Fistful of Hate

by Steve Lee

  'You sure make a feller feel at his ease,' said Sloane casting a wary eye over the desert.

  It wasn't hard to give weight to Joe's story. Not in the place they found themselves. Not in death's domain. Before them the scorched and thirsty sands stretched to the horizon and beyond like a shimmering sea of bone — the bones of animals and men that had once throbbed with the pulse of life. The desert had snared them all in its trap of thirst and heat. It had snared them and crumpled them, drunk of their blood and shared their flesh with the tearing beaks of buzzards. It chewed them, swallowed them and digested them. Another handful of sand. Another spit in the white ocean.

  El Muerte's trail lay ahead of the three men like the desert's own parched thirsty tongue. They followed it right into the grinning jaws of death.

  Chapter Six

  Pascual gave thanks to El Muerte as he strode towards the cockpit, his tall young son walking proudly at his side. He heaped blessings on the bandit's head. For Pascual was the richest man in the village of Lascara and he owed his wealth all to El Muerte.

  Pascual was the village coffin-maker. Before the coming of El Muerte, business had been bad. Pascual had many times thought that nowhere in the whole of Mexico could there be such inconsiderately healthy and long-living people as the citizens of Lascara. He passed the long, idle days seated outside his humble jacal waiting for trade that never seemed to come, keeping an interested eye on old shuffling grandmothers, an eager ear open for news of who was sick and who kicked by a stubborn burro and whose wife lay beaten and bleeding in her bed and how so-and-so was going to knife such-and-such when he caught up with that no-good wife-stealing sonovabitch.

  Then El Muerte and his bandits had made their camp near the village. And, ever since, Pascual and his son had been as busy as they wished to be. No more could they be seen lounging in the shade of their shack waiting for someone to die. Instead they would be sawing up trees into lengths of six feet — or shavings would be curling endlessly off a rasping plane. Even on Saints' Days, the sound of their insistent hammers could be heard above the tolling of the mission bells. And as fast as he filled his hastily-constructed coffins, Pascual filled his pockets with pesos. For seldom a week passed that someone failed to displease El Muerte — it was so very easy to displease El Muerte — and then screams would shake the village calm, the dogs would bark, widows wail and Pascual would fetch his tools and get straight to work.

  So it was not surprising that Pascual offered mil blessings to the killer everyone else hated and feared as he walked through the village with his young son, feeling that pleasant gratification men feel when they know they are richer than all those they see around them. Man and boy both had resolute smiles on their faces, their manner suggesting that they were men embarked on a mission that promised enormous satisfaction. As they proceeded towards the cockpit, a ragged collection of barefoot children gathered around them, all noisily expressing their interest in the wicker basket which Pascual carried under his arm with the same pride that a young mother cradles her newborn. For Pascual enjoyed nothing better than a good cockfight and today was Saturday, the day of cockfights. In his basket Pascual carried his new fighting cock, which he had no doubt would be champion by the end of the day. It had better be, he thought. He had paid good money for it, very good money, sending for the bird all the way to Ensenada as only a man of his importance could afford to do. Everyone in the village was anxious to see this marvel in action and none more so than Pascual himself. So far he only had the dealer's word that it could do all the wonderful things claimed for it.

  Everyone in the village who could walk and see — and even some who couldn't — were waiting there at the cockpit, the crowd taking the shape of the circular arena. In grander days the arena had been the scene of many a corrida. Now the villagers had to content themselves with fighting cocks instead of bulls. Pascual and his son walked straight to the centre of the arena where a knot of men were standing waiting. With satisfaction, Pascual noted that Jose the pulque-vendor, owner of Lobo, the reigning champion, lacked his usual bright air of confidence.

  After a brief exchange of greetings, Pascual kneeled and opened his basket. The circle of onlookers tightened, men craning their necks to get a better look at this bird which had cost enough money to feed every mouth in the village for days. Pascual lifted the bird from the basket and held it high for all to see. The crowd murmured its approval. The cock, which Pascual had hopefully named Vampiro, was a mean-looking bird. It was smaller than its opponent, Lobo, but looked more lively and alert. Its bright beady eyes glared evilly from side to side, suspicious of all it could see. It irritably nipped a piece of Pascual's hand between the sharp points of its beak. Pascual took this as a good omen and shrugged aside the pain.

  'Well, José,' he demanded of the pulque-vendor, 'do you still think your old chicken can beat my Vampiro — or do you wish to call off our bet?' He knew, of course, that the pulque-vendor could not back out without losing face in the eyes of the other villagers and this he would never do.

  'It is as we said — fifty pesos to the winner,' José affirmed.

  'Muy bien,' Pascual nodded and held the bird stiff-legged so that Juan could tie the wicked, glinting spurs to its feet.

  When both owners had completed their preparations, they held the two birds close together — close enough to taunt but not to bite. Their hackles rose at the sight and smell of one another. Their heads jerked back and forth as they strained to peck at each other's eyes. Holding the birds at arm's length, Pascual and José stepped back until about seven feet separated the two fighters. The men waited for Manolo the basket-weaver to give his signal. Manolo let flutter his handkerchief to the ground and the waiting men released their birds.

  The cocks flew straight at each other. They met in midair, flapping desperately, each trying to climb higher than the other. Their scrawny yellow legs pumped a crazy dance, blurs of yellow and slashing silver. Beaks clamped on wings and the two birds became a red fluttering ball spinning and spinning. Feathers splashed the air. The two cocks tore themselves apart and fell awkwardly to the ground. Both landed running. They clashed again, became furiously embroiled. Dust swirled around them in feather-flecked clouds.

  'At him, Lobo!' yelled Jose the pulque-vendor. 'Cut him to pieces!'

  'Go, Vampiro, go! Tear out his goddam eyes!' screamed Pascual, pounding the air with his fist.

  These sentiments were hotly taken up by each of the crowd according to preference.

  The two birds leapt apart, both speckled with blood from a dozen small bites and tears. They circled each other, wary as boxers in a ring. Lobo was bigger, but Vampiro had the advantage of speed. Again they threw themselves at each other, pecking and slashing. Lobo managed to get above Vampiro. He snapped his beak tight on Vampiro's comb, the cracked yellow beak becoming wet and red. His legs thrashed, spike-tipped feet hunting flesh to carve. It looked like the end for Vampiro. Pascual groaned. He thought of the money wasted, the prestige lost. His sleeve mopped at his dripping forehead. He dared not raise his eyes from the battling cocks in case they met the taunting gaze of the pulque-wendor.

  But Vampiro was not yet finished. He twisted and wheeled to break free of the biting pain of Lobo's beak. Lobo held on through all the evasions, beak clamped determinedly onto comb. Vampiro leapt up. The two birds whirled fluttering into the air. Then Vampiro's stabbing spur found a soft place. Lobo squawked, releasing his hold. He fell twisting to the reddened soil. Vampiro plunged down after him, one spur ramming into an eye. Lobo's thrashing spasm of pain weakened slowly into twitching death. Vampiro went on pecking at the savaged body until it lay completely still. Then he strutted back and forth beside the body, lustily proclaiming his victory.

  Pascual raised his champion in firm but adoring hands. He hugged the bird then handed him to Juan to care for his wounds. He felt like crowing aloud himself. He looked around, proud and smiling. People shouted their congratulations. He received them with the gracious tolerance of a ma
n who had never for an instant doubted that his bird would triumph. He looked over at the pulque-vendor. José was gathering up the remains of the ex-champion, lifting the body reverently as he would the corpse of his own son. They would be eating chicken soup tonight in the jacal of the pulque-vendor, he thought with a smile. But nobody would enjoy it much.

  Pascual tugged contentedly at his greying moustachios. He had come as a rich man and he would leave the cockpit richer still. The thought made him so happy that he almost did not notice the horsemen until they were all around him.

  The villagers stumbled back before the shoving intrusion of the snorting stamping horses and their loud-voiced riders. They humbled their suddenly hatless heads beneath the mocking grins in the faces of the bandits. In silence they suffered the scornful abuse thrown at them like stones. The few that dared raise their heads had eyes only for the man riding the blackest of black horses, a tall, spectral figure rearing high and straight from a silver-worked saddle. The tall man on the black horse swung his eyes across the faces of the villagers like a lash.

  'Is there a maker of coffins here?' El Muerte demanded. 'One who calls himself Pascual?' There was a caress in his voice, a purring caress that almost hid the contemptuous scorn.

  'I am he, señor…' Pascal stepped forward almost eagerly, an arm half-raised for recognition. In his head he was already rubbing his palms. More dead, he thought. More dead, more coffins, more pesos.

  El Muerte waved a wagon forward. The grinning driver reined in alongside Pascual, the horses churning dust. Pascual stared at the wagon. In the back lay a coffin. He recognised it without hesitation as one of his own.

  El Muerte made an impatient gesture, flicking his wrist towards the driver of the wagon. Rings sparkled on his fingers. Boots scraped across wagon-boards, spurs jangling. Strong hands pushed the coffin and heaved it to the ground. The coffin rolled, the lid bursting open. A body tumbled out at Pascual's feet. With difficulty he recognised the mutilated face. It belonged to a bandit who had spoken disrespectfully of El Muerte when drunk in the cantina one night.

  'You made this coffin?' El Muerte asked.

  'Yes, señor,' Pascal admitted with uncertain pride. 'With the help of my son, Juan.' He rested a hand on the boy's shoulder. He wanted El Muerte to see what a strong helpful son he had.

  El Muerte climbed slowly down from the black horse. He walked purposefully towards the coffin and Pascual, six and a half feet of midnight moving across the arena in the afternoon sun. His body made music as he moved. A tiny golden bell tinkled sweetly from one ear. Gold coins sewn onto his black jacket and black conchoed trousers jingled and chattered. His holsters creaked beneath the weight of heavy guns. But louder than all of these was the regular shivering rattle of his spurs, jumping and jangling at every step. The spurs rose from the back of his stack-heeled boots like the quivering sting of a scorpion. They were silver these spurs and long, each one shaped like a scythe. The eyes of all the villagers were on the spurs as El Muerte approached Pascual. For they knew what these spurs could do. And what they had done.

  El Muerte nudged the shattered coffin with the square toe of his boot. His eyes filled Pascual's horizon.

  'This is not a good coffin,' said El Muerte in a voice like a judge passing sentence. 'This is a very bad coffin. I would not bury a dog in a coffin such as this. Not even a dog such as him!' As he spoke the last words, his voice rising in anger, El Muerte kicked the body of the dead bandit.

  Something whimpered in the pit of Pascual's stomach. He wished he could throw himself down and dig a hole in the dust and disappear inside it. Or that he might suddenly wake up and find himself safe and wealthy at the start of another profitable day with his naked thigh pressed up against the plump pillow-like buttocks of Maria the village whore. None of these things happened. Instead he found himself still uncomfortably at the centre of the arena, face to face with death.

  In twenty years as a coffin-maker, Pascual had seen and handled death in many forms — bodies blackened by scorpion stings, baked by the sun, shattered by cannon-balls, mangled by cart-wheels. All of these and worse he had put to bed in their final resting place. But never had he seen anything as terrible as this living death which glared at him with furious narrow-slitted eyes — eyes that scorched into his and gave his soul a foretaste of Hell.

  "The dead must be honoured,' said El Muerte, his voice slow-burning in anger. 'And your coffins are not fit for the dead!'

  The anger of El Muerte flared up like coal-oil on a fire. He kicked at the ruined coffin. He kicked at it and stamped on it — smashing apart the flimsy boards. His anger was a fearful thing to see. Old black-shawled women whose ancient eyes had seen everything crossed themselves at the sight. The faces of hardened men grew pale and lesser men sweated and trembled as if struggling with a fever.

  As Pascual was doing now.

  El Muerte stood above the splintered fragments of the coffin, his chest heaving. He seemed to be trying to control the madness that inflamed his brain. He glared at the coffin-maker trembling before him and then at his son. The smouldering eyes fell upon the cock Juan held in palsied hands.

  'This bird… he is yours?' El Muerte asked the coffin-maker.

  'Yes, señor…'

  'You like to watch him fight with other birds?'

  'Oh, yes, señor!' Pascual assured him, anxious to please. 'It is my whole life.'

  El Muerte smiled the smile of a man who had suddenly found the solution to a nagging problem. 'Then let it be your death,' he said. 'So you will know how it is to die in the dirt to please other men like you — men with no respect for Death!'

  Ignoring the faint wail of despair that sprung from Pascual's bloodless lips, El Muerte called out to his men who were watching from their horses with silent, slack-mouthed amusement: 'Give them weapons that they may fight like men and not like birds!'

  A machete was tossed to Pascual. A sword clattered at Juan's feet. Another bandit nudged his horse forward and snatched Vampiro squawking from Juan's hands. Whooping, he spun the bird in a napping circle round his head — then tossed it like a cabbage into the ranks of villagers. Others rode their horses stiff-legged against the crowd, forcing the villagers to retreat further back.

  'Pick up your weapons,' El Muerte ordered the trembling man and boy.

  Father and son looked at one another for a moment that seemed endless. Then they stooped and lifted the weapons. They weighed the unfamiliar blades in their hands, testing their balance.

  'Now let's see if you crow as loudly as your birds…' said El Muerte, his smile carnivorous.

  The three men were a triangle inside the larger circle of the cockpit. Juan attacked first, his sword raised high to slash at the bandit's head. El Muerte side-stepped and sent the boy sprawling with a kick in the pants that raised a laugh from his men. Now Pascual tried his luck. He ran forward and lashed out with the machete. El Muerte dodged the blow then sprang up, leaping high in the air, lashing out with his boot at the side of Pascual's head. Pascual's hand flew to his ear and found only blood. His ear lay in the dust.

  El Muerte stood with his hands on his hips and laughed a cavernous laugh. With a shriek of anger, Juan launched himself at the laughing bandit. He thrust with his sword and missed. He swiped in a broader arc — and missed again. The third time, El Muerte's foot leapt up. Spurs slashed through skin and muscle, scraped on bone. Juan howled. The sword dropped from pain-flexed fingers. The boy clutched his arm, his white shirt becoming scarlet.

  El Muerte's men cheered as if they were applauding a skilful pass by a great toreador at the Plaza de Toros in Mexico City. The bandit chief had no time to acknowledge his men's appreciation and take a bow because Pascual was upon him, hacking with the machete like a madman, his face flushed with hate and fear and blood from his pumping wound. El Muerte danced from the hissing blade, coins and spurs jangling a mocking tune. Amused, he watched the older man make himself breathless in vain. Then the bandit snapped out a kick. The machete sprang from Pascua
l's grasp. Through tears of pain Pascual watched the blood gush from his wrist. El Muerte's vaulting cry of pleasure alerted him to the next kick. He stumbled backwards, jerking his head away from the boot rushing at his face. The boot caught him under the chin, the silver spurs slicing through his neck and slitting his jugular. Pascual collapsed in the dust by Lobo's body. Somehow, he managed to struggle up onto his knees. Like a very weary man who can hardly keep his eyes open, Pascual watched his veins empty into the dust, feeding the thirsty sand. It took much less time than he expected for his veins to run dry. He toppled forward onto the crimson sand and lay still, dead as Lobo.

  He was the lucky one.

  Juan retreated from El Muerte's advance in a tearful panic. There was nowhere he could run to. He was trapped inside a solid circle of horseflesh and steel. With death for company. Without any hope, he ran and snatched the sword from where it had fallen. Holding it awkwardly in his left hand, he turned to face his father's killer. El Muerte advanced steadily towards him. There was no doubt in his face as to what the outcome of this duel would be.

  Juan attacked. It was a clumsy attack. He ran at El Muerte and slashed with the sword. El Muerte was no longer where he had been. The sword whistled over his head. He danced out of range. Juan made to follow — then tripped over the body of the dead bandit. He pitched to the ground.

  El Muerte looked down at him with disappointment, with amused pity. The boy struggled up, using the sword as a support. Through a veil of blood and sweat he saw El Muerte standing there waiting for him, smiling his contempt. Juan screamed his hatred at the bandit. He ran at him, the sword flashing wildly… This time El Muerte did not side-step. He threw himself into the air and kicked out. The raking spur slashed a red line up one side of Juan's face, neatly cutting through his left eye.

  Juan pitched into the dust, hands to his face, and screamed.