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o'clock we leveled off. We passed some wooden crosses, another little feature they've got. Under Socialism, it seems that there's only one guy that really knows how it works, and if some other guy thinks he does, it's a counter-revolutionary act, or, in unsocialist lingo, treason. So back in 1927, a guy named Serrano thought he did, and they arrested him and his friends down in Cuernavaca, and started up to Mexico with them in a truck. But then up in Mexico somebody decided it would be a good idea if they never got there at all, and some of the boys started out in a fast Car to meet them. They fastened their hands with baling wire, lined them up beside the road, and mowed them down with a machine gun. Then they said the revolution was over, and the American papers handed it to them that they had a stable government at last, and that a strong man could turn the trick, just give him the chance. So wooden crosses mark the spot, an inspiring sight to see.
    We had some coffee in Cuernavaca, then pushed on to Taxco for lunch. That was the end of the good road. From there on it was just dust, curves, and hills. She began to get sleepy. A Mexican is going to sleep at one o'clock, no matter where he is, and she was no exception. She leaned her head against the side, and her eyes drooped. She wriggled, trying to get set. She slipped off her shoes. She wiggled some more. She took off a string of beads around her neck, and unfastened two buttons. She was open to her brassiere. Her dress slipped up, above her knees. I tried not to look. It was getting hotter by the minute. I didn't look, but I could smell her.
    I gassed in Chilpancingo, around four o'clock, and bathed the tires with water. That was what I was afraid of, mostly, that in that heat and sliding all over that rough road, we would have a blow-out. I peeled down to my undershirt, knotted a handkerchief around my head to catch sweat, and we went on. She was awake now. She didn't have much to say. She slipped off her stockings, held her bare legs in the air stream from the hood vent, and unbuttoned another button.
    We were down in what they call the tierra caliente, now, and it turned cloudy and so muggy the sweat stood out on my arms in drops. After Chilpancingo I had been looking for some relief, but this was the worst yet. We had been running maybe an hour when she began to lean forward and look out, and then she told me to stop. "Yes. This way."
    I rubbed the sweat out of my eyes and looked, and saw something that maybe was intended to be a road. It was three inches deep in dust, and cactuses were growing in the middle of it, but if you concentrated we could see two tracks. "That way, hell. Acapulco is the way we're going. I looked it up."
    "We go for Mamma."
    "...What was that you said?"
    "Yes. Mamma will cook. She cook for us. For the house in Acapulco."
    "Oh, I see."
    "Mamma cook very nice."
    "Listen. I haven't had the honor of meeting Mamma, but I've just got a hunch she's not the type. Not for the high-class joint we're going to run. I tell you what. Let's get down there. If worse comes to worst, I'll cook. I cook very nice, too. I studied in Paris, where all the good cooks go when they die."
    "But Mamma, she have the viveres."
    "The what?"
    "The food, what we need. I send Mamma the money, I sent last week. She buy much things, we take. We take Mamma, Papa. All the viveres."
    "Oh, Papa too."
    "Yes, Papa help Mamma cook."
    "Well, will you tell me where you, me, Mamma, Papa, and the viveres are going to ride? By the way, do we take the goat?"
    "Yes, this way, please."
    It was her car, and I turned into the road. I had gone about a hundred yards when the wheel jerked out of my hands and I had to stamp on the brake to keep from going down a gully that must have been two hundred feet deep. I mean, it was that rough, and it didn't get any better. It was uphill and down, around rocks the size of a truck, through gullies that would have bent the axles of anything but a Ford, over