Gringos (25 page)

“No, it's not the boy,” I said. “We're not looking for the boy now. We're looking for a dangerous fat man and a little girl.” I snatched the rotten bandanna from the hippie girl's hands and took Ramos by the scruff of the neck and rubbed his nose around in it and spoke soft and unusual words to him. I could always talk to dogs, certain dogs, if not to people very well. It was a gift; the words just came to me.

We made a quick circuit around the outside deck and then struck off down the backslope. This side was uncleared but not nearly as steep. There were trees and earth and tangled undergrowth and rushing water madly seeking an ever lower place. Ramos was in the lead, taking us below and off to the right. He knew what was wanted, and even with the rain there was still a good smelly trail to follow. That bandanna was strong, and Dan himself would be pretty ripe by now. There was the goat, too. Refugio said, “What a night!” I told him to be careful.

Our path was littered with yellow blossoms which the rain had beaten off the
palo blanco
trees. I lost my hat in the vines. Down to our right there was a complex of structures, still half buried, called the acropolis, though it was by no means the high point of the place. It was a maze of galleries and chambers, most of them roofless shells, set at different levels on terraces. We broke out of the woods onto the topmost terrace, and Ramos was off at a lope and into the maze. We lost sight of him. We had to follow his barking through twists and turns, up and down. Diggers had been here recently. They had cleared one corridor and put up marker ribbons along the way. Strange looters though, to leave the artworks behind. I saw a fine stucco mask of the long-nosed rain god, with the fragile nose intact, a rare find. There were wooden door lintels, untouched. That carved sapodilla wood had endured tropical heat, rain and insects for a thousand years, and it was still in place and still bearing a load. Iron would have crumbled away centuries ago.

We passed through a small forest of derelict stone columns, supporting nothing, and then we were suddenly out in the open once more on a bare terrace. It was good to get on level ground again. I thought we would catch up with Dan somewhere in the woods, crashing through the brush, but there he was standing in the rain at the very edge of the terrace, he and three others and a dead goat. A kerosene lantern burned at their feet. Ramos was running about before them in a fury. The second baldheaded boy was keeping him at bay with a forked pole.

I didn't see the tall woman. Dan wore a white headband and a long white or tan smock over his old outfit, nothing very priestly, more like something from the early days of motoring. There were dark splotches down the front. The skinhead made a swipe at us with his sapling, and we stopped just outside his range. I had never known anyone so crazy that he couldn't understand a 12-gauge shotgun, and here we had run into two of them in one night, or three. They had courage. Raindrops sizzled on the hot lantern. I could see the dead goat, a brown and white billy goat, with a red string around his neck and the black lump beside him that had been his heart. Dan had just cut his heart out. It was still bleeding—I won't say smoking.

Big Dan was lifting one foot and then the other about an inch off the ground. He was rocking from side to side like an old bull elephant. He had a crude knife of chipped flint or obsidian in one hand. In the other he held a lead rope loosely at his side, with LaJoye Mishell Teeter and a small Mexican boy in tow. The two children were bound wrist to wrist with baling wire, and the rope was tied to the wire. The girl now wore an outsize football jersey that drooped below her knees. She was number 34, a little mite of a fullback. A bow of red yarn was tied at her throat. The Mexican boy had one too. I thought at first that his face was painted. The face paint on the others, if any, had washed away. The boy was about six years old and he was in a torn white shirt and some pathetic little blue trousers. They were dress trousers with cuffs and creases. Dan must have grabbed him on a Sunday.

I said, “What's all this about the sun, Dan?”

“Who is that? Where is Harvey? What do you want with me?”

“We came for the kids. Tell your boy to put the pole down,”

“Who gave you permission to approach me? You don't belong here.”

“No, we don't. So we'll just take the kids and be on our way. I want you to drop that rope and move away from them. Okay? None of your crap now. Just do what I say and we'll get this over with.”

“You can't interfere with me in my own city. It wasn't easy getting here at the appointed time. You don't know the kind of people I've had to work with. Even
El Mago
let me down.”

“Yes, but it's all over now, Dan. Those folks out there want their money back. I told them you were a fake.”

“This is the City of Dawn. You don't have no business here.”

“Our business won't take long.”

“Wait. I know that stupid sharecropper voice. You're the one who broke my staff. And my car windows. How did you get here? Beany Girl had a disturbing dream about you.”

“I don't want to hear about your dreams.”

“A prophetic dream. ‘We're not through with Curtis yet.' That's what she said. I didn't believe her. All right. A sign then. But that's all you are. You can't touch me. You don't have no power over the
Balam.
Do you know who I am? I have three yards of fine linen wrapped around my head.”

“No, we're not going to talk about your wrappings. You can save that stuff for somebody else.”

“Where is Harvey? Who is that with you?”

“He's a policeman from Guatemala City. He has some questions for you. Let go of the rope now and step aside. And you better get your boy here under control pretty fast. The other one is dead. Harvey is dead and you better get this loco son of a bitch out of my way before you lose him too.”

Dan looked bad. There were inflamed swellings on his face and knots on the side of his head the size of hickory nuts. The bridge of his nose was bruised and puffy, perhaps broken. One ear was flopped over at the top with the cartilage crushed. All this from the police beating, I supposed, but it was more than that. I think he had been fasting. He was still a big round man, the belly undiminished, but his face had gone slack. There were sagging yellow pouches under his eyes like folds of chicken fat. The mosquitoes had been at him too. He was breathing hard through his mouth, gasping. Two or three buttons were missing from the smock, and I could see a bit of his hairy white belly and the expando waistband of his pajamas.

Refugio said, “What a fine gringo circus this is!” I touched his arm, the one holding the pistol. “Don't spook the big one,” I said. “Keep your eye on the boy with the pole.”

“If he strikes Ramos I will choot him.”

“No, not until we have the
niños.
”

There was a drop of about forty feet behind them, and I didn't know what Dan might do with that demon in him. Would he go over the side and take the children with him? Just how crazy was he? Then there was the knife, a stubby double-edged thing. No Mayan priest had ever used it to tear open a human breast. It was a cheap souvenir letter-opener from a curio shop but no less a sharp ripper for that. I put my light on the Mexican boy and spoke to him in Spanish, with a bit of English for Dan's benefit. “Don't worry son. Dan has thought this over and he's going to let you go. It's all he can do. He's not dumb. Everything will be all right. Can you tell me your name?” He was crying and too terrified to speak. I could see now that the little fellow had
mal del pinto,
a skin disease that left pink and blue patches on his face, like the markings you see on piebald Negroes back home. The rain was letting up. I spoke to the girl. “LaJoye Mishell? I know your name and I came here to see you. I have a cold Coca-Cola here for you. Can you just step over here a minute? You and the boy. Come on, the dog won't hurt you. He does just what we say. His name is Ramos. Come on, Dan is all finished with you now.” She didn't respond at all. Wet strands of hair lay stuck across her face.

Dan jerked the rope tight and pulled the two small bodies up against him. He said, “My offerings are blemished, as you see. A spotted toad and a spotted goat and a spotted boy and a speckled girl with vile red hair. It was the best I could do. You don't know how hard it's been. Finding the correct path. People like you can't never understand anything. I had to take the hard road. I could have been a famous musician. I could have cut an album and rocketed to stardom and won awards on TV if it wasn't for people like you controlling everything.”

Now I was the master sharecropper in control of things. There was nothing else left to do. I put the shotgun to my shoulder. “You're all done now anyway, Dan.”

“Why do you call me that? Dan died long ago. There is no more Dan. Some call me
El Mago
but my true name is
Balam Akab.
I am the Jaguar of the Night.”

“No, I tell you we're not going to have any more of that. Here's how it is. We're all wet and tired and hungry. We're a long way from home. You're not thinking straight. Now listen to what I'm saying. I won't say it again. Turn loose of that rope or I'm going to send you back to the Gulf of Molo.”

His voice changed a bit. He stopped being crazy for just a moment. “All right then. Take the boy and go. He's no good to me anyway. I can't let you have Red. We've come too far. She is prepared. I have my instructions. And now I have the final sign. Which is you. I have my work to finish here on this rainswept promontory. Even you can understand that, Curtis.”

“No, I can't.”

“I deny that you have any power over me.”

Rainswept promontory. Blemished offerings. Rocketed to stardom.
This was what came of reading a lot of books and magazines in prison. The tireless baldheaded boy irritated me with his jabbing and dancing about. Ramos had had enough, too, and he made a dash under the swinging pole and went for a leg. The boy kicked him. Dan tried to change hands for some reason, switching the knife and rope about, to get the knife into his right hand, I think, for a quick thrust at the girl. Refugio fired once at the skinhead and killed him. I let go of both barrels at Dan. There were two sheets of flame and his headband and the top of his head went away. The girl squealed. I gave Dan both barrels up high of No. 2 shot, goose shot, which scalped him and blinded him and shattered his teeth and all but severed his thick neck. He was a dead man on his feet. The knife slipped from his fingers. His knees buckled and he fell backwards over the side, still holding the rope with a feeble grip. I went for the
niños,
slipping on the wet stone, knocking the lantern over and grabbing at the wire that joined their wrists. They were both howling as I dragged them back from the edge.

Then something struck me across the back, not very hard. It was the other skinhead, the one we thought was dead. It was the faithful Harvey, all crippled up, come back from his long tumble. I couldn't believe it. He held a short stick in one hand and beat at me with it and spit blood on me. The other arm hung broken and useless. The dome of his head was bleeding. Refugio shot him twice. Harvey was just as tough as whitleather but he could take no more. He dropped the stick and broke away in a stumbling run. Ramos was right behind him, and then Refugio, who fired again. The boy had at least two .45
balas
in him—they don't make handgun balls any bigger—and he was still on his feet when I saw him last.

“Let him go!” I called out. “That's enough! We don't have time for that! Get Ramos back here!” One time you smash a bug with no mercy. Another time you find one helpless on his back with his legs flailing the air, and you flip him over and let him go on his way. The struggle that touches the heart. Refugio rightly paid no attention to me. I broke the breech of my gun and re-loaded quickly out of habit. The girl wanted to know where her Coke was. I tore the red string from her neck and the one from the boy's neck.

The thing now was to get back across the river, out of Guatemala and into Mexico. It wasn't such a serious matter as all that, one gringo killing another in Latin America, and when the dead one needed killing to boot. Down here too you could always plead that you had acted from motives of honor. I could say that the
cabrón
had insulted me. But sorting out the mess would be a long and expensive business, and I wanted to be many miles away in another country when the military police came, if they came.

Not far off in the darkness I heard two more booming shots, the
golpes de gracia.
Ramos came back and ran around in mad circles, eager for more of this sport. Then here was Refugio shouting in my face. “You can't stop in the middle of a bloody
fregado
like this! You have to finish it off!”

“All right! It's done now!”

“You have to finish it! Ramos knows that much! In the name of God! What's wrong with you!”

“You're right. But we're wasting time! Let's go!”

“You can't just stop in the middle of a stinking business like this!”

“I said all right! Can't you hear! But now we're done!”

“So now you say it! Now you say we're done!”

“Yes, I say we're done! Does that suit you!
Término!
”

We were yelling at each other face to face, and I was never one to do that much, even when provoked.

THE MEXICAN boy was so weak from hunger that he could barely walk. Refugio carried him down the hill on his back. Not a single light burned in Yorito. The rain came back in a soft drizzle, and I had the devil of a time rousting out two boatmen from their dry hammocks. I had to pay through the nose for this rainy night emergency service. It was no time for haggling. We would need two
cayucas
to carry this growing flock of mine downstream to the railroad bridge near Tenosique. There we could flag a train to Mérida.