Porfirio was standing over Marta as she slept. He watched her a long time. Then he bent over and Mike thought he was going to kiss her. But all he did was touch the blanket, finger it a moment. It was practically new, made in Michoacán—Mike’s—he had brought it from the truck. There was no question that Porfirio knew it wasn’t Marta’s. He turned and just as he passed Mike at the door, said quietly:
“How it happen you are here?” he asked.
Mike thought the man meant how does it happen you are still here, when all the others have gone. Mike muttered something about not knowing what to do about his blanket.
Porfirio’s eyes smiled only a little—that wasn’t his question at all.
“I mean,” he said, “how you are here when fire starts?”
Mike shifted his thought. “Oh, I got to thinking—what you said about her being a widow. So we decided to give her the betting money after all. And when we drove up . . .” He stopped. He didn’t want to lie any more than necessary.
“. . . jacal was burning?” said Porfirio.
“Yes.”
The old man nodded. But Mike was sure he didn’t believe a word of it.
* * *
• • •
The boy was sleeping peacefully, but Mike was wide awake. There was a low wind outside the shrine house, like a barely audible moan, as if the mesa were grieving in the night.
What the hell am I doing here? Mike thought. Why don’t I get going, finish the trip? Well, there was the matter of getting the rest of the traveling money. But suppose he did have the money right now, would he—with Marta ill—could he depart immediately? The question perturbed him and he wouldn’t press for an answer to it, except to keep remembering that Marta was not what the trip was about—and if he protracted his stay here, it would be bad for everybody. Rafo would get too attached to Marta’s children—and Marta, too attached to Mike. As to himself . . . it was better not to think of her as anything other than an interlude, better to get on the move, get going.
He arose in the darkness and went outdoors. Quietly, so as not to awaken Rafo, he put the truck in neutral, released the brake and let it drift downhill. Only when he thought he was out of earshot of the shrine did he turn the motor on and ride back up to the middle of the mesa.
Even before dawn, entirely on his own, he caught two horses, a stallion and a mare, both sorrels. And by midmorning—this time with Rafo who was rhapsodic over such a run of luck—he roped another mustang, a stallion bay, a handsome horse with a measured dancing strut.
It was getting easy to sell to Jiménez, now that the price of mustangs had been set and there was no longer any need for bargaining. The trader inspected the three animals to see if they were healthy, without lesions, and paid Mike the six hundred pesos.
“How much money we got?” Rafo asked as they were driving toward the abacería.
“Over seven hundred pesos,” Mike replied.
They didn’t have to say what was on their minds. They now had almost enough money—another horse would do it, and they could pay for the rest of the trip. And go.
They decided to take Marta and the kids some lunch. They left the abacería with armfuls of food and when they arrived at Marta’s house they were amazed: the patient was already out of bed and feeding her children.
But their coming was worse than an amazement to Marta; it was a painful shock. She was mortified at having them see her the way she was. It was an understandable embarrassment—she looked weird. She had long hair only on one side of her head—the other side was short and frizzled. Where the flames had singed it, it was a strange color—not black anymore but a dry and reddish brown. Her left eyebrow was entirely gone; the lashes too. She wore a rebozo, a borrowed one, perhaps, that was dirty and torn and hung only on one shoulder, the other one naked except for the gauze and adhesive.
“No!” she cried, waving him away. “Do not come in!”
Mike didn’t think she meant it. He laughed affectionately at her discomfiture and started into the room, moving toward her. But suddenly her alarm became shrill. “No!” Then, in anger, “No—no!”
Her fury was a bit too wild. He was confused, off balance. He turned, left the house and walked slowly back to the truck. As he started the motor, he called for Rafo. The boy came running out of the house.
“She say she is sorry but she cannot bear you should see her ugly.”
“Tell her . . .” And he didn’t know what to tell her.
“She say come back tonight,” Rafo said, out of breath. “She will cut her hair, she will be clean—and not so ugly.”
“Get in.”
“She wants to know will you come back tonight?”
“Get in!” Sharply.
Rafo looked back toward the house, not knowing whether to tell her he had no message for her—or get into the truck and leave her invitation hanging there. Mike saw the boy’s quandary but didn’t know how to help him. If the kid was bewildered, so was he himself, more deeply than he could handle for the moment.
Mike was gentler than before. “Will you please get in?”
Rafo got in and gave Mike a sideways, troubled look.
“Don’t look at me that way,” Mike said, with a little irritation. “I don’t know what happened.”
Nothing had happened—he knew that—hardly anything. Why had it struck him so hard? Why had he refused to tell Marta he was coming back this evening?
Because he might not come back this evening?
He wondered if it was her anger that had put him off. Not at all—he understood it. Was it her appearance—that she had lost her beauty for him, the poor burned creature? No. No matter what she looked like, he would want to touch her, kiss her, be kind to her, be giving.
Giving. Not since Laurie’s death had he felt such a need to be a giving man.
Perhaps the fire, the hurt, her sadly injured neck and singed hair, her need had brought it out in him. Was that why she seemed—not less—even more beautiful than before—because she had brought out in him the one quality in himself that he could best live with, his kindness?
Did he love her enough to stay in Janasco?
There it was, the heart of his disturbance. He could never live in such a place. And yet . . . Janasco was beautiful. There never was a mesa that summoned so much beauty, such a wide sweep of sky, so many stars at night, such explosions of sunset. No meadow ever cried with poppies the way Marta’s did, no stream ever spoke so softly or ran so clean. There were never gentler children in the world than Marta’s children, never stronger men than Jiménez and Porfirio, never more friendly voices than the voices of Mexicans in the cool of the morning or in the sweet sadness of the zócalo in the evening. There were never mysteries so wonderful and deep as the darkness behind the eyes of Indians.
But . . . never such poverty in his experience. Never, where he lived up north, a bowl of chick-pea soup between life and starvation. Never the despair in the meadow that doesn’t yield and can’t be tilled. Never the mean centavo earned by children tying bits of string. Never the poultices of rancid butter and pig’s brain and superstition, or the black evil out of a dirty old woman’s mouth. No, this Janasco was not a heaven, not a paradise, not a fairyland; this place had its anthrax and, when they had to appear, its Croags, its cruel gossip, its alley violence.
As if any of those despairs mattered—for God knows, if he started listing the miseries of Texas . . . But that was his home and this wasn’t. He was a Texan, not a Mexican. And he knew he couldn’t live here.
Even if he loved her too much to leave Janasco, he would have to do it. He had, in his mind, already done it. That’s why he wouldn’t go back tonight. That’s why he was so miserable.
* * *
• • •
That afternoon they got another mustang. It was the most beautiful of all, a chestnut, mottled, glowing gold and cop
per brown, fire and amber.
They rode it down to Jiménez—and he refused to buy it.
It was Porfirio’s doing.
The three of them—Rafo, Jiménez and Porfirio—were standing out on the street, in front of the blacksmith’s forge, all shouting at once. The trick of the argument seemed to be to prevent one another from being heard, and any noisemaking sound that came out of the mouth was permissible. Mike didn’t realize how many angry sharps and flats were possible in the Spanish-Indian-Mexican music. And he had no notion what the quarrel was about.
Suddenly, silence.
In dudgeon, Rafo quit the argument and haughtily walked away, down the street.
“Rafo!” Mike yelled. “Come back! What’s it all about? Come back!”
The boy had had enough of it. He turned the corner and left the alameda. Mike was utterly baffled. He turned back to the other men. They were no longer on the street but had entered the smithy and were standing indoors by the anvil, talking quietly to each other.
“What’s happening?” Mike asked.
Porfirio moved away and since Jiménez knew no English Mike was no better off than before.
“Porfirio.”
Slowly the old man turned. He raised his head a little. He set his muscles. It was clear he was bracing himself for a fight, any kind of fight, and he was going to brave it out, honestly, without lying.
“Is my fault,” he said. There was no note of apology in his voice. He said the word fault as if he meant credit.
“Fault for what?” Mike asked. “What did you do?”
“I sell him horse many year,” he said, pointing to Jiménez. “Good horse. I spend three, four week to make them so they are not too wild. Someone can ride them. You do not do this. Your horse are wild. Nobody can ride your horse. If he will sell them to somebody, they will lose the money. You cheat him. This is what I say to Jiménez—and he will not buy your horse no more. Ask him.”
Mike turned to the trader who remained silent. No need to ask him—his jaw was set the same way as Porfirio’s.
Balked, Mike twisted back to Porfirio. “You lied to him. You’ve seen my horses with bits in their teeth. You know damn well I’ve ridden every one of them!”
“I never see you do it.”
“I’ll do it now!”
Porfirio had only a moment’s hesitation. “It make no difference if you ride. Maybe you are good rider—or maybe you are crazy.”
The man was right—it wouldn’t prove anything to him. But something else did.
They heard a shout outdoors, then they saw the chestnut horse race by. For a moment, Mike thought it was on the loose. He raced onto the street, Porfirio and Jiménez after him. What they saw was Rafo on the mustang, riding it. The horse ran a hundred yards or so, stopped as if it had been braked, reared, bucked, ran again. Three times around the alameda the horse ran, the boy sitting the animal and never for an instant losing him.
“Jee-zee-us Christ!” Mike yelled.
He heard Jiménez yelling too and although he didn’t understand a word, he knew the trader would be buying the chestnut.
“Rafo!” Mike shouted. “Come back! You’ve done it, kid! Come home!”
The horse came sweating and steaming back, and the kid let himself topple off, not waiting for Mike to help him. Mike grabbed him and held him close, embracing the boy. When they were separated again, they laughed and hit each other once, then hit each other lots of times, and laughed. Rafo was so happy he thought he couldn’t stand it.
They went inside to collect their two hundred pesos. When they came out, Porfirio was waiting for them. He was smoking a long brown pitillo. He took it from his mouth and, raising it, beckoned to Mike. As Mike approached him the old man coughed, a phlegmy smoker’s cough. He was angry enough—the insult of the cough made him angrier. Mike waited for him to finish wheezing. Porfirio pointed to the chestnut, then held up the thumb of one hand and all five fingers of the other. “Seis,” he said.
They had won this afternoon’s engagement with the old man and Mike didn’t want any further battle. Besides, there was something he respected about Porfirio, a dignity he didn’t want to violate. He said, as pacifyingly as he could. “What’s six horses? There are plenty of them.”
“No, is not plenty,” the old man said darkly. “Every winter is less. They have nothing to eat. Or they eat black cactus and die. Soon they will all be gone.”
“So will we,” Mike said. “We’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
Rafo looked at him quickly, then did a strange thing. He said, “Mañana,” as if he had to translate for the Indian.
Porfirio got the boy’s point and it bothered him. He wasn’t going to be put off by a promise of a vague Mexican future. “Not mañana!” he said. “We do not like that gringo take our horse.” Then he added, with even quieter anger, “Not our woman either.”
Mike felt the stab not for his own sake, but for Marta’s. It upset him that anyone in the town should know. He was on the verge of lying to the man. But what he said was more effective.
“I told you when we’re leaving. Tomorrow means tomorrow to me. We won’t take any more horses. We won’t take any more of anything.”
Porfirio said nothing, barely made any sign he had heard. He put the pitillo back in his mouth and turned away, to go out of the alameda.
When Mike and Rafo drove off they tried to talk about how well the boy had ridden the chestnut mustang but the one word they were really thinking was: tomorrow.
As they arrived at the main street, Rafo made the seemingly offhand comment that it was getting late, the sun was setting. Mike knew what he was getting at but, pretending not to, turned left to drive up the hill toward the shrine house.
“Wait!” Rafo pointed out the back. “You go in the wrong direction.”
“No.”
“We are suppose to go to Marta tonight.”
“No.”
“You said yes.”
“I didn’t say yes.”
“You mean yes.”
“I didn’t mean yes—I didn’t mean anything.”
Rafo paused a moment. “Is true we leave tomorrow?”
“I’d leave tonight if I could find my way on the back roads.”
“Then . . . tonight . . . you will not say good-bye to her?”
“I can’t!”
He didn’t realize how it would hurt to admit it.
The boy was silent, trying to decide what he himself should do. They were in the center of town now.
“I want to say good-bye to them.”
Mike stopped the truck. He wasn’t going to drive the boy to her house. It was only a short walk down the hill. “Go ahead,” he said quietly.
He waited for Rafo to open the right-hand door and go. The boy didn’t. At last: “Mike . . . if you do not say good-bye to each other . . .”
He couldn’t finish the sentence.
Mike turned to Rafo and faced him fully. “Look, kid, tomorrow, when we’re gone, it won’t matter to me what they think about us. But if I go back there tonight . . .” He stopped. He couldn’t say to the boy: If I go there, I can’t just shake her hand and go. I’ll want to kiss her, to touch her. He tried to imply it. He spoke quietly. “Rafo . . . listen. Porfirio’s going to watch her. If I go there tonight—if he talks about her—if they all talk about her and the gringo—how do you suppose she’s going to live here? How do you suppose she’s going to manage against the gossip and the anger in a little town like this? She’ll be the puta of Janasco.”
“You know how to say whore, but you don’t know how to say gracias.”
The cut hurt but Mike didn’t defend himself. “Are you going?”
“No.”
He knows I’m right, Mike thought. Then why is he giving me such a bad time?
When they got to the shrine hou
se, they tried not to be angry with each other. They talked again about the riding of the chestnut horse. But Rafo’s spirits wouldn’t lift. Nor Mike’s. They went silently to bed.
In the middle of the night Mike awakened with a griping pain in his belly. He had the trots again. Goddamn this place, he said, goddamn this place, this town, goddamn this Mexico.
He was awake all night and couldn’t wait for the dawn to come, so they could get away. When it was light enough, he was glad there were things to do, preparations to make. He would have to go down to Janasco, gas up the truck, put in supplies for the trip. He debated whether to awaken Rafo, but decided to let him sleep, for the boy too had been restless through the night. He would come back and get him.
It was the hottest Mexican morning of the trip. All the time he was at the Pemex station and at the abacería the sweat poured down his face, and his shirt was wringing wet. When his chores were finished his head began to ache and he wondered if he was going to be ill. But even the trots were over now, and he knew the headache came, in the midst of all this terrible heat, from cold, cold desolation. He had a desperate yearning for forgetfulness, for oblivion. He wanted to sleep for a week, or get stoned or drunk. So he bought a bottle of tequila, opened it and barely got the smell of the liquor when he realized it was not a specific for his unhappiness. All his pain was Marta and if he didn’t say good-bye to her he would feel pain until he died of it.
He went down to her house.
She wasn’t there.
It was inconceivable that she wouldn’t be there. She was too sick not to be there. He was in a rage at her for not being there. If he was there, if he had gone through a small hell to be there, she had to be there.
He found her down in the lowest valley. He followed the brook to the waterfall, then to the pond. She was in the shallower part of the pool, naked, breast high in water. She looked altogether different. She had cut off nearly all of what remained of her long hair. As nude as her body was, everything about her face now seemed more naked than an adult face had any right to be. Her mouth was a bare, exposed tremor. Her eyes seemed so wide that any word could wound them.
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