February 18 - Fish Tacos

Mindy left before dawn, a few hours ahead of the support team as usual.
The Mexican heat quickly became brutal during that time of summer. From 11am - 3pm, riding was out of the question, so Mindy generally tried to log at least 20 - 25 miles before the midday siesta.
She was cycling the entire length of the Gulf of Mexico, having undertaken the project to raise awareness (and maybe eventually funds) for the plight of indigenous Mexican Indian fishermen who were being squeezed out of their territorial waters by international corporate fishing concerns. She'd heard about this issue at Reed the previous fall, and unlike most of her classmates, had decided to do something about it.
Joining her on her trip were Ziggy, Janet, and Rochelle, three other Reeders who followed her in a beat-up VW van they nicknamed Whitney (as in Houston, as in Mission Control) that carried all their camping equipment, cooking supplies, Mindy's laptop (she was blogging the trip), a GPS, and four iPods that collectively held enough music to provide the soundtrack for a yearlong trip, even though they would only be gone a month.
Every morning she left before dawn. Well, not every morning: the day after Janet's 20th birthday she got a late start and at 9am declared herself too hungover to continue. But on every other day she got up well before the sun to ride along the route they'd mapped out the night before and then wait for the others at a designated spot for lunch and a long nap. Then, at around 3 or 4, she would do the same thing, riding for a couple more hours before stopping for a swim and blogging in Whitney. Finally, after dinner (usually fish tacos and fruit) she would crash, get up the next morning, and do it again.
Although the first week was a bitch, now that she was well into her trip, she quite enjoyed the routine. Cycling was very calming in a way. And even though her novice Spanish skills hadn't progressed much, she felt a strong bond with the locals who gave her strange looks or laughed good-naturedly when she tried to tell them in jumbled Spanglish about why she was riding.
Mostly though, she felt good--good to be out there doing something someplace real. The endless expanse of deep blue water, the impossibly wide sky, the little fishing villages with simple shacks and corrugated tin roofs, the tejano cassettes playing in boomboxes inside taquerias, the starry nights, the sun bleached afternoons. It was fantastic.
At about 10:30 she reached the rendezvous, a hole in the wall cantina they'd found on Google Earth the night before. She leaned her bicycle against the cinder block wall and went inside.
Compared to the outside, the inside of the cantina was as dark as a cave and it took Mindy's eyes several seconds to adjust. There were six tables. One of them was occupied by four fishermen. There was a dusty bar on one side of the room and a broken pool table on the other. The room smelled like cigarette smoke, stale beer, and cement.
By the time Mindy's eyes had adjusted themselves to the relative dimness of the room, the fishermen had also adjusted to her presence in the cantina and had gone back to their conversations.
A heavyset bartender of indeterminate gender came to her table.
"Hola," Mindy chirped. "Tres pescado tacos por favor."
She held up three fingers then remembered that the others would arrive (probably hungry) relatively soon. "Oh, wait. Un momento. Uh, diez-dos tacos."
The bartender looked at Mindy blankly.
"Um. Diez dos? Twelve?" She flashed all ten fingers and then two. "Diez dos? Crap, I forgot how to--habla ingles? Twelve?"
The bartender said nothing. A couple of the fishermen turned around.
Mindy looked around at the fishermen and then at the bartender. "Um, mi amigos?" She pointed at the table. "Aqui. Mas pronto. So, diez-dos tacos? God, why can't I remember how to say twelve?" She looked at the fishermen. "Hola. Habla ingles?"
None of them answered her. Instead, the ones who had turned around stared at her and the other two said a couple of sentences to each other and then laughed. Then one of them said something to the bartender who yelled at him in return.
Moments later, the bartender turned to Mindy and spoke at her quickly and waited for her to respond.
Mindy's heart beat a little faster.
All the fishermen were looking at her.
Her mouth was dry.
"No entiendo. Um, yo--"
The bartender cut her off with a flurry of language that Mindy didn't even recognize as Spanish. A few words sounded familiar, but it all came out so fast that she couldn't be sure. The bartender seemed to be waiting for an answer, but Mindy had no idea what the question was.
She was about to speak when one of the fishermen tapped her on the shoulder. His fingers felt hard, dry, and smooth, like wood, and Mindy could smell the alcohol in his sweat and on his breath.
He said something to her in the same language the bartender had used. Maybe it was Spanish, but she couldn't be sure. She just wanted to forget the order.
"I don't--no entiendo. I. Crap, I--"
Another fisherman spoke at her and then the one who had tapped her on the shoulder laughed and said something in response.
Mindy tried a smile and then focused on the bartender again. "OK," she said waving her hands to erase everything else. "Just forget it. Tres tacos frio. I mean, pescado. Jesus"
The bartender left the dining area shaking his/her head.
Mindy could feel them staring at her for another minute before turning around to their table and murmuring quietly among themselves.
She looked around the room and then checked her watch: 10:39. The others were supposed to arrive by 11, but they were often late. She rubbed her legs and looked around the room again, feeling the fishermen stealing glances at her.
She checked her watch again.
Still 10:39.
The other table was quiet.
Mindy sat for a couple of minutes and did a better job at checking her watch on the sly than the fishermen did at checking her out on the sly.
She stood up and said to no one in particular. "Yo espero," she pointed to the door. "Outside."
She could feel their eyes on her the whole way, but she forced herself to walk casually.
Once she was outside, the sun was so bright that she had to clamp her eyes shut for a few seconds. The street was quiet and empty. There was nothing there: no other people, no cars, no buses, nothing.
When she gradually opened her eyes, she saw that one of the fishermen was walking her bike away from the cantina.
"Hey!"
He continued walking her bike.
"Hey!"
He said something she couldn't understand over his shoulder.
"Hey! Viene aqui!"
There was no reply from the fisherman.
The bartender came out and said something to her while the man continued walking her bike.
Mindy started to follow him, but the bartender grabbed her arm and repeated whatever it was that he/she had said.
"Hey, espero! I mean, Jesus. Espera! Hey! That's my bike! Come back here!"
The bartender tugged at her to come back inside.
"WAIT!"
She glared at the bartender.
"He's got my bicycle! I'll be with you in a minute!"
The bartender shouted at Mindy and two of the other fishermen came outside and everything happened very quickly. "No problema," one of them said as they pushed and pulled her back inside, where the cantina felt darker than a closet. Mindy could feel the fishermen around her pulling her inside. The air reeked of fish, alcohol and smoke. The man repeated, "No problema" again and again.
Mindy ripped herself free of the fishermen and began screaming at them. She was in panic mode, her eyes still unable to adjust to the darkness. She could feel their presence, their hands and arms and breath all around her, but everything was a blur. She screamed and swung at everything around her with both fists.
Suddenly, Ziggy, Janet, and Rochelle came running in and it was chaos as they adjusted to the darkness in the room. Mindy screamed. Ziggy's ears zeroed in on her screams and he punched his way through the fishermen to get to her while Janet and Rochelle punched and kicked and screamed.
The fishermen raised their arms to block their punches, but they didn't hit back.
Ziggy, Janet, Rochelle, and Mindy--their eyes now adjusted to the darkness in the cantina--clutched pool cues and empty bottles and put up a defensive stand.
Everything became very quiet.
The fishermen stared at them.
One of the fishermen laughed.
Behind them the bartender glared at them and then turned around to clean up the big platter of fish tacos that was now littered on the floor near the overturned table where Mindy had been sitting.
The fisherman who had taken Mindy's bicycle walked it through the entrance. It dripped water on the dusty cement floor and sparkled in the sunlight that shone through the entrance.
Mindy was crying. Rochelle and Janet comforted her.
"Jesus Christ," said Ziggy between breaths. "What the hell's the matter with you people? Are you crazy? Son loco?"
The fishermen ignored them. One of them helped the bartender while the rest of them returned to their seats.
"This woman here," he pointed at Mindy. "She's trying to help you. Don't you get that?"
Nobody was listening.
Rochelle and Janet had Mindy on her feet.
"Just forget it," Janet said. "Let's go."
And they loaded Mindy's bike into the back of Whitney, and drove away.