The Mexican Tree Duck

  “Believe me, it’s not,” Jimmy said, then shook his head. “Fuck, it’s the only place I ever felt at home except the bush,” he added sadly.

  “Let’s try it,” I suggested, then caught the tip and followed Barnstone.

  “I got the tip,” I said at the front.

  “Thanks.”

  “An old friend said to tell you hello,” I said.

  “Who might that be?”

  Standing next to Barnstone, his form black against the light, I realized how much he loomed over me.

  “Abnormal Norman,” I said quietly.

  “Holy Jesus,” Barnstone said, “is Mr. Hazelbrook alive?” Then he smiled, radiant as the sun. “I nearly killed him myself one Sunday afternoon. I had the shovel raised that would have sent him into a desert grave but I couldn’t plunge it into his neck.”

  “He thinks quite highly of you,” I said. “Says you should be either god or President.”

  Barnstone laughed and the whole room rumbled. “That was just his first mistake,” he said.

  “What was his second?”

  “I don’t exactly remember, my friend, but in those days it was very nearly worth his life,” he said, then paused to chuckle. “How is Norman these days?”

  “Almost respectable,” I said, “looking at getting married.”

  “Then I suppose I should be glad I didn’t take the fuck’s head off,” Barnstone said seriously. “I spent too much time around the killing, my friend, in the Delta, then in the drug business. Back in those days I guess I thought, ‘What fucking difference can one more make?’ But now I know the difference.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a buddy back home,” I said. “He did two tours and an extra eighteen months.”

  “Somebody should pray for him,” he said as Jimmy and Frank joined us, then we took the ambulance home.

  Although the three of us swore we’d never sleep again, the rumbling of the swamp coolers and the pecan grove silence of the Upper Valley morning had us sleeping like tired children within moments, sleeping once again without the dreams.

  I woke first, changed into running shorts and shoes, then jogged slowly up the levee and walked back alongside the sluggish brown of the tamed river. On the other side of the border they called it the Río Bravo del Norte, and somebody once told me that down at Ojinaga the Río Conchos dumped clear cold water into the muddy river, but I had never been there and didn’t know if I should believe it. But suddenly I wanted to see it, all of it, West Texas, Mexico, and points south, I wanted to see where my Mexican Tree Duck belonged. I wanted to go home someplace I had never been before.

  When I got back to Hacienda Barnstone the sun hovered just over the rim of the valley, and my chest prickled with late fall desert air. Frank and Jimmy sat across a picnic table from Barnstone, who held his white duck in his lap as if it were a large sleepy cat. The horses cribbed noisily at the corral posts, their teeth like chisels, the chickens clucked aimlessly, and beyond the garden the turkey had a bantam rooster cornered in a fuck-or-fight position. Only god, or perhaps Ben Franklin, knew what the turkey had in mind. Nearby, on a rock cairn among the raised beds of the garden, Carney sat in the lotus position as still as a silk flower.

  I showered, changed, then joined the boys at the table. Frank opened a beer, Jimmy passed me a joint, and Barnstone smiled. I hesitated.

  “I think maybe we’re running out of time, boys,” I said.

  “I know a little bit about it,” Barnstone said quietly, “and I suggest a night of R&R. This is not Vietnam. A lot of rich people live in the Upper Valley; a lot of private guards watch over them. Run a scout patrol tomorrow afternoon around rush hour, nobody will notice you. Some people are coming over tonight. Take a moment. Please.”

  Frank took the joint from me, hit it, then talked through the smoke. “I know you’re worried about the woman and the baby, Sughrue, but if we go off half-cocked, we’ll fuck it up.” He handed me the joint.

  “Or half-stoned,” I said, hitting it too, hoping we were right one last time, wondering what kind of people were coming.

  Barnstone’s dentist girlfriend showed up to tend her horses and lay out a couple of lines of pharmaceutic cocaine for his guests. She was a horsy blonde with an overbite and an East Coast accent that could have stripped paint off steel. Then a few college professors and some of their students arrived with a keg. Slumming I thought, until I realized that one of them, a potbellied jester of a history professor, was the guy that shared a Juárez jail cell with Jimmy, and another, a chubby perky redhead who latched on to Gorman’s arm, was more than an old friend. Then some pepper farmers from Hatch showed up with half a dozen goat kids, which Barnstone slaughtered and butchered while Frank and I built a fire of pecan logs in the barbecue pit.

  Three guys passing through on Harleys, on their way from Long Beach to Miami, dropped in to crash. They smelled like biker trash to me, but Barnstone laid his beatific rap on them and made them at home. A lady columnist from Austin, whose work I knew, came by to grab some local color, by which, it became clear, she meant Frank. A pair of homosexual bone surgeons came down from Albuquerque escorting a pair of lesbian dancers, by far the prettiest women at the party, but not the only ones.

  By good dark, Frank and the journalist had settled the barbecue sauce debate and the cabrito simmered and sizzled over a bed of hardwood coals. A pot of beans the size of a sidecar had appeared, dozens of steaming tamales covered the table, and more people rolled into the yard. But if you watched, Barnstone occasionally turned people away, usually groups of young men or a hard-core ex-con or a biker without credentials or the wrong colors.

  It wasn’t a party that a Republican could understand—the marijuana smoke sweet on the air, the occasional cocaine sniffle, cold Mexican beer, good food, great conversation and laughter—but a Parisian deconstructionist scholar might find it about as civilized as America gets. Or at least the one I met, who was visiting at UTEP, maintained. Somewhere along the way, he claimed, Americans had forgotten how to have a good time. In the name of good health, good taste, and political correctness from both sides of the spectrum, we were being taught how to behave. America was becoming a theme park, not as in entertainment, but as in a fascist Disneyland.

  “No facial hair, no false eyelashes, and no fucking fun!” the short Frenchman shouted, then stormed away toward a tequila bottle in the hands of a tough-looking Kiowa-Chicana breed with a single foreboding eyebrow dark as war paint across her face.

  “I hope she doesn’t hurt him,” a woman’s voice said beside me. When I turned, she added, “Barnstone said I should talk to you.”

  “Okay,” I said. Whoever she might be, she had the prettiest pug nose I had ever seen, dusky rose skin, and a thatch of silver-blond hair that gleamed like stainless steel in the firelight.

  “Let’s take a walk,” she said, holding up a joint, “and get to know each other.”

  “You got a deal,” I said, holding out my hand to introduce myself.

  “Dottie Milano,” she said. She was short, almost petite, but she damn near broke my hand when she shook it. “Sorry,” she said, “but I love to bring you big guys to your knees.”

  “Don’t hurt me,” I said, “it’ll be my first time. On my knees, that is.”

  Dottie brayed, then headed for the gate, talking to me over her shoulder. “If it comes to that, Mr. Sughrue, we’ll compare rug burns in the morning.”

  “What the hell do you do for a living,” I asked, “that allows you to behave like this?”

  She stopped at the gate latch, sort of a vision in a white off-the-shoulder blouse, a pale yellow skirt, and a bright red belt with matching high heels.

  “I’m a deputy sheriff up in New Mexico,” she said, then smiled, happy as a pig in shit, as we used to say.

  Dottie was one of those women who aren’t slowed by high heels. I don’t know how they do it. After she fired up the number, I was walking too fast to smoke it.

  “This ain’t a race, is it?” I a
sked. “Because if it is, I’m already whipped.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve just got too much fucking energy. Sorry, didn’t mean to put it that way, didn’t mean to lead you on.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Lead me on. I’m a big boy. I can stand the disappointment.”

  Dottie gave me a shot in the ribs Jimmy would have admired. I nearly swallowed the joint.

  “Sorry,” she said again, then laughed. “Barnstone said you needed a tough broad, said you’d been hanging around fake tough broads.” She took the number out of my fingers, hit it so hard, the fire flared among the shadows of the pecan trees. “He said you needed a strong dose of reality.”

  “You do everything he says?”

  “We trade favors,” she said.

  “Are you really a deputy sheriff?”

  “Wanna see my gun and my badge?”

  “Sure,” I said, nodding, and Dottie lifted her full skirt. The badge case was tucked into one of her stockings and the Ladysmith S&W .38 nestled beside the tight bundle of her crotch. “Jesus,” I whispered.

  “Excite you?” she asked. I guess I nodded. “Me, too,” she said, then clicked down the hardpan road through the dark glade.

  “Wait up,” I stammered. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  She stopped and I bumped into her hard little body. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m undercover.”

  “Not yet,” I said, and she actually laughed.

  “Thanks,” she said, “I haven’t done that in a long time, not like that, out of the gut.” Then she giggled. “Of course, I’m stoned senseless. That’s how stress works sometimes. Sometimes I can’t get stoned on a cola the size of a horse’s tail, and sometimes I start giggling just thinking about it.” Then she paused. “Too much fucking stress in my job,” she said, then sighed.

  “I’ve got a friend who says that,” I said.

  “What’s he? A dealer?”

  “Good guess,” I said. “But what are you really doing here?”

  “Hey, asshole, I’m really undercover,” she said, then laughed again, a husky little chuckle that lifted the hair on the back of my neck. She wasn’t the only one stoned. “Barnstone used to move major weight across the border, and he never got caught. Until I popped him. So he belongs to me.”

  “He’s still moving grass?” I asked, wondering why she was telling me all this.

  “Barnstone hasn’t bought or sold a single joint for eight years,” she said. “He won’t smoke it if he has to pay for it. But he still belongs to me. We’ve been friends for a long time, lots of favors over the years. He says you’re cool, even though your name has been all over the DEA computer for the last week.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “The FBI told me,” she said. “You’d be surprised what kind of women FBI agents have to marry,” Dottie said, smiling. “The dumb bastards will give up their pieces, their snitches, shitty as they are, and their children just for the hint of a promise of an actual blowjob.”

  “So where do I play in all this shit?” I was beginning to feel as if I had been playing out of my league with women lately. “Exactly fucking where?”

  “Don’t get tough with me, cowboy,” she said, turning delicately in the center of the road. “I know you’re not packing, and if you fuck with me, I’ll blow your nuts off.” Then she grabbed her crotch.

  “Promises, promises,” I said. “If I tell you I love you, will you show me your gun again?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “If you do it right.”

  “Dorothy, I love you,” I said.

  “You’re good,” she said. “You’re fucking good, C. W. Sughrue. That’s perfect. We’re going to be friends. Thanks.” Then she lifted her skirt, laughing like mad, then dropped it and kissed me so hard she nearly broke my neck.

  After we stopped nibbling, stroking, and running our hands all over each other, I stepped back, rolling my shoulders and stretching my back, which had been holding her surprising weight all that time.

  “What’s the matter, cowboy? Little tough girls too much for you?”

  “Goddamn, I hope so,” I said. “I’ve been looking for too much all my live-long days.” Dottie just grinned like a small mean animal. “But I have to know where I play in this fucking little game of yours, kiddo,” I said as I twirled her little pistol around my fragrant index finger, then handed it back to her.

  “Where have you been all my life?” she said, tucking her piece away. “Okay, Barnstone has great instincts about people. I’ve never seen him miss. So I’m telling you this because he says you’re absolutely the straight-on decent goods. So don’t fuck me over, okay? Word is, though, that somebody’s about to move a huge shipment of cocaine across the border here—tons. I’ve heard two and I’ve heard ten. And you’re the middleman on the deal.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I said, “but I’ve got a missing woman and a baby out there somewhere.”

  “Barnstone didn’t say anything about that.”

  “I didn’t tell him,” I said. “But I’ll for damn sure tell you something: I don’t give a rat’s ass about your cocaine bust. The best you ever do is ten percent, anyway, and I believe you people lie about that …”

  “You people?”

  “You fucking DEA people,” I clarified for her. “You haven’t survived this long undercover without major DEA connections.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “What do you want to know from me, lady?”

  “So what do you know about the shipment?”

  “Not a fucking thing,” I admitted. “I started off on this thing looking for a friend’s mother so he could invite her to his wedding …”

  When I paused, she said, “What?” As if she didn’t believe me. “Where do this woman and baby come in?”

  “On the fringe, I think.”

  Then she wanted to know: “Who’s your friend?”

  “Sorry,” I said, “I’m working for his lawyer.”

  “And you criticize me for my known associates?” Then she laughed. “Between you, me, and the bedpost, honey.”

  “Nice place,” I said, even though I knew she meant the name, then I took a long breath and sighed. Well, I had to trust somebody eventually. “Swap?” I suggested, and she nodded vigorously. “His name is Norman Hazelbrook, and he claims Mrs. Joe Don Pines is his mother …”

  Dottie shook her head and cursed under her breath, “Jesus, you must be crazy to fuck around even the fringes of an FBI kidnapping,” she said, then leaned against me, her arms wrapped tightly around my chest, her head tucked under my chin. “I think her husband did it,” she murmured, “but like every decent human being in this part of the country, I hate the prick.” She breathed against my chest for a while, long enough so I could feel her warm, moist breath through my shirt. Then she sighed, much as I had shortly before, and said, “What’s the lawyer’s name?”

  “Solomon Rainbolt,” I said, then moved her back to arm’s length so I could see her face.

  “I’ll see what I can come up with,” she said, smiling, cuddling back into my chest, whispering, “and keep in mind, cowboy, that I can lie just as well looking you in the eye.”

  “I prefer to be lied to in this position,” I said. “See what you can find out about Joe Don’s dog boy, last name Jones. They say he committed suicide some years back …”

  “I don’t need the computer for that,” she said. “Eloy Jones. But I need another small favor before I tell you the story.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If we’re still speaking around midnight,” she said, “I’d like to fuck you.”

  “That’s romantic,” I said.

  “For me,” she said. “Truth is, Sughrue, I’d like to fuck you right now.”

  Who was I to argue? The lady had a gun.

  The rest of the R&R evening was just as magical as that moment. The food was wonderful, the conversation marvelous, the stars shining in the desert sky. Even the duck was happy, squatt
ing and coming all over the yard as everybody petted her. And Dottie …

  Well, sometimes stress kills sex like a snake, and sometimes it makes foreplay superfluous. We both had come so quickly and so hard that we were sure we had knocked pecans off the tree we leaned against. Back at the party, we watched each other like hawks when we weren’t holding hands like teenagers, and when we finally went to bed, stoned and greasy with goat meat, it was like making love to an old friend.

  We knew the same things. Not just that tomorrow it would be different, and we hated our inability to change it, but that because this was all we were going to have, we had to actually love each other. It might have seemed like casual sex to some people, but for us, that night, it was the beginning and the end of the world. Of course, most people can’t tell shit from wild honey. That’s one of the things we knew together. We could be dead tomorrow. That’s one of the others.

  Later, when I was finally on my knees, and she was stretched out across the bed, breathing hard, I asked her about the suicide of Wynona Jones’s father.

  She grabbed the back of my head and buried it deeper into her crotch, then moaned, “Just one more, man, and I’ll tell you anything.”

  Well, neither of us believed that, but we silently agreed to do it that way anyway.

  Afterward, she turned the light on, sent me for a bump of cocaine and another cold beer, then let me have it. It wasn’t a bedtime story, but it made me want to sleep on it.

  The next morning, the women were gone and we all suffered from mild hangovers that made us a little edgy and more than a little mean as we helped Barnstone clean up the surprisingly orderly party debris while a huge pot of cowboy coffee came to boil over the barbecue coals. When we finished, Barnstone filled tin cups with coffee and started cooking breakfast in two old iron skillets set on the coals.

  Fresh farm eggs, some still warm with chicken shit, shredded cabrito and tamale hunks crumbled into the mixture along with white onions and jalapeño peppers, in one skillet; refritos loaded with a large handful of chiles pequins in the other. Just as it came off the fire, Carney returned from town with fresh corn tortillas, which we flopped on the crusted grill.