Valdez Is Coming: A Novel

  As they crossed the grazing land Valdez recognized the church, the roofless shell that had never been repaired. It stood at the end of the single street of adobes where the street widened into a square and there was a well with a pump and a stone trough for watering the horses. Beyond the cluster of buildings was a stand of cottonwood trees and a stream that came down out of the high country to the east. Valdez saw the women in the trees, some of them walking this way carrying baskets of clothes. Then he was entering the street, the Mexican next to him now, with the dogs barking and the smell of wood fires, seeing the freight wagons along the adobe fronts and more horses than would ever be in a village this size. It was a village preparing to make war. It was a military camp, the base of a revolutionary army. Or the base of a heavily armed scouting force that would stay here until they were driven out. But at the same time it was not a village. Yes, there were people. There were women among the armed men, women in front of the adobes and a group of them at the well with gourds and wooden pails. But there were no children; no sound of children nor a sign of children anywhere.

  “He’s there waiting for you,” the Mexican said.

  Valdez was looking at the church. A gate of mesquite poles had been built across the arched opening of the doorway, and there were horses penned inside the enclosure. He felt the Mexican close to him, moving him to the east side of the square, to the two-story adobe with the loading platform across the front, the building that had been the village’s general store and mill and grain warehouse.

  Frank Tanner stood at the edge of the loading platform looking down at a group of riders, standing over them with his hands on his hips. A woman was behind him near the open doorway, not a Mexican woman, a blond-haired woman, golden hair in the sunlight hanging below her shoulders to the front of her white dress. Valdez looked at the woman until they were close to the platform and the riders sidestepped their horses to let the Mexican in, Valdez holding back now; and as they moved in among the riders he saw that one of them was the segundo. He saw R. L. Davis, then, mounted on a sorrel next to the segundo. He didn’t look at Davis, who was watching him, but up at Tanner now, the man so close above him that he had to bend his head back, feeling awkward and unprotected and foolish with the woman watching him, to look at Tanner.

  Tanner stared down at Valdez as if this would be enough, no words necessary. Valdez did not want to smile because he knew he would feel foolish, but he eased his expression to show he was sincere and had come here as an honest man with nothing to hide.

  He said, “I’d like to talk to you once more.”

  “You’ve talked,” Tanner said. “You get one time and you’ve had yours.”

  Maybe he was joking, so Valdez smiled a little bit now, though he didn’t want to smile with the woman watching him. “I know you’re a busy man,” he said, “but you must be a fair man also, uh? I mean you have all these people working for you. You recognize the worth of things and pay a just wage. A man like that would also see when someone is owed something.”

  Goddam, it didn’t sound right, hearing himself speaking with his goddam neck bent back and Tanner looking down at him like God in black boots and a black hat over his eyes.

  “I mean if the woman was to go to the courthouse and say some men have killed my husband, by mistake, as an accident. So I think somebody should pay me for that—don’t you think the court would say sure and order that we pay her something?”

  “Jesus Christ,” R. L. Davis said. Valdez did not look at him, but he knew it was Davis. He saw Tanner’s eyes shift to the side, slide over and back to him again.

  “I’m talking about what’s fair,” Valdez said. “I’m not trying to cheat anybody—if you think I want to take the money and run off. No, you can give it to the woman yourself. I mean have one of your men do it. I don’t care who gives it to her.”

  Tanner continued to stare at him until finally he said, “You don’t learn. I guess I have to keep teaching you.”

  “Tell me why you don’t think she should have something,” Valdez said. “You explain it to me, I understand it.”

  “No, I think there’s only one thing you’ll understand.” Tanner’s gaze went to his segundo. “You remember that one tried to run off with the horses?”

  Valdez lowered his head to look at the segundo, who was nodding, picturing something. “The one who liked to walk,” the segundo said.

  Valdez heard Tanner say, “That one,” and the segundo continued to nod his head, then raised it and gazed about the square.

  “We can use the poles from the gate,” the segundo said, looking toward the church, “and have some more cut.”

  Tanner was saying, “All right,” and the segundo was looking at Valdez now. He nodded once.

  Valdez felt the hand at his shoulder, fingers clawing into his neck as the hand clutched his bandana, and his own hands went to the horn of his saddle. He felt the Mexican’s horse tight against his left leg, then moving away and the Mexican pulling him, choking him, until his hands slipped from the saddle horn and he was dragged from his horse, stumbling but not able to fall, held up by the Mexican’s fist twisted in the tight fold of his neckerchief. They were around him and someone hit him in the face with a fist. It didn’t hurt him, but it startled him; he was struck again on the back of the neck, then in the stomach, seeing the man close to him swing his fist and not being able to turn away from it. He went down and was kicked in the back, pushed over and pressed flat to the hard-packed ground. His hat was off now. A foot came down on his neck, pinning him, face turned to the side against the ground. Now they pulled his arms straight out to the sides and he felt a sharp pain through his shoulder blades as he was held in this position. Several minutes passed and he rested, breathing slowly to relax and not be tensed if they hit him again. Boots were close to his face. The boots moved and dust rose into his nostrils, but no one kicked him.

  They placed a mesquite pole across his shoulders that extended almost a foot on either side beyond his outstretched hands and tied it with leather thongs to his wrists and neck. They placed another pole down the length of his back, from above his head to his heels, and lashed this one to the crosspole and also around his neck and body. When this was done the segundo told him all right, stand up.

  Valdez could not press his hands to the ground. He raised his head, turning it, and pushed his forehead against the hardpack, arching against the pole down his spine, straining the muscles of his neck, and gradually, kicking and scraping the ground, worked his knees up under him.

  “The other one didn’t get up so quick,” the segundo said.

  Valdez was on his knees raising his body, and he was kicked hard from behind and slammed onto his face again.

  “This one don’t get up either,” the Mexican said.

  Valdez heard Tanner’s voice say, “Get him out of here,” and this time they let him work his way to his knees and stand up. But as he straightened, the bottom of the vertical pole struck the ground and held him in a hunched position, a man with a weight on his back, his eyes on the ground, unable to raise his head. Someone put his hat on his head, too low and tight on his forehead.

  “That way,” the segundo said, nodding across the square. “The way you came.”

  “My horse,” Valdez said.

  “Don’t worry about the horse,” the segundo said. “We take care of.”

  There was nothing more to say. Valdez turned and started off, hunched over, raising his eyes and able to see perhaps twenty feet in front of him, but not able to hold his gaze in this strained position.

  The segundo called after him. “Hey, don’t fall on your back. You’ll be like a turtle.” He laughed, and some of the others laughed with him.

  Frank Tanner watched the stooped figure circle the water pump and move down the street past the women who had come out of the adobes to look at him.

  “You fixed him,” R. L. Davis said.

  Tanner’s eyes shifted to Davis, sliding on him and away from him, as he had lo
oked at him before. “I don’t remember asking you here,” Tanner said.

  “Listen,” R. L. Davis began to say.

  Tanner stopped him. “Watch your mouth, boy. I don’t listen to you. I don’t listen to anybody I don’t want to listen to.”

  R. L. Davis squinted up at him. “I didn’t mean it that way. I come here to work for you.”

  Tanner’s gaze dropped slowly from the bent figure down the street to Davis. “Why do you think I’d hire you?”

  “You need a gun, I’m your man.”

  “I didn’t see you hit anything the other day.”

  “Jesus Christ, I wasn’t aiming at her. You said yourself just make her jump some.”

  “Are you telling me what I said?”

  “I thought that’s what it was.”

  “Don’t think,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”

  “Hell, you can always use another man, can’t you?”

  “Maybe a man,” Tanner said. “Ride out.”

  “Try me out. Put me on for a month.”

  “We’ll put some poles on your back,” Tanner said, “if you want to stay here.”

  “I was just asking,” R. L. Davis lifted his reins and flicked them against the neck of his sorrel, bringing the animal around and guiding it through the group of riders, trying to take his time.

  Tanner watched Davis until he was beyond the pump and heading down the street. The small stooped figure was now at the far end of the adobes.

  The woman, Gay Erin, who had been married to the sutler at Fort Huachuca and had been living with Frank Tanner since her husband’s death, waited for Tanner to turn and notice her in the doorway behind him. But he didn’t turn; he stood on the edge of the platform over his men.

  She said, “Frank?” and waited again.

  Now he looked around and came over to her, taking his time. “I didn’t know you were there,” he said.

  She kept her eyes on him, waiting for him to come close. “I don’t understand you,” she said.

  “I don’t need that boy. Why should I hire him?”

  “The other one. He asks you a simple thing, to help someone.”

  “We won’t talk about it out here,” Tanner said. They went into the dimness of the warehouse, past sacks of grain and stacked wooden cases, Tanner holding her arm and guiding her to the stairway. “I let you talk to me the way you want,” Tanner said, “but not in front of my men.”

  Upstairs, in the office that had been made into a sitting room, Gay Erin looked out the window. She could see R. L. Davis at the end of the street; the hunched figure of Bob Valdez was no longer in sight.

  “You better keep up here from now on,” Tanner said, “unless I call you down.”

  She turned from the window. “And how long is that?”

  “I guess as long as I want.” Tanner went into the bedroom. He came out wearing his coat, strapping on a gunbelt. “I’m going to Nogales; I’ll be back in the morning.” He looked down at his belt, buckling it. “You can come if you want a twenty-mile ride.”

  “Or sit here,” the girl said.

  He looked up at her. “What else?”

  “If you say sit I’m supposed to sit.” Her expression and the sound of her voice were mild, but her eyes held his and hung on. “No one can be that sure,” she said. “Not even you.”

  “Well, you’re not going to leave,” Tanner said. He moved toward her, settling the gunbelt on his hips. “You don’t have anything at Huachuca. You don’t have anything left at Prescott. Whatever you have is here.”

  “Whatever I have,” the girl said, “as your woman.”

  “Aren’t I nice enough to you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Take what you get.”

  “Sometimes you act like a human being.”

  “When I’m in my drawers,” Tanner said. “When I’m in my boots that’s a different time.”

  “You had them on outside.”

  “You bet I did, lady.”

  “He was trying to help a woman who’d lost her husband; that’s all he was doing.”

  “And I’m helping one already,” Tanner said. “One poor widow woman’s enough.” He was close to her, looking into her face, and he touched her cheek gently with his hand. He said, “I guess I could stay a few more minutes if you like.”

  “Frank, send someone to cut him loose.”

  Tanner shook his head, tired of it. “Lady, you sure can break the spell…” He moved away from her toward the door, then looked back as he opened it. “Nobody cuts him loose. I don’t want to see that man again.”

  You’ve looked at the ground all your life, Valdez thought at one point. But never this close for so long.

  The pain reached from the back of his neck down into his shoulders. He would try to arch his back, and the pole, with a knot in it, would press against his head and push his hat forward. The hat was low and stuck to his forehead and sweat stung his eyes. He told himself, The hell with it; don’t think about it. Go home. You’ve walked home before.

  God, but he had never walked home like this. The ground across the grazing land was humped and spotted with brush, but he had little trouble with his footing. No, God, he could see where he was going all right. He could hear Tanner’s cattle and he thought once, What if some bull with swords on his head sees you and doesn’t like you? God, he said to himself, give that bull good grass to eat or a nice cow to do something with.

  A mile across the grazing land and then up into the foothills, following a gully and angling out of it, climbing the side of a brush slope, not finding the trail and taking a longer way to the top, trying to look up to see where he was going with the pole pressed against his head. He couldn’t go straight up. He couldn’t lose his footing and fall backward on the crossed poles. He remembered what the segundo had said about the turtle, and at that time he had pictured himself lying on his back in the sun of midday and through the afternoon. No, he would take longer and he wouldn’t fall. It was the pain in his legs that bothered him now; it turned his thighs into cords and pulled so, as he neared the top, that his legs began to tremble.

  They’re old legs, he said to himself. Be good to them. They have to walk twenty miles. Or over to Diego Luz, he thought then. Ten miles. Twenty miles, ten miles, what was the difference?

  He wished he could wipe the sweat and dust from his face. He wished he could loosen his hat and rub his nose and bring his arms down and straighten up just for a minute.

  Before he reached the crest of the slope he crouched forward and gradually lowered himself to his knees, bending over and twisting his body as he fell forward so that a tip of the crosspole touched the slope first; but this did little to break his fall, and with his head turned, his cheekbone struck the ground with the force of a heavy, solid blow. It stunned him and he lay breathing with his mouth open. His hat, tight to his forehead, had remained on; good. Now he rested for perhaps a quarter of an hour, until the pain through his shoulder blades became unbearable. Valdez got to his feet and continued on.

  R. L. Davis waited for him in the trees, across the meadow on the far side of the slope. He had watched Valdez work up through the ravine and down the switchback trail on this side. He had waited because maybe Tanner’s men were also watching—the lookouts up on the slope—and he had waited because he wasn’t sure what they’d do. He thought they might come out and push Valdez down the trail, have some fun with him; but no one appeared, and Valdez had come all the way down to the meadow now and was coming across, hurrying some as he saw the shade of the trees waiting for him.

  R. L. Davis moved his sorrel into heavy foliage. There wasn’t any hurry: watch him a while and then play with him.

  Goddam, now what was he doing, kicking at the leaves? Clearing a spot, R. L. Davis decided. He could hear Valdez in the silence, the sound of the leaves scuffing, and could see him through the pale birch trunks, the bent-over hunched-back figure in the thin shafts of sunlight. He watched Valdez go to his knees; he winced and then smiled as
Valdez fell forward on the side of his face. That was pretty good. But as Valdez lay there not moving, R. L. Davis became restless and started to fidget and tried to think of something. You could trample him some, he thought. Ride over him a few times. He decided maybe that was the thing to do and raised his reins to flick the sorrel.

  But now the man was stirring, arching onto his head and getting his knees under him.

  Valdez rose and stood there, trying to turn his head to look about him. He moved forward slowly, shuffling in the leaves. He turned sideways to edge between trees that grew close together. Farther on he stopped and placed one end of the crosspole against a birch trunk and waved the other end of the pole toward a tree several feet from him but the pole was too short. R. L. Davis watched him move on, touching a trunk and trying to reach another with the crosspole until finally there it was, and R. L. Davis saw what he was trying to do.

  Valdez stood between two trees that were a little less than six feet apart. Now, with the ends of the crosspole planted against the trunks, holding him there, he tried to move forward, straining, digging in with his boots and slipping in the leaves. He bent his wrists so that his hands hung down and were out of the way. Now he moved back several steps and ran between the two trees. The ends of the crosspole struck the trunks and stopped him dead. He strained against the pole, stepping back and slamming the pole ends against the trunks again and again. Finally he moved back eight or ten feet and again ran at the space between the trees and this time as the ends struck, R. L. Davis heard a gasp of breath in the silence.

  He moved the sorrel out of the foliage. Valdez must hear him, but the man didn’t move; he hung there on the crosspole leaning against the trunks, his arms seeming lower than they were before.

  R. L. Davis saw why as he got closer. Sure enough, the pole had splintered. And it looked like a sharp end had pierced his back. R. L. Davis sat in his saddle looking down at the blood spreading over Valdez’s back. He reined the sorrel around the near birch tree and came up in front of him.