Chilean Chronicles, Part 56: Remembering Helen Kelly in Chile

Two years ago this morning my beloved mother-in-law helen C. Kelly took her final breath. The marking of the anniversary of her death for me is bittersweet.

The source of the bitterness is clear.

It comes from the fact that another year has passed without seeing her again and from the deeper acceptance that no future visits to Chicago, morning phone calls or holiday meals are ever going to happen.

In a fundamental way, our loved ones like helen live on in our memories after their physical passing.

The memories of the tenderness we shared are part of the sweetness.

These memories are many, and, like a kaleidoscope, look different at two or three or twelve of fifteen years' distance than they did at the moment they occurred.

I remember the first time we met in the fall of 1998 in the two-bedroom apartment Dunreith and Aidan shared in Easthampton.

Helen was reading to her oldest grandson in his bed, and, while she looked up to greet me, it was apparent that he was the primary focus of her attention.

I remember the first time we spent a full day together the Sunday of Dunreith's graduation from Smith, how we all got dressed up, ate the fancy brunch the college provided, and spent hours and hours waiting for the two seconds after Dunreith's name was called to yell and clap.

I remember the pride dancing in helen's eyes as we all ate dinner together to celebrate her daughter's accomplishment.

I remember the same pride and joy radiating from helen's core as she and Marty walked Dunreith down the aisle at Look Park. Helen started an impromptu, acapella version of "Here Comes the Bride" as she took the final steps before passing her only daughter to me.

I remember the hours and days she spent helping us prepare to leave from Western Massachusetts to Chicago, where we moved so that I could attend journalism school and pursue my dream of becoming a writer.

I remember the quiet confidence helen showed in me as a husband and father as Dunreith, Aidan and I became a family, the blue sweater she and Marty got for me when I got my first full-time job with benefits in journalism at The Chicago Reporter, and the deep-down laughter we'd share during our morning chats.

I remember the pleasure helen derived from extracting every last morsel of succulent meat from the lobsters we bought near Kezar Lake in Maine, her delight in nature, her boundless appetite for learning, her love of poetry-she could recite verses on end that she had learned many decades earlier-and her generosity that knew no limits.

I remember how Aidan called his Babci the perfect grandmother-he was right about that-and how she was able, with each of her seven grandchildren, to be fully and wholly with them and only them.

I remember her sense of occasion, how she'd make trip after trip from the kitchen to the table at 11 Ridgewood Road, only sitting and joining us at the feast she had created for all of us after everyone insisted she do so.

I remember the thoroughness of how she cleaned spaces, removing everything, making it immaculate and then putting it back just so.

I remember helen's composure and her strength, her fierce loyalty and seemingly effortless elegance.

I remember how she gave and gave and gave to her born and chosen family until the very end of her days.

I remember these moments, and, with each passing year, feel even more grateful to have had the good fortune to have know helen as long and as well as I did.

Dunreith and I talked about some of those memories today.

I played a recording of Dylan Thomas' poem "Do not go gentle in that good night," a poem that helen had quoted to me after Marty's death to describe what she saw of his experience right before his end.

We talked about helen with Mom today via Skype, and again this evening as Durneith and I clinked glasses filled with Peruvian pisco sour and toasted to her memory.

She would have been here with us, Dunreith said, pointing at one of the empty seats at our table. And not for a short visit, either. She would have stayed a month.

My wife was right.

And, with her statement, she reminded me of how people who are no longer with us physically live on not just in our memories, but in our understanding of how they would have reacted in situations we encounter now.

When we spoke about helen's zest for travel, I offered that she would have relished decoding Spanish words, given that she had tried to do the same with Hebrew words when she visited Dunreith in 1986.

Dunreith told Aidan how excited Babci would have been at the expansive set of experiences he has had and the independence he has shown in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, in the lush green of New Zealand and the major cities of Australia.

When we spoke with Dunreith's brother Shaun on Skype tonight, he talked about how his mother would have given him rides to physical therapy during his post-surgery convalescence whenever he needed them.

She would have been right there, Shaun said.

This calling forth of helen, this application of our memories of her warm, soothing, adventurous presence to our imagining what she would have done today and tomorrow, doesn't change the fact of her death.

But it does help us get through the pain caused by the reminder of her absence.

It does bring her close to us.

Real close.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 55: El Dieciocho Continues in Providencia

Naval Military Academy Band

It’s the day after El Dieciocho here in Santiago, and the celebration keeps on coming.

After yesterday’s defeat at the hands of my first terremoto on the actual Independence Day, I was looking for something quieter.

But there was nothing quiet about the band from the naval military school band that marched past a still-empty Providencia Avenue this morning.

The brassy sound of the horns accompanied by the steady beat of the bass drum reached our apartment from blocks away.

I grabbed my camera and rushed out into the street.

Row after row of dark vested, young midshipmen with gold buttons, white slacks and the black strap from their hat snugly tucked under their necks stepped in unison.

Their lean faces adopted a hard, emotionless look as they walked stiff-backed and staring straight ahead.

A host of proud family members walked alongside them, recording the moment with cameras of varying lengths, IPads, and cell phone.

They weren’t the only ones showing pride.

A father with his son on his shoulders clapped as the midshipmen went by.

A white-haired man with a scruffy beard who looked as if he could have been homeless saluted.

So did a man with a stern expression and short cropped brown hair.

The students walked and beat the drums and played the clarinets and flutes and even a bassoon until shortly past the Manuel Montt Metro stop.

There their leader told them to relax for five minutes and spend time with their families before boarding the orange Pullman buses that would take them to the first of their many destinations for the day that would end with a trip to Valparaiso.

The young men’s faces relaxed.

They returned for a few minutes to adolescent bodies and energy as their parents and grandparents hugged and congratulated them.

I started talking with Jorge, a middle-aged stocky man with thinning black hair, a mutli-colored sweater and the rumpled look of someone who had been sampling and enjoying all that Dieciocho has to offer.

He explained that he was a family member of one of the students, and that their itinerary for the day included a stop at Parque O’Higgins before the early morning trip to the Armada’s home base.

I asked him what he and other Chileans thought about this show of military might just one week after the flurry of commemorative activity that culminated in last Tuesday’s observances of the fortieth anniversary of the Pinochet coup.

That was in the past, Jorge said. The people aren’t afraid of the military. They’re proud of them.

Based on what I had seen, he might have been right.

But I wondered.

The students finished loading the buses, which pulled out into the street and rumbled off their destination.

Uncertain about the accuracy of Jorge’s assessment, I walked back to our apartment.

Parque Ines de Suarez: The Whole Foods of Fondas

A few hours later, we were ready to take on my fourth and Dunreith’s third fonda of the week.

This time we were going to Parque Ines de Suarez in our Providencia neighborhood.

We walked down Antonio Varas Street before taking a left turn and following a crowd that was streaming calmly into the nearby park.

The first thing we noticed was the smell.

Or absence of it, to be precise.

Whereas Parque Alberto Hurtado and Parque O’Higgins each had had the distinctive odor of searing flesh being cooked over charcoal on one of dozens of grills, the air in Ines de Suarez held none of that.

Instead, we discovered a stand where you could purchase veggie burgers, or, at another spot, a slice of quiche.

The anticucho did not have thick chunks of meat and sausage doused in hefty portions of salt.

It had thin cubes of chicken, beef, and pork interspersed with neatly cut slices of onion and red peppers.

Rather than people walking around with a bucket-size container filled with terremotos, the cups were smaller and the major entertainment was a puppeteer drawing cries of delight from the dozens of children seated underneath the tent where he performed.

While the stands at Parque O’Higgins featured all manner of kitschy tchotchkes, the Providencia gathering had stands with five flavors of organic pisco, refined olive oil, Ceylon tea or an anti-Monsanto sign.

Nearly all of the owners had business cards, and many, if not most, of the owners, accepted plastic.

Dunreith and I took a look around, accepting samples of high-end chocolate and apple pie, taking a look at the lapislazuli jewelry, and finally settling on empanadas made by a Mapuche owner that Dunreith later declared were the worst we've had.

We gathered our food and ventured under the tent where lines of people were waiting obediently to purchase terremotos that were advertised on a white board in both English and Spanish as “the best.”

We found a table that had three empty seats and a woman sitting there.

After securing permission to enjoy our meal at the table, we met Charo, and, a little while later, her husband Guillermo.

They’re Peruvians who have just moved for his work in IT after living in Spain for three decades.

She’s got brown hair, white earrings and an easy smile.

For his part, Guillermo has a firm handshake, a grey beard and a pair of round glasses.

We chatted for a while.

Guillermo and Charo spoke in English, a language she is laboring to master.

Dunreith and I spoke in Spanish, a language that Dunreith is working hard to learn.

We talked about the pleasure he and his son-in-law take in cooking and the joy their grandchildren give them.

They told me that in Spain I would be called “Jose,” or “Pepe.”

Guillermo explained that he doesn’t know what to answer when people ask him where his residence is.

He’s lived and raised his children in Spain, where his grandchildren still live.

He’s got family and a home in Peru.

And now he’s living in Santiago in the Los Condes neighborhood.

I think of myself as a citizen of the world, he said.

I concurred, noting that national boundaries can be arbitrary before Dunreith pointed at her chest and said, “Corazon.”

That’s where home is.

Where the heart says it is.

Guillermo nodded in agreement and complimented Dunreith for taking the conversation in a deeper direction.

I unfortunately took it in a hazardous direction when I asked how many years they had been married.

Guillermo faltered for a minute, then turned red as he turned to ask his wife what year they had wed. (The answer appeared to be 1977.)

I tried to explain that I had wanted Charo to flex her English muscles for saying numbers.

Too late. Dunreith sought to throw Guillermo a lifeline by saying that we had it easy because we had married in 2000.

Smart man, Guillermo said.

Charo said they needed to go, so we hugged goodbye after exchanging numbers and plans for getting together on an upcoming Sunday afternoon.

Dunreith was ready to leave, too.

We traced our route back along the still empty streets to our apartment, grateful that our objective of a relaxed, but still expansive, day had been accomplished.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 54: Terremoto 1, Jeff 0

I had done all the preparations. Enjoyed the Journalism Department’s celebration last Thursday.

Walked into a work party for El Diecicocho, Chile's Independence Day, last Friday.

Traveled by metro, bus and car to Alejandra Matus and Alberto Barrera’s idllyic home nestled in the foothills of the mountains on Saturday.

Taken pictures of teams caballeros herding cows into the wall at the rodeo at Parque Alberto Hurtado on Monday.

Evoked memories of Fenway Park circa 1990 by spending time with anticucho cooks and hustlers Patricio and Andres at the national stadium on Tuesday.

Today was the day.

El Dieciocho.

And I was ready for the New York City of fondas, Parque Bernardo O’Higgins.

Or so I thought.

Patricio had told me yesterday that whereas the party at Estadio Nacional ended at 1:00 a.m., resuming at 10:00 the next morning, the fiesta at Parque O’Higgins never stops.

It’s also the site of La Jein Fonda, a venue for musical acts and performances.

Dunreith and I walked down the usually bustling Providencia Avenue to meet fellow Fulbrighter Larry Geri outside the Salvador Metro station.

With very few exceptions, buses, taxes and shops with steel gates announcing their closure greeted us.

Before leaving our apartment, we had heeded Alejandra’s instructions, delivered via email, to empty our wallets of all non-essential items that we might fear losing.

I didn’t bring my customary fire-red backpack or my notebook.

But I did have a to-do list.

At the very top: tasting my first terremoto.

Multiple sources had advised me to try the drink.

Juan, one of the doorman in the front lobby of our apartment, had thought seriously a week ago when I asked him what I should do during the week of Dieciocho.

“A terremoto,” he said after extensive deliberation.

He had repeated his recommendation last night when I observed that it was quite cold in the front lobby, as if the sweet drink with white wine ,ice cream and cognac could magically ward off freezing weather.

In our session last Thursday the students in our English conversation had also told us earnestly that we needed to try one of the drinks during Fiestas Patrias, the weeklong celebration that included today’s commemoration of Independence Day.

We took the Metro to Los Heroes and managed to identify that the Parque O’Higgins stop was the correct one for us.

We walked through the large gates, down the row of stands selling every conceivable kind of trinket, past the picture of “Hanoi Jane” that was drawn across the white tent that served as the venue for the musical entertainment, and into the sandy area where food was sold.

The smell of sizzling chicken, beef, veal and sausage being grilled on fresh charcoal assaulted me.

A stand from Arica, one of Chile’s northernmost communities, had a row of particularly juicy looking chicken that caught my attention.

I made a mental note to return after completing our quest.

Then I saw them.

Already prepared, the frothy white cream approaching the lip of the plastic cups that held them, six terremotos in three different flavors stood atop a wooden bar.

After determining that Dunreith was not going to have one, I invited Larry to join me.

He did.

I approached the woman behind the bar and delivered what has become my standard speech about how this is the first Dieciocho we had attended, that this was the first terremoto we were drinking and thus this was an important moment in which we needed to have success.

She listened patiently, then directed me to the caja, the place where nearly all Chilean purchases occur, the spot where you pay and receive a paper receipt that you pass to the server.

I went through the same speech with the man at the caja.

He listened with slightly less patience than the server, but said in a less than enthusiastic tone that he hoped I enjoyed myself.

I’ve found that at times explaining to people our purpose and the meaning of that particular moment in their country can elicit higher levels of service.

This time nothing of the sort occurred.

But Larry and I did receive our desired drinks.

He chose grenadine, while I picked mint.

We toasted and took our first sips.

The sweetness of the frothy substance at the top was cut by a beerlike taste in the body of the drink.

Dunreith pointed out that I was drinking on an empty stomach, so, after completing a lap around the food, entertainment and child amusement park options, returned to the spot with the tasty looking chicken breasts.

I tried to purchase the chicken directly from the woman working the grill, only to be told that I needed to go yet again to the caja.

I went inside the tent with signage that proclaimed its loyalty to Arica, located the caja and sought to take my chicken to go.

The lady at this caja told me that there was no take away option, that the chicken came with a salad and thus we had to sit down and wait for it.

This was just fine with Larry, who recently lost the heat in his apartment.

The waiting turned out to be longer than we had expected, as, compared with the flow of sausages and beef that were being served at tables near us, the chicken was taking a while to cook.

Larry and I contented ourselves with making our way through the terremoto, which was having no apparent effect on us.

A waiter with long black hair approached our table and asked us in English where we were from.

I kept answering in Spanish, and put special emphasis on our desire to have our chicken as soon as possible.

About a minute later, he walked through the tent carrying the chicken breast on the end of a long, thin, shiny fork.

The meat and the salad of green tomatoes in a salty sauce arrived shortly after that.

As opposed to much grilled meat we’ve encountered thus far, which is cooked to the point of resembling jerky, if not leather, this breast was piping hot, tender and succulent.

The conversation flowed amiably amongst us.

Larry’s taught about sustainability at Evergreen State for nearly two decades-a period during which he’s spent months at a time in South Africa and Japan before his present gig in Chile. We talked about our kids, our teaching and research projects, our his wife’s impending visit and their plans to dance the tango in Buenos Aires. (She’s been taking private lessons for months. He hasn’t.)

We finished the chicken and decided we ready to leave.

The crowds were streaming in to the park.

Although the sidewalks were not yet jam-packed with people, we could tell that time was not far off.

“That terremoto is starting to kick in,” Larry said as we neared the front gate.

Indeed it was.

My stomach and head were starting to get the same woozy feeling I remembered having with some frequency during my freshman year at Stanford.

My steps became more uneven, my pictures more erratic.

I weaved through the ceaseless wave of people entering the park and staggered onto the Metro that would take us back to our apartment.

Larry graciously allowed me to take a seat.

We parted at Salvador and made plans to eat dinner together with his wife and him next Monday.

Dunreith, who was battling an upset stomach, and I walked the two blocks from Pedro de Valdivia in an unsteady gait.

The doormen greeted us.

Dunreith explained in Spanish that she had had enough of fondas.

I said that I didn't feel that good and that the terremoto had won.

They laughed.

Loudly.

We made it back to our apartment and took an hourlong nap to recover from our wild adventure.

We woke up at 5:10 p.m.

The sun was shining brightly.

The terremoto was still rumbling away within me.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 53: Meeting Patricio and Andres at Estadio Nacional

Part I: Selling T-Shirts at Fenway, the Sausage King

I sold Green Monster and Bleacher Creature t-shirts at Fenway Park during the summer of 1990.

The season was noteworthy for many reasons.

I became firm friends with fellow vendor David Axelrad-a connection that has continued and deepened through living and teaching together, through our becoming husbands and fathers and through our shared passion for a thoroughly examined and joyful life lived in the present.

Thanks to childhood brothers Vinnie, Paul and Gus D'Angelo, I had a job I will remember fondly forever.

Since we were selling right outside Gate E on Lansdowne Street, I had one of the best possible spots near Fenway Park.

Yet, as meaningful as these all ultimately proved to be, one aspect stands above all:

We sold next to the Sausage King.

Gatesy and Jimmy, brothers and a pair of Italian-Irish Boston Police officers, owned and ran the stand as a second job.

In moments that reminded me of Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog checking in for the day, tickets scalpers and policemen would gather at the King for a brief chat in what amounted to the equivalent of the demilitarized zone between the Koreas or Switzerland during both world wars.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_u3YRZb74w&w=420&h=315]

In addition to the sausages that had hefty portions of Windex that dribbled down from the glass window onto the grill, the stand was distinctive because it had Perry hawking.

A welterweight boxer who hailed from South Boston, Perry bore a striking resemblance to Dennis the Menace. He would spend large chunks of time admiring his tanned biceps and issuing memorable calls to attract customers like "How many, how many, my name is Jack Benny," and "Coast to coast, like buttered toast, we sell the most."

Perry often punctuated his favorite jingles with a guttural sound, "AAAAHHHH!"

His relentless desire to scam the customer knew no limits.

When Mike, a pretzel salesman who would have far preferred to practice astrology, left his stand for a minute, Perry stepped in, charged the unsuspecting client two dollars instead of one and then pocketed the change.

His favorite story was how he took a $100 bill from a drunken customer in a limousine, gave him $2 back and declared solemnly, "We're even."

Memories of Perry's antics stirred within me late this afternoon when I met Patricio and Andres at one of the many anticucho stands outside the National Stadium that is the site of the 14th annual Festival of Nunoa neighborhood.

Part II: Festival De Nunoa

These fondos are happening in communities throughout Santiago in observance of "El Dieciocho," or Chilean Independence Day on September 18. Of course, the celebrations are by no means limited to that day only.

In fact, one of the vendors at today's event told me that the hours of 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. from Tuesday through Sunday are actually light compared with the fondo at Bernardo O'Higgins that, like New York, never sleeps.

I met Andres and Patricio on my second late afternoon lap around the stadium. I had already passed by empanadas baking on the grill, the crust carrying bits of charcoal.

I had observed a fussball game that involved three generations of family members, chatted with the owner of a shop that sold stuffed cupcakes with a replica of the Chilean flag made of frosting, watched a series of children try to win prizes by throwing a ring around bottles of soda and alcohol and seen a Mapuche hut made of straw that stood next to a stand where a young woman with blue jeans who did not want to be photographed kneaded the dough that would turn into sopaipillas.

I had heard the wail of children who did not want to get off the rides they were on in the mini-amusement park near the front of the stadium and witnessed a little girl ride a static line from the stadium to a stand about 50 yards away.

The blue sky had few clouds, the air had a gentle cool and couples old and young, groups of friends, and families strolled leisurely around the stadium, their pleasure in the national celebration and being with each other evident in their smiles and relaxed faces.

The smoke billowing forth from the grill he was working and the sunglasses and bright red hat he was wearing obscured a view of Patricio's face until I walked to the other side of him. A construction worker, he is solidly built with brown and moves with a decisive efficiency.

I took a picture first of Patricio, then of Andres, who is stockier, younger and has a buzz cut that looks like it's been growing back for about a month.

They asked where the picture was going.

I answered, and we started chatting.

Andres' extolling the quality of the beef they were grilling in an effort to cajole customers whose ages ranged from teenager to senior citizens rivaled some of Perry's top efforts to help us sell t-shirts before demanding a commission after a successful sale. ("One hundred percent Egyptian cotton," he would crow, paying no attention to the fact that our cotton came from nowhere near Egypt.)

Andres repeatedly asked me if I wanted a terremoto, a trademark Chilean drink that Dunreith and I had agreed we would try tomorrow. My refusal neither deterred nor offended him.

Instead he kept emphasizing the importance of our trying the alcoholic trifecta of a Terremoto, La Replica and a Tsunami.

It sounded like a recipe for public drunkenness and free pickings for the many pickpockets we had been advised liked to feast on foreign prey at the fondos.

Part III: Patricio works the grill and an angle

For his part, Patricio called me over behind the red shack that was part of "La Pica Del Tio Nino," the spot where he was working that had been set up for the festival.

I want you to get me a beer.

That's fine, I replied. Just give me the money and I'll bring it over.

My answer did not appear to satisfy Patricio, who then said he wanted two beers.

He then showed me a blue lined receipt with the words, "1 Anticucho" on it.

All became clear.

I would take purchase two beers, which were 1,000 peso each, and then bring them to Patricio and Andres, who would in turn give me an anticucho from the receipt Patricio was about to hand me.

I would save 500 pesos off the price of the anticucho.

Patricio and Andres would have the beer they coveted.

And the store would have 2,000 pesos it had not had before.

The plan went seamlessly.

Patricio hustled me over to the side of the shack, where he placed the beers with such care and reverence it was like he was putting a Faberge egg in its cases.

He offered me a cold coke he had already hidden, but my journalistic ethics against accepting gifts from sources compelled me to decline.

These same ethics hadn't rebelled against my scamming the company they were working for not one minute earlier, but somehow that seemed different.

I identified the anticucho I wanted, which, as Andres pointed out to all who passed by, had 250 grams, or more than half a pound of fresh beef and sausage from Chillan, a community about four hours south of Santiago.

We made sure the meat was cooked enough and I retreated to one of the Tio Nono tables that were covered with red and white tablecloths.

I had a long wooden skewer, two pieces each of beef and sausage and no plate.

No problem.

A woman instantly appeared not with a plate, but a plastic cup full of napkins.

I needed all of them, as both the sausage and especially the beef were dripping with juice.

The woman, who was dressed in an all-white outfit, recognized my plight and brought over even more napkins before I finished to help me clean my hands.

I thanked her, then returned to the grill.

In between his salting the meat, I learned that Andres is 29 years old, works in concert promotion and has a wife and nine-year-old son.

Patricio has three children ranging from ages 15 to 24 and offered repeatedly to give Dunreith and me a tour of Santiago's most beautiful places. (We didn't talk about which those were.)

He leaned in to tell me that since I hadn't handed them the ticket for the anticucho, I could get another one later.

Pure Perry.

I responded in kind.

I'll get two more Coronas and give them to you, I told Patricio.

He smiled broadly.

I don't forget, I said.

We all swapped phone numbers. I shook hands again with Patricio. Andres and I hugged.

I said I would come back with my wife the next day.

My rumpled anticuhco ticket in my pocket, I believed it at that moment.

I don't know if we'll make it back, but I do know that I appreciated the chance to meet Patricio and Andres.

And to visit with Perry for a minute, too.

Chilean Chronicles, Part 52: The Rodeo at Parque Alberto Hurtado

"What are you doing?" the photographer standing next to me in the sandy rodeo ring asked me in Spanish as I raised my Panasonic DMCZ525 to take a picture of the black and white, mangy-looking cow that had just been knocked to the ground by a pair of horsemen wearing sombreros and traditional cloak. I thought the answer was pretty obvious.

Trying to stay out of the way of the horses that were standing in a row and whose back legs seemed within kicking range, for one.

At the same time, avoiding the other horses who were being ridden sideways by the cowboys in the middle of the sandy ring.

Nevertheless, I was aware both of being a guest in the country and, more to the point, of standing near the side of a small stadium with about three dozen horses on all sides of me.

Their riders were contestants at Parque Alberto Hurtado during La Semana De Chilenidad, a week of typical Chilean cultural activities that started before, and ended after, Chilean Independence Day on September 18. (It's often simply called, "Dieciocho.")

Rodeo was named the national sport of Chile in 1962.

"I'm taking a picture," I answered.

"You can't take pictures of cows that have fallen," replied the photographer, who was about my height, stocky, and was wearing a woolen black hat and round glasses.

It's forbidden, he told me.

He went on to explain that there were strict rules governing the photographing of cows in the rodeo competition. Violators, he said meaningfully, can be arrested by the carabineros, citing an example of one recent photographer had been hit forcefully in the head after having taken the rules-breaking image.

I looked at the first row in the stand outside of the ring.

The number of green-suited carabineros standing with arms folded right near the entrance where I had gained entrance half an hour earlier seemed to have multiplied.

Perhaps I was being unduly influenced by my new acquaintance, but some of them seemed to be looking at me.

I started to look for where I could leave the ring without being noticed. The fact that I had earlier snapped two pictures of the same cow on the ground after an earlier time of being ploughed into the ring's sideboards gave my search additional urgency.

I pictured attempting to inform Dunreith, who, after a cursory glance at the cowboys coming into the stadium, listening to the white-robed priest bless the event, and hearing the Chilean and Spanish national anthems, had returned to the Adam Johnson novel she had been reading. (I had a sneaking suspicion that she would not notice me being carted off into custody.)

Where are you from? He asked, interrupting my reverie.

"I'm from the United States; it's my first time here in the country for Dieciocho," Because he had conveyed the information to me about my transgression, I started talking to the photographer as if he were a policeman.

Thank you for explaining rules I wasn't aware of, I said, a touch of desperation entering my voice as I imagined myself standing before a Chilean judge and hoping that ignorance of rodeo photography policy would in fact be an acceptable excuse.

"Is there anything else that I shouldn't do," I asked.

"Don't take pictures of a cow that's on the ground," he repeated.

I decided to change the topic.

Is this a national competition, I inquired.

My question elicited a lengthy discourse about the association of local rodeos, the winners of whom earned points that helped qualify them for the annual national competition in April.

The man spoke calmly, as if we were having an afternoon cup of team, not standing within striking range of large hoofed animals who could easily paralyze, maim or even kill us with a single kick of their back legs.

What's your name, he asked.

I told him mine and requested the same information.

Maximiliano, he answered, smiling broadly and extending his hand.

I shook it.

His calloused hand had a firm grip.

We started talking about where we worked.

Maximiliano was independent, he said. This meant freelance.

I started telling him about the Fulbright and teaching a journalism class at the University of Diego Portale.s.

Maximiliano nodded sagely, then asked, "Where's your credential?"

Uh-oh.

I didn't have one, I told him, that sinking feeling again coursing through my stomach.

I asked the man at the gate if it was all right if I went in, and he let me, I told Maximiliano.

To be completely honest, the second part of the statement was far more accurate than the first. (Unless you count a look at the gatekeeper who pulled it open and allowed me to slip through as asking.)

I looked again in the stands.

More carabineros.

Another cow being crushed into the board near me.

The time when I had entered the stadium in the park and walked along green grass, past the little children being led on ponies by a blue-haired lady and close to a dozen people playing on the longest fussball table I had ever seen, seemed like years ago.

I scanned the crowd to find Dunreith.

Her attention was directed downward into the book.

It was time for me to leave, but how?

I spied a cowboy directing a horse toward the same exit where I had entered.

This was my chance.

I gave enough space to avoid the row of horses waiting their turn as well as the one shimmying around the middle of the ring and arrived at the open gate just a second after the horse.

True to his name, the caballero let me pass.

I walked up the bald patch of dirt, nearly bumping into four carabineros.

They paid no attention to me.

I walked back into the stands and found Dunreith, who looked quizzically at me.

I didn't see you, so I started to walk around, she told me.

We confirmed that we were both ready to leave and started to head back toward the entrance of the park.

Before we left the stadium I shook a security guard's hand and thanked him.

Where are you from? He asked.

The United States, I said.

Which state?

From Chicago in the state of Illinois. It's our first time in the country, our first dieciocho. We're very excited to be here.

This was starting to sound too much like my conversation with Maximiliano.

Better not to push my luck.

Thanks again, I repeated, reaching my hand out again.

Disappointment flashed across the guard's dark face for an instant before he extended his hand and we shook again.

We stopped to buy an overpriced cheese empanada with a flaky crust and my second anticucho, a long skewer with a cork on the bottom, think hunks of meat, slices of thin red peppers and onion in between, and a piece of bread on the top.

Unlike much Chilean asado that I've had thus far, which has been on the overcooked side, this anticucho had a savory medium rare texture.

My gratitude at being free after my excursion into the ring made it taste even better.