The Coconut Palm

Babes in the tropics, my husband Jonathan and I bought our property in the Mexican village of San Pancho largely because it had four magnificent coconut palms. Over time, falling coconuts have led us to axe three, replace two smashed roofs, repair broken paving and haul away crushed flower pots. It is not pretty to contemplate the meeting of a coconut descending at terminal velocity and one of our heads, thus, the yearly ritual of bringing in cocoteros to defang the last palm standing.

Cocoteros—guys who climb the trees and clean out the cocos—are not, as a rule, steady citizens. You have to be something of a cowboy to shimmy up that 30 foot trunk with your machete and crawl around the spiky canopy with spiders and biting ants, hacking loose and lowering clusters which could weigh a hundred pounds. Cocoteros work in pairs. The one who remains on the ground, likely the smarter one, receives the bunches and carts them to the street. When the well-paid job is done and the dead fronds, called palapas, and detritus cleaned up, the cocos can be sold as bonus.

Last year we waited too long to have the tree cleaned and the coconuts were falling, so when Diego appeared at the door and offered to do the job, we eagerly accepted his bid. We had only about half the fee on hand so my husband drove off to the nearest ATM.

Soon, Diego returned with Ramon whom we recognized as one of the surfers at the beach. Shirtless and tanned, black boxers fashionably visible above his baggy pants, he finished the edgy theme with wrap-around shades and shoulder-length hair. Diego was older, calm, with deep, smiling eyes. He was the one with the social graces to interact with me, admiring the house, asking for drinking water and the garden rake whose name translates “spider broom.”

Our property is walled for privacy. Inside are separate, largely open rooms—living, dining, kitchen, bedrooms, baths and studio. In the center is the garden with its coconut palm. Where I sat reading in the living room, the tree was between me and a new, still doorless, bathroom.

Ramon mounted the tree. Soon fronds were crashing to the patio and bunches of cocos gliding down on yellow nylon rope. Thirty minutes later when the tree was coco-free, Ramon climbed down and joined Diego in cleaning up around it. With their machetes they hacked the twelve-foot-long palapas into manageable lengths and piled them with immature coconut clusters and other tree-trash in a large mound in the driveway. They accepted half the fee with agreement to return later for the rest and hauled off the coconuts.

It was a hot day and as soon as they left I jumped in the shower. That time of year—May—two showers a day seem just about right. But when I reached for my razor to shave my legs, it was gone. I knew that it had been on top of the tiled shower partition and I knew immediately what had happened to it.

When Jonathan got back with the money, I told him that I thought the cocoteros had made off with my razor. He is always ready to see the best in people and he looked for a reason not to believe it. He tried the theory that they wouldn’t even want it since the replacement cartridges for the fancy multiple-blade razor are so expensive here in Mexico. Nevertheless, and with all due reluctance to blame unjustly, I stuck to my accusation. The cocoteros were coming back for the money, and I wanted Jonathan, with his superior Spanish, to Say Something. He was between a wife and a hard place, but he’s good at problems like this.

“The señora is missing her razor and wonders if it might have fallen on the floor and been swept up with the trash from the coconut palm,” Jonathan told Diego and Ramon when they returned. Ramon looked at the sky. Diego looked at the ground. Yes, Diego said, they would be glad to go through the heap. First he had to pay a bill at the tienda but they’d be right back to look. When they returned there was a showy rummage through the pile, and ¡Que milagro! A miracle! There it was. It had been swept up with the trash. Loud, nearly giddy, laughter all around at the perfection of the resolution. Our small-town relationships were salvaged for another day.