Jim said.

Jane was the only other person with Jim on the Land Tenure Project and he would have been completely lost without her. He was struggling to complete the project questionnaires with his two years of high school Spanish, while she was fluent in Spanish due to instruction from third grade on through grad school, where she had read the immortal Cervantes in the original, also Machado, Lope de Vega, Unamuno, Ortega y Gassett, César Vallejo, Garcia Lorca, this skill thanks to the excellent language programs of the Florida Department of Education, which understood that kids could pick up another language quicker than adults, and especially kids could get the accent right. Irv Cohen and their own project director, Friedrich, who had a doctorate in linguistics from Heidelberg, spoke Spanish well, but neither could have passed for a native speaker like Jane could. And she’d also been studying Quechua at Indiana University, which did a lot of language instruction for the Air Force and the Peace Corps. Ten miles outside of Ayacucho, Quechua was all that was spoken, and Jim couldn’t have gotten anything done on the project without Jane. She was pretty in a Doris Day sort of way, though the Cal students thought her a conservative bore because she was always criticizing the leftist government and ossified Peruvian bureaucracy, which truth to tell, on a good day functioned about as well as a Corvair with a bad wheel. Recently the Army engineers had been improving things, building roads in the sierra and the jungle, which was a damn site more productive than spraying napalm or Agent Orange on it. But the Cal students didn’t give Jane or him any points for being against Vietnam, since they took that for granted maybe because they lived where that wasn’t quite as hard to do. And then some of it was just liberal, academic bias, because Jane was basically a Southern Democrat, just too pro-free enterprise and anti-union for them, even though she was in the McCarthy campaign and against Vietnam. Her Dad was a big politico in Dixie, and by reason of holding high State Democratic office was an HHH (LBJ) delegate to the ’68 DNC. Jim learned this only after they were approaching Chicago on I-65, and when they were outside the Hilton and things were getting tense between police and protestors, Jane said well, they could just duck inside because her Daddy was staying there.

Oh, no, we’re getting out of here, Jim had said, taking her by the arm so her Clean Gene placard tumbled to the pavement in the crush of the crowd, and when they got to his car, he kept driving south to Merrillville where they crashed in a motel and watched the riot on TV.

Anyway Jane hadn’t let opposing Vietnam drive her to the point of questioning capitalism, which was another minus for her with the Cal grad students, who had taken the step from Old Left pragmatism to New Left abstract radicalism. Like her, Jim never really questioned free enterprise; he never thought Communism was a good alternative, though now Sweden looked more attractive to him, with a good welfare net so the poor were taken care of, and