a short detour to drop me off at my destination.
I took advantage of the wait to have a look around town and visit a museum of the churches of Chiloé, designed by Jesuit missionaries three hundred years earlier and raised plank by plank by the Chilotes, master boat builders who can make anything out of wood. The structures are created by an ingenious assembly system without using a single nail, and the vaulted ceilings are upside-down boats. As I came out of the museum I met a dog. He was medium in size, lame, with stiff gray fur and a lamentable tail but the dignified demeanor of a pedigree animal. I offered him the empanada I had in my backpack, and he took it gently in his big yellow teeth, put it down on the ground, and looked at me, telling me clearly that his hunger was not for food but for company. My stepmother, Susan, was a dog trainer and had taught me never to touch any animal before they approach, which they’ll do when they feel safe, but with this one we skipped the protocol and from the start we got along well. We did a little sightseeing together, and at the agreed time I went back to where the women were knitting. The dog stayed outside the shop, politely, with just one paw on the threshold.
The cousin showed up an hour later than he said he would in a van crammed to the roof with stuff, accompanied by his wife with a baby at her breast. I thanked my benefactors, who had also lent me the cell phone to get in touch with Manuel Arias, and said good-bye to the dog, but he had other plans: he sat at my feet and swept the ground with his tail, smiling like a hyena; he had done me the favor of honoring me with his attention, and now I was his lucky human. I changed tactics. “Shoo! Shoo! Fucking dog,” I shouted at him in English. He didn’t move, while the cousin observed the scene with pity. “Don’t worry, señorita, we can bring your Fahkeen,” he said at last. And in this way that ashen creature acquired his new name; maybe in his previous life he’d been called Prince. We could barely squeeze into the jam-packed vehicle. An hour later we arrived in the town where I was supposed to meet my grandmother’s friend, who’d said to wait in front of the church, facing the sea.
The town, founded by the Spanish in 1567, is one of the oldest in the archipelago and has a population of two thousand, but I don’t know where they all were—I saw more hens and sheep than humans. I waited for Manuel for a long time, sitting on the steps of a blue-and-white-painted church with Fahkeen and observed from a certain distance by four silent and serious little kids. All I knew about Manuel was that he was a friend of my grandmother’s and that they hadn’t seen each other since the 1970s but had kept in touch sporadically, first by letter, as they did in prehistoric times, and then by e-mail.
Manuel finally appeared and recognized me from the description my Nini had given him over the phone. What would she have told him? That I’m an obelisk with hair dyed four primary colors and a nose ring. He held out his hand and looked me over quickly, evaluating the remains of blue nail polish on my bitten fingernails, frayed jeans, and the commando boots, spray-painted pink, that I’d gotten at a Salvation Army store when I was on the streets.
“I’m Manuel Arias,” the man introduced himself, in English.
“Hi. I’m on the run from the FBI, Interpol, and a Las Vegas criminal gang,” I announced bluntly, to avoid any misunderstandings.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“I haven’t killed anybody, and frankly, I don’t think any of them would go to the trouble of coming to look for me all the way down here in the asshole of the world.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult your country, man. Actually it’s really pretty, lots of green and lots of water, but look how far away it is!”
“From what?”
“From California, from civilization, from the rest of the world. My Nini didn’t tell me it’d be cold.”
“It’s summer,” he informed me.
“Summer in January! Who’s ever heard of that!”
“Everyone in the southern hemisphere,” he replied dryly.
Bad news, I thought—no sense of humor. He invited me to have a cup of tea while we waited for a truck that was bringing him a refrigerator and should have been there three hours ago. We went into a house marked with a white cloth flying from a pole, like a flag of surrender, a sign that they sell fresh bread there. There were four rustic tables with oilskin tablecloths and unmatched chairs, a counter, and a stove, where a soot-blackened kettle was boiling away. A heavyset woman with a contagious laugh greeted Manuel Arias with a kiss on the cheek and looked at me a little warily before deciding to kiss me too.
“Americana?” she asked Manuel.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said.
“But what happened to her head?” she added, pointing to my dyed hair.
“I was born this way,” I told her cheekily in Spanish.
“The gringuita speaks Christian!” she exclaimed with delight. “Sit, sit down, I’ll bring you a little tea right away.”
She took me by the arm and sat me down resolutely in one of the chairs, while Manuel explained that in Chile a gringo is any blond English-speaking person, and when the diminutive is used, as in gringuito or gringuita, it’s a term of affection.
The innkeeper brought us tea, a fragrant pyramid of bread just out of the oven, butter, and honey, then sat down with us to make sure we’d eat as much as we should. Soon we heard the sneezing of a truck that bounced along the unpaved, potholed street, a refrigerator balanced in the back. The woman leaned out the door and whistled, and a moment later several young men were helping to get the appliance off the back of the truck, carry it down to the beach, and load it onto Manuel’s motorboat using a gangway of planks.
The vessel was about twenty-five feet long, fiberglass, painted white, blue, and red, the colors of the Chilean flag—almost the same as that of Texas—that flew from the prow. The name was painted along one side: Cahuilla. They tied the refrigerator on as well as possible while keeping it upright and helped me in. The dog followed me with his pathetic little trot; one of his paws was a bit shriveled, and he walked leaning to one side.
“And this guy?” Manuel asked me.
“He’s not mine—he latched on to me in Ancud. I’ve been told that Chilean dogs are very intelligent, and this one’s a good breed.”
“He must be a cross between a German shepherd and a fox terrier. He’s got the body of a big dog with a little dog’s short legs,” was Manuel’s opinion.
“After I give him a bath, you’ll see how fine he is.”
“What’s his name?” he asked.
“Fucking dog, in Chilean.”
“What?”
“Fahkeen.”
“I hope your Fahkeen gets along with my cats. You’ll have to tie him up at night so he won’t go out and kill sheep,” he warned me.
“That won’t be necessary—he’s going to sleep with me.”
Fahkeen squashed himself into the bottom of the boat, his nose in between his front paws, and stayed absolutely still there, never taking his eyes off me. He’s not affectionate, but we understand each other in the language of flora and fauna: telepathic Esperanto.
From the horizon an avalanche of big clouds rolled toward us; an icy wind was blowing, but the sea was calm. Manuel lent me a woolen poncho and didn’t say anything more, concentrating on steering and the instruments, compass, GPS, marine wave radio, and who knows what else, while I studied him out of the corner of my eye. My Nini had told me that he was a sociologist, or something like that, but in his little boat he could pass for a sailor: medium