The Wild Girl (15 page)

Mayor Cargill and his committee members and their wives had also come out to the camp for the evening festivities and were joined there by the mayor of Agua Prieta, Presidente Rogerio Loreto, and the governor of the state of Sonora himself, Fausto Topete. I was stunned to see Wade Jackson descend from one of the late-arriving buses toting a duffel bag, in addition to his camera gear.

“What in the world are you doing here, Big Wade?” I asked him.

“You’re not going to believe it, kid,” he said disgustedly. “But I’m bunking with you. Turns out my asshole editor is making me go on the expedition, after all. Says we need two photographers to cover it in case something happens to one of us . . . yeah, like, for instance, I drop dead of a
fucking
heart attack . . .”

Magdalena was one of the girls from the cantinas who had been driven out for the evening, and I spotted her now standing by one of the tents, talking with Chief Gatlin. With all the preparations for departure, I had barely been able to see her this past week and had not even said good-bye. I went over to her.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again, Magdalena,” I said to her.

She kept her eyes downcast and looked as if she’d been crying.

“Are you okay?”

“She’s fine,” Gatlin said impatiently. “What can I do for you, boy? The young lady and I are discussing business.”

“What kind of business?” I asked.

“The kind that’s none of yours.”

“They are taking some of us along to Bavispe, Ned,” Magdalena said to me. “It is the town where my family lives. I do not wish to go.”

“Why are you bringing the girls?” I asked the chief.

Gatlin smiled a thin, ugly smile. “Because it is among my duties as director of personnel to see to the entertainment of our distinguished volunteers.”

It came out of my mouth before I could stop myself: “Doesn’t that make you a pimp, Chief?”

Before I even saw it coming, Gatlin had clamped his hand around my throat. He put his face up inches from mine so that I could smell his breath. “Who do you think you are, you little pissant?” he said, spitting his words at me. “Do you think you’re a tough guy?”

I do not think I’m a tough guy, but I was unable to answer because Gatlin was squeezing my throat so hard that I couldn’t speak.

“Well, do you?” Gatlin asked.

I managed to shake my head.

“That’s right,” Gatlin said. “You’re not tough at all. You’re just a smart-aleck city boy. And if you ever speak to me that way again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“I don’t want you bothering this girl again,” Gatlin said. “We’re not in the cantina now. We’re in the field. And you are here at the pleasure of the Great Apache Expedition; you are here at
my
pleasure. There will be no more mooning around like a lovesick puppy dog. Do you understand what I’m telling you, boy?”

Margaret Hawkins walked up then. “What’s going on here?” she demanded.

“Just teaching young Mr. Giles some field protocol, Margaret,” Chief Gatlin said. “That’s all.”

“Let go of him, Leslie,” Margaret said. “You’re hurting him. He’s just a kid.”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s exactly what I was explaining to the boy myself,” said the chief, releasing his grip. “There we are, son. The lady comes to your rescue. But I think we understand each other now, don’t we?”

I rubbed my throat.

Gatlin tipped his hat to Margaret. “Always a pleasure to see you, Margaret,” he said. “Right now I’m just getting the staff settled, but I’d love to take a turn with you on the dance floor later.” He took Magdalena by the arm and led her off.

“Are you all right, Ned?” Margaret asked.

“I’m okay.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I called him a pimp.”

“I don’t think Chief Gatlin is a man you want for an enemy,” Margaret said.

“It’s a bit late for that, Mag,” I said. “And besides, he is a pimp. That girl is not here of her own free will. She never chose this life. And now he’s making her come with us. To service his volunteers. It’s slavery.”

“Okay, Neddy,” Margaret said. “I’ll speak to him myself about it.”

“I didn’t realize you two were on a first-name basis.”

Just then one of the waiters walked past, half carrying, half dragging the boy Jesus by the scruff of his neck. “Señor Ned!” he called out, struggling to escape the waiter’s clutches. “I have been looking for you!”

The waiter stopped and spoke rapidly to me in Spanish while pointing and gesturing at the boy.

“The part I understood,” I said to Jesus, “is that you’re a thief and the son of a whore. Is that true?”

The boy shrugged. “I do not know my mother.”

“What did you steal?”

“The Americans do not miss a few quarters from their pockets,” the boy said. “Please tell him I come with you, Señor Ned.”

“You’re not coming with me.”

“Yes, I am coming,” Jesus insisted. “I am working for you. I am carrying your camera, I am teaching you to speak Spanish. I am very helpful. Please.”

“Esta bien,”
I said to the waiter in my rudimentary Spanish.
“Usted puede dejar al chico.”
Grudgingly the waiter released Jesus, but not without first cuffing the boy sharply on the back of the head. The boy hollered.

“Si yo le agarro robando otra vez, yo cortaré la mano,”
said the waiter, making a little chopping gesture with one hand on the wrist of the other.

I cuffed the boy on the back of the head myself, which made Jesus holler again, but which seemed to placate the waiter somewhat. “I’ll cut his hand off myself if I catch him stealing,” I said.

“If I work for you, Señor Ned, I will not have to steal,” Jesus said, rubbing his head.

“You’ll have to talk to Big Wade about that, kid,” I said. “I don’t have the authority to hire you and I’m not exactly on the best of terms with the director of personnel.”

Now I lie in my cot in the canvas wall tent I’m sharing with Wade Jackson, who passed out earlier and is snoring like thunder. The boy, Jesus, is wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the tent, sound asleep himself. It’s well past midnight, but I’m all keyed up. I don’t see how anyone could sleep through all this racket, anyway. Not only Big Wade’s snoring, but a number of the men are still up drinking and dancing. A few minutes ago it sounded like a fight broke out, with shouting and cursing in both Spanish and English. Shots have been fired . . .

A moment after I made that last entry, the flap to our tent opened and someone slipped in.

“Who’s there?” I asked.

“It’s just me, Neddy, Margaret.”

“What are you doing here, Mag?”

“I got spooked,” she said. “Did you hear the gunshots? Can I stay here with you?” Not waiting for an answer, Margaret climbed into my cot. She was fully clothed.

“Don’t get any ideas, little brother,” she whispered. “I’m just feeling a little vulnerable. It was you or Tolley, and I thought you might offer me a bit more protection.”

“Gee, thanks, Mag,” I said. “I’m flattered.”

“Plus you never know who might already
be
in Tolley’s bed,” Margaret added.

“I guess you could have tried Chief Gatlin’s,” I said. “I saw you dancing with him tonight.”

“From the sounds of things, I imagine the chief is busy with law enforcement duties tonight,” Margaret said.

“Oh, so were it not for that, you would have gone to his tent?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it,” I said. “Jesus, I really can’t believe you like that asshole, Mag.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, really I am,” she said. “I have terrible taste in men. That’s why I try to stay away from them.”

“What happened to you, Mag?” I asked. “Some man must have treated you really badly.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that, Neddy,” Margaret said. “But I don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Okay.”

So we lay quiet for a while. I could feel the soft weight of Margaret’s breast grazing my arm, her heart beating, the warmth of her body next to mine. I could feel myself becoming aroused.

“It’s a little tight in here, isn’t it?” I said, trying to shift my body and accidentally brushing up against her.

She obviously felt me because she said: “Maybe I’d be safer in Tolley’s bed, after all. Don’t disappoint me, Neddy. I need you to be my friend.”

“I’m sorry, Mag,” I said. “I am your friend. I didn’t do it on purpose. I’m only human.”

She laughed. “You’re a darling boy. If I was five,
ummm,
maybe ten years younger, I’d fall in love with you. Then you could break my heart.”

“I’d never do that, Mag.”

And so we lay still. I tried to think about other things, concentrating on the drunken brawl outside. There was more shouting and scuffling, and finally we heard Colonel Carrillo’s troops being called out to quell the disturbance. “God, they’re all going to kill each other before we even get started,” Margaret said. “I’m glad your roommates are such sound sleepers. I don’t know what’s worse, the noise out there, or Big Wade’s snoring.”

It was at least an hour before the camp settled down. I felt the tenseness gradually leave Margaret’s body as she relaxed against me, her breathing becoming slow and even as she drifted off to sleep. I couldn’t sleep myself, and so I lit the candle and rolled over on my side to make these entries.

1 MAY, 1932

On the Sonoran Road

Ignoring Chief Gatlin’s warning, I went early this morning to the tent in which the prostitutes are housed to check on Magdalena. There the other girls told me that rather than face the disgrace of returning to her village with the expedition, she had run away in the night. They had no idea where she had gone. Perhaps she had made her way back to town. Or had she just wandered off into the plains? After I discovered that she was missing, I went to see Gatlin, to find out if he had sent out a search party for her.

He chuckled and shook his head. “She’s just a whore, boy,” he said. “Not worth bothering about. I was getting a little tired of her bellyaching anyway.”

“She didn’t ask to be a whore,” I said.

“She was lucky to have the work,” Gatlin said. “Why, she probably walked back to town and set up shop somewhere on a street corner.”

“Yeah, Chief,” I said, “she was a real lucky girl.”

“I guess you could go look for her yourself, son, if she’s so important to you,” he said. He looked out across the plains. “’Course it’s mighty big country out there, and in case you didn’t get back before we left, you’d miss out on the expedition altogether.”

And so I hurried back to our tent and got Jesus, who, ever resourceful, talked one of the drivers from town who had spent the night at the camp into giving us a ride to Agua Prieta. There was clearly no sense in searching the plains for Magdalena, and I could only hope that she had had the sense to walk back to town, although even there, I had no idea where I would look for her. She could certainly not return to the cantina.

“You have any suggestions where she might be, kid?” I asked Jesus, after the driver dropped us off.

“If she came back to town,” he said, “there is only one place that she could go.”

Jesus crossed himself as we entered the church on one end of the town plaza. We stood in the back examining the few people who sat in the pews.

“I think she is there,” Jesus said, pointing to a figure huddled at the end of a pew near the front of the church.

I approached the figure, whose head was shrouded with a shawl, and not until I had slipped into the pew beside her, and looked directly into her face, did I see that the boy had been right; it was Magdalena. She looked frightened to see me.

“What are you doing here, Ned?” she asked, and I thought for a moment that she was going to bolt.

“I came looking for you,” I answered. “What are you doing here, Magdalena?”

“Are you going to make me go back?” she asked.

“No, of course I’m not,” I said. “Not if you don’t want to.”

“I cannot go home, Ned.”

“I understand,” I said. “But what are you going to do now?”

“I do not know,” she said. “I will wait for the expedition to leave here, and then perhaps I will return to the cantina. And if they will not take me back, I will go to another.”

“Maybe you could find some other kind of work, Magdalena,” I suggested.

“What kind of work, Ned?” she asked.

“I don’t know . . . anything . . . anything at all.” I dug in my back pocket, pulled out my billfold, and removed some bills. “Here, use this money until you get on your feet. I’ll come back when this is all over and find you.”

She accepted the bills, and I noticed that she held rosary beads in her hands. She smiled gratefully. “Thank you,” she said. “You have been very kind to me, Ned.”

“I have to go back now,” I said. “I just wanted to see if you were safe.”