by George Wier
As I was escorted back to my plane, it dawned on me. During my trip down, I had tested him. I had forejudged him; had weighed him with judgmental eyes. I suspected he had merely been evening the score. Had I thrown up my hands and given in and attempted the bribe, why, who knows what could have happened. But then again, that’s the nature of might-have-beens. They merely...aren’t.
*****
Even though the weather had broken hundreds of miles before and the skies were clear with a vast spread of bright stars above me and the blackness below me studded with distant points of light, I never caught a glimpse of the Rio Grande River. What are borders, anyway? They’re imaginary lines on pieces of paper. As the Indian is purported to have said, the eagle sees no border, he sees only the land. Some things, those people had right on.
There was a glow on the eastern horizon as I turned for my final approach at the San Marcos Municipal Airport. I could make out the wind sock, but it was no matter. It didn’t seem like there was so much as the whisper of a breeze below my ailerons, my flaps, and the rear elevator. I came in on the numbers, coasted over to my hangar, and switched off.
I got out, knelt down onto the tarmac, and kissed it.
EPILOGUE
I was in my study when the front doorbell rang. It was a Saturday, and we weren’t expecting company. I got up, walked to the front window and looked down. There was one of those big King Ranch pickup trucks out front, and behind it was a horse trailer.
“Hot damn,” I said to myself. “I think that’s...Crap. Julie is going to kill me if it is.”
I bolted for the door and the stairs beyond. I took them three at a time going down.
Downstairs, Julie had the baby in her arms. She had just gotten up to answer the door.
“I’ll get it!” I said.
“Hmph. I think I’d better go with you.”
She turned to the door.
I reached for her shoulder and brought her up short.
“Before you do,” I said, “do you remember me telling you about my trip to Mexico?”
“You didn’t tell me a whole lot about it, but yes.”
She studied me, and her eyebrows slowly contorted and her eyes widened.
“Oh my God. Bill, what have you done?”
“Shh. You’ll wake the baby?”
“Don’t shush me. What have you brought to our front door? From Mexico?”
“Look,” I said. “It’ll be all right. We’ve got a high fence around the place, and the back yard is huge. And he doesn’t take up any room at all.”
“Did you get another dog?”
At that moment the doorbell rang again.
“Um...I think maybe worse.”
She turned, took three steps to the front door, reached and whipped it open. A tall fellow with a cowboy hat stood there. Next to him, standing on my front sidewalk, was Señor Burro, otherwise known as Esteban.
“Howdy, ma’am,” the cowboy said. “My name’s Craig Johnson. I was asked to deliver this donkey to Bill Travis.”
“That’s me,” I said, and stepped forward. “Do I need to sign anything?”
The cowboy handed the lead rope to me. “No sir. The way I hear it, this is the most traveled donkey in the world. Someone brought him up from Yucatan, Mexico, and paid to have him taken across the border. Somehow he came into my hands, with this note.” He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a piece of stationery. I recognized it from the Pisté Hotel. He handed it to me, but before I could take it, Julie’s free hand whipped out and snatched it up.
She opened it and read aloud, “Bill, I asked you kindly to take this fellow. You may have refused, but I knew he wouldn’t be any good to me after you were nice to him. I told you I would pay you back for what you did. So, here you go. Samuel, Candace and Herlinda send their love. Your friend, Walt.”
She turned to me. “What the hell, Bill?”
“Honey,” I said. “We’ll figure it out. I’ve got friends in high...I mean low...places. At least one of them will be able to stable him for me.”
“But until you find him a home, he’s going to be here, isn’t he?”
And then Señor Burro took the note from Julie’s hand and started eating it.
All of a sudden Jennifer burst through us from behind and came to a sudden stop. “Oh cool! A donkey! Can I ride him, mom?”
“Well folks,” Mr. Johnson said, “I reckon I need to be getting back to South Texas.”
“Nonsense,” Julie said. “Come in and sit for a bit. I’ve just made some iced tea. And there’s some lemon pie on the kitchen counter.”
“Did you say iced tea?” he asked. “And lemon pie?”
“She did,” I said. “Please, Mr. Johnson. Do come in.” As long as a stranger was with me in our home, I felt I would be safe, as odd as that might sound.
He doffed his hat and rubbed his jaw. “Well shoot, that’s mighty kind of you. Yes sir, that does sound too good to pass up.”
Señor Burro brayed suddenly and the baby woke up, startled. Instead of crying, she turned and looked at the donkey and a huge smile spread across her face.
“Jennifer,” I said, “lead Señor Burro through the house and into the back yard. He’s staying.”
“Yippee!” she cried.
I watched as Jennifer took the lead rope, then she began speaking in baby-like gibberish to Señor Burro. Jennifer, with her animals. She already had a menagerie upstairs and out in the back yard. Señor Burro must have understood her, because he followed her into the house. Julie trailed them, with a parting hard look at me. For a brief instant, Craig Johnson and I were alone on my front steps.
“Interesting house and family you’ve got here,” he said.
“Thanks,” I replied. “But you don’t know the half of it.”
I led him into the house, to awaiting iced tea, lemon pie, good conversation and tall tales.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Readers of this series may notice that this book is the true sequel to The Devil To Pay—no, not chronologically-speaking, but instead in terms of content.
Let me begin by saying that I was never really happy with the outcome of The Devil To Pay. There were far too many unanswered questions. For instance, why would a woman—even a crazy, psychotic one—set fire to a house that contained her husband and children? I believe that question has been satisfactorily answered here.
With regard to the subject matter of this book—specifically, Mexico—I've taken a number of trips down into the interior of Mexico, interspersed over a great many years. My first excursion was in 1991, around the time I got married for the first time. That one was a simple border crossing, and my fiance and I enjoyed a meal in Nuevo Laredo at the famous Cadillac Bar, walked around the town, and had a fine time. That one sort of doesn't count, you know. I was never more than a stone's throw from Texas, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were waiting for me there in the middle of the Rio Grande that evening upon our return. Many years later, around 2004, after I had moved to Austin and gotten a different wife, we took several trips down into the interior of Mexico. The first was a road trip to San Miguel de Allende with friends, and we spent a week there. That's the Mexico I know and love. If you ever get the chance to go to Mexico, go to San Miguel. It's unforgettable, and you will likely fall in love. Since then we've been to Guadalajara several times. But Guadalajara is...Guadalajara. It's not what you'd call the ideal tourist destination. It can, at times and in certain spots, be raw and unforgiving. But it is, simply put, Mexico.
I approached my decision to take Bill Travis out of Texas—and to drop him like a fish out of water into Mexico—with no small degree of trepidation. First of all, it would have to be real, and I knew I would be drawing on every experience I could recall. Second, I am not so fluent in Spanish as I should be. Chalk that one up to—as is the case in many things—me never finding the elusive Round Tuit, as in “I'll get around to it.” No, I have a number of books and cassette tape courses on learning the languag
e, but can you see me even for a moment tooling down the Interstate conjugating verbs in Spanish? I can't, and maybe that's part of the problem. You see, like most people, I walk around fooling myself. “Oh, I want to do this thing here. Oh, I'll do that!” Right. When someone starts talking like that, it’s best to smile and nod, and quickly move on to another topic. You know—and deep down they know—it'll never happen. All by way of saying, “Nope, I haven't learned Spanish. This is gonna be interesting.” So, to compensate for that, I had to keep the Spanish references down to the common ones that most people—especially yours truly—could wrap their wits around. Second, Bill knows no more Spanish than I do, so I decided that, as a writer, I would use that deficiency in the story. I would make it an asset, which calls for no slight measure of literary legerdemain. Oh, the possibilities that went flitting through my head as I began.
There's another thing I try to do when I'm writing. I try, at every turn, to only use those places I have actually been in the story. For instance, when I wrote Caddo Cold, Sallie and I made three trips over that way. And yes, in that instance, I did change the physical universe around just a tad to make it conform with the story, but at the very least I had been there, and I knew what those changes were. But while Sallie has decidedly been down to Cancun and to the Chichen Itza site, I haven't—or at least not during this lifetime. I don't know what you believe on that score—meaning, of course, the idea of reincarnation—and I don't really care. But, I do remember some things. I remember far more than I care to. And no, I don't really care to return. There are too many negative associations with the place, and most of us don't like returning to a place that once brought us great pain. That's the nature of living life, and human beings are at least predictable in that respect. So, no, we didn't go to Chichen-Itza before I wrote this book. It's about the same reason I'm reluctant to visit the Alamo. Will I never go to see Chichen-Itza this lifetime? I've found it's not a healthy thing to go around saying, “Never.” That's usually where the trouble begins. So, my apologies on that score. I didn't go. And I don't plan to. Sorry for having to say so. But—and this is a rather large 'but'—I've discovered that Bill Travis is no less than my avatar. I can send him places I no longer dare to tread. It's true, many of the situations in the earlier adventures were situations I have been in (for instance, I have landed a plane with the wind, instead of against it, I have been in some knock-down drag-out fist fights, and prior to my current marriage, I have been known to dive into relationships on the first date). But for once, why not break out of the box—the box in this case being Texas—and send Bill abroad? Why not send Bill to Mexico? And doing so, why not give him the best reason in the world for jumping in an airplane in the dead of night and heading out? And while we're at it, why the hell not make it the greatest white-knuckle adventure of all time? There! The defense rests!
You know, this one sort of makes Bill an international man of mystery. Just sayin'.
Since we're down the list to Book Twelve at the moment—and I can't tell you how much I appreciate you hanging with me for this long; I mean, that's a special kind of devotion, and I am forever indebted to you—you have by this time noticed that some of these books are “a bit out there.” As the famous mystery reviewer, Kevin Tipple, said when he reviewed Ghost of the Karankawa, “Often he gets into cases where one can almost hear The Twilight Zone theme music playing in the background...” and “George Wier again strains reader suspension of disbelief at a couple of points, but the read is very well worth it.” I confess that I do love a fantastic tale. They attract me, they pull me right on in, and I have no power over them. (For instance, I just got back from a trip last night to San Antonio, where I got to meet Charles Hall, the author of the Millennial Hospitality series—five books, thus far, about his experiences with the Tall White extraterrestrials while serving in the Air Force. Goodness Grief, it's wonderful stuff, whether you believe him or not!) So why should I not include the fantastic in my own fiction? For those of you who don't write, I offer the following explanation: a good writer doesn't choose his story—the story chooses him! That's right, you'd think I'm the arbiter of this particular universe—the world where Bill and Julie move around and have their being, and where Jessica is on patrol with the Sheriff's Department, and where Perry Reilly is yet again hitting on his new young receptionist, and where Hank Sterling takes up karate. No. I don't have much say there. You sort of knew it all along. The truth of the matter is these books write themselves. I'm just the conduit. Is this actual channeling? I sure hope the hell not. But it is, at the very least, honest work. It's like...it's like Bill. He says no more and no less than what he means to say. And that makes me glad.
Okay, that's about it. That's about all I have to offer.
I hope you enjoyed Mexico Fever, and I hope it doesn't overly infect you such that you feel you have to go there. Or at least no more than you can easily ward off by diving into another book and leaving this one behind you.
All my best to you and yours.
George Wier
April 29, 2016
Austin, Texas