The Cooler Was Optimistic

Marco bought the cooler at a gas station in Ensenada for what a good one costs in shipping alone. Two bags of ice went in on top of eighteen cans and four sandwiches. He announced, in front of witnesses, that this would hold until dinner.

It was 104 by ten in the morning and the cooler was sitting in the bed of a black truck, in the sun, being opened roughly every nine minutes by four people who all wanted to look at it rather than take anything out.

By noon the ice was a suggestion. By two the sandwiches had entered a state Marco described as 'marinating.' The cans were the temperature of a swimming pool in August. Someone suggested moving the cooler into the shade, roughly six hours later than that idea would have been useful.

This is where the day actually turned good, because failure at that scale is just entertainment. Somebody remembered a tienda about eleven miles back at the crossroads. Two of them went. It took an hour on that road and they came back with a block of ice, a bag of limes nobody asked for, and the news that the woman who runs the place had made them coffee and asked about the truck.

This time, the ice lasted until they got back.

Around six the temperature broke and the drinks were finally cold and nobody wanted one, because by then everyone had adjusted. Marco kept the cooler. It rides in the bed on every trip, still bad at its job, and the eleven miles to the tienda are now a planned stop.