NYR 5-14-14

Today I am thankful to be sharing with you one of my edited assignments for my writing class.

The Goat Train

(nonfiction)

When we were nearly 20 years younger, many dollars poorer and not nearly married, Jimmy and I backpacked across Peru during his grad school summer break when he worked for the Peruvian government to determine the sustainability of the country’s fisheries.  We'd spent time in Lima and Cusco, seen the magnificent Incan wonder that is Machu Picchu, and passed several, idyllically lazy days in the charming town of Arequipa, but oddly enough, the only proof I’d seen of these fish he was trying to sustain was in the delicious ceviche I’d consumed at every opportunity. 

The final leg of our two-week journey was a train trip across the arid, sky-high Altiplano to go from Cusco to Puno, where we'd visit the floating reed islands of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world.  To this day, Jimmy and I dispute the train ticket class we purchased for this 12-hour trip. I am sure that we got the cheapest seats available.  He says it was first class.  If that was first class, I can't even imagine how awful third class must have been.

Our train seats were as comfortable as we could've expected in this pseudo first class arrangement.  Each car had clusters of four non-reclining seats: two seats facing the other two seats, separated by a small table.  There was some padding on the seats, but certainly not enough for 12 hours of comfort.  For the first part of our journey we shared our cluster with no one.  We spread our books and postcards on the table with no concern for sharing the space except with each other. 

As the train made more stops in small pueblitos along the way, the train filled up with more passengers and roving salespeople who stopped at our seat frequently to peddle their wares which ran the gamut from edible to ornamental.  Our seating pod was soon filled with two Quechua Indian women who were taking rounds of homemade cheese to market in the bigger city of Puno.  Their Spanish seemed nearly as nonexistent as mine, and since Jimmy nor I spoke the first word of Quechua, our conversation was limited to the universal smile and a nod.

Their age was indeterminate: they could have been 20 or they might have been 50.  The harsh Andean sun baked everyone the same, and their faces were dark and lined.  They wore the colorful dresses, long braids, and the little woolen bowler hats that was unique to their people. 

To me, there was an imaginary line on our shared table that neither side should cross.  The line extended to below the table as well, and obviously those women didn't understand that they were invading my space. Their cheese rounds, which were very rustic and had the odd long black hairs stuck to them, were thunked down all over the table, and they spread their legs across the divide into "our side" under the table.  Clearly they'd never ridden in a station wagon middle seat with two other siblings whose mother constantly warned about keeping all of your body parts on your side of "the line".

I was tired and grumpy, and the unhygienic-looking cheese plus one too many panhandlers playing Simon and Garfunkel’s "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail" on their pan flutes in our ears, trying to gain a few pesos from the gringos, were pushing me over the edge.  I decided to take back my side of "the line". I pushed the cheese over, spread my book out and kicked my broken-in, dusty hiking boots just to where I was sure the imaginary wall under the table would be.

The train trip across the Andean Altiplano seemed interminable.  Jimmy and I passed the time by reading, snacking on our smuggled food, chatting about everything from life to the trip to our Quechua seatmates, and watching the Andean mountains pass by, but twelve hours is a long time to sit on a train seat without much movement.  I was antsy to get to our destination, but would have settled for getting off the train in the middle of the Peruvian version of Nowhere.  Then the goat man got on the train.  

The Quechua Indian woman called the goat man over to our tight seating pod.  They swiftly moved their hairy cheeses to the edge of the table, and after speaking some unintelligible-to-me words, the goat man dropped his brown butcher paper-wrapped merchandise onto our table. I was dumbfounded but recovered sufficiently to remove my personal effects from the table. 

I could not tell you then or now what the goat man looked like.  Was he Quechua or of Spanish descent?  Did he wear a hat?  Was his skin sun- and windburned?  Was he old or young?  I have no idea.  I was so taken aback by this dead, roasted animal that had been thwacked down mere inches from my face on our small table that I may not have remembered my own name. 

I watched as he withdrew a large butcher’s knife from a rusty coffee can that had been fashioned into a carry-all with a cord knotted through two holes in the top like a young girl might make a homemade purse at a craft table.  He wore the coffee can purse slung across his torso like the young current-day bike-riding delivery service people wear their messenger bags as they cycle across New York City to make deliveries.  With that butcher’s knife, the goat man started hacking off bits and pieces of meat for his most recent sale to the Quechua women.  It was ugly and quick work as bits of meat, bone and gristle flew around with each violent downstroke of the knife.  The goat man then tore off two pieces of the brown paper that constituted his goat-carrying package and used the papers to grab two portions of the goat meat.  He then asked the women something in the language they understood, and they must have answered in the affirmative because he then took that butcher’s knife, dipped it back inside the rusted coffee can and withdrew a bile green sauce, which he smeared all over their goat meat.

 

The goat man handed the packages of goat to the women, who quickly paid and began to make short work of devouring their purchases. I can only imagine the look of horror and disgust on my face as these hungry women tore into that goat.  They ate the meat.  They ate whatever fat there was on that lean animal.  They cracked bones and sucked out the marrow.  They ate gristle.  As a cultural experience, it was nothing short of living a National Geographic special.  As a literal experience when all my senses were already on overload from the close confines of the long train ride, it was nearly more than I could stand.

Jimmy always says that I can smell a rotten grape inside a closed refrigerator from 50 yards away.  Normally I take this as a compliment to my very keen olfactory sense, but on this train ride, I wish I could have shut down my nose.  I felt that horrible feeling of near-vomit as the fresh smells of the goat mingled with the lingering earthy smells of the hairy cheese, the stale trapped air inside our car, and the not-so-fresh body odor all around us. 

I got hot and flushed, and my mouth began watering in a way that can only be a precursor to vomit.  There was zero air circulation in the train car which only got me hotter and more flushed. 

The windows on the train were similar to those on a Bluebird school bus.  You had to pinch the latches to release the locks so that the window could drop down.  But while a school bus’s windows open at least a half-foot, the windows in our compartment of this train only opened an inch or two. 

While Jimmy and the Quechua woman were laughing at my obvious discomfort, I quickly opened the window only to realize with disappointment that it didn’t open enough to generate any significant air flow which might cool and calm me down.  I then tried to stick my nose and mouth up near the window to catch the fresh air, only to find that I was trapped by that ridiculously small table that separated me from the goat-eating lunatics across the way.  Finally, in most unladylike fashion, I climbed on my seat and was able to push my nose and mouth up to the window to drink in the cool mountain air. 

Once I settled down and felt my salivary glands return to normal, I sat back down to stare harshly at the women who now had committed crimes against my humanity.  The meat was consumed and the few inedible cracked bones were piled on the greasy brown paper like little monuments to the dead goat.  I breathed an audible sigh or two of relief to know that this culinary ordeal was over and that surely the ladies were full and would not need to partake of any more meat on this trip.

I had just settled comfortably back into seat and taken a few deep steadying breaths when I noticed the women pulling on their long tight braids of black hair.  They each pulled one strand of hair from the braid, which they proceeded to use as dental floss to clean their teeth of any remaining goat detritus.  I knew at that point that I had seen everything.

We finished the trip and went on to marry a couple years later.  We visited Peru together with our young son a year ago, some 18 years after the last visit.  Some things were the same:  Machu Picchu still has the power to drop jaws and Cusco has great restaurants.  Some things were different:  I didn't depend on Jimmy for translations and Cusco now has a Starbucks right on the main plaza.  I don't know if the goat train falls under the first or second category:  I made Jimmy promise me that there would be NO train trips, first class or otherwise, on this vacation!