On the front seat sat the young bullfighter she had seen at the arena the Sunday before. He was very young and very slim. His dark hair was now wild and free, not sleek and severely tied as it was worn by bullfighters. In the arena he had seemed taut, all nerves and electric resilience. In his white pants and slack shirt he looked vulnerable and tender. Lillian had seen him wildly angry at the bull, had seen him challenge the bull recklessly because, during one of the passes, it had torn his pants with its horns, had undressed him in public. This small patch of flesh showing through the turquoise brocaded pants, this human, warm flesh glowing, exposed, had made the scene with the bull more like a sensual scene, a duel between aggressor and victim, and the tension had seemed less that of a symbolic ritual between animal strength and male strength than that of a sexual encounter.

This vulnerable exposure had stirred the women, but injured the bullfighter's dignity, made him a thousand times angrier, wilder, more reckless...

The bus driver was teasing him. He said he was going to visit his parents in San Luis. The bus driver thought he was going to visit Maria. The bullfighter did not want to talk. Next to him sat a very old woman, all in black, asleep with a basket of eggs on her knees. When the bus stopped someone got on carrying candelabras.

"Are they moving the whole church?" asked the man carrying turkeys. But though he was standing, he did not dare sit on one of the red velvet praying chairs. He was bartering with the man who carried chickens. The bag filled with corn undulated with each bump on the road. Finally a very small hole was made in the hemp by so much friction, and a few grains of corn began to fall out. At this the chickens, who were all tied together, began to crane their necks, and to mutiny. The owner of the bag became angry and, not finding a way to repair it, sat next to it on the floor with his hand on the hole.

In another seat sat an English woman with a young Mexican girl. The woman was a school teacher. Her English clothes were wearing out; they were mended, patched, but she would not change to Mexican clothes. She wore a colonial hat on her sparse yellow hair. The books she carried were completely yellow and brittle, the corners all chewed, the covers disintegrating.

At each station the bus stopped for the bus driver to deliver letters and messages. In exchange for this he was given a glass of beer. "Tell Josefa her daughter had a son yesterday. She'll write later. She wants you to come to the baptism."

A man climbed in. His pants were held up with a string. His straw hat looked as if the cows had chewed on the edges until they had reached the unappetizing stains of sweat. His shirt had never been washed. He was selling cactus figs.