Talara (standard:adventure, 2342 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Aug 08 2007	Views/Reads: 3329/2312	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Magic sands are full of intriguing mystery. They compel even rational minds to bend, to lust after their hidden jewels.

TALARA 

The Peruvian sun was already hot when we set out for the beach.  Ramos
and his friends were loading the pickup truck with ropes and pails and 
shovels.  I worked my way around the plugs of dung left by turkeys on 
the kitchenfloor last night, and climbed behind the wheel.  Ramos 
hopped in beside me, his boots straddling the transmission, the 
gearshift lever threatening his crotch.  Bill squeezed in beside him 
and slammed the door.  Ramos crossed himself. 

I turned the ignition key, hauled on the choke and jabbed the starter
button with my thumb a couple of times.  When the engine took off, I 
hit the brakes hard.  They seemed to be working alright ... now.  Where 
were they when I needed them yesterday? 

A small army of rogue mutts challenged the truck.  I leaned on the horn
and the diggers riding behind shouted loud enough to wake the dead.  We 
pulled out onto the divided parkway that splits Talara down its middle. 


Talara was a modern Peruvian city, built to accommodate a few thousand
oilfield workers and their families.  The oilfields lay under the 
Pacific shelf, covered by miles of hard magnetite rock and sixty feet 
of water. The city had no buildings taller than two stories.  A 
four-lane paved semicircle half a mile in diameter collected dust 
between its curbs: once or twice a day, some vehicle came along and 
nudged it aside. Plus the ice cream truck.  It was believe-it-or-not 
white, like magic frost.  At the crux of the crescent was a broad shaft 
of concrete: the shopping mall.  Right next to the Chinese restaurant 
was a sidewalk stall vending three kinds of beer. First you had to buy 
the beer, then go inside to have lunch. And how did all Chinese dinners 
end?  With a fortune cookie, of course! In flawless English, with a 
slight Chinese accent. 

So we chugged up the long hill rough-cut into the steep clay bluff,
rounding the corrugated slopes, trying to hug the inside wall.  On one 
curve, a guardrail -- conservatively designed from rusty half-inch 
conduit -- shielded us from the 500 meter sheer drop as we approached 
the crest. From here we could see the Texas towers in Talara bay, 
piercing the ocean floor to suck oil from pools beneath the teeth of 
rock. 

Over the hill was the old Chimu settlement: Negritos.  The story goes
like this: When the early Spaniards came, their slaves were black 
dwarfs or pygmies.  Once they set foot on land, the pygmies up and 
dispatched their masters, then founded their community on the site of 
an old Chimu meeting-ground.  When the first Chimu tribes settled here 
and in the mountains 2300 years earlier, they migrated with each 
season.  In this way, they feasted on fish, then hunted monkey meat, 
nibbled on chirimoya, platano and other jungle fruit.  They didn't know 
what knives were, but could throw clay with the best of them.  Their 
peaceful parents, when they died, were seated in the bottom (or cup) 
half of a clay vase.  The neck was placed, sealed to the cup, and the 
whole was decorated with skill, pathos and humor.  Before long, the 
pygmies learned to live this way. From drawings on the outside of old 
burial urns, and from the contents inside, they learned how to survive 
off the land -- and their pygmy culture prospered handsomely. 

In time, some official in Lima decided that "Los Negritos" might offer a
threat and exterminated them. Only the echoes of their history speak 
for them today. 

Stopping beside the lone gas pump, I told Ramos to get water.  The
engine steamed as he emptied one canful after another into the 
radiator. Each "clang" from the hand pump told me another gallon of gas 
was in the tank.  Bill paid the barefoot station operator with 
hundred-sol notes.  I slammed the hood shut and wired it safe with a 
twisted coat hanger.  The exhaust burped and backfired as I started the 
engine again.  Beyond here, the road wasn't paved.  Sand drifted across 
it during the night, and it wasn't easy to follow yesterday's tracks. 

The air smelled of salty dust as we lurched onto a stretch of corrugated
desert.  Here at the fork, pipes ran between the gasworks and the town. 
 It was hot but dry.  We were alone on the road, aiming southeast, with 
a darker desert to our left.  The ocean wasn't visible, yet we knew it 


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