which the unwary and uninformed could easily drop. There were machine-men who were crooks; there were machine-men who were incompetent; some were too timid and some were too reckless, and some even were unreliable. And then of course there were the machines. Domingo’s
bête noire
was the machine with rubber wheels.
‘Whatever we end up with, we don’t want a machine with rubber wheels. They’re no good. Estéban has one with rubbers, and he’s a good driver, but he’s a crook so we won’t go to him.’
‘Didn’t you say that Estéban was a friend of yours?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘But you just said he was a crook.’
‘Even crooks need friends, and anyway I like him, crook or no.
His machine is old, though, and completely knackered, another reason it’d be no good. You don’t want an old machine. You’ll pay the same hourly rate but the thing will get tired and won’t work as hard as a younger one. And of course you don’t want a new machine either, because a man with a new machine will be frightened to scratch the paintwork and he won’t push it hard enough.’
My head was spinning with the complexities of the task. We sped back and forth through the mountains, stopping everywhere a machine-man had been spotted. We interviewed dozens of machine-men in bars, or in pyjamas at their doors after midnight, inspecting critically their plant and discussing the merits of various arms, blades, buckets, tracks, wheels, shovels and grabs.
Eventually we settled on Pepe Pilili and his machine. Between Órgiva and Lanjarón is a
tasca
, a thing too humble to be classified as a bar or
venta
– a sort of wayside watering-hole – and beside it is a little
ermita
or wayside chapel, decked in flowers. Long after midnight and a fruitless evening searching for a machine, we pulled up.
‘Pepe Pilili lives here. He has a machine,’ Domingo announced.
Pepe was there in the bar, cuddling his new baby. Once acquainted, you wouldn’t forget Pepe Pilili. He was tall with thick blond hair and cocky as a sparrow.
‘No problem, my friend. I’ll do your road for you. Start tomorrow evening.’
We celebrated our pact with sangria, a mixture of red wine, lemonade and brandy. You don’t get much sangria in the Alpujarras, which made the occasion a particular treat. Then Domingo and I returned home in jubilant mood. On the way Domingo confided to me that Pepe’s machine, a JCB, had rubber wheels, that it had been delivered from the factory only the week before, and that Pepe had never actually driven a machine in his life. ‘It’ll be alright, though,’ we assured each other. ‘You can’t afford to be too fussy in these matters.’
A week later Pepe Pilili turned up with his shiny new machine. To a man like myself, lately come to the business of appraising such apparatus, it looked businesslike – despite its immaculate paintwork and rubber wheels. It splashed across the river, made itself a ramp to get up the sandy bank, devoured a clump of bushes, the last obstacle to arriving on the farm, and there it stood, gleaming in the last rays of the evening sun.
Pedro and his goats shuffled up to give it a critical scrutiny. ‘What do you think, Pedro?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you feel a bit sad that the world is about to thrust its grubby arm into El Valero, and cut a road through these timeless terraces?’
‘The Host, no! This is the future, man. This is what El Valero needs. I’d have done it years ago if it hadn’t been for my people. Pity about the machine, though.’
‘What’s wrong with the machine?’
‘It’s got rubber wheels.’
Domingo steered his donkey through the scrub to come and supervise. ‘We’ll start with that bank there, Pepe. Off you go – and cut in as close to the almond as you can. We want to waste as little good land as possible.’
Pepe launched his machine at the bank indicated by Domingo. I disappeared up to the house to fetch some beer. Coming down I was surprised to see the JCB
Kelley Armstrong
Washington Irving
Ann Packer
J.S. Frankel
Sarah A. Hoyt
John Lutz
Natalie J. Damschroder
Ira Levin
Ann Rinaldi
Murray Bail