“No. Did you see him after that?”
“I saw him once in a car with some other people.”
“Was it a Ford Torino?”
“No, it was a small foreign car. All beat up. It was some odd little car like a Simca. They were just cruising around the jardín here. I didn’t pay much attention.”
Other people? Foreign car? Dupree was not one to take up with strangers. What was this all about? But Sarge could tell me nothing more, except that the people were “scruffy” and appeared to be Americans. He pointed out the drugstore on the corner where he had sent Dupree for the flea powder. Then he took a ballpoint pen and some glasses from his shirt pocket and I jumped up from the bench in alarm, fearing he was about to diagram something for me, but he was only rearranging his pocket stuff.
I thanked him and went to the drugstore and learned that an American wearing glasses had indeed bought some flea powder in the place. The woman pharmacist could tell me nothing else. I was tired. All this chasing around to prove something that I already knew, that Dupree had been in San Miguel. I couldn’t get beyond that point. What I needed was a new investigative approach, a new plan, and I couldn’t think of one. I looked over the aspirin display.
“¿Dolor?” said the woman, and I said Sí, and pointed to my head. Aspirins were too weak, she said, and she sold me some orange pills wrapped in a piece of brown paper. I took the pills to a café and crushed one on the table and tasted a bit of it. For all I knew, they were dangerous Mexican drugs, but I took a couple of them anyway. They were bitter.
On the way to the bank for a second try I got sidetracked into a small museum. The man who ran the place was standing on the sidewalk and he coaxed me inside. The admission fee was only two pesos. He had some good stuff to show. There were rough chunks of silver ore and clay figurines and two rotting mummies and colonial artifacts and delicate bird skulls and utensils of hammered copper. The man let me handle the silver. I wrote my name in the guest book and I saw that Norma and Dupree had been there. In the space for remarks Dupree had written, “A big gyp. Most boring exhibition in North America.” Norma had written, “I like the opals best. They are very striking.” She had signed herself Norma Midge. She was still using my name. I stood there and looked at her signature, at the little teacup handles on her capital N and capital M.
The book was on a high table like a lectern and behind it, tacked to the wall, was a map of Mexico. I drew closer to admire the map. It dated from around 1880 and it was a fine piece of English cartography. Your newer map is not always your better map! The relief was shown by hachuring, with every tiny line perfectly spaced. The engraver was a master and the printer had done wonders with only two shades of ink, black and brown. It was hand-lettered. I located myself at about 21 degrees north and 101 degrees west. This was as far south as I had ever been, about two degrees below the Tropic of Cancer.
Then after a few minutes it came to me. I knew where Dupree had gone and I should have known all along. He had gone to his father’s farm in Central America. San Miguel was technically within the tropics but at an elevation of over six thousand feet the heat here would not be such as to cause dog suffering. And there was no humidity to speak of. They were on that farm in British Honduras. That monkey had taken my wife to British Honduras and he had planned it all in the Wormington Motel!
I was excited, my dolor suddenly gone, and I wanted to share the good news with someone. ¡Misión cumplida! That is, it was not exactly accomplished, but the rest would be easy. I looked about for a place to gloat and soon hit on a bar called the Cucaracha.
It was a dark square room with a high ceiling. Some padded wooden benches were arranged in a maze-like pattern. They faced this way and that way and they were so close together that it was hard to move about. I drank bourbon until I figured out what it cost and then I switched to gin and tonic, which was much cheaper.
The customers were mostly gringos and they were a curious mix of retired veterans and hippies and alimony dodgers and artists. They were friendly people and I liked the place immediately. We’ve all run off to Mexico—that was the thing that hung in the air, and it made for a kind of sad bonhomie. I was surprised to find myself speaking so freely of my private affairs. The Cucaracha people offered tips on the drive south to British Honduras. I basked in their attention as a figure of international drama. My headache returned and I took some more pills.
One of the hippies turned out to be from Little Rock. I never thought I would be glad to see a hippie but I was glad to see this fellow. He had a hippie sweetheart with him who was wearing white nurse stockings. She was a pretty little thing but I didn’t realize it for a while because her electrified hair was so ugly. It was dark in there too. I asked the hippie what he did and he said he drank a liter of Madero brandy every day and took six Benzedrine tablets. He asked me what I did and I had to say I did nothing much at all. Then we talked about Little Rock, or at least I did. I thought we might have some mutual friends, or if not, we could always talk about the different streets and their names. The hippie wasn’t interested in this. He said, “Little Rock is a pain in the ass,” and his sweetheart said, “North Little Rock too.”
But it didn’t matter, I was having a good time. Everything was funny. An American woman wearing a white tennis hat stuck her head in the doorway and then withdrew it in one second when she saw what kind of place it was. The Cucaracha gang got a good laugh out of this, each one accusing the other of being the frightful person who had scared her away. I talked to a crippled man, a gringo with gray hair, who was being shunned by the other drinkers. He said he had shot down two Nip planes when he was in the Flying Tigers. He now owned a Chiclets factory in Guadalajara. People hated him, he said, because his principles didn’t permit him to lend money, or to buy drinks for anyone but himself. He described for me the first six plays of an important Stanford football game of 1935, or I should say the first six plays from scrimmage, since he didn’t count the kickoff as a play.
There were two Australian girls across the room and the Flying Tiger said they wanted to see me. He told me they had been trying to get my attention for quite a while. I went over at once and sat with them. These girls were slender cuties who were hitchhiking around the world with their shoulder bags. But it was all a hoax, the invitation, and they didn’t want to see me at all. I sat down by another girl, this one a teacher from Chicago, and then I had to get up again because the seat was saved, or so she said. I watched that empty seat for a long time and it wasn’t really saved for anyone. A hippie wearing striped bib overalls came in from the bar and sat beside her. She advised him that the seat was saved but that bird didn’t get up. “You can’t save seats,” he said. What a statement! You can’t save seats! I would never have thought of that in a thousand years!
I forgot about the bank business and I sat there and drank gin and tonic until the quinine in the tonic water made my ears hum. Someone that night told me about having seen Dupree with a fellow wearing a neck brace but I was too drunk to pursue it and the thing went completely out of my mind. I began to babble. I told everybody about my father’s Midgestone business, how the stone veneer was cut with special band saws, and how it was shaped and sanded. I told them about my greatgrandfather building the first greenhouse in Arkansas and how he had developed a hard little peach called the Lydia that was bird-resistant and well suited for shipping, although tasteless. I couldn’t stop talking. I was a raving bore and I knew it too, but I couldn’t stop. It was important to me that they know these things and who would tell them if I didn’t?
They fled my presence, the hippies and vets and cuties alike, and left me sitting alone in the corner. I kept drinking, I refused to leave. They had all turned on me but I wasn’t going to let them run me off. There was a lot of old stuff on the jukebox and I who had never played a jukebox in my life had the waiter take my change after each drink and play “It’s Magic” by Doris Day. She was singing that song, a new one to me, when I first entered the place. I h
ad heard of Doris Day but no one had ever told me what a good singer she was.
Sometime around midnight the hippie couple from Little Rock got into a squabble. I couldn’t hear what he was saying because his voice was low but I heard her say, “My daddy don’t even talk to me like that and you damn sure ain’t!” The little girl was blazing. He put his hand out to touch her or to make some new point and she pushed it away and got up and left, stepping smartly in her white stockings and brushing past an old man who had appeared in the doorway.
He was a fat man, older than the Flying Tiger, and he was looking from left to right like an animal questing for food. He wore a white hat and a white shirt and white trousers and a black bow tie. This old-timer, I said to myself, looks very much like a boxing referee, except for the big floppy hat and the army flashlight clipped to his belt.
He looked around and said, “Where’s the boy who’s going to British Honduras?”
I said nothing.
He raised his voice. “I’m looking for the boy who’s going to British Honduras! Is he here?”
If I had kept my mouth shut for five more seconds, he would have gone his way and I would have gone mine. I said, “Here I am! In the corner! I’m not supposed to talk!” I hadn’t spoken for a long time and my voice croaked and had no authority in it.
“Where?”
“Over here!”
“I can’t see you!”
“In the corner!”
He bumped his way across the room and took off his hat and joined me on the bench. His white pants were too long and even when he was seated there was excess cloth piled up on top of his shoes. “I couldn’t see you over all those heads,” he said.
I was still fuming, a resentful drunk, and I took my anger out on him. “You couldn’t see any normal human being over here from where you were standing. I’m not a giraffe. For your information, sir, a lot of navy pilots are five seven. Why don’t you try calling Audie Murphy a runt? You do and you’ll wake up in St. Vincent’s Infirmary.”
He paid no attention to this rant. “My bus broke down and I need to get back on the road,” he said. “When are you leaving?”
“They won’t let me talk in here.”
“Who won’t?”
“All these juiceheads. You’d think they owned the place. I have just as much right to be here as they do and if they don’t want to hear about the greenhouse they can all kiss my ass! These juiceheads never grew anything in their lives!”
Neither had I for that matter but it wasn’t the same thing. The old man introduced himself as Dr. Reo Symes. He looked to be in bad health. His belt was about eight inches too long, with the end curling out limp from the buckle. There were dark bags under his eyes and he had long meaty ears. One eye was badly inflamed and this was the thing that made me feel I was talking to Mr. Proctor or Mr. Meigs.
He said he was from Louisiana and had been making his way to British Honduras when his school-bus camper broke down. He was the owner of The Dog of the South. He asked if he might ride along with me and share the expenses. Overdoing everything like the disgusting drunk that I was, I told him that he would be more than welcome and that there would be absolutely no charge. His company would be payment enough. He questioned me about my driving skills and I assured him that I was a good driver. He said he was afraid to take a Mexican bus because the drivers here had a reputation for trying to beat out locomotives at grade crossings. He offered me some money in advance and I waved it aside. I told him I would pick him up in the morning.
I had planned on searching the sky that night for the Southern Cross and the Coalsack but when I left the bar it was overcast and drizzling rain. I bought two hot dogs from a man pushing a cart around the square. One block away the town was totally dark. I staggered down the middle of the cobbled street and tried to make it appear that I was sauntering. In the darkened doorways there were people smoking cigarettes and thinking their Mexican thoughts.
A hotel cat, a white one, followed me up the stairs to my room and I gave him one of the hot dogs. I didn’t let him in the room. That would be a misplaced kindness. He would take up with me and then I would have to leave. Just inside the door there was a full-length mirror and the image it gave back was wavy and yellowish. I knew that Norma must have stood before it and adjusted her clothes. What would she be wearing? I liked her best in her winter clothes and I couldn’t remember much about her summer things. What a knockout she was in her white coat and her red knit cap! With Jack Frost nipping her cheeks and her wavy nose!
Four
RAIN WAS STILL FALLING when I got up in the morning. After I had paid the hotel bill, I had seven or eight dollars and around sixty pesos left. There was a terrible metallic clatter when I tried to start the car. A bad water pump or a bad universal joint will give you notice before it goes but this was some sudden and major failure, or so I thought. A broken connecting rod or a broken timing chain. Strength of materials! Well, I said to myself, the little Buick is done.
I got out and opened the hood. There was the white cat, decapitated by the fan blades. I couldn’t believe it. He had crawled up into the engine compartment of this car, not another car, and there was my bloody handiwork. I couldn’t handle anything. I couldn’t even manage the minor decencies of life. I could hardly get my breath and I walked around and around the car.
A boy with some schoolbooks stopped to watch me and I gave him ten pesos to remove the carcass. I tried to get a grip on myself. Idleness and solitude led to these dramatics: an ordinary turd indulging himself as the chief of sinners. I drove down to the square and waited for the bank to open. My hands were shaking. I had read somewhere that white cats were very often deaf, like Dalmatian dogs. I had dry mouth and tunnel vision.
The bank manager said he could not cash the bonds but he could accept them as a deposit if I wished to open a checking account. They should clear in about a month. A month! Why had I not cashed them all in the States? What a piddler! Norma would have enjoyed this and I couldn’t have blamed her for it. I was always impatient with this kind of childish improvidence in other people.
The Siesta trailer park was now a field of mud. Dr. Symes was having coffee in his white Ford bus. The passenger seats had been removed from the thing and replaced by a clutter of household furnishings that had not been anchored or scaled down or customized in any way. There was a dirty mattress on the floor and a jumble of boxes and chairs and tables. It was an old man’s mess on top of a hippie mess. I accepted a roll and passed up the coffee. I loved those Mexican rolls but I didn’t like the looks of the doctor’s cup and I’ve never cared for instant coffee because it has no smell.
I was frank with him. I explained the bonds problem and I showed him exactly how much money I had. It was a bad moment. I was already embarrassed by my behavior in the bar and now, after all the expansive talk of a free ride, I was making myself look like a cheap liar. I made him a proposition. I would drive him to British Honduras if he would pay for the gasoline and other expenses. When we reached Belize, I would wire home for money and repay him half of his outlay. In the meantime I would give him five of my savings bonds to hold.
He was suspicious and I could understand that, although the deal seemed fair enough to me. The bonds were not negotiable, he said, and they were of no use to him. I pointed out that they did have a certain hostage value. It would be in my interest to redeem them. He looked at me and he looked outside at the car. It sat funny because the tires were of different sizes. He said, “All right then, let’s go,” and he flung his coffee through a window.
There was a staple-and-hasp affair on the bus door and he locked it with a brass padlock. He brought along his grip and a gallon of drinking water in a plastic jug and a sack of marshmallows. We left The Dog of the South parked there in the mud.
He was wary. He had little to say. He tried the radio, longer than I would have, and then gave it up. He said, “If a man wanted to get the news in this car, he would be out of luck, wouldn’t he?”
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“This is not my car. Everything works in my car.”
The skies were clearing and the morning sun was blinding. He reached up for the right-hand sun visor that had never been there. His hand fell away and he grunted.
“It runs okay,” I said.
“What’s all that vibration?”
“The motor mounts are shot.”
“The what?”
“The motor mounts. They look like black jelly down there. A V-6 shakes a lot anyway. It’ll be all right after we get up some speed.”
“Do you think it’ll make it?”
“Yes, I do. It’s a good car.” I had said that just to be saying something but I thought it over and decided it was true.
“I hope a wheel doesn’t fly off this thing,” he said.
“I do too.”
He worried a lot about that, a wheel flying off, and I gathered it had happened to him once and made an impression on him.
When we reached Celaya, which was only thirty miles or so from San Miguel, I left the highway and went downtown. I drove slowly up one street and down another. I thought I might see some shell-pocked buildings or at least a statue or a plaque of some kind.
Dr. Symes said, “What are you doing now?”
“This is Celaya.”
“What about it?”
“There was a big battle here in 1915.”
“I never heard of this place.”
“I figure it was the third bloodiest battle ever fought in this hemisphere.”
“So what?”
“Some sources say the fourth bloodiest. Obregón lost his arm here. Pancho Villa’s army was routed. Do you know what he said?”
“No.”
“He said, ‘I would rather have been beaten by a Chinaman than by that perfumado, Obregón.’”
“Who were they fighting?”
“It was a civil war. They were fighting each other.”
“I never heard of it.”