Man Without Light Is to Be Pitied

When we reached our Baja house the sun was down; there was just enough fog to screen out the starlight; it was pitch dark.

I unlocked the front door and walked through the house and unlatched the back door and threw it open. In crossing the kitchen I had stumbled over a number of unidentified objects.

“The kitchen floor is covered with objects,” I told my wife.

“What kind of objects?”

“I don’t know. Bottles, I think.”

We couldn’t see a thing. We had brought down two lamps: a battery-powered fluorescent lamp and a Coleman lantern. The batteries hadn’t been installed and I couldn’t do it in the dark. To light the Coleman we needed a match. Neither of us had a match. We had neglected to bring matches.

We went into the kitchen and began groping for matches. There were none on the sink; none on the range; none on the bar top. I suddenly realized how helpless we humans would be without fire. It was a basic primitive need.

“I found some,” my wife said in the dark. “No. It’s empty.”

Without light we couldn’t move in. We couldn’t even determine the nature of those objects on the floor. I decided to turn on the car lights. But just then the moon crept up over the low mountains. It was almost full. I was amazed at how much light a moon could cast.

I found the fluorescent lamp and the six-volt batteries and shoved them into the base of the lamp. I turned the switch. The two tubes lighted up. I felt like the cave man who brings fire to his tribe in the TV beer ad.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘No, I wanted Bud light,’ ” I told my wife.

By the pale fluorescent light we discovered that the objects on the floor included two cases of empty beer bottles and several cartons of magazines and other articles that had been moved away from the kitchen wall to make room for some repair work on the crumbling bricks.

We took the light and went exploring. Several months earlier I had given the keys to a young man who was doing a book on Baja and told him he could use the house. He had recently returned the keys to one of our neighbors and said he was moving out. But he had not moved out his things. They were scattered through the house. In the back bedroom an eight-foot surfboard stood against a wall. The beds and my desk were covered with his effects.

Worse, we had been infested by mice. They had been everywhere, leaving their tell-tale pellets behind. The kitchen counter top, the refrigerator, the bar top, every drawer in the house was covered with their droppings. Several hideaways were stuffed with torn-up paper towels and napkins. They had invaded the cabinets under the bar, tearing up the paper and leaving their signs. Our guest had left dishes in the drain. They had even marked those.

We threw back the covers on our king-size bed. At least the sheets looked clean.

The butane tank felt empty. By moonlight I unhooked it and hooked up the portable tank we had brought with us. My wife had found matches. She soon had the range going. We brought our cool can in and she began to cook some hamburger for dinner while I opened up a bottle of wine.

I tried to light the gas refrigerator but it wouldn’t light. That was a serious disappointment. The refrigerator was an old Servel we had brought down 18 years ago. It was old when we acquired it. But it had never failed us. Now, apparently, it was kaput.

There are four things we need to sustain us in Baja. Gas, water, light and refrigeration. When we first arrived I had tried the faucet outside and been rewarded with a gush of water. So we had three out of four. We would survive. The alternative was to turn around and go home, which we had never done.

We ate dinner to Mexican music from our portable radio, then read a while and went to bed. I wondered whether we would be attacked by mice during the night. I realized that, despite Mickey Mouse, I hated mice.

I would deal with the mice in the morning.