Big Maria (32 page)

“Our mother,” Ramón yelled.

The Swede said, “You are to put your hands above your heads until I assess this situation.”

“Are there more of you in the tank?”

The Swede didn’t answer. Bernardo gestured with his chin to the hatch. Ramón nodded and scrambled up the side of the tank. When the Swede went for his sidearm, Bernardo was on him. With nothing but a tight squeeze of the wrist and a turn, he had the poor guy up against his own tank, disarmed and embarrassed.

Ramón leaped before he looked, dropping straight down into the tank. Bernardo held the gun to the Swede’s back.

“Ramón?”

Ramón’s voice echoed from inside the tank. “There is no danger.”

“How many are there?”

“Three. They will be no trouble.”

“How do you know?”

Ramón popped his head out of the hatch and tossed Bernardo a can of beer. “It is just one other Aryan and two ladies. You know, sexy ladies. Ladies of the night for having sex with.”

Bernardo gave the Swede a look.

The Swede shrugged. “Lars and I were in Yuma and we met—I don’t know their names. They said the tank made them, uh, horned. We commandeered one of our vehicles to—for a tour.”

“Our mother is exploded because you were trying to impress a prostitute.”

“They were excited to be in the tank.”

“Prostitutes do not need to be impressed. Prostitutes need money.”

“Was your mother really in the bus?”

“She sure was.” But that wasn’t Bernardo’s voice. Or Ramón’s. They both turned to see Mercedes standing between the tank and the bus, her hair smoking a little and her face blackened on one side. She looked like some kind of crazy demon. Which wasn’t too far from the truth.

“You are alive,” Ramón shouted.

“These the bastards that tried to kill me?”

“I can explain,” the Swede said, fear creeping into his voice.

“How did you...?” Bernardo asked.

“Went out the back door.”

Mercedes walked to the tank and ran her hand along the exterior. “So we’re saved, right? I told you Indians couldn’t get lost. What country are these Nazis from?”

F
rank must have died at some point during the night.

No last words. No ceremony. No nothing. Just an old man going to sleep and staying asleep. Business unfinished. The end at the middle. The world continuing on as if nothing had happened. His final breath had gone completely unheard.

Ricky zipped Frank into the sleeping bag to keep the insects away. Some industrious ants had already staked a claim, but Ricky brushed them off with his hand. Harry drank from his flask and said nothing. It didn’t seem fair to either of them. Frank was supposed to die after they found the gold, not before. Frank’s death didn’t jibe.

Ricky talked to talk, lost in the loss. “How did he look last night? He looked good, yeah? He was tired, sure, but no more than you or me. Maybe he was hurt more than he let on. Acted tough for us. Frank never complained. Never.”

Ricky placed his hand on the sleeping bag and said a silent prayer. Harry dropped his head but didn’t close his eyes. He watched Ricky’s lips move silently. Eventually, Ricky said “Amen” softly and stood.

“Damn” was all Harry had in him. No other words felt right or necessary. This was new to him. Not the death. He knew his share of dead people, but he had never cared enough about a person to care if they had died. He’d known the old man was near the end, but that wasn’t the same as seeing him no longer as a human being, but a limp collection of skin and body. Harry was sad to the bone. Sad for someone other than himself for possibly
the first time ever. He wanted to kill God, or someone God loved, show him how it felt.

Harry didn’t know how to deal with those feelings. He wanted to be alone. Harry limped the perimeter of the crater until he was at six o’clock to Frank’s body’s noon. He slid down the wall and put his forehead to his knees. He didn’t know if he was going to cry. He didn’t know if he had it in him. He didn’t know anything anymore.

Ricky watched Harry, letting him experience the death in his own way. Ricky believed in God’s plan. Frank was a good man. God was fair and good, he knew it. It was sad, but Frank was in a better place. Ricky believed it. He had to and he did.

A
silent, mournful hour later, Harry rose from his seated position and approached Frank’s body. He ceremoniously took off his Saint Christopher necklace, unzipped the sleeping bag, and placed the necklace inside. He nodded sharply and closed it back up. Ricky walked up behind him.

“We have to carry him back,” Ricky said.

Harry rose, his eyes never leaving the body.

“It’s too far without the donkeys. We have to leave him here. Bury him. Leave a marker. Tell his people. They can come back for him, if they want.”

“It feels wrong.”

“You bet it does, kid. Wrong in every way. But sometimes, wrong is all you get.”

“Like we’re abandoning him, you know?”

Harry nodded.

Ricky said, “Okay. We bury him and head back first thing to tell his family.”

“After we find the gold, you mean,” Harry said, knowing that wasn’t what he meant.

Ricky shook his head. “Frank is dead, Harry. That’s the end of our adventure.”

“No, it isn’t. The gold is here. Frank dying changes things, sucks, but it don’t end them.”

“Yes, it does. We bury Frank and go home. This whole plan got him killed. We have to live with that.”

“Don’t you dare put that on us. We didn’t do jack to get Frank killed. Some cancer or heart thing or whatever disease he caught did. He was a grown-up who understood what risks are. We headed into a missile range. He wouldn’t’ve come if he wasn’t ready to kick.”

“Even if I wanted to stay,” Ricky said, “we can’t get back up and down the mine with two people. It’s a three-person deal. The gold is as far away as when we were in town. It’s time to go home.”

“What if I figure a way?” Harry said.

“That’s not really the thing.”

“What if I figure a way to get in and out of the mine? Will you stay and help me get that gold?”

Ricky looked over at the sleeping bag holding his dead friend.

Harry kept up the pitch. “One. No. Two days. Give me two days. We don’t have the gold in our hands by then, we pack it in and head down the hill.”

Ricky thought about it. He thought about his family, his wife, and his daughter. As much as he wanted to be home, the gold still mattered. He wanted to go back winners.

Ricky gave an almost imperceptible nod. “One day. That’s all. I don’t think we have enough water for two days and the trip back. Even now with two people.”

Harry nodded and clapped his hands together, no idea how he was going to get them in or out of the mine. He needed inspiration. That one-day deadline would pass quickly. He had to figure something out.

R
icky and Harry set Frank down gently in the pit he had been resting in the day before. The same pit that Frank had imagined as his grave had become just that. Some might have found it funny, but the irony would have pissed Frank off. Irony is only amusing when it happens to someone else. Death isn’t funny to the dead. It’s rude.

Ricky pulled Rosie’s
manta
from his pocket. He gave it a kiss, slid onto his stomach, and slipped it into the sleeping bag with Frank.

“Protection for your journey,” Ricky said softly before standing. “We should say something.”

“You’re the Goddy one. I wouldn’t know where to start,” Harry mumbled. He knew if he talked in his regular voice he would cry. He didn’t want the kid to see that.

“Bow your head.”

Harry decided to believe in God for the next ten minutes, so long as it meant that God would hear whatever prayer Ricky prayed. He would believe for Frank. After that, he’d go back to atheisting. He let the shovel fall to the ground.

Ricky took a breath and exhaled loudly. “Lord. As we lay Frank Pacheco to rest here in the beauty of the Arizona desert, please watch over him and take care of him. Frank was a good man. A caring man. A father, a grandfather, and a friend. And while I’m not sure whether he believed in you or in a group of Indian gods or animals, I know he was a man of faith. He would not have come out here unless he truly believed that there was more than what he could see. His belief in this trip and his friendship is all you need to know to know Frank as a man. While your rules are strict, your love is endless. I put my faith in you to do right by Frank. Lord, you always know the right thing. This one is easy. That’s all. Amen.”

Harry nodded, stared into the grave, and then picked up the shovel.

Ricky found a spot on the other side and sank his shovel into the soil.

“Wait,” Harry said, running to the bags and stacks of supplies.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Harry said. “Might as well bury two birds under one stone.”

He held up the wrapped head of Abraham Constance.

“I’m not sure you’re supposed to put two people in the same spot. Won’t that be confusing if someone comes back for Frank?”

“It was his mine, too,” Harry said.

Dropping down to his stomach, Harry gently rested Constance’s head in the vicinity of Frank’s chest. It toppled to the side. Harry tried to roll back in place, but it fell to the other side. Harry left it.

He pushed himself to his feet, giving Frank and the head a final look. Both covered and wrapped, it looked more like they were burying old clothes than one and one-fifth of human being. It was disturbing how quickly a person became a thing.

Ricky dropped his first shovelful of dirt onto the body. The pebbles and dirt sounded like hard rain from inside a canvas tent.

“Wait,” Harry said, eyes filled with mischief.

“Second thoughts on burying the head?”

“Frank can still help.”

C
overed in dust so fine and faded it looked like ash, Harry and Ricky shovel-patted the earth above Frank’s grave. Not a word had been spoken as they had done the work. There was nothing to say. The finality of the moment said it all, and it ate deep at both of them. Nobody should have to bury their friend.

They stepped back and examined their work. The thick rope looked strange, like a dead vine, rising out of the ground in the center of the fresh dirt.

Against Ricky’s initial protests, Harry had tied the rope around Frank’s waist and ran the rope up, bracing it with small rocks as they buried him. The way Harry figured it, Frank’s weight and the depth of the hole should easily hold Ricky’s weight. He could use the rope to enter the mine and climb out. Ricky thought the idea was a desecration of Frank’s body, but Harry argued that Frank had agreed to help and he would have been happy that even death hadn’t kept him from fulfilling his obligation. After all, Frank was still in for a share of the gold.

Ricky finally ceded out of exhaustion and the certainty that he would eventually lose the argument. He felt the need to protest, but it was like defending against ten shouting men. No matter how many verbal punches he landed, eventually it would be him on the ground bleeding from the nose and ears. That’s what arguing with Harry was like.

“We still have daylight,” Harry said. “You want to give the mine a go right now? No time like the present. But you’re the one down there, so it’s your call.”

Ricky looked at the hole. He should have been excited, but he wasn’t. He was ready to return to Blythe, but he had made a promise to Harry. And to himself that he would see this thing through to the end. Even if Frank wasn’t there to bolster his confidence, it didn’t mean he couldn’t hear the old man’s voice in his head. If he was heading down the right road, he was going to have to keep his promises. Stupid or not.

As Harry prepared the rope and the supplies, Ricky ate the last of the Slim Jims and drank a Red Bull. Not surprisingly, the combination hurt his stomach, and his esophagus felt like it had been scoured with oven cleaner.

Three flashlights (because two extra is better than one extra), two full canteens of water, a small spade, a big knife, thick leather gloves, three lighters (same logic as the flashlights), a candle, and some granola bars for energy. It was the kind of list that an eight-year-old would make before running away from home or camping in the backyard. Might as well pack a few comic books and a Game Boy.

“You hear that?” Ricky said. He stopped digging through the remainder of the supplies. He held a roll of their pilfered military toilet paper with his head cocked.

Harry looked up quickly. “What? Someone coming?”

“No. It’s quiet. They haven’t blown nothing up. There hasn’t been any explosions. Not for a while. Not all day so far. Not last night either. The longest they’ve stopped since we started.”

“Maybe today’s a holiday. One of the lame ones you forget. Columbus or Arbor or Flag Day. Even the Army takes a day off.”

“I don’t think that’s true. One Army guy? He takes a day off. But the whole Army? They don’t take vacations. Or else the bad countries would invade.”

“Maybe the howitzer is on the fritz. I’m sure there’s a reason. Don’t worry. None of the bombing or mortaring or missiling is happening east of the ridge. If they stopped, they stopped bombing
over there. And if they start up again, they’ll start up again over there.”

“Maybe they’re re-aiming. We’re in a crater, right? Maybe that part of the mountain has seen enough. Need to fallow it like farming.”

Harry spoke as soothingly as his rasp would allow. “Calm down. Yeah, we’re in a crater, but looks like it’s been a long while since this area took damage. There’s plants growing. The bombing is west.”

“The same direction to get back.”

Harry smiled and nodded. “And we’ll crap our pants and jump off that bridge when we get to it. Right now, let’s enjoy the peace and quiet.”

“Got thoughts in my head about getting in that mine and all them explosions starting again and it caves in on me. I can imagine it, and the idea of being buried under the dirt and rocks and stuff makes my stomach real queasy.”

“That’s probably the Slim Jims.”

“I’m not joking.”

Harry gave Ricky a manly pat on the shoulder. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. “I thought you were the optimist? God’s watching over us, right? Or at least, he’s watching over you.”