Cloud-shadows drifted lazily across the cornfields, the tile-roofed houses and the tree-lined trails of the village below us, and across the steep, forested ridges behind us where we had just passed a little roadside quarry. In the thin Andean air the sharp pings of stonecutter's hammers, knocking chisels against blocks of granite, beat a counterpoint to the dull thuds of villager's axes. Those villagers not chopping wood were nursing their babies, spinning wool, tending sheep, milking cows, weaving ponchos, shelling beans, grinding corn or doing whatever else they did to survive and to occupy themselves.

Above the villagers, Carmelo, the jeep and I were flying through the air.

A few weeks before this flight, the Peace Corps had terminated my driving privileges--this in consideration of several cases of jeep-abuse, one of which resulted in a brief stay in a provincial jail. Carmelo, a new volunteer in Saraguro, took charge of our jeep. Shortly thereafter, while he was driving very slowly in a rainstorm on a narrow-track strip of mud that was steeply sloped for good drainage, Carmelo and the jeep and the new-fallen rain all slid off the road together. The rain just kept on running down the hill and into the river thousands of feet below, but the jeep, with Carmelo and several other people in it, only rolled over a couple of times and then stopped. No one was hurt, but the jeep's top was bent and dented. Later we drove the jeep to the provincial capital, Loja, for repairs.

Having left behind the damaged metal top, we headed back to Saraguro on the Pan-American Highway--all one and one-half lanes of curving, cliff-edged, dirt and sand and gravel of it--and rain wasn't falling and Carmelo was driving fast and sliding all the curves going downhill. I gritted my teeth and held on to the seat and jammed my feet into the non-existent brakes on the passenger-side floor, but said nothing. This fool had learned to drive Andean roads from a very poor teacher: one who slid all the curves going uphill or on the level; one who had a diminishing list of willing riders (which wasn't all bad since the jeep was one of the only vehicles in town and fear significantly reduced the number of calls for its services); one who was no longer even permitted to drive. Me. What could I say?

And then Carmelo lost control and we left the road and bounced across a short strip of rough ground and rocks, which jarred us loose from the topless jeep, and we flew over the edge of a cliff into space--Carmelo, the jeep and I.

Time slowed down as it always seems to when death seems imminent, yet it must not have slowed much: there was no time for a quick review of twenty-four years of experience and inexperience. Amid the jangle of thoughts and emotions that surged through my lonely, flying head only one final angry word stood out: D A M N.
And then Carmelo and the jeep and I hit the bare plowed field that sloped out beneath the cliff we had flown over.

As I was landing, I saw the jeep crash--nose first--just behind me. The ability to see was evidence that I was still alive, but what I subsequently observed cast grave doubt on the future of that existential condition: the jeep was about to topple over and to smash me back into the dust and dirt and mud from whence, presumably, I had come.

Literary to the very end, I saw not a battered, green jeep, but the jaws of a great white whale about to snap shut--with me inside.

I rolled frantically to one side. Carmelo, perhaps fleeing another metaphor, jumped up and then ran and stumbled thirty yards on down the hill. The jeep slammed harmlessly to the ground beside me.

Time returned to normal. The jeep lay upside-down and backwards on the steep slope. Carmelo lay sprawled at the edge of a cornfield. I lay in the sweet smelling earth next to the jeep.

Slowly we stood up, feeling and testing each bone and muscle as we did so. Carmelo's left leg had been deeply slashed, we had many small cuts and bruises, and we were trembling violently. Otherwise we were physically undamaged.

Only when our self-absorption in the rediscovery of life had advanced by several stages did we become aware of a monotonous, blaring sound--a sound that rippled through our egos and through the thin Andean air and across the cornfields and houses and trails below; a sound that called out, "Look here, look here, look here . . . ."

The dull thuds of axes and the pings of the stonecutter's hammers had ceased and were replaced by a chorus of mangy dogs barking out their annoying counterpoint, "Look there, look there, look there . . . ." Damn. In landing upside-down, the jeep had jammed its weight against the horn button and the dying jeep was screeching its death-howl, calling to the villagers below. A thousand eyes were now upon us.

We glanced at each other, then wordlessly moved to the side of the jeep. Together we knelt, grasped the edge of the jeep, and lifted. The pressure on the horn was released. Silence. Blessed silence.

Seemingly without effort, we continued to lift the jeep until its weight was on its side. But it would not balance in that position so we pushed it on over. As the jeep bounced onto its wheels, the sudden awareness of what was about to happen drove out all memories of our recently aborted flight. Two thousand eyes were now fixed upon us: two tattered figures exposed on a hill above them all; two foolish gringos who had come to show them a more modern, rational way of life; two crude norteamericanos who gobbled corn right off the cob like dogs and pigs instead of delicately removing each grain, one-by-one, like properly civilized beings with fingers; two prisoners of existence who had escaped the loneliness of death only to be condemned to live in the eyes of others.

We swore and grabbed desperately at the now-silent jeep, but it wrenched itself free, and in a final act of vengeance for all the abuse it had suffered at our hands, it rolled and then bounced and tumbled several hundred yards on down the hill.

And so on a calm and partly cloudy day the jeep died in a cornfield in southern Ecuador. And Carmelo and I, standing shakily on a steep hillside awaiting all those smirking, giggling, chattering (we imagined) and not-so-ignorant villagers who had seen the second half of our spectacle, were alive--excruciatingly, humiliatingly alive and with no place to hide.

 Background source: sigsig plant above the Las Lagunas cornfields, Saraguro