The wrong bus

Danny got on the wrong bus in Oaxaca and it was the best decision he made that year. He'd meant to go to the ruins. Everyone went to the ruins. The guidebook had a full page on the ruins and a photo of a man in a hat looking at them meaningfully. The bus was supposed to leave from the corner by the market at nine, and there was a bus at the corner by the market at nine, and he got on it, and paid, and sat down, and it was only forty minutes later, going up a mountain road in a direction that felt wrong, that he asked the woman across the aisle. "Mitla?" She shook her head and said the name of a town he'd never heard of. Then, seeing his face, she laughed, not unkindly, and said something to the driver, and the driver said something back, and the whole front half of the bus had an opinion. The consensus, delivered by a young man in a football shirt who spoke some English, was this: the bus went to the town. The town was two hours away. There was no bus back until tomorrow. But it was a good day to be going to the town, because today was the day of the town's saint, and there would be food. Danny thought about the ruins. He thought about the man in the hat. "OK," he said. The town was small and steep and every wall was painted a colour that would have been illegal in Leeds. A band was setting up in the square. A woman was frying something in a pan the size of a satellite dish. Children ran between the legs of adults holding cups of a hot drink that smelled of chocolate and chilli and something else, and the young man in the football shirt, whose name was Beto, walked Danny to a house that belonged to an aunt and told him he was staying there tonight, and that was not a question. The aunt's name was Lupe and she took one look at him and put a plate in his hands.

He didn't understand most of what happened that day. There was a procession with a statue and a lot of flowers. There were fireworks in daylight, which seemed like a waste until he understood they were for the noise. There was a dance in the evening where he was dragged into a line of men and did his best and was laughed at and didn't mind. Beto translated about a fifth of it. The rest Danny got from faces. At some point, late, sitting on a wall with a beer, Beto asked him what he did back home. "I work in insurance." Beto considered this. "You like it?" "No." "Then why?" Danny had been asked this by his sister, his ex, and a therapist, and had answers for all of them. He didn't have one for Beto. The band was playing something slow. Lupe was dancing with a man about half her height. "I don't know," he said. "I got on the bus." Beto laughed so hard he spilled his beer. In the morning Lupe fed him again and refused money twice and accepted it the third time, folded small, without looking. Beto walked him to the bus. It was the right bus. He'd checked. On the way down the mountain he took out the guidebook, looked at the page about the ruins, and then closed it and looked out of the window instead, because he thought he might want to remember the road.