Gringos

by Charles Portis

  “No, you wouldn’t, would you? You don’t want us to make a quality contact. Rudy finally makes a quality contact and you resent it. You’re jealous of him. You’ve always been envious of his field equipment and his City Planning degree, and for some reason I don’t understand you’re trying to stop him from becoming a distinguished author and lecturer. It’s small-minded people like you who make it so hard for the rest of us. You’re jealous of anybody and everybody who’s working on the frontiers of knowledge.”

  “Yes, but when these visitors do snatch someone, don’t they always bring him back? To pass on their warnings about pollution and atom bombs and such?”

  “A simple peasant, yes, or some dumbbell off the street, sure, they would bring him back after a quick body scan, but with someone like Rudy they would want to take him onto the mother ship. They would want to go over his notes and listen to his tapes and study his brain. They must have known he was on to something down there. It was a golden opportunity for them.”

  “Well, no need to borrow trouble. My guess is he hasn’t gone far. There’s a good chance he’s already walked out somewhere.”

  “Not if they took him back to their own planet.”

  “No, in that case he’s sunk, but there have been no reports of any landings. Someone would have seen the lights. The nights are very dark in Chiapas.”

  “They don’t always use lights in the visible part of the spectrum. They’re so far ahead of us in lasers and fiber optics that it isn’t funny.”

  The children trooped out with their teacher, and Beth came over to see what was up. She and Louise badgered me with suggestions, relishing the drama. Beth thought I should use my “underworld connections” to help in the hunt. I went dead silent. Usually I brighten up a bit in the company of women and am not so much the lugubrious bore, my natural and most comfortable role, but my thoughts were far away. I was thinking not of Rudy but of Dan and his tribe and the little runaway girl they called Red. Yes, that was me to a T, lugubrious and punctual and facetious, all at once, a combination I would have found tiresome in another person, if I had known one.

  Louise and I went to her casita and listened to the tape. It was just Rudy going on and on with his descriptions and measurements at Ektún. I thought it would never end. The murdering tape thief would have been annoyed when he got back to the quiet of his room and heard this stuff and looked at the blood on his hands. I fast-forwarded some of it. Rudy made no mention of his plans. I left the Checker car with Louise and suggested she move in with Beth, who had a telephone. “Stay close and I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.”

  The night had turned off cool. A norte must have blown in. I walked over to the Posada and got my truck. Refugio would be waiting for me at Doc’s place. On the way back across town I caught a glimpse of the night dog. I checked the moon. It seemed to be in about the third quarter.

  A word here about the night dog and El Obispo. It took me almost two years to figure out what the old man was muttering. I picked up a word here and a word there and finally pieced them all together. Then one day Jerry asked me what he was saying. I told him and he wrote it down in his anthropology notebook. I felt cheated of my time and labor.

  The common belief was that The Bishop was simply going through his rosary, but no, I knew the sounds of that litany all too well, from mountain bus rides on rainy nights, with terrified passengers all around me telling their beads. No, it was a text from Mark he was reciting. I looked it up.

  “¿Ves estos grandes edificios? No quedará piedra sobre piedra, que no sea derribada.” (“Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”)

  Those were El Obispo’s words as he marched around Mérida with his eyes cast down. That, with variations, was what he said day in and day out. At noon he sat against the shady side of the cathedral and rested and ate squash seeds. Once I stuck an ice cream cone into his curled paw. He received it passively and may or may not have eaten it. He may have been asleep. I kept moving and didn’t look back. On certain nights, in his shed behind the church, he changed himself into a small reddish dog with a fox face. The animal was about eighteen inches long, exclusive of the tail, which itself was about the same length, and stiff as a new rope. It curled up and around to form a near-circle, with the tip touching his back.

  At least there was such a dog, I had seen him myself many times, and Fausto and others claimed that you could never catch the two of them together, The Bishop and the night dog. He moved at a trot, a dog on pressing business, and was always just going around a corner, it seemed, out of view. He was too healthy and sleek for a scavenger.

  But on what business? No one could say. As it happened, I caught a glimpse of him on this night. He was jogging into an alley. The looped tail was unmistakable. I parked the truck and got out with my flashlight.

  I knew this street slightly. This was the Naroody block. The Hotel Naroody was on the corner, and next to it was Foto Naroody, a photography estudio, with framed pictures in the window, portraits of brides and fat babies tinted with gruesome colors. Along the way there were shops with such names as Importaciones Naroody and Curiosidades Naroody. I had never seen Naroody taking any fotos. The display pictures gathered dust and were never changed. Some of those falsely colored babies may have been brides themselves by now. I wasn’t even sure I had seen Naroody. Whenever I spotted some likely Levantine candidate I would be told, “Him? No, that’s not Naroody.”

  I played the light about in the alley and kicked at boxes and piles of trash. The dog was gone. I doubled back and found a chubby man waiting for me at the entrance. He too had a flashlight. His eyelids drooped. One hand was resting in the pocket of a loose smock, such as a photographer might wear in his darkroom. I asked him if he had seen the jaunty dog.

  “Ah, the dog. I thought you were a burglar. Yes, I know this dog. You will never capture him.”

  “I’m not trying to capture him. I just thought I had found his sleeping place.”

  “He passes this way on his rounds but he doesn’t sleep here. He never stops. Why do you wish to capture him? The little dog is not harming anyone.”

  “I don’t wish to capture him. I don’t wish to bother him in any way but I would like to get a closer look at him.”

  “Why?”

  “I hear these stories. I’m curious.”

  “The stories are nonsense.”

  “They say he comes out at certain phases of the moon.”

  “I don’t listen to such talk.”

  “You’re not Naroody, are you?”

  He was startled. “What? Naroody? No. I only work for him.”

  “I hear he’s a good man to work for.”

  “Where do you hear this?”

  “You must be the watchman.”

  “I keep an eye on things, yes, but I have other duties too.” He looked around and drew close and his voice fell to a whisper. “May I tell you something in confidence? All his methods are out of date.”

  “Naroody’s methods?”

  “His business methods. He won’t listen to anyone.”

  “Do you know where the dog goes from here?”

  He hesitated. I gave him some money. He thanked me and apologized, saying he was not moving up as fast in the Naroody organization as he had hoped. Naroody kept him short of pocket money. He got his keep and little more. He pointed to a window above one of the shops. That was his room. He had a room of his own up there with running water, or trickling water anyway, and he ate well enough at Naroody’s second table, but he saw very little cash, not nearly enough to buy fashionable clothes and take women out at night. His life was not fulfilled. There were men his age, much less deserving, who drove cars and had as many as ten pairs of pointed shoes in their closets.

  “But the dog.”

  “They say he goes to the rail yard and later comes out of the big drain pipe behind the feed mill. After that I don’t know. Who has time to listen
to such foolishness? These are not good questions. You drive a fine white truck that will take you anywhere you wish to go. Do you tell me that you believe in ghost animals?”

  “I believe he’s a strange dog. You say yourself that I could never capture him.”

  “Let me say too that I am disappointed with this talk about the phases of the moon. I took you for a modern man like me.”

  His name was Hakim. He wanted to chat some more, but about California and career opportunities there in real estate management. I knew nothing about it. Yucatán is off the California flyway, and we didn’t see many of those birds around here. There was a heavy squarish lump in his pocket. Hakim, I think, was holding a little .22 or .25 automatic in that smock pocket. He was ready to defend Naroody’s property with force.

  I went to the rail yard and the feed mill and even watched the round black hole of the drain pipe for a while. I crouched in the weeds like a stalking cat. It was downright cold there, though the wind had fallen off. The dog didn’t show.

  What we had here, according to Jerry, another modern man, was a case of conflation or confabulation. El Obispo and the dog, taking similar steps, made regular circuits around town. Someone had noticed this and with an imaginative leap had spun a tale combining the two elements. It was a good enough explanation except that the two gaits were not alike. The old man and the dog just didn’t walk in the same way, and as far as I could see there were no points of physical resemblance whatever.

  Jerry then was not above a little confabulating himself. He too dealt in fables, and this was a good name for his science, I thought, confabulation, not that Jerry ever defended his science, not with the tiniest of pistols, being trained as he was to believe in nothing. In the Anthropology Club, as I understood it, you were permitted, if not required, to despise only one thing, and that was your own culture, that of the West. Otherwise you couldn’t prefer one thing over another. Of course Jerry’s curiosity was no more damnable than mine, a poking, pointless, infantile curiosity, but then he got paid for his.

  After cruising around the cathedral a couple of times, I gave up on the night dog and went to Doc’s house to pick up Refugio. He wasn’t ready to go. They were upstairs in the bedroom looking at old photographs. A little tepee of sticks was blazing away in the fireplace, so seldom used. The fat ocote wood was popping and there were some cedar sticks, too, some kuche, for the pleasant scent. How long had it been since the three of us had sat around a fire at night?

  Doc said, “Look, Jimmy. See what Cuco brought me. It’s by far the finest jade I ever held in my hands. This is the work of a master.”

  Refugio had given him the little Olmec man. Quite a gift. Quite an exchange. A $7,500 jade for a $200 pistol. Doc asked me if I would place the little idolo in his mouth when he died and see that he was buried with it. I refused. Then would I just clasp his dead fingers around it? A simple grave offering. No! I wouldn’t put that snarling little demon into the grave of my worst enemy and I told him so. He tried to pass it off as a joke. Refugio, looking troubled, must have turned him down, too, or more likely had hedged. It took an effort to cross the great Doctor. Or he may have been having second thoughts about his generosity—if in fact he had made a gift of the thing. Doc may have misunderstood him.

  The moment passed, and we went on to other things. Doc offered advice on how to conduct the search for the missing boy in the selva. “Chombo is the man you want for that work.” Soon it was like the old days around the campfire, with Doc toasting the soles of his big white feet and Refugio spitting at the coals. We laughed and talked foolishly for hours. We must have burned up a donkeyload of pine knots, or ocote wood. But then we pushed it too far, tried to make the happy occasion last, and along toward daylight our talk trailed off. Doc let his pipe go out and began heaving mighty sighs. He said, “Well, what does it matter in the long run? When you get right down to it everything is a cube.” One by one we went numb. The fire died. No one stoked it. We were grainy-eyed and lost within our own heads again.

  NO USE turning in now. Refugio and I had breakfast at the little café on the zócalo called the Louvre. The crazy black ants of Yucatán were at play on the tabletop. They never let up. From birth to death they went full out, racing about to no purpose on the oilcloth and crashing into one another like hockey players. The Louvre would do in a pinch. A cook was on duty all night and the onion soup was good, but they wouldn’t give you enough crackers. They begrudged you every last galleta. The biggest and most modern cracker factory in Mexico was right here in Mérida, but you would have never guessed it at the Louvre, where they doled them out two at a time.

  Refugio tried to sell some of his plastic pipe to a Dutch farmer, a Mennonite, who was sitting there in overalls spooning up corn flakes from a huge white bowl. He could have washed his hands in that basin. Give them all the corn flakes and milk they want but make them beg for crackers. What kind of policy was that? The Mennonite said nothing and missed not a beat with his spoon and yet he managed to show a kind of crafty interest in the pipe deal.

  I was watching the jailbirds, the degradados, who were out early sweeping the plaza. One was a very tall American with a black goatee. It was Eli Withering. I picked up an orange from the table and walked across the street. I gave the guard a cigarette, and he allowed me to have a word with my cuate. My pal, that is, which was stretching it a bit.

  Eli said, “They got me cold, Budro. Can you let me have $500? They got old Nordstrom too. That amber was bad news. You knew it and I didn’t. I never had any luck with that stuff. Now look at me. These flat Popsicle sticks are hard to sweep up.”

  Yes, there was Mr. Nordstrom in the line of sweepers, working hard with a pushbroom to cover his shame, poking away, trying to get a purchase on the paleta sticks. He would be a model social-democratic Scandinavian prisoner. Mr. Nordstrom wouldn’t bang his cup against the bars or otherwise give trouble. It was too bad, but I had told the old man not to meddle in this business.

  Eli was disgusted with himself. “It was really dumb. Sauceda was tailing me and I didn’t spot him.”

  “He would have gotten you anyway. It wasn’t the amber.”

  I saw a third gringo in the work gang. It was Louise’s friend, Wade Watson, the young man from Missouri. He was dragging a trash box along and he still seemed to be taking a dazed delight in everything. First he couldn’t believe he was in Yucatán and now he couldn’t believe he was a prisoner.

  “That boy there,” I said. “What’s he in for?”

  “I don’t know. Sauceda grabbed him too. He was just standing there with us, asking a lot of questions. I thought he was with Nordstrom. Do you know him?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “There’s something wrong with him. He won’t shut up. He talked all night in the tank. Here, let me have that.”

  Eli grabbed my orange and ripped it apart and sucked the pulp to shreds. “I need that money today. I’m counting on you, Budro. I need to get this settled before it goes up to the Director of Investigations.”

  “Do you want Nardo to handle it?”

  “Hell no. Bring the money to me in dollars. I’ll cut my own deal. Sauceda is a man you can talk to. You know I’m good for it. I’ll put my car up against it. Bring me a blanket, too, and get me a hat of some kind. Somebody stole my hat while I was sleeping.”

  I told him I would see what I could do. And there was poor Wade, caught hanging around the wrong people, on his first night here too. He must have been hoping to catch some sparks off the conversation of two old Maya hands. I went over to him and asked if he had any money.

  “A little. Who are you? I have my credit card.”

  “That’s no good. Here. You’ll need a few pesos if you’re going to eat. I may be able to get you out of this jam.”

  “How? I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

  “It’s a tradeoff. I may be able to pull some strings, but first, you see, I’ll have to know where the City of Dawn is.”

  “
Oh yes, you’re the curious guy from the bar. Why do you want to know?”

  “I’m to meet a friend there, but she forgot to tell me where it is.”

  “Oh? Then she must have had her reasons for not telling you. Just as I have mine. There are good and sufficient reasons why certain people know things and others don’t.”

  “Well, you think it over. They’ve got you on a pretty serious offense. Encroaching on the national patrimony. I won’t be able to do anything after you’re formally charged.”

  The guard shooed me away. I didn’t want Eli’s car. I didn’t need a Dodge Dart with burnt valves and major oil leaks and an electrical system that shorted out every time you hit a puddle. The distributor was mounted low on the block and was readily swamped. Eli kept saying he was going to trade the Dart for a heavy car with a long trunk lid. But I did owe him for services rendered. Unclean bird that he was, he was always square with me. Or he wasn’t always square but he was generous.

  He had shown me the ropes in the antiquities business. It was Eli who had put me on to the job with Doc Flandin. They had worked together briefly and then fallen out over the First Fruits Rule. This was the rule whereby Doc, as boss, had the pick of the finds. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. He was no hog. Doc didn’t always take the most valuable pieces. In his more swaggering moods he called this privilege his quinto, or royal fifth, though it was more like a half.

  I felt too that I had let Eli down. I had sent Nordstrom to him. Nardo had warned me that he was in danger, and I had done nothing, sat on my hands.

  So now I had to wait until the banks opened. Refugio took a nap in my room. I called Louise at Beth’s place and told her about Wade. She was still in bed, her voice languid and nasal.

  “You’re not in Chiapas?” she said. “You haven’t even started yet?”

  “Not yet. If you want to help this Watson boy go to the police and carefully explain to them that he has a screw loose.”

  “Why do you say that? You think everybody’s silly but you.”