The flower-filled median was the runway leading to the temple of the Virgin. I sensed that we were being pulled toward Mexico's magic center. Mary was in reach of millions of Mexicans; every shameful life, every unforgivable sin could be cleansed at this Mecca of the Americas. Angelo remained with the car as Carl and I headed up the steps to the Virgin's home.

An endless parade of people traveled the steps with us. Some groups of poor Mexicans were stalled out on the steps. They passed bits of food amongst themselves, took pictures, or simply conversed. One family led an old man up the steps. The old man rapidly struck his left hand that covered his crotch.

Inside the Catholic temple, my hunger to devour the images of past and present was insatiable. Shamelessly, I took pictures while Carl stood guard near the entrance. I was in a high-ceilinged cave with old people materializing out of dark niches. The altar was cluttered with gold and candles and the cloth that had been marked by the miracle was stretched above the altar. When the priest began communion, a young woman knelt before him cradling a massive bouquet of flowers. Finally, Carl grabbed my arm, saying it was time to leave.

Inside the church

Outside the church, he asked me to take his picture. He didn't smile but had the look of a man who sees the barbarians piled against the garage door while his wife wonders why the electric door opener screams without working.

Neither of us said much to Angelo on the way back to the hotel. The fever broke and I had run out of film. Passing Alameda Park, I watched two lovers huddled on a park bench, encircled by screaming children in the midst of some game.

"We must be entering the Pink Zone," I said to Carl a few minutes later. The Pink Zone was Mexico City's version of Rodeo Drive. The armed guards leaned in doorways with pump shot guns or slowly paced in front of businesses with drawn Uzis.

"These fellas are serious about their business," Carl said.

I didn't say anything. But Carl's remark made me wonder if we still had such men to protect our "pink zone" with such ferocity.

The Spaniards had married glamour to the Indian face of hard angles and obsidian eyes. Angelo was genetically grown from the same Spanish-Indian forest, but he was too light-hearted to pose mysterious and macho in front of a jewelry store with a machine gun. The world was transparent from his perspective. He was captain of his clean old cab, the Virgin his consort. When he laughed, the heat of millions of people cooled into fog and beautiful shadows.

We met at seven o'clock for dinner in the hotel's restaurant. As Carl approached the table, his eyes shot past me to someone walking towards us. He turned to me.

"It's Gary," Carl said.

We exchanged greetings and Gary sat next to Carl and lit a cigarette. Gary's neck and face grew red in anticipation of the nicotine and story he was itching to tell. Carl registered one emotion with his eyes and another with his mouth - amusement tempered by revulsion.

"Carl, these people here will someday inhale us like an over-ripe fruit."

"Jesus, Gary, you've got to get into it right away. Can't you tell us something simple, like, where you're flying to next, have things been slow or busy?"

"You're brutal. When I'm in a place like this the only thing that matters is to watch these folks. They have vitality and patience and they're our enemy."

Gary's neck was swollen and red. He inhaled into his neck where it seemed another pair of lungs had taken root. I expected him to sprout gills. He smiled as he scanned the menu. "I suggest the T-bone steak." He looked at me and winked. "Make sure this stud doesn't fly you into a volcano."

Carl mentioned the airlines hiring again but Gary ignored him. Gary was a scout. He traveled alone. He could smell treachery, armies massing on the border, new plagues, the advance of killer bees. His tan sport jacket was wrinkled and dirty.

"I was at an airport where a Lear salesman was prowling around. He knew the operator might be interested in trading his old Lear 23 for a new 35. I heard he had been hanging around for days, chain-smoking with a severe look. Then I realized he was on a mission to retrieve all those old 23's. Most of them had crashed--nearly fifty percent. The company wanted to pick up, buy, steal every Lear 23 and bury them in the desert. And this salesman wasn't just fighting the operator, but the ghost of Bill Lear who loved that first aircraft. Bill traveled at his side, losing his room key or changing the dials on his traveling alarm clock."

"Well, that was a lot of airplane for guys coming out of piston twins," Carl said.

"Lear wanted it that way. He wanted people to ride in a slice of his own imagination. And that's a dangerous place."

"Well, that's enough of that. Gary, when do you leave Mexico City?"

"Thursday. I wish I had something to drop on these people. Maybe a neutron bomb. I'd wait for the dust to settle then come back to this hotel. I like it here."

"Jesus, you're too much." Carl managed a smile. He appreciated the thought of dropping things on certain people.

Neither Gary nor Carl ate much. Carl ate slowly, almost in reverence. Gary stabbed at the meat, more for dramatic effect than for sustenance. My steak was delicious. I expected a steak to taste great in Wyoming, not in Mexico City.

Mexico City street scene

I noticed an Indian girl, perhaps seven, dangling a large wooden puppet from her small hands. She moved the puppet's arms and legs to arouse interest in the people walking past her. No adult accompanied her. Gary watched me and found his last foothold.

"They'll never evict that kid from this spot. Even though this is their Park Avenue, every hustler, including this kid, will always be outside our window. The day they give her the bum's rush is the day there'll be a revolution."

A few minutes later Gary left our table. We watched him corner the manager and a table of customers like they were a bunch of old friends.

"You know," Carl said, "this place brings out weird notions in people, like Gary. He's all right. But this place has a mood - something I'll never be able to figure out." He paused and stared at his empty plate. The same tension from our afternoon walk gripped him. "I flew down here a couple years ago into a small town just across the border. We got in mid-morning and had a late-afternoon departure. There was no telephone, no services, just a small shack with a couple of chairs. The guy there tells us we could get a ride into town - something to eat. Jesus, what a place. Have you ever been to any other place down here besides Mexico City?"

"No, this is it. Just the last twenty-four hours."

I ordered dessert. Carl was lost in his story.

"The guy takes us in an old pick-up truck. I've never seen such poverty. He pointed out a place to eat but I just told him to keep driving; you didn't want to step out of the truck. Animals were wandering in and out of shacks, kids playing naked in the streets - you don't know how good we have it.

"Anyway, we get back to the airport. We're there for hours. No AC, hot as hell, and the two of us sitting in this shack on the only two chairs. Then, I start to hear a commotion - cars, horns - it sounds like a hundred radios tuned to a hundred different stations. My co-pilot jumped up and ran outside. I looked out the hole in the wall where a window used to be, and hundreds of Mexicans were converging on the airport in cars and trucks, with women, children, goats, dogs in tow. Well, I went straight for the airplane."

Carl played with his butter knife. He turned it slowly, catching the light.

"Then they started to drive up and down the runway. They're banging into each other, racing, sometimes three cars abreast. Somebody set up a generator and pretty soon I'm hearing mariachi music blasted over large speakers."

"A car race?" I asked.

"Hell, no. That's all they did for the next three hours. Passing bottles of tequila, running up and down my runway."

I thought of the Nascar drivers we occasionally flew. Were their promoters aware of this budding market?

"How no one was run over was a miracle. Some drivers loaded up their junkers with as many people as they could fit. I saw guys jumping from one moving truck to another."

The Virgin must have been their patroness, I thought. A brown-skinned Virgin in tight jeans with a cluster of stars arched over her head.

"What happened when your passengers arrived?"

"We had to clear the runway. We got in the truck and began driving up and down the runway yelling for the people to clear out. It was strange, our passenger didn't seem to mind the delay. He said to take our time; he was in no hurry. Christ, some people. I guess with a lot of money you lose your nose for certain kinds of danger. But what a mess - pieces of transmissions, nuts and bolts all over the place - you know it had to be clean. I couldn't take off with all that shit cluttering the runway. The airport manager and the two of us spent an hour throwing stuff off to the side. These cars had been disintegrating, self-destructing for hours. We walked the five-thousand-foot strip until it was clean. Then the Mexicans set up another race, a quarter mile away in an unpaved parking lot. You could hear them screaming and banging into each other, and the dust cloud they created made it almost impossible to breathe."

"Any reaction from your passenger?"

"He just sat outside the shack and went over some of his notes. I don't know, maybe he was going to buy the place. A lot of people came back when they saw we were getting ready to go. I had the storm window open and you can't believe how quiet it became once the cabin door was shut. It was weird. The mariachi music was still blasting but the Mexicans had really quieted down. Then, as soon as I started the right engine, they started screaming and cheering. I couldn't hear them any more after I started the left engine, but I could see from their faces and their arms going crazy that they were cheering like we had won the World Series!

"The passenger was getting a kick out of all this and asked me if I'd make a low pass after takeoff. We started down the runway with hundreds of cheering Mexicans on either side. I had to make a short field takeoff in order to clear the speakers at the end of the runway. We came back around, made the low pass, and finally headed home."

Carl placed the butter knife back on the table. He studied my face for a moment. "I've never seen people so excited over nothing."

Our flight wasn't scheduled for departure out of Mexico City until mid-afternoon, so I let dispatch know that I'd be leaving the hotel for breakfast. I left the camera in the room and walked among the rich and poor, the ugly and the godlike. Of all the emotions manifested, self-pity was absent. Someone could have died right in front of me without a scintilla of remorse for themselves.

I turned the corner and came upon a man and woman lying on the sidewalk near the curb. Hundreds of people passed the couple in a matter of minutes, yet no crowd gathered to taunt the sleeping couple nor did the authorities show any interest. As I approached them, I notice that they were sprawled out on a large piece of cardboard. They were dressed in black: the woman in a formal evening gown and the man in a tuxedo. A film of dust ran the length of the man's jacket sleeve. They were young and attractive, of the world, but not a part of it. Those of us passing took short glances.

In the lovers' dream, the streets of Mexico City were fuller than any of us could have imagined.

Copyright © 2003 Fred Tribuzzo
All rights reserved

About the Author

Fred Tribuzzo lives in Ravenna, Ohio, with his amazing wife Susan and an unpredictable cat named Sarah. Fred is a commercial pilot who has flown the fastest corporate jet ever made, the Citation Ten, and now flies the Boeing Business Jet. Unlike the major airlines, his job is unique in that he can be dispatched anywhere, unexpectedly, for trips ranging from thirty minutes to ten hours. And though his days are busy, there's the possibility of extended time off and exploration of new places as fate intervenes with weather delays or as passengers change their plans.

Authoring his first book, "An American Sky," has given Fred a better appreciation for the humanity in others and the untiring view of America from coast to coast.