On the Porch: Conversations with Don Vicente

by Jonathan Roldan

I approached the old adobe house perched against the escarpment almost reverently.  A bit like whistling in a graveyard...even in the daytime.  To say it was weather-worn and old would have been an understatement.  

The outer bricks of the old walls looked to have been cast in the days of Cortez himself.  The dusty gravel and old bits of straw and other aggregate seemed to be slowly eroding particle-by-particle in the gentle breeze that blew up from the valley of cactus sentinels down the grade.

Fading to dust before my eyes, there wasn't a single right angle left on any edge of the old building.  Rounded smooth by time.  Framed windows looked out, but no panes of glass reflected back the late morning Baja sun.   

How it held up the quilted patchwork of tarpaper, corrugated tin, plywood and clay roof seemed to defy physics and the laws of gravity.  A sandblasted wooden door, hanging by single hinge had a dried leather strap where a door knob would be.  I'd bet it didn't boast a single nail or drop of glue but notched and grooved by tough hands using mallet and chisel.

Had I not  known better, I'd say the small adobe casita (small house)  was deserted and left to the dry desert whims.    But the path leading to the shanty led through a perimeter fence of cactus.  A tended garden sprouted some tomato plants, onions and what appeared to be some young stalks of corn.  Two small goats stared at me curiously from a small shed ablaze with pink bougainvillea flowers sprouting from a gnarly twisting vine that had to be as old as the home itself.  

"Hola!" I said almost to myself.  Yelling didn't seem quite appropriate.  "Hola!" I said again just loud enough.

"Que quieres, joven?" came a dry voice from beside me.  "What do you want, young man?" he said in Spanish as a slight figure emerged from the shadows of the shed.  

Dressed in pants rolled to his calves and long sleeves rolled to his elbows, "Don Vincente" wore a woven hat that looked as if it had gone a session with the goats. His huarache sandals were as worn as the feet they barely covered. White facial stubble was stark contrast to his skin. Brown as wet adobe mud and as weathered as a desert  arroyo, the man looked like the house he lived in.  Time and weather took their turns, but if stories were true, he was on the longer side of 90 and still defying gravity and physics.  

"Perdon, Senor.  Tiene usted dientes para vender?P"  I responded in Spanish.  "Excuse me, Sir.  Do you have teeth to sell me?

At that he smiled broadly and put down the rusty bucket he was carrying.   "Ah, los dientes. Espera!" He shuffled back into the adobe where I could hear scuffing and movement on what I assumed were old wooden floors.

"Ven, joven!"  He gestured to me still smiling "Come here, young man. " as we both sat down on the edge of his porch.  

He pulled out a leather bag and poured them in a scratched clay bowl.  

Teeth!  Dozens and dozens of fossilized shark teeth.  Huge serrated prehistoric types the size and shape of a small tortilla chip. Slimmer shinier and sharper dagger-like choppers that could almost be arrowheads.  Medium-sized triangles of hardened bone.  A treasure of calcified bones!

Don Vincente was the legendary "shark tooth man" of the desert but I had no idea he would have what I now saw before me!  

"Where did you get these?"  I asked in Spanish as he watched me sort through the small mound of teeth.  "These are beautiful!"  

He smiled again and put a sole finger to dried lips.  "Es un secreto, " He winked.  "It's a secret."  But he gestured with an arthritic thumb over his shoulders casually and said, "In the mountains.  Up there."
    
I scanned the huge palisades that rose up behind his home. Granite and volcanic walls, jagged and  as forboding a landscape as any on the planet.  "Up there?  You?"  
He grinned; shrugged; and spread his arms palms up.  "Si senor.  Of course."  As if there would be any other way.

I picked out a dozen and asked for a price.  I braced myself.

"Four hundred fify pesos," he said in Spanish. (about 40 dollars)

The game was on!   Each of these teeth alone would be worth that much alone.

"I will give you 25 dollars, no more, " I grinned back trying to look pained.

He grinned back.  "Young man, it is a long walk to find these teeth in the hot desert.  As you can see, I am a poor old man. Give me 35." He pulled the sympathy card.

I reached into my pocket and held out 30 dollars.  "Here is my last offer," I said with a shrug. 

"You insult me, but I like you," he said with a laugh snatching up the paper pesos. "Please stay and visit."  With a spryness I didn't expect, he gathered up the remaining teeth; dusted off;  and shuffled back into the house.  

He came back with two scratched plastic cups of water and a tiny Mexican lime.  A worn pocket knife cut two slivers.  One each to squeeze into the cups.  

We sat.  Not saying much at first with my limited Spanish and trying to be polite and appreciative in being asked to visit.  But fascinated with what he told me.

After telling him I had a small fishing business in La Paz, he told me he had once been a fisherman as well.  He and his father would row their small skiff off the beach each day.  He remembered how the sun rose over the Sea of Cortez.  He remembered huge areas of birds and yellowtail.  As many as they could catch until the boats were full and the nets were strained.  "Mucho trabajo pero tiempos buenos," he remembered. "Lots of work, but good times."  Said wistfully.

He never went to school.  He  never learned to read.  He had seen TV only a few times.  He once had a radio.  He still cooked over an open fire.

He didn't meet his first gringo until he was in his teens.   That was also the first time he saw an automobile.  They came down his pueblo's dirt road and everyone came to look.  They were lost and spoke a funny language and wore funny clothes.  

And their skin was so white and the lady had hair the color of sand.  He had only heard about cars and gringos before, but this was his first experience.  With a smile, he said after all these years, they still are funny people and they still wear funny clothes!

He had only ridden in a car or truck half-a-dozen times himself.  "Yo prefiero un caballo o burro," (I prefer a horse or donkey) he said shrugging.  "Slow but dependable."
"I have been to a big city only a few times. Too many people.  Too much noise.  

He moved to the mountains after his parents died. He worked  in the mines or traded.  He grew his own food; hunted when he could; bartered for whatever he couldn't cultivate or kill.

"I built this house 60 years ago." No wife.  No kids.  Said he had a girlfriend once, but she ran off with his friend."  He smiled and slapped his knee.  "I saw her and she got old and fat!"

A sip of water.  A long pause.  "Pienso que tengo  96 anos" (I think I am 96 years old).   He looked at me. He asked if I liked the ocean.

"I like the mountains. It has many secrets. Only I know some of them."

"Like about the shark's teeth?' I queried.

"There are places up there where the teeth can be found.  I was lost one time and came upon the spot.  I have actually been lost many times.  But it is when you are sometimes lost in the canyons and cliffs that you find many secrets."  

He paused.  

"There are caves in the mountains with paintings of animals. I think ancient giants painted them because they are very high on the ceilings.  The "man pictures" are also larger than the animal pictures."

"There are springs coming from rocks and in the old forgotten mine shafts there are rivers also.  No one knows.  I see birds and animals no one ever sees. Maybe they are hiding from people too. I know a place where large bones are stuck in the rock sides of a cliff. "

He looked at me and let that settle in. Large bones?  Stuck in a cliff?  Hmmmm...

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Left them alone, claro (of course)," he said matter-of-factly.  "Why would I disturb them?"

Another reflective pause.  He threw a twig at one of the goats and stared down the valley.

He continued. "There are also people who live high up in the mountains who never come down. They do not speak Spanish. They speak different.   I talk to them and they tell me of mysterious lights in the mountains and in the sky. "  A long breath and another smile.

He looked up at me.

"They tell me they are ghosts or gods.  Maybe.  I really don't know anything about that. But they tell me the old Spanish and Indians hid treasures in the mountains.  I am sure of that.  One day, I will find it. Probably when I get lost again."

His voice tailed off.  His vision narrowed as well.  His lips tightened a bit as if remembering something or everything. As if he said too much.   A lifetime living away from it all.  Or with it all. With everything you need.  

He looked at me.  A deep breath and sigh.   Smiled again and held out his hand to shake.  "Gracias por su visita."  (Thanks for the visit).  He stood and walked into his casita.

The goats watched as I reverently let myself out through the path and down the hill. A handful of intriguing sharks teeth in my pocket and a fired imagination in my head.  Paintings? Bones?  Lights? Treasure?

Several months later, I heard Don Vincente went up into the mountains.  He never came back.  Sometimes when you are lost you find secrets. Maybe he got lost again.  Personally, I think he found his treasure long ago in so many ways.