THE PALE LIGHT OF SUNSET: SCATTERSHOTS AND HALLUCINATIONS IN AN IMAGINED LIFE

Reunion - 1970

171 1970 Reunion It is the best café I have ever been in. I want to stay here, to live here, to drop out of the minds and sights of any who are in search of me, who know that I am alive. Heavy wooden tables and benches nestle into the sand floor. The wood has been scrubbed so many times with sea water that the surfaces are velvet to the touch. The roof is made of banana leaves and palm fronds, stitched together with some sort of tiny vines that twist and bind like miniature snakes. The roof is held aloft by heavy timbers of wood so hard that there are no nails driven into it. There are no walls. The café is open to the air, to the beach, and the sea. The counter is bamboo, and meant only to keep customers out of the kitchen. There are no stools at the counter. The kitchen is an area directly behind the counter where a length-wise half of a 55-gallon barrel rests atop a stack of concrete blocks. Lying across the top of the barrel are pieces of heavy metal grill that look as though they might once have been the shelves of refrigerators. At the other end of the counter is the café’s cooler, a heavy wooden box lined with thick pieces of foam that have been picked Lee Maynard 172 up along the beach. The box is half-filled with ice left over from the fish truck that leaves the village before dawn each day. As the ice melts, it simply runs out of the box and down into the sand. There is no electricity in the café. There is no gas, not even propane. When night falls, the only light is from the glow of two kerosene lamps attached to the center pole that supports the roof. The lamps do little to hold back the night. In this café, at night, you eat mostly by touch. I sit at a small corner table near the front—the side nearest the ocean. I am less than twenty yards from the water. There are only three other customers, all men, all sitting at separate tables off to my right, and as the shadows of the jungle darken the café and the beach, I am not able to see any of them clearly. Even so, I sit turned slightly so that they are in my field of vision. I dig my rubber sandals into the cool sand, sip a beer from the cooler, watch the small waves, and wait on my food. The menu is simple, never varies, everything cooked on the barrel-grill: fish—whatever has been caught that day—rice, flat bread, coffee and beer. The cook is also the waiter, and also the owner, and when he brings my food he brings a small pottery bowl filled with something that can only be described as liquid fire, the hottest salsa I have ever tasted in a public place. He smiles when he puts it on the table. He knows the salsa will demand that I have another beer. I have been coming here every day for almost a month. It has become a habit, and I know I am not supposed to develop such public habits. But the café is, after all, the best café I have ever been in, and that has to count for something. I have begun to feel less tense, less hunted, less the hunter. I have begun to fantasize about living here, sleeping under a palapa, wearing nothing more than I have on now—sandals, shorts, large floppy shirt—fishing for my food . . . Coming here is a habit. It is a habit I will risk. The Pale Light of Sunset 173 The cook brings my second beer, and I pay him, and I know he will simply go home, leaving everything as it is until he comes back tomorrow . If he decides to come back tomorrow. I sip my beer, listening to the soft sounds of night at the edge of the jungle, hearing the overlay of light surf. Two of the other men are gone. There is only me and the one other guy. I keep him in my peripheral vision. He does not seem to be eating and there is no beer bottle on his table. He sits and stares at the ocean, now...