On a chilly, sun poached day in early November, 1965, in the San Miguel de Allende graveyard, I helped Jesus Sanchez Mendoza dig up the remains of his mother.

And, with all due respect, that was one hell of a day.

I'd met Mr. Mendoza some months earlier, in the San Miguel town jail, actually, where he'd shared his "outside family food" with me and we'd gotten along as only two kickin' wino's can.

Tobacco! Tortillas! Frijoles!

After jail, we made occasional guest appearances in the market as: El Borracho Brothers, watching each other's back.

I'm not proud of it, just unable to avoid the truth and make sense of life.

The market cops wanted bribes in exchange for "fraternization" between foreign and Indian winos, in the same way Safety Patrol kids overlook skipping-steps for bubble gum. I wouldn't payoff, so they wouldn't let me eat in the Indian market, where believe me, the best food in town was served. Still, I was another art-bum to them, and they were tired of us. I don't blame them at all.

Earlier that day Rick Barton and I fought over something, nothing really, and everything, as usual, ending with Barton melodramatically smashing a framed photo of the two of us on the tile floor of our studio. I then predictably called him, "Sarah Burnhardt," and left the house without the slightest idea I was storming directly into the annual Day of the Dead.

My life reads like a pop-up book. That morning, along with brown boots I had recently dyed black and an old black dress shirt from Big Al's in San Francisco --- the "mob" shirt I'd worn with a white necktie when I was the bar-boy & doorman there --- I'd pulled on a pair of "Can't Bust 'Um,'" Frisco Jeans which are black work pants, thus dressing completely wrong for THIS day for sure, let alone, the country of Mexico.

Believe me, in those days it was less than uncommon to catch a "goth gringo" stalking the cobbles in Mexican desert towns. Artists, sure. But only mariachis, priests and widows wore ALL black.

I turned away from town, off the cobbles, ducked between some buildings, and onto a well worn desert path, eventually assuming the sleeping Mexican posture at the base of a huge cactus plant, and crying my self-piteous heart out.

And right then, Mendoza walked up holding a beat-up shovel in one hand, wearing a straw hat, peasant shirt and pants, he skidded to a Road Runner stop on his tire-tread huaraches right there in front of me ... screeeeeeck!

Oh great. Jesus Mendoza was just about the last guy in San Miguel de Allende I ever wanted to catch me crying. I couldn't hide it. I was blubbering.

Jesus was shocked. I mean, he looked at me like he'd just tripped over Dracula, dying in the sun.

Then he got angry.

Alcohol-angry at my tears.

It wasn't that Mendoza never cried. He got stoned and sang sad songs, and cried sometimes, sort of. I'd seen him do that in the neighborhood cantina.

Cantina tears though, are just that. Boo hoo. All in good fun.

A man sobbing in the dirt was fairly intolerable to Jesus. I felt utterly ashamed. Then he started striking firm martial arts poses with the shovel, with the sun behind him, and talking loudly at me like Cantinflas playing a drill sergeant for some Mexican TV commercial: "get up out of the dirt David! ... you look like crap amigo! ... stop crying like that right now!"

He offered a hand, pulled me up, and insisted I go with him to the cemetery, which I didn't understand.

Immediately he took me to the nearest house and asked a woman --- she was alone --- to feed us, offering her a few coins.

She argued with him a little.

Mendoza's sister? I didn't know. Perhaps she was the woman who had brought him food in jail. Finally she told us to go sit on hard ground and wait. In jail, she gave him food through a small window, and she wore a head scarf so I hadn't seen her whole face. Then, she brought two bowls of beans, along with a pile of corn tortillas. The last thing I wanted was food. Jesus made me eat two entire bowls with a stack of thick tortillas until: I could swallow no more. All while stabbing prickly pear cactus fruits from plants nearby, carefully skinning them with his pocket knife, then cutting chunks into my beans.

Jesus force-fed me like a python, insisting, "... be strong amigo!"

After stuffing me with food, we went to the road where we came upon several small stands, not much more than a few sticks nailed together with boards on top, displaying candy skulls as well as other morbid treats.

At this point, my mentor bought two colorful skull candies, handed one to me, half the size of a hen's egg, and insisted I eat it down right there with him. In other parts of the world kids were eating what was left of their trick or treat candy.

Here, the graveyard was alive with activity.

Human sacrifice of course, was the Aztec way, giving the Day of the Dead, deep and tangled roots.

Aztecs recognized certain times of the year when the dead arose from their graves. Aztec priests and peasants made ritual food offerings among the graves and burned copal at those times. After the Spanish conquest, numerous yearly rituals were absorbed into the Catholic feasts of All Saints Day and All Souls Day, on November the 1st and 2nd. Some graves that day were set out with decorations including food, flowers and candles, waiting for nightfall. Small groups were digging or simply visiting among the graves here and there. The place was medium sized, perhaps an acre at most, surrounded by adobe walls. From what Jesus told me, yearly fees had to be maintained or remains could be exhumed to make room for others.

Walking behind Jesus, suddenly my gut snapped as tight as a drumhead. It was the men's eyes, following me. Penetrating. Reading me.

I could almost hear: "Who's the gringo dressed like a raven. Oh, he's that morose one crazy Jesus met in jail".

At an unmarked space near a small sheltered shrine, Jesus began to bundle tall weeds in his hands, indicating to join him. When that job was finished we took turns digging. His mother's remains were not deep, maybe three feet at most, in fairly easily shoveled earth. The plain board coffin had caved in a bit. We cleared the final dirt away with our hands. It was a job.

Then with a feeling of terrible dread, we reached down into that awful hole and pulled the brittle boards up a little, some out of the grave. I was awfuly anxious, lightheaded.

His mom looked terrible. That's all I'll say. And Jesus didn't cry. His eyes were wet, but he held back with great strength, finally indicating the shrine. We entered the small room, kneeling together side by side, before a cross on an altar. Mendoza lit a candle and we prayed together in the Durer posture.

After awhile, members of his family walked up behind us praying. They showed disapproval in their voices and looks.

We left.

And they were right, of course, dressed as they were, better than Jesus, cleaner, plus, I rather doubt any of them had ever spent a single night in jail, or swept the town square every morning for two months, or brought a gringo raven to a family Day of the Dead ceremony.

Mendoza and I were the sort of drunks who hide behind buildings and guzzle a bottle down together, then go and get in some sort of trouble, usually. This was our trouble for the day. Nothing unusual for us. We were fairly downtrodden characters. Inwardly I mean. That is, a couple of 25 year old quick-cycling manic-depressives with no diagnosis. It was bad. Still, Mendoza had gotten to the graveyard early, with Digger O'Raven, in tow, and, he had accomplished what was arguably, the most difficult part of the ceremony, opening the grave. And I think he really did that for them. Because I don't remember them with a shovel. It was like they expected him to be gone when they got there, our borracho folly. I don't remember Jesus having the shovel for the rest of the day either, so he must have left it with them.

Mendoza took us to a place not far, where we did a quick job for an older fellow. Together, we picked up and carried a rather large log, finally rolling it, to a place the gentleman wished it to be. He gave Jesus some small coins before we returned to the road.

Jesus turned away from town then, and motioned me to follow. Here I stopped, trying to get him to "let me go" back to town on my own. Mendoza took no excuse, demanding I follow him. After another quarter mile of walking we came to the edge of a large cultivated field of agave cactus, each huge plant brandishing spiked leaves, like bundles of greenish silver swords.

Into the field we trudged until we had gone so far, we were completely screened from view. Then we arrived at a small adobe shed surrounded by at least sixty Indian men, identically dressed in white, like Jesus. They had been drinking pulque, a fermented cactus drink imbibed by Indians only, and were in various stages of intoxication. Pulque not only contains alcohol, but psychoactive alkaloids. Inside the shack were two 55 gallon, open-topped barrels of the stuff, with clay mugs for self service.

Many of the men were upset I was there and proceeded to give Jesus an extremely verbal bad time about it. He continuously defended me, strongly, while dipping large jars of pulque, nearly a quart, for each of us, then led me back outside. Everyone inside followed, then all of the men crowded around me, eager to see my reaction to the drink. There was a pulqueria in the San Miguel marketplace where I'd had my share. Some of the men recognized me from there. The cops would run me out if they saw me. Often, I took my own jug and they filled it, then took it home. Rick thought I was mad to drink it, preferring brandy. A pulqueria is an Indian bar. No stools. A combination urinal / up-chuck trough at one end. Pulque is sold from 55 gallon open barrels. Mexicans generally scorn pulque as beneath them. I liked it. Plus, I could afford it. I had a job too. Imagine that, a wino with a job. It didn't pay much, but enough for rent and the young hard scrabble artist's life.

I downed the mug in one or two long drafts and wiped my lips on my sleeve. Mixed approval: SMILES, and frowns.

An angry man pushed through the other men and faced me. He had tombstones in his eyes and was holding a machete. Green with pulque, he missed nothing. Pulque is weird that way. It seems somehow, to actually heighten senses while intoxicating at the same time. Pulque addicts don't stagger around, even on cobblestones, they "maneuver". One I saw nearly everyday for a year in the San Miguel market, always had a small airplane with him which he "flew," quite purposefully, holding the plastic toy in his fingers next to his head.

I didn't want to die in a pulque field, so I lied.

Rather, I heard this fairly good disembodied Spanish LIE, "come through me" like a spirit voice talking out of a cave, and rather loudly too.

A voice I came to know as:

Universal Human Default Voice

UHDV.

I, David Archer Nelson, speaking in UHDV, explained that my father had died, and that I expected soon to be going to the Parrocia, the Indian Cathedral in town, there to pray to HIM, for dad's Eternal Soul ... not to mention my own.

The LIE being twofold, in that yes, my father had died, but, five years earlier, while I was suggesting perhaps five weeks. That, and am not Catholic, and didn't have a lot of business in the Parrocia, other than the fact that as an artist, I loved that place. Really loved it. And Rick Barton made a beautiful lino print of the facade, squeak, squeak. There was a pause as the man with the machete searched my eyes for lying. I was petrified. Then, he changed. Sensing my grief to be real, which it was, the man simply went from an enemy to a friend, right there in the November sun. From outraged to compassionate in seconds. Just like that.

"Hombre," he said, holding my shoulders in his hands, full face, machete handle pushing into my shoulder, blade near my ear.

Men moved in patting my shoulders and offering condolence, and pulque.

After another half an hour or so of camaraderie ... to the point of bursting from all that pulque on top of "lunch" ... I left to pray for my father at the Parrocia. Mendoza went with me back to town, leaving me at the door of the church.

For the next year I stayed out of jail and every single time I ran into my friend, he hit me up for pesos.

In those days the peso was at 12.5 to the dollar. And one peso (12 1/2 cents) would buy 12 amazingly good tacos. One dollar: 120 tacos. San Miguel in those days was a great place for broke artists. The town was full of poets, movie types, psychedelic painters, unique actors, flamboyant travelers, (Stan Wilkins for one, creator of Mr. Magoo) renegade authors, (John Muir, How To Fix Your Volkswagen Bug And Be A Complete Idiot) madcap missionaries (Pierre d'Lattre) all "starving," for their art, yet quite well fed actually.

I don't know what it's like there today.

Write me and tell me.

PS ... when I got back to the house Rick was sitting on the bed painting a picture. Rick was always sitting on the bed painting a picture.

I said, "Have you been outside yet?".

Rick said, "No".

"I know you're mad at me, but listen. this has been the most weird freakin' day of my life man. Three hours ago I helped Jesus dig up his mother in the graveyard. It's the Day of the Dead out there man! And, this guy wanted to kill me with a machete ... whew!"

"Better light some incense," he said, "it's going to be a long night ..."

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