Gringos (16 page)

It was lunchtime when I got back to the jail. I advised Eli to call in Nardo or some other lawyer. He said it would only jack up the price. We were standing in the courtyard with prisoners and visitors milling around us. This was the old municipal jail downtown, a very loose jail, nothing at all like the new one. You could keep your belt, and your shoelaces if you had shoes, and your necktie too. You were free to hang yourself. Wives and mothers and sweethearts were there with bowls of pozole, a Mexican version of grits, for their men. It was like a busy bus station. Fausto had more rules at his hotel. I gave Eli a blanket and a couple of paperback westerns and a few packs of Del Prado cigarettes. The money was taped inside a book. I didn't forget his hat. It was a cheap straw hat and of course too small. They didn't make them big enough for gringo skulls. He wanted it so he could whip it smartly off his head in the presence of Sergeant Sauceda.

I didn't see Wade Watson. Louise must have sprung him already. Say what you will, you could rely on that girl to do her job and do it right the first time. When I left Eli he was writing something in a tablet, working
zurdo,
left-handed, with his fist twisted around. A journal? Prison literature? Yes, of course, I knew about that, an old tradition, but I had no idea they started in on it so soon. Jail was a place for reflection, no doubt. Time would hang heavy. But Eli with pen in hand? Well, why not? It would make for some good reading, the confessions of
El Zopilote
. Pancho Villa himself had gone a little soft in his prison cell. He applied to a business school for a correspondence course. He would learn to use a typewriter and begin a new life, a clerical life. He would live in town and wear a clean shirt and write business letters all day.
Most Respectfully Yours, Francisco Villa, Who Kisses Your Hand
. But then after a day or two with the study materials he became annoyed, saying it was
tedioso
and all a lot of
mierda seca,
and he broke out of jail and went back to his old bloody ways on horseback.

REFUGIO WAS a good salesman, a natural closer, and he had the Dutchman right where he wanted him. They were sitting on the curb in front of my hotel. Refugio was going for the No. 3 close. This is where you feign indifference to the sale, while at the same time you put across that your patience is at an end, that you are just about to withdraw the offer. On that point you mustn't bluff. You can't run a stupid amateur bluff.

It was a little trick I had picked up in a salesmanship school at a Shreveport motel. The League of Leaders, we were called, those of us who completed the three-day course and won our League of Leaders certificates and our speckled yellow neckties. I had to learn such things, but Refugio knew them in his bones. He spit in his hand and rubbed away the figures that were written there. He was washing his hands of any further bargaining.
“Dígame,”
he said to the man. Say something. Speak to me.

The farmer saw that the moment had come. The polyvinyl chloride pipe was as cheap as it was ever going to get. He gave in, with conditions. He would have to inspect the bargain PVC pipe and he wanted the slip couplings and elbow couplings thrown in and he wanted it all delivered. Agreed, said Refugio, but no cattle and no checks.
En efectivo
—strictly cash. A rare Mexican, Refugio had no interest whatever in owning livestock, unless you count fighting poultry and short-haired dogs with pointed ears.

The Mennonite would go with us then to Chiapas, this big fellow in bib overalls, with his gray flannel shirt buttoned right up to his chin. He would take a 300-mile ride in a truck with complete strangers in order to save, maybe, a few dollars on some irrigation pipe.

Refugio jumped up and clapped his hands together. “
¡Listo!
Done then! Let us get out of this terrible place!” Mérida made him uncomfortable, as did all cities, with their busybody policemen and parking restrictions. I had my eye on all the street approaches, expecting Louise to appear any minute with news of Wade Watson, and perhaps with Beth, the two of them marching arm in arm, the league of women voters. But it was Gail who came instead, in a taxi, with her suitcase. Word of our trip had somehow reached her at the Holiday Inn, and here she was with her pink plump hands, wearing her field gear.

Would I take her back to Ektún? She had thought it over and decided that desertion in the field, no matter what the circumstances, would damage her career. It was particularly bad for a woman. She might never get another fellowship or grant unless she returned at once to her colleagues and made amends. She wouldn't have made such a rash move in the first place, she said, if I hadn't been there at the dig with my truck, offering an easy way out. “I know you were only trying to help, in your way.”

Yes, all my fault, naturally, but what about Denise?

“She wanted to go back, too, but she lost her contact lenses at the motel. She flew home last night.”

Then here came Doc Flandin, breathless, walking as fast as he could. “Wait up,” he said, “Wait up, Jimmy.” He was wearing his surgeon's cap and there was a machete in a canvas scabbard swinging from his belt. It was an old one and a good one that kept its edge, forged by the Aragon family in Oaxaca. All the other swords in the world were now dead ceremonial objects, or theatrical props, but the machete was still whacking about and smiting every day. Doc had his gourd canteen, and his pockets were bulging with what I took to be a change of underwear and socks. The machete pulled him over to the left. He missed the weight of the .45 on the other side, which would have put him back in trim.

“I'm going with you,” he said. “I'll ride up front by the window.”

“Going where?”

“To the
selva
. With you and Cuco. I want to see it all one more time, Jimmy. You can't refuse me that.”

“It's a long run. Do you feel up to it?”

“I'm fine. Never better.”

“What does Dr. Solís say?”

“He says onward.
Adelante
. St. James and at them! That's what he says. I'm not an invalid yet. Do you think I'm going to collapse?”

“Mrs. Blaney approves?”

“She knows.”

“I don't want that woman coming back at me.”

“I'm still responsible for my own actions, thank you.”

“What about your book?”

“What about it? The book will keep. The unleavened lump. A few more days won't matter. It's not as though anyone was waiting for it.”

“A lot of people are waiting for it.”

“So you say. Well, perhaps. My loyal Jimmy. But you mustn't expect too much. I'll ride up front by the window. We'll stop at Salsipuedes on the way and pick up Chombo. He's just the man for our search.”

It wasn't a bad idea at that except that Chombo had been dead two or three years. He was an old hunting guide who knew the rivers.

Rudy had it right all along—never reveal your travel plans. I didn't mind about the farmer or Gail—I would see that she paid for some gasoline this time—but I knew Doc could only be a burden.

I went into the Posada and called for Agustín, the boy, and sent him down the street to fetch Soledad Bravo. “Tell her it won't take long. A brief
consulta,
that's all.”

We waited. “Just call me Dicky,” Doc said, to one and all, and Gail took him at his word. I didn't like it much but then I thought, well, she doesn't know who he is. Over the years he had invited me to do the same. “Why don't you call me Dicky?” But I knew my place and I could no more have called him Dicky to his face than I could have called my regimental commander Shorty.

Soledad came in some haste with her heavy
curandera
bag. She was in her slippers and house dress, a loose
huipil
dress, and she was peeved a little when she saw that this was no real emergency.

I said, “Here's what it is, Soledad. Dr. Flandin wants to ride down to Palenque with me. Is he fit to travel? That's all I want to know.”

“He is sick?”

Doc refused to answer. I said, “He is not well.”

“He is in discomfort?”

“He says not.”

“Can he button his clothes without help?”

“I think so.”

Passing blood? No. Appetite? Good. Chest pains? No. Does he catch his feet in things and fall to the ground?

No, I had to admit that Doc was no stumbler. He wasn't easily tipped over.

She worked fast and Doc might have been a sick cat the way she went at it. She took him by the ears and blew into his nostrils to give him a start, then looked into his eyes to see what she had surprised there. She examined his fingernails. She ran her fingers around under his jaw. Then she pronounced.

“He can travel on the road for three days in a motorcar, God willing,
si Dios quiere
. Don't overfeed him. After three days he will need some rest in the shade.” She held up three fingers.

That was good enough for me. She knew her business. It was all over before Doc could protest much, and Soledad was gone before I could pay her.

Here we were, all mustered and ready to go, but who got the third seat, up front? Doc had already staked out his place by the window. Who took precedence these days, a Mexican
patrón
or an American female anthropologist or a Dutch Mennonite deacon? I couldn't work it out and so left them to decide among themselves. Gail and Refugio deferred to the big solemn farmer. His name was Winkel and he was a senior deacon in his church, with authority to make major purchases. That was about all we could get out of him.

He sat between Doc and me and said nothing, staring straight ahead, when he wasn't sneaking looks at the speedometer. I mumbled and Doc fiddled with the radio. What a crew. Taken as individuals we were, I think, solid enough men, but there was something clownish about the three of us sitting there side by side, upright, frozen, rolling down the road. We were the Three Stooges on our way to paint some lady's house. It may have been our headgear.

Refugio and Gail had to rough it in the back of the truck, scooping out what seats they could amid all the luggage and junk. Refugio had bought an old oily Tecumseh engine in Mérida, and some other hardware. There was a heavy iron cylinder of welding gas and some used milk cans—he couldn't resist empty containers—and a little sandblasting chamber for cleaning the electrodes of spark plugs. It was no longer the custom to clean plugs in the States, the new ones were so cheap, but down here we still practiced these little economies. We still put hot patches on inner tubes and we still filed down the ridges and pits on burnt contact points. We would set the gap with a matchbook cover.

I drove fast. This racing about at my age was unseemly, but I was still impatient. Refugio and I were both forty-one years old at the time of these events. Few Mexicans passed us and no gringos. The cargo shifted about as we pulled some hard G's on the curves. The least bit of lateral tire slippage made Winkel go stiff. He said, “You must think the devil is after you.”

“The devil will never catch this truck, Mr. Winkel.”

Gail was thrown from side to side. Refugio kept her amused with his high jinks. He stood on his
dignidad
with Mexican women, but it was all right to be a little silly before young
gringas
. They were shallow vessels in his estimation and didn't count for much. He popped a burning cigarette in and out of his mouth with his tongue. He raised the lift-gate and fired at road signs with his .45, including the ones that said DON'T MISTREAT THE SIGNS (NO MALTRATE LAS SEÑALES). I had done the same thing as a kid. I was an old mailbox shooter from the Arklatex, no use lying, but I no longer approved of such behavior and I rapped on the window glass and made him stop.

Doc grumbled and sulked when I wouldn't turn off at the Labná ruins. He said he only wanted to take a quick look at some of the restoration work. I knew he would start pointing out architectural errors and correcting the hapless guides, and we would never get away. Farther along, I did pull over and let him buy some cut flowers from a girl at a roadside stand. He wanted a bouquet for Sula.

Winkel became more and more uneasy after the sun went down. I felt bad about frightening the man and I told him to relax, he was safe enough, that I was an old hand at these night runs. I told him about the night I had driven an FBI agent named Vance up to San Cristóbal de las Casas in the fog. These agents, who worked out of the embassy in Mexico City, were not permitted by their superiors to drive at night on Mexican roads. Strange rule, for cops. They didn't call themselves FBI agents either—their cards simply said Department of Justice.

I had found a soldier they were looking for, a warrant officer who had run off with the payroll, or a good part of it, from Fort Riley, Kansas. He had dyed his hair but was still using his own name, which was McIntire. He felt safe up on top of that mountain with all his dollars tucked away in a duffel bag. He thought he was at the end of the world in that chilly Indian town high up in the clouds, but he wasn't counting on the likes of me, with my sharp eye and my Blue Sheets. I was eager in those days. Vance identified him and called on the Mexican Judicial Police to make the arrest.

Doc said, “How much did they pay you?”

“I did well enough out of it.”

“Were you proud of yourself?”

“Why not? It was a clean job.”

“Jimmy, Jimmy, the things you do.”

Used to do. Not so much lately. Still, it was a clean job, if I do say so myself, over and done with in two weeks and none of the usual hitches. There was no trouble at all with the extradition since he didn't have a Spanish name or a Mexican wife. He was a warrant officer, neither fish nor fowl, and his name was Gene McIntire, and he let down the people who trusted him. But there was no whimpering from the old soldier. He just said, “I'm going to miss San Cristóbal. This place is cool and pleasant the year round, a fat man's dream.”