The Footloose American: Following the Hunter S. Thompson Trail Across South America Read Online Free Page B

superior to mine, so he mostly handled the transaction, flirting mercilessly with the round-eyed, tube-topped attendant at the kiosk. Funny, I thought, how easy it is to recognize playful innuendo, even when you’re fighting to understand the language.
    The rest of our supplies we picked up at the Colombian equivalent of a Walmart anchoring one end of the mall. Unlike American big-box stores, however, this particular retailer employed several conspicuously armed security guards, which I learned when one of them chased me down to ask gruffly that I check my backpack in a locker. From the short-barreled rifle hanging at his side, I guessed that gringos with illicit backpacks were the least of his potential problems. So there’s at least one difference between American and Colombian malls, I thought. In Colombia, the mall cops get to carry guns.
    We were further delayed at the bus terminal, where a smooth-talking driver duped us into leaving Barranquilla on the local rather than the express, which meant stopping for a pickup at every no-name village along the way. It’s an easy mistake to make in Colombia, where every shifty-eyedcounter agent will assure you that
his
is the only nonstop route. We stuck out the bus ride for several hours, covering all of seventy miles before switching at another terminal to a
puerta-a-puerta
—a “door-to-door” shuttle van that carries a dozen passengers for a few pesos more than bus fare. Our particular conversion van was packed with middle-aged men and smelled faintly of diesel, and when it finally pulled away from the station, it was clear we had zero chance of reaching Riohacha before nightfall. But at least Barranquilla was in the rearview mirror, and the rest of the continent spread out in front of us like a dashboard map.
    “Jesus Christ is coming back!
Jesús Cristo va a regresar!
”
    I heard the bearded and wild-eyed street preacher before we’d even stepped out of the
puerta-a-puerta
. It was an uncharacteristically cool evening in the beachside village where we stopped for dinner, and a handful of locals were loitering around an open-air market, sipping
refrescas
and trying to ignore the ragtag prophet howling in the street. At our driver’s urging, we filed out with our fellow passengers, lining up at a street-corner grill for some cheese-stuffed corn pockets called arepas, the de facto national street food of Colombia.
    “He is bringing you his blood!” yelled the preacher, addressing no one in particular.
“Jesús Cristo le ofrece su sangre!”
    Sky looked at me and rolled his eyes. The air was heavy with the buttery scent of frying arepas. In line in front of us, a stocky middle-aged guy who’d been riding shotgun in the van turned around and pointed none-too-subtly at the preacher.
    “You see that guy?” he asked in Spanish. “
That
guy is an asshole.”
    I blinked and begged his pardon.
    “He’s an
asshole
!” said the guy again, a little louder this time. “He used to be a hit man for the cartels, and now he stands out here screaming about salvation.”
    In the road, the street prophet was literally thumping his Bible with a fist, his knees bent and back arched like a soccer goalie in his stance. He looked like a cross between Cesar Romero and how I’d always pictured John the Baptist, his elastic face hidden behind a bird’s nest of a beard. He looked ready to tackle someone.
    “These fucking guys,” our companion snorted dismissively. He shook his head. “All these evangelicals, these born-again guys? They’re the ones who used to do the really bad things.”
    We paid for our arepas and piled back into the van, passing the preacher as he waved his arms and moaned. His pupils were grotesquely dilated, a pair of total eclipses, swallowing the light. As the van pulled away, the shotgun guy leaned out the window for a parting taunt.
    “Hey, asshole!” he yelled. “Killed anybody lately?”
    The preacher turned to face the van, nostrils flaring above a