Changes in Latitudes Read online

  CHANGES IN LATITUDES

  Books by WILL HOBBS

  Changes in Latitudes

  Bearstone

  Downriver

  The Big Wander

  Beardance

  Beardream

  Kokopelli’s Flute

  CHANGES IN LATITUDES

  WILL HOBBS

  SIMON PULSE

  New York London Toronto Sydney

  The author is grateful for permission to quote from the following songs:

  “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” by Jimmy Buffett, © 1977 Outer Banks/Coral Reefer Music

  “Wastin’ Away Again in Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett, © 1977 Outer Banks/Coral Reefer Music

  “Ripple”: Words by Robert Hunter, music by Jerry Garcia; © 1971 Ice Nine Publishing Co., Inc.

  “Throwin’ Stones”: Words by Bob Weir and John Barlow, music by Bob Weir; © 1984 Ice Nine Publishing Co., Inc.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Simon Pulse edition September 2004

  Text copyright © 1988 by Will Hobbs

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Hobbs, Will. Changes in latitudes.

  SUMMARY: A family trip to Mexico changes a cocky teenager’s attitudes as he becomes exposed to his brother’s consuming interest in saving endangered species, to his parents’ problems, and to his own selfishness.

  [1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Sea turtles—Fiction. 3. Wildlife conservation—Fiction. 4. Mexico—Fiction] I. Title.

  PZ7.H6524Ch 1988 [Fic] 87-17462

  ISBN 0-689-31385-3 (hc.)

  ISBN 0-689-87069-8 (pbk.)

  eISBN 978-1-439-11634-0

  ISBN 978-0-6898-7069-9

  For my father 1915-1984

  There is a road

  No simple highway

  Between the dawn

  And the dark of night

  And if you go

  No one may follow

  That path is for

  Your steps alone

  Robert Hunter

  CHANGES IN LATITUDES

  WE WERE LEAVING for a week in Mexico, all of us except my father, that is. For years he’d been putting down Mom’s dream of vacationing in a tropical paradise, so she finally gave up on him and said we’d just go on our own. So here we are in the airport, milling around before the flight. Dad’s in his jeans, and Mom’s looking like she just walked out of a fashion magazine. Not exactly a matched pair. Jennifer and Teddy are sticking close together. Jennifer’s fourteen, your standard kid sister. Attractive? Sure, but who’d say that about their sister? Teddy looks like a normal nine year old, but let me tell you something: he isn’t.

  I’m the one with the headphones and the shades, trailing behind like I’m only loosely affiliated with these people. I used to think I was the center of the universe, but by the end of the week down there I found out this wasn’t the case. I found out something about what’s really important and what’s not. I guess that’s why I’m writing this down, to let you know the price I paid and let you draw your own conclusions.

  Back to the airport. Jennifer had just noticed some photographs of animals in a glassed-in display. Over the pictures it said in big letters, “THINK BEFORE YOU BUY.” I wish she hadn’t, but she pointed it out to Teddy. He was over there so fast he could’ve smashed his face.

  He stood there staring with his mouth open. Over his shoulder I saw bloody elephants on their sides with their tusks sawed off, dead leopards, dead rhinoceroses, dead polar bears, dead whales, a mound of dead sea turtles, and on and on. I looked over to Teddy—he was horrified. I told you he wasn’t a normal kid.

  “Endangered feces,” I said.

  When he heard that blasphemy, Teddy glanced my way with a hurt and disbelieving look. Disbelieving, I don’t know why—I did it to him all the time. “Lighten up,” I told him.

  Despite the one-sided evidence to the contrary, he wanted to believe that deep down I was as kind and idealistic as he was.

  “Look at all those sea turtles,” Dad said.

  I wish my father hadn’t done that. I don’t think Teddy had registered on that particular photograph. Now that Dad pointed it out, he took a long look.

  While they talked about whether there would be sea turtles on the Pacific coast of Mexico, I checked out examples of illegal items tourists try to bring back into the States, like ivory, furs, curved daggers with hilts of rhino horn, even skin lotion made from turtles.

  “Ever seen a bottled sea turtle?” I asked.

  I wish I hadn’t done that. Teddy came over and had another long look.

  “Cut it out, Travis,” my sister said. She harbored the suspicion that deep down I was truly twisted. She always was a better judge of character than Teddy.

  My mother was getting bored, I could see, and was about to open her mouth and get us moving, so I launched into a reading of the display’s big message in the same gloriously insincere style a game-show host uses to announce prizes:

  “If trends continue, within fifty years over half of the world’s wild animal species will be extinct. The seemingly harmless purchase, in any quantity, of products derived from these animals can only hasten their decline. The Endangered Species Act makes it illegal for anyone to bring such products into the United States, for personal as well as commercial use.”

  “I can see this is going to take some time,” my mother got in edgewise. “Travis, would you stay with Jennifer and Teddy please? We’ll be over at the coffee shop. Your father and I need to talk before we go.”

  This was obviously news to Dad. She was still mad at him for not coming, I figured, and wanted to get off some parting shots. He went along without saying anything.

  After awhile they were back and we lined up at the gate. Dad gave presents to everyone, mostly books. When he came to me he said, “Travis, you’re the only one who doesn’t get a book.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I can’t read.”

  He grimaced. He hates it when I put myself down, even if I do it for the comedy. He even goes so far as to say I’m as smart as Teddy.

  “Some tunes for your Walkman,” he said, and handed me a cassette.

  “It’s dated,” he half-apologized, “but for a trip to Mexico, it’s essential.”

  “What kind of stuff?” I asked. We were all shuffling along, nearing the front of the line for boarding. The PA was announcing what we did and didn’t need, birth certificates, tourist cards, whatever. All of a sudden I realized my father was all choked up and about to lose it.

  But he kept talking. “Jimmy Buffett. You know, ‘Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.’”

  I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly, we were squeezing through a little checkpoin
t and my father stepped to the side. It was happening fast but it was an awkward moment that seemed to hang up in time and still does. I remember a little of what we were like. Teddy was spooked, very confused. Jennifer was sniffing. Mom was impatient. She’d told us she was determined to have a good time, and we should too, even though Dad had done his best to sabotage the trip by not going.

  Dad leaned toward us and whispered hoarsely, “I want you to know I love all of you very much.”

  That was it. I was the last through the door out to the plane. At the last second I looked back toward my father, but he had already turned away. He had his head in his hands, and he was crying.

  I DON’T WANT YOU to get the idea I left for Mexico with a heavy heart. I had no use for whatever it was that was going on between my parents: I was psyched about the trip. I’d been dreaming up some juicy scenarios for months, and here I was in the air and on my way. Within a few minutes of takeoff I lapsed into my fantasy about how I was going to meet a beautiful stranger. She’d be on vacation too. It was a conviction of mine that beautiful women on vacation are more accessible than they are at home.

  Across the aisle, Teddy was submerged in the book Dad gave him. Next to him Jennifer and my mother were going over the airport scene, the latest installment in the family soap opera, their favorite show. Mostly I tuned out under my headphones.

  Somewhere over Mexico, Teddy woke me up all excited about something he’d discovered in his book. “There’s a nesting beach of the Pacific ridley just a few miles from Punta Blanca!”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s only a few nesting beaches along the whole Pacific Coast.”

  “I’m not surprised. It sounds like a pretty rare talent for a beach to have.”

  Jennifer and Mom hissed. “Nesting beach of the Pacific ridley,” Jennifer insisted. “Don’t you listen?”

  I couldn’t tell if Teddy was enjoying this or not. Mostly he liked it when I shoved sticks into his spokes. He was about to ask Mom something, but I intercepted him. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I think I know this. The Pacific ridley is a seabird, a distant cousin of the blue-footed booby. It lays its eggs on a nesting beach because it’s too lazy to make its own nest—right?”

  “They’re sea turtles,” he explained, only a little amused. “Can we go to that beach?” he asked Mom urgently. “This is the time of year they’re nesting.”

  My mother’s the master of the non-answer, and she was never sure Teddy should be so hung up on animals. “Let’s wait until we get there,” she said.

  HAVE YOU EVER taken a ride in a Mexican taxi? Well, it was a first for me, and I mean to tell you we got our money’s worth.

  The airport at Punta Blanca is twenty miles out from the city. When we reached the curb out front, somehow we were funneled into a van with a bunch of other gringos. We all sat there for about twenty minutes and felt real stupid, not knowing what was going on.

  Fortunately, my mother couldn’t handle the heat in there and decided we’d get our own taxi. As we got out, a Mexican guy tried to shoehorn us right back in.

  “We go to all the hotels,” he assured us. “No problem. We leave in just a minute.”

  We didn’t know what to say. “Let’s get our bags, Travis,” Mom said.

  “Taxi,” I explained to the man in my best Spanish accent. “Taxi to the hotel.” I don’t know why I was talking like that. It seemed like the thing to do at the time.

  He looked at us like we must be the stupidest people he ever met.

  What really made his day was when I pulled our bags from the bottom of the pile in the back of the van, and most of the rest came with them.

  Down the curb a little ways there were a number of taxis to choose from. The driver of the first one we came to was leaning against his taxi, a laid-back guy who wasn’t hustling everyone who came by. “Sol Mar Hotel?” my mother inquired.

  “Sí,” he answered. “No problem.”

  He never said another word, all the way in to Punta Blanca.

  Taxi Number 22, I think it was. Ask for Number 22 if you’re ever down there—maybe it’ll be the same guy. Sure, there’s lots of good drivers down there, but I have a hunch he’s the best. When he cleared the airport like a getaway man leaving the scene of a job, Mom was pleased with herself. “We won’t have to spend all afternoon getting to our hotel,” she said.

  But right about then, as we slalomed on two wheels around the “alto” sign and onto the two-lane main road, our driver shifted into warp speed. There isn’t an amusement park on earth with a ride that compares with his.

  When you’re in a Mexican cab, it’s like being inside a Christmas tree. There’s all these stickers and dimestore gadgets and little statues. It’s gaudy enough, but you like it just the way it is because you realize it’s all tied in to the driver’s delicate psyche and has something to do with your survival. I got under the Walkman, slipped in my new tape, and turned the volume all the way up. That’s what I would recommend as the best strategy for this trip—it worked for me. It takes care of the driver’s horn for one thing. He’s always leaning on it because he’s so angry at whatever’s slowing him down, like the car three feet in front of him. If you notice it at all, the horn fits right into Jimmy Buffett’s music.

  Sometimes music is made-to-order for the situation, as if it were written with you in mind. Check this out:

  It’s these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes,

  Nothing remains quite the same.

  With all of our cunning and all of our running,

  If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.

  If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.

  Teddy, Jennifer, and my mother didn’t have the benefit of the Walkman, I’m afraid. The g-forces had me and Teddy and Jennifer plastered against the back seat, and they were terrified out of their minds. You’ve never done hairpin turns on a mountain road until you’ve done them with this guy. Mom had her hands braced against the dash and looked like she’d gone catatonic. I was playing air guitar along with the music, probably singing along, too. I thought it was all perfect and funny, including how scared they were. We were in Mexico, no doubt about it.

  Actually the driver had it all under control, sort of. Cows appeared right in front of us and somehow he missed them. Every time it seemed we were sure to fly off a cliff, he held the road by a fraction. One time, though, he pulled out to pass a truck loaded with watermelons, and there was this other taxi right there coming at us every bit as fast as we were at him. I knew for a fact I was going to die.

  We didn’t sneak back in behind the watermelons—no way. We went for it. Our driver’s honor was at stake.

  That other taxi driver wasn’t slowing down either. Neither was the truck driver. Everybody’s honor was at stake.

  Well, I’m happy to tell you we passed that truck and slipped in barely ahead of him, maybe a tenth of a second before that other taxi came on through. No problem. A tenth of a second is just as clean a miss as three or four seconds, after all. That’s why I have to admire our driver and why I’d recommend him to you. I’ll bet he’s as skillful as any fighter pilot in the United States Air Force.

  After we came off the steepest part of the mountain I caught a view of the surf pounding in at the bottom of the cliffs. Then we came to a spot where you could see Punta Blanca to the south and I saw why people come there. Punta Blanca, shining white against steep green mountains and tucked in the arms of a big blue-green bay: the travel posters can’t begin to do it justice. I pointed it out, and that brought the others around a little. My mother couldn’t see it at first; probably she was seeing spots.

  What sticks out when you first see Punta Blanca even from a distance are the high-rise hotels on the north end. “Look at the high rises!” Mom gushed. They’re beautiful in their own way, I have to admit.

  They say thirty years ago Punta Blanca was a sleepy fishing village. You always hear that expression, “sleepy fishing village.” I picture peasant
s in serapes sleepwalking their way along the cobbled streets, the entire town afflicted with narcolepsy. Every now and then a drowsy fisherman takes his boat a little ways out into the bay, lowers his nets, and catches a few fish while he’s dozing off. After awhile he goes home with his fish to his family, who wake up just enough to eat before it’s time for siesta.

  Aren’t stereotypes wonderful? Mexicans like to sleep, Russians are warlike, the French are sexy. There must be something to it, because I saw all kinds of Mexicans sleeping in their hammocks in the middle of the afternoon. So I’m afraid of the Russians, and I’d really like to try France sometime.

  A sleepy fishing village, as I was saying. Thirty years ago. Then an American film company lugged its equipment and people hundreds of miles over donkey trails and made a film there.

  It must have been a pretty good film. The village grew into a town that spread around the bay and became a city, attaching itself even to the mountainsides—all with the speed of time-lapse photography. The people in the movie must have been having lots of fun, because tourists have been streaming down there ever since to get in on it.

  I’ll have to find out the name of that movie sometime and go see it. It’ll be the most personally meaningful one I’ll ever see. After all, we wouldn’t have gone down there if they hadn’t made that film in the first place. That’s how fate works, isn’t it? They could easily have botched it, made a movie nobody wanted to see. Or filmed it in black and white.

  AS WE REACHED THE CITY’S north end and drove right by the entrances to the big hotels, my mother was fairly drooling. She knew all about them from her guidebook. “There’s the Sheraton,” she cried. “There’s the Las Palmas. There’s the El Presidente!”

  There must have been a dozen of them. It was hard to tell, we were going so fast. Then we sped through the narrow cobbled streets of the old part of town toward our own hotel, the Sol Mar, which Mom’s guidebook described as “a good choice for the budget-minded.”