Saed parked his Land Cruiser in front of his father's bottling factory outside Comayagua, Honduras. He climbed out and slammed the truck door shut. Brushing the dust off his brown dress pants and white linen shirt, he walked to the front of the truck. He heard a hissing noise from under the hood.

“So the temperature gauge wasn’t lying?” he asked as if interrogating the truck.

Getting no reply, he slapped his hands down on the hood.

He could feel the overheated engine through its metal skin. “You can’t even make one stupid trip without falling apart these days!” he shouted. The truck continued its hiss as if to ignore his rebuke. With a dismissive wave of his hand, he turned away from the truck. He needed to get to San Pedro for his cousin's birthday and this would cost him daylight. Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm down. The air around the engine smelled like burnt coffee.

Conceding there was little he could do until the engine cooled down, he walked back to the driver side door. Perspiration started to gather on his forehead. It was hot today. Saeed took off his sunglasses, looked at his face in the driver side mirror, and slicked an errant strand of black hair back into place. He flashed a recently whitened smile. At least he still looked good for the party tonight. He admired how piercing his brown eyes could be, and grimaced when he noticed a little tuft of hair between his eyebrows. Maybe he could borrow a razor from his cousin, Juan Pablo, when he got to San Pedro. Straightening up, he walked over to the factory entrance to look for help.

It was Sunday. The gate into the courtyard was locked. Saeed rattled it hoping to catch someone’s attention. He didn’t see movement in any of the windows, and besides a faint whirring coming from the direction of the water tanks, the factory was silent.

         “Mierda,” he muttered to himself, and shouted for the old guard, “Indio!”

Ernesto Garcia Moreno, “El Indio” to Saeed’s family, was seventy years old and came from the village of Copan. He had worked for Saeed’s family most of his life; first in the banana fields for his grandfather and now for his father at this factory. Saeed’s grandfather had called him “Mono” as when he was younger he could climb the banana trees like a monkey. Ernesto got his current nickname from Saeed’s uncle.

 “You could see the Indian in his face,” his uncle would say.  Indio went to work at the water plant shortly after the death of Saeed’s grandfather. Back in those days, you didn’t need to be an engineer to help run a place like this. You just needed to be able to fiddle with greasy, clunky motors and make sure that the workers were doing their jobs. 

Saeed walked back to the truck. He unlocked the clasps on the hood and looked at the spitting engine. It needed water. He decided to leave the radiator cap on, as it was still too hot.

Why was this happening today when he actually had somewhere to be? He just had the Land Cruiser looked at yesterday. He didn't want to miss Juan Pablo’s party, or at least the beginning of it. It was Juan Pablo’s eighteenth birthday. Perhaps he could play it off as being fashionably late. Saeed was older by two years, but he and Juan Pablo spent a lot of their childhood together. They were more like hermanos than primos.

Saeed loved hanging out at his Uncle's place when he was a kid.

There was always something new to do or to play with. Not that Saeed ever lacked for anything at his home, but his father had taken more of a “just because we can afford it, doesn't mean we have to buy it,” attitude. 

He was unsure why his family had moved from San Pedro to Tegucigalpa.

He still saw his cousin often, but it was a lot more work for them to get together. The factory was about mid-way between the two cities. His father had started the factory shortly after Saeed's grandfather retired and handed the plantation over to his uncle. There didn't seem to be any bad blood between the brothers, but soon after the factory was up and running, his family moved to Tegucigalpa.

His father would joke that San Pedro had just not been big enough for the two brothers.

He had asked his mother and older siblings if there had ever been an argument that caused the split, but no one knew of anything beyond the typical sort of annoyances brothers had with each other. They still talked to each other and his father always visited the plantation a few times a year to help during harvesting. They never seemed to be angry with each other, but there was a distance between them even when they were standing next to each other. 

There were differences between the brothers to be sure. Tío always had a big, new truck. It took his father eons to get rid of vehicles. Tío always seemed to be up on the latest fashions, his father was stuck in the 70's. 

And it wasn't that his father was stingy, he just seemed old fashioned. His clothes looked like they were bought 20 years ago even when they were new. His cars looked twenty years old as well, but that's because they were.

The Land Cruiser had been the family car long after it should have been, or so Saeed believed.

For years he would be embarrassed to be seen driven in it. He had been ecstatic when his Dad broke down and bought a new car. The Land Cruiser was parked behind the factory unused until Saeed discovered shortly after getting his drivers license and it became an easy way to get a car of his own. The irony that Saeed begged his father for the Land Cruiser when he first got his license had not been lost on the family. But a car of your own was a car of your own.

He took a gulp of water from a bottle he took off the front seat of his truck. He wondered if they had even checked the coolant at the last check-up. 

Why did he keep driving this truck? It was time to get a new more reliable vehicle. He could afford it now. His father paid him well. Saeed started to see some of his father in him and frowned. He hoped holding on to clunkers wasn't genetic.

He looked at the truck accusingly. Things he once thought had given the truck character, were now mocking him. The bumper in the front, with its right side bent down slightly, sneered at him. It was time to get rid of the old heap. Maybe he would ask Tío where he got his trucks.

          Saeed looked over to the factory entrance. “Where are you, Indio?” he shouted. 

          “Vengo, I come,” answered Indio. The old guard walked up to the gate entrance and looked at Saeed. “Buenos días, Don Saeed.”

As long as Saeed could remember, Indio had called him “Don,” as if he were some great patriarch. It made Saeed feel important when he was little, as it was a title Indio had used only with Saeed’s grandfather.

Indio unlocked the gate.

His clothes were old. They clung to him like plaster clings to an old wall. His only weapon, a machete, hung in its brown leather sheath. It was decorated with flowers made out of colored leather strung down the side. Indio's face was as leathered as the machete's sheath, but with only one shade of dark brown. Patches of white stubble revealed a hand that had become too shaky for a clean shave.

He took off his hat as Saeed entered the courtyard. 

          “I need some water, Indio,” barked Saeed. The old man headed toward the factory. Saeed took out his cell phone. He knew there would be no signal, but checked any ways. There were phones inside the plant, but he didn’t feel like making the trip inside. “Indio!” he shouted impatiently.

The old guard shuffled around a corner carrying a bucket. Water dribbled over the lip of the bucket and into the dust.

          “Careful!” shouted Saeed. “That’s not your water to waste.”

Indio raised his head to look at him. Saeed shifted his weight uneasily bowed his head. He placed a thumb and finger to his temples, closed his eyes and sighed.

          “I'm just frustrated, Indio. I should be in San Pedro right now, instead of fixing this heap,” he said, trying to justify the last outburst.

Indio had been larger then life when Saeed was a kid.

There wasn't anything that Indio couldn't do, fix or know about. He tried to pinpoint a moment where Indio went from childhood hero to employee. He remembered when his uncle once chastised him for being too friendly with the hired help when he had come with his Dad to help at Tío's plantation. Saeed had not felt comfortable around Indio after that. He felt awkward. It was hard to reconcile his memories of the Indio when he was younger and the Indio staring at him now.

He suspected that his uncle had a lot to do with Indio's coming to work for his father. The relationship between them had never been good. Even when he was a child, Saeed had noticed the shift in Indio's face when his uncle was around him. There was no emotion, only a blank stare. Indio never said anything disrespectful to his uncle, but it was clear that they didn't like one another. It had been after one of his uncle's outbursts, that his father invited Indio to come work for him.

The only person Saeed ever saw yell at Indio was his uncle. His uncle had a way of putting people in their place. Saeed believed that it was this aspect of his uncle that had prompted Indio to take a job with his father. Indio never seemed intimidated by his uncle though. Not like other employees on the plantation. 

Saeed walked out to the truck. Indio followed, struggling with the weight of the bucket. Grabbing a rag from inside the truck, Saeed walked back to the engine. He used it to remove the radiator cap. The cap, still too hot, burned him.

          “Mierda!” he said dropping the cap. He kicked the truck.

 Part II of 'Engines' will be continued in the June issue of The Cud...