Quinton steered us away from the main highway and down a road that became increasingly industrial and dusty. The road came to a traffic circle and the buildings thinned, leaving miles of dusty white road winding between fenced yards filled with slabs of white and rose marble gleaming in the moonlight.
Just beyond the circle was a driveway leading into one of the stone yards. A dust-covered truck stood idling in the driveway as the driver walked around it, using a flashlight to search the underside of the large, empty flatbed. He muttered to himself and reached to grab something, shaking it with a muffled rattle.
The man lay down on the ground and tried to move something while still holding his flashlight. Something slipped and the light broke with a crash. The driver rolled out from under the flatbed, shaking off debris and swearing. “Filho da puta!” he added, kicking the nearest tire and drumming his fists on the flatbed.
Quinton and I exchanged a glance and walked toward him while Quinton pulled a small flashlight from his pocket. “Hey, do you need a hand?” Quinton called out as we drew near and turned on his flashlight, aiming the beam at the ground.
The man whirled, wide-eyed, not expecting anyone to be walking along this road after midnight. He stared at us and at the flashlight for a second. “Sim! Yes! I could use an extra hand.” His English was good enough, but his accent was thick. “You have a light.”
“Yup,” said Quinton, stopping next to the driver. “What’s the problem?”
“This pile of shit—the lift is jamming. I had the bolt out and then one of the scissor arms fell off. . . .”
The conversation became an exchange of technical terms that meant nothing to me, but Quinton understood. And that led to a few minutes of talking, then lying on the ground under the flatbed with flashlights and tools and cursing. Finally both men were satisfied with something and got back to their feet, dusting themselves off and smiling at each other as if they’d slain a troll with butter knives.
“Thank you!” the driver said, offering his dusty hand to Quinton. “I would have been here all night without you.”
Quinton shrugged. “It wasn’t much trouble, once you could see it.”
“It was a lot of trouble for me. Obrigado. What can I do to thank you?”
“Don’t know. Where are you headed?”
“Vila Viçosa. It’s not very far down this road, but I’m glad I don’t have to walk it.”
“Well, we do. Can you give us a lift?”
The driver looked me over and made a “not bad” face as if I were a bit of livestock he was considering. “Sua namorada?”
Quinton shook his head. “No. She’s my wife.”
The driver stiffened and stood up straighter. “Oh. Desculpe. Sorry. Uh, yes . . . I can take you to Vila Viçosa. Where you need to go?”
“As far as you feel comfortable taking us.”
The driver nodded and walked up to the cab to open the doors. “Get in.”
We scrambled aboard. I sat on Quinton’s lap in the narrow cab while the guys made small talk. I fell asleep as we passed through an endless plain of holes where the marble quarries had been carved into the earth. We parted company from the driver a few miles down the road in Vila Viçosa, outside the Palace of the Dukes of Braganza and walked through the early-morning silence toward the industrial edge of town, once again. As the sun was rising, we negotiated another lift with a man who was delivering sausages to Ciladas—the next town closer to our destination.
The route twisted along a narrow highway through dry, tree-covered hills with the rising sun in our eyes and the dusty smell of olive and cork trees mingled with the odor of cured meat as the breeze twisted through the open windows of the delivery van’s front seats. I was considering a raid on the man’s cargo almost the whole time—my empty stomach now becoming insistently loud. I wasn’t sorry to see the last of the too-redolent truck when we reached the tiny outpost that turned out to be Ciladas.
I felt we’d been transported back to some wide bit of the road in Southern California’s eastern desert near San Bernardino or Riverside. Even in the early morning with the sun barely up, the place was hot, dusty, and smelled of agriculture. But it was still a Portuguese town of low, plastered buildings with red tile roofs, stone-paved sidewalks, the sound of the Grey atonally melancholy, and all the rest of the world as remote as the moon. And yet, once again, I was reminded of places I’d grown up, the scent of ocher dust, the color of the light, and the weight of sun like a veil lying on my shoulders and winding up my neck and face, as tangible as a touch. The town rolled along the edge of the road, which wasn’t even a highway anymore, with some of the houses hiding behind stubbled brown humps of land or perching on the ridge in rows like red-crowned birds. The only notable landmarks were the police station at one end of the main street and the soccer field on the other. The road stretched away, east, out of town, into more rolling, sunburned hills dotted with dust-laden trees. It seemed like we’d come to the end of the world and the road was only an illusion that would vanish under our feet and return us endlessly to the same intersection.
I looked at Quinton. “Where to?”
He frowned and pulled a pad of paper from one of his pockets. “East. The directions say it’s a little more than three kilometers—about two miles. Can you walk that far?”
“I don’t walk on my hands.”
He gave me a tired smile and we started on our way.
Usually, I stride along at a good clip and could have completed the trip in less than an hour, but it was warm and I wasn’t at my best. Two hours later we turned onto a dirt road that went up a long rise landmarked by crippled cork oaks. The driveway curved to a rambling white house perched on the height so it looked down into a valley of wheat stubble and olive groves that tumbled to the edge of a small river. The energetic colors around the house were soft, as if they were as worn by time as the rolling hills. The sign at the edge of the road indicated that the house took in guests and I hoped we were in the right place. I could hear kids behind a courtyard wall and the splashing of water. A painted tile sign beside the gate in the wall identified the building with a number and the name A CASA RIBEIRA NO VALE DAS OLIVEIRAS, and a hand-painted addition just below the tiles read TURISMO RURAL.
“The name’s right—if I understood Rafa correctly,” Quinton said, “But the turismo rural is a tourist bureau, which would make this a sort of . . . very nice B and B, for lack of a better term. Most people call them turihabs.”
“Is this bad?” I asked, my voice still no louder than a whisper.
“Not necessarily, but I wasn’t expecting this. It’s not quite a hotel, but it’s not really a private house, either, so, while it’s all right to just walk into the courtyard and see what’s what, we have no guarantee about who else may be here.”
I opened the gate and walked through into a white-walled corridor between the building and the courtyard wall. The ground was covered in slate slabs, and I followed the walkway along the side of the house until the wall turned and I came out into the courtyard itself. The wall ended a few dozen feet ahead, leaving an open, falling-away view of the shallow valley below. A wide blue swimming pool stretched across half of the revealed terrace and a small band of children played in and around it, screeching with delight. Carlos sat in a deck chair at the far end of the terrace from the pool, brooding out into the view. He raised his head and turned toward us as a petite woman stepped out from the house through a door on my left. She was almost a dead ringer for Rafa.
She peered at us with a knowing smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Cousin Carlos told us to expect you in a day or two, but we’re pleased to see you sooner. I’m Nelia. Welcome to A Casa Ribeira.”