ALBACORA 199 



He shrugged as though the question were pointless, 

 but before long we heard the rumblings of a truck. 

 Then we saw a cloud of white dust. Carlos honked 

 hard. The truck replied. Carlos honked again. The truck 

 backed up off the road into a clump of jungle under- 

 growth. Then we edged past. "In the next province," 

 Lou said, "the road is certain to be better." 



Although it seemed impossible, in the next province 

 the road was much worse. The foliage alongside it be- 

 gan to grow thin and as it did, dust thickened and 

 the chalky soil of Ecuador worked its way into our 

 noses, our eyes, between our teeth, and over our hair 

 and our clothing. Conversation gave way to grunts that 

 marked each jarring bump. We saw no other cars, no 

 other people. We kept going. 



When night came and we still seemed to be nowhere 

 near anything, I took some comfort in the blood- 

 curdling sort of beauty that the headlights etched out 

 in little yellow holes through the darkness. Half-dead 

 stumps and burned trees marched in the lights, forming 

 an army of the writhing, the tortured and the beheaded. 

 K the road led upward, the Ford shuddered painfully; 

 if it led down, the car brought us into small streams 

 that often ran as high as the running board. Yet, with 

 the night a little of the solitude vanished. Every ten 

 or fifteen miles we came upon invisible villages, hidden 

 by foliage but revealed by blaring phonographs. Out 

 of the jungle came mambos, sambas and rhumbas, and 



