From Cacequi we trekked south towards Rosario do Sul – second to the last city we would cross on Brazilian soil.
The road we travelled down was plagued with potholes! I have never seen a main road in such a horrific state. Some of the holes looked like they were created by meteors. If a car was to hit one of these craters at full speed, it would most certainly mean serious injury for those inside or even death. It was a sad site.
On our third day out, I found refuge in a cattle ranch on the right side of the road. The farm was huge but there was only a small house on the property where the worker lived alone. The house was simple, painted yoke yellow with blue windows.
“You don’t need to set up your tent tonight, you can sleep in here with me,” the short, bald worker said to me when I arrived in the mid afternoon.
I accepted his offer!
Because the home had recently run out of water, I carried my things to a stream nearby and bathed outdoors. The water was freezing but I hadn’t showered in 2 days and the smell coming from my body was appalling.
After drying up and getting dressed I returned to the small house. I cooked myself a pot of noodles and with the sun kissing the horizon ate my dinner in the dirty kitchen. My host was tending to the cattle so I awaited his return after I finished eating.
With darkness now taking over the world, he returned. He walked into the kitchen with a small bible in hand. With wide eyes he told me he recently joined the church.
“Two weeks ago the devil visited me during the night and didn’t let me sleep at all,” he told me waving the pocket-bible around. “He whispered into my ear all night,” he continued.
A cold chill ran up my spine. My hands automatically became clammy. My heart began to beat faster and faster. Looking at this dark-skinned middle aged man before me, I began to realize how scary this situation could get. I was in the middle of the boonies, alone, with no weapon, sleeping in the home of a complete lunatic and to top it all off, no one knew I was there.
“Why did you tell me this brother, now I’m not going to sleep a wink,” I said before letting out a nervous laugh.
“You don’t need to worry, he visited me because I was a bad man… I did bad things. But now I belong to the church, you will see bibles everywhere in this home, we are safe,” he said trying to calm me down.
It didn’t work. He wasn’t lying about the bibles. I counted 5 little bibles, opened in different places around the house. You know what else I saw… a shotgun… in his room… standing up against the wall. I caught a glance of the weapon on the way to my room. It drove my already intense fear through the roof.
When I entered the room I was to sleep in, I immediately began looking for escape routes in case this lunatic tried to kill me in the middle of the night. There were two windows I could jump out of, a large desk I could use to block the door, and a chair that could become a weapon if need-be…
“Look this was my wife, wasn’t she beautiful,” he said passing me his phone.
“Oh yeah, she was a beauty,” I responded looking at a photo of his wife with their child.
This guy was absolutely rife with sadness. He spent half an hour showing me photos of his wife, and told me how she left him for another man. I felt really bad. It was obvious he was in a lot of pain. His eyes were red as if he had been crying nonstop for weeks. There was a constant lump in his throat he tried to fight down every few minutes. It was sad.
Eventually he wished me good night and left me be. I was alone with only my thoughts to keep me company in the darkness. As I lay there trying to tell myself I wasn’t going to die, all I could imagine was the little bald man kicking the door down and shooting me to death with his shotgun.
Eventually I dozed off. But in the middle of the night I awoke drenched in my own sweat as if it were a hot summer night. Yet it was freezing outside. Really weird.
