Cry Macho

by N. Richard Nash

  Mike looked at the rearview mirror. He couldn’t see the patrol car.

  “Have we lost them?” he asked.

  Rafo was turned in his seat. “I don’t know. Too much dust—but I don’t see them.” His voice had brightened.

  Perhaps Mike’s first guess had been right—the car just happened to be on the same road and wasn’t following them at all. Or perhaps the souped-up carburetion of the truck had finally done its work and successfully outstripped a weaker, older car. Or—this was putting the worst face on it—perhaps the police had stopped to phone ahead. To the border station.

  In any event, he didn’t see them following, nor did Rafo. So Mike slowed down a little—no sense breaking their necks on mountain curves.

  But the possible phone call to the border worried him. “Rafo, when we get to the border—”

  Before he could finish the sentence the boy jumped to it. “Yes—what?” His voice was frightened.

  “Take it easy,” Mike said. “Don’t be worried.”

  It was no use. The kid’s anxiety seemed to deepen. “If they ask where is my papers, what do I tell them?”

  “You don’t tell them anything.” He spoke as calmly as he could, to let the boy know there was a well-considered plan. “You won’t have to tell them anything. We don’t go through the border station. We come in to the west. A mile from the border we ditch the truck. We walk down into a ravine. When we walk up from the ravine, we’re in Texas.”

  He hoped the offhand account would help the boy relax and even prompt a word of acceptance. Nothing. “Don’t be scared,” he tried to reassure him.

  This time the boy nodded. It was his promise that even if he was scared, he would handle it himself.

  To give him added comfort, Mike said, “I know the place very well. I’ve been over it lots of times. I used to camp there when I was a kid. Sometimes I wouldn’t know which country I was in.” Then, as cheerfully as possible, “Suddenly you’ll be in Texas.”

  To hearten him further, he told about the hundreds of wetbacks, the thousands of them, who had infiltrated through those woods. He used to run into them, Mexicans old and young who were risking capture, risking a gunshot, to work in the orchards and the cornfields for a dollar a day—“dollar shuckers” they used to call them, although their lives were only nickels and dimes.

  “I am another wetback,” Rafo said.

  Mike smiled. “Well, not quite.”

  “You say . . . a gunshot?”

  Of the whole story, the thing that had stuck fastest with the kid was that wetbacks occasionally got killed. Something had happened to the boy. He had lost some of his childhood recklessness, his fool’s courage. He was suddenly unsure of himself, unsure of the limitlessness of his powers, unsure of his assurance. “Rafo—take my word for it—it’s going to be all right.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  His voice had grim certainty in it—he was looking out the back.

  Mike turned and saw the car. It was quite clear now and close—perhaps no more than a thousand feet away.

  The going was nearly straight uphill. He pushed the truck for all it could give. It strained upward, groaning. Mike stared forward, didn’t glance back at all and, through the dust that fogged everything ahead of him, he saw he had to make a choice. It was a fork in the road.

  The map had shown no such division—he hadn’t known it was there. Nor was either road wider than the other, or more inviting; both were bad. But it seemed to him that they had come as high in the hills as they had to come and perhaps the route to the left was going downward. The downward direction held a little hope for him. As they came to the fork, he turned left. The road dropped and his spirit lifted. Then, alarmingly, when they turned into what promised to be another descent, the road ascended sharply, kept going upward and upward, into more and more dust—worse than dust now, winds of stone, flailing against the glass.

  Then, the stop. They couldn’t proceed farther. The road was barricaded. Great boulders of fallen rock obstructed the narrow trail. There was no pathway to the left, only shelves of precipice—and to the right, mountainside, jagged and pitilessly steep.

  If there was no going forward, there was certainly no going back, for the patrol car must surely have seen them make the leftway choice. They were trapped.

  Well, getting caught was the logical finish of the amateur, Mike thought. Nothing to do but wait . . . wait for the professionals to come and scrape them up.

  He didn’t have to tell any of his thoughts to Rafo; Rafo knew.

  They waited.

  They waited minutes and the patrol car didn’t come. They waited longer—they couldn’t say how long—and the dust storm abated a little. Still no patrol car.

  It was starting to be nightfall now, with the wind dying and the sun almost gone. Still they saw no sign of the pursuing vehicle. Maybe it wasn’t pursuing them any longer, maybe the police hadn’t seen the truck choose the left fork, maybe the patrol assumed Mike had chosen the other road because he knew about the fallen boulders. All his maybes might be wrong, Mike realized—perhaps he couldn’t make any sensible suppositions anymore. If they had saved themselves by a blunder it might mean that chance, from now on, was all he could rely on. But there was one more supposition he had to make: maybe the police had, in fact, seen them go onto the left fork and, knowing it to be obstructed, were simply waiting below, smiling at the fact they had the gringo trapped up here. But if they knew, why didn’t the police simply come up and get them?

  He decided to go down a little way, on foot. He got out of the truck. As he was moving to the rear of it, he heard the other door slam. Rafo was out too.

  “Stay here,” Mike said quietly.

  “I go with you.” It was not contention, merely a willingness to share Mike’s danger.

  “We’ll only go a little way,” Mike said. “Be careful. Stay close to the hill.”

  They started downward, single file.

  They heard a sound and stopped.

  A strange noise, unidentifiable. Then Mike saw it, the vulture again, not flying really, but hanging nearly motionless in the air. The wind was almost entirely gone, perhaps only enough of it left to hold the enormous wings aloft, more black than brown against the twilit sky, and the ugly head held low. The sound they’d heard was not the flutter of the bird, not the flapping of its wings, but a guttural sound issuing from the creature’s throat, hoarse and repulsive, like a vomiting. The bird was so close they could see the naked, wrinkled skin of its head and neck and its ugly, fleshy comb.

  Rafo threw a stone. The vulture showed no alarm; it simply lifted a little, soared a few feet higher, glided there, then drifted downward and glided close again.

  A second stone. This time the monster didn’t lift; it barely moved at all.

  Abruptly, another sound.

  Rafo turned. He saw the rooster, saw Macho stand at the open doorway at the rear of the truck, saw him flutter downward onto the ground. He didn’t take many steps, nor did he have a chance to make a sound. The vulture swirled once in the air as if caught in a current, then swooped downward on the gamecock.

  “No!” Rafo cried. “Macho!”

  But the rooster was tied by one leg. The vulture yanked and the rope didn’t give. He yanked again.

  Rafo kept running toward the truck. “Macho!”

  The vulture yanked again. The rooster’s leg broke and the vulture had the crippled bird.

  “Macho!”

  The vulture lifted. One foot of talons held the struggling, lamed bird. They heard the rooster shrieking. It kept on shrieking as the vulture soared, drifted, soared, glided. Then with the great beauty of great wings it lifted itself into open sky.

  “Macho!” Rafo kept screaming and running along the ledge in the direction of the vulture’s flight.

  “Rafo—come back!”

&nbs
p; But the boy kept running, amuck now, screaming into the sky, where the vulture was now no larger than a lark, screaming Macho’s name, yelling no, running, falling, running dementedly, crying, screaming no.

  “Rafo—come back! Rafo!”

  The boy was at the farthest ledge now, no farther to go unless he flew . . . or fell.

  He fell.

  “Rafo!”

  The boy was gone. Mike raced to the edge of the escarpment. He looked down. Rafo was down below, on a shelf of rock, some fifteen feet lower, lying there, motionless, as still as sleep.

  “Rafo!”

  Mike started to clamber down. He got five feet below and there was no way downward. He came up again. He tried another way and, step by falling step, got to where the boy was lying.

  “Rafo!” he kept yelling. “Rafo!”

  He started to lift the boy, became afraid to do so—if something was broken. Afraid.

  “Rafo!” he cried helplessly.

  Then he took the boy in his arms. He held him, he cradled him, he rocked him back and forth. “Rafo!” he kept crying. “Rafo! Rafo!” He didn’t say the words—don’t die, Rafo—didn’t dare give utterance to them, for fear that saying death would make death come true again.

  All his controls were useless to him, they failed him now, he gave vent to his love of the boy, to the love that had come too late, to his despair. And holding him close, continuing to rock him, rocking him as if he were a baby, Mike kept crying against the having and the losing, and the deeper despair of never knowing which was which.

  * * *

  • • •

  The boy lay in the back of the truck, conscious sometimes, other times not as still as death but stiller than dying. The thing to do was get him to a hospital, a doctor at least. But he had the terrible fear of moving him again, on these bumpy roads, with the night already black. He had heard warnings against disturbing a broken spine—not that there was any sign of a broken spine or even a broken limb. But still, in the darkness, on a craggy road along precipices, a rut might mean catastrophe. Especially if he drove without lights. And if he did turn the lights on, they’d be seen. Yet, he wouldn’t care about that anymore if it meant saving the boy’s life. Perhaps he’d better take the chance. The big worry was: there had been that time in the Dallas Rodeo when a rider had been thrown and they’d budged him, not more than that, and the doctors had said they’d killed him with the move. But . . . there was the other time, the opposite . . . What to do?

  He’d give him until dawn. Perhaps the boy would be conscious before daylight—and they could move more safely in the light.

  The boy was conscious sooner than dawn. It was well before midnight when he awoke. Mike didn’t even hear him. He was lying beside the boy and thought himself stark awake; thought, in fact, he was keeping a wide-eyed vigil on his patient. When he came to his senses he saw Rafo—sitting up.

  “What are you doing?” Mike asked, not too sensibly.

  “Nothing,” the boy said. “My leg hurts.”

  Mike got the flashlight and turned it on. “Where?”

  Rafo showed him—all along the muscle of his right thigh and down the calf. His trousers were torn; there was a gash and a rock burn.

  “Anywhere else?”

  “No,” he said. “Except my hand.”

  Mike turned the flash on it. Another cut, not too bad, and another burn.

  “You’re sitting up,” Mike said and realized how foolishly obvious it was.

  Rafo looked puzzled. “Yes.”

  “Anywhere else?” Mike continued. “Do you hurt anywhere else?”

  Rafo moved his shoulders. “I’m . . .” He seemed in pain.

  “It’s just stiffness, I think,” Mike said quickly. “You know—bruised. A lot of it’ll go away when you’re able to get around and walk.”

  “I walk,” the boy said simply.

  “What?”

  “I did walk.”

  “What do you mean, you did walk?”

  “While you are asleep, I go out there and I walk.” He pointed outdoors.

  “What the hell for?”

  “I have to take a piss.”

  Mike howled with laughter and relief. “You mean you went out there and pissed?”

  “I should piss in here?”

  He couldn’t believe the boy had been walking around, couldn’t believe the miraculous luck. “Let me see you do it again,” he said.

  “What—piss?”

  “No, goddamn it—walk! Let me see you walk.”

  “My leg hurts!”

  “Walk!”

  Mike got out of the truck first and as Rafo started to follow him, he offered the boy his hand. Rafo was annoyed enough at having to prove he could walk—more annoyed at being offered help. “Let go!” he said. “What the fuck you think I am—a cripple?”

  Mike laughed again.

  Rafo hobbled around a bit. He groaned a lot and shook his leg a little and seeing all the attention he was getting, groaned some more. But his leg did bother him. “Nothing is broken—yes, Mike?”

  Mike poked him and pulled him and made him flex and bend and do a number of things the boy thought were foolish. “You don’t know what the hell you are doing,” Rafo said. Mike did know, having had enough experience with broken legs, but it was wonderful to hear the brash, insulting tone in the boy’s voice again.

  “I’m hungry,” Rafo said.

  They sat in the back of the truck and started eating. Rafo didn’t eat much, a few Fritos out of a box, a part of a bottle of Orange Crush.

  Then suddenly he was still. At last he said softly, “Why didn’t he kill him right away?”

  He hoped the boy wouldn’t always have that memory of the rooster, lame and crying in the vulture’s grasp. It was a terrible sound, terrible even to Mike. “I don’t know,” he said.

  The boy was talking mostly to himself, trying to understand something. “If you kill animals, you have to kill them fast,” he said. What was he remembering now? Marta insisting on killing the cow before setting fire to the jacal? Some other small mercy?

  Rafo continued: “Even some people do this.”

  “Sometimes,” Mike said. He didn’t know whether Rafo meant some people kill things fast or some kill slow—it was true either way.

  The boy was still worrying it, mostly to himself. “Macho kills the black one—is a game. The other one kills Macho—is not a game.”

  He was seeing something out of joint, but it was too much for him. He became silent. Once, he seemed on the verge of asking a question and Mike, with a heavy feeling, felt he knew what it would be. You told me vultures don’t go for living things, only for the dead. Carrion, you said. But Macho was not carrion. What do you say to that?

  I’ll say I was wrong. I was wrong with you, Rafo, from the very beginning—which made everything else wrong. It’s dead earnest, Rafo; it’s not a game—the rules don’t count—when vultures starve, they go for anything.

  But the boy didn’t ask the question. Either he had forgotten or was, simply, kind. Rafo finished the Orange Crush and said he was sleepy. This time instead of lying on the sleeping bag he got into it. Mike lay down on the floor of the truck, beside the boy, and determined not to doze off this time but to keep watch, in case the boy awakened and needed him.

  Rafo had just started breathing heavily when Mike had the shock. Rafo had it too—he sat up quickly.

  It was a light. A beam shone in on them. It was a flashlight but sharp as a sword, stabbing the darkness. All Mike could see behind it, all he could see of the dark face was a neat moustache and a smile of crooked teeth.

  “What?” Mike was stunned. “Who is it?”

  The man leaned forward a little to get a better look inside and Mike had a glimpse of his uniform. The national patrol. He said something in Spanish and Mike cou
ld hear the word sargento. As he went on talking, Mike asked Rafo, “What’s he saying?”

  Before the boy could answer, “Ah, a norteamericano!” the sergeant said. “Step out, please. Him also.”

  Mike helped Rafo ease himself out of the sleeping bag, then they both got out of the truck.

  Making way for them, the sergeant moved back a few steps and Mike saw the other man. He was the driver of the police car, younger than his superior, with a round face almost childish in its innocence. He stood there quietly, not so suave as his superior, certainly not so confident except for the drawn gun in his hand.

  There were no preliminaries. The sergeant didn’t ask for identification, tourist cards, anything of the sort. With his flashlight he simply gestured for the driver to start the search. As the young man holstered his gun, the sergeant drew a neatly compact automatic from his tightly fitted leather belt and, with his other hand, held the light for his assistant. Quickly the young officer went through Mike’s clothes, then through Rafo’s. He was adept at it; his hands ran swiftly, exploring everything. Discovering nothing that interested him, he drew his own flashlight from his pocket, and cast a cone of light into the truck. His attention caught by something inside, he jumped in and disappeared for what seemed a long time. They could hear him moving things inside the vehicle, shoving the stuff around, opening anything that was openable, prying loose the cover that hid the spare tire, exploring the well space under it. At last the beam of his flashlight was directed outward again and the driver followed it, puffing and muttering under his breath. He looked at the sergeant who gestured him to the front of the truck. Presently they heard him in the cab, opening the glove compartment, searching under the seat, ransacking everything. When Mike heard him leave the cab and pull open the hood, he addressed the sergeant.