by Guy Johnson
Maria answered as if she was stating common knowledge. “You are El Negro’s heir, his grandson. If I am with you, I don’t have to bed with or tolerate approaches from the other men. Plus, if I treat you well and you like me, El Negro will have greater cause to treat me well. He is a powerful friend to have.”
“Then you are just using me.” Strains of anger and disappointment began to creep into his words. “This was only a practical decision; it had nothing to do with whether you liked me or not! I see now. I guess I didn’t know how innocent I truly was!”
“You are disturbed? Why?”
“Damn straight I’m disturbed! Your decision to have sex with me was a business decision, it had nothing to do with me! And I thought you liked me! Me, Jackson Tremain!”
“You see nothing! Your anger is in the way! I do like you! I like you very much, more than I thought possible. I have tried not to lie to you. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but the truth is not always kind. It is true that I made the decision to make love with you before I ever met you. But when I actually met you, you gave me many reasons to be with you. I feel good with you. I can speak my heart and you will listen. I wanted to enjoy myself with you and I do. I don’t have to pretend that you give me pleasure.”
She put her hand on his face and caressed his cheek tenderly then continued, “You don’t understand, but for a poor woman life is very hard in this country. This is a man’s land and if a woman is considered attractive she may be taken young unless she has family to protect her. That type of life can squeeze blood from the body. After a time it is like an artery is cut and your spirit drains away! A woman who is not yet thirty can look sixty years old if she does not make smart business decisions.
“I have survived by making decisions with my head that I could not afford to let my heart make. You have felt the ridges on the skin of my back?” She waited for Jackson to respond. His dark silhouette nodded in response to her question. She continued, “They are the scars from being whipped with a riding crop! I was whipped until the blood ran! I was not always obedient, but I could not afford to be stupid! I do not wish you to marry me or even take me back to the United States with you. All I wanted was to avoid being passed around and to have favor in El Negro’s eyes. Now, I have more than I ever expected to have. We are friends and lovers, no?”
“I guess,” Jackson answered, the darkness hiding the confusion on his face.
“I want to give you pleasure and be with you as long as you want to be with me. Is this wrong?”
Her large, dark eyes stared at him with a trace of fear. He suddenly realized that she was afraid of displeasing him. He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know. Who’s to say what is right and what is wrong? But your story is very chilling.”
She asked in a soft voice, “Do you still want me?”
Her question totally disarmed him. It gave him a sense of her vulnerability and it made him feel ashamed that he had challenged her motives. It made him want to protect her. He reached out and put his arms around her and pulled her close until their bodies were touching. “Yes, more than ever,” he murmured into her ear. She pressed herself against him and he grew hard in the grip of her hand.
Jackson’s grandfather arrived midafternoon on Tuesday and he greeted his grandson with a hug and a handshake, but Jackson saw appraising eyes behind the actions and felt immediate resentment: He didn’t realize that he was doomed to live by his grandfather’s standards until he developed his own. The sight of El Indio, who had come with his grandfather, washed away any ill feelings he had. Jackson hadn’t seen the old Indian since he was fifteen. A flood of warmth flushed through him. He rushed over and gave El Indio a hug, which was returned.
El Indio pushed Jackson away and held him at arm’s length. He nodded his head as he looked him up and down. “Much time has passed.”
Jackson nodded, noticing the gray hair that sprinkled El Indio’s once jet-black mane and the sun-weathered and wrinkled face. Only the black, flat-brimmed hat with the white, black-tipped feather stuck in its band and the glitter of the dark eyes remained the same.
El Indio smiled and said, “Diablito returns to us as a man! Soon, we will have to find another name for him! A man’s name!”
El Indio’s announcement pleased Jackson. Although he never gave it credence consciously, his grandfather and the men around him were extremely important to him. He would rather risk death than appear weak or foolish in their eyes.
After dinner a map was laid on the table and the hunt was planned. Once again Jackson begged off horseback assignments, explaining that his behind was still sore from the previous day’s six hours in the saddle. Amid laughter and a few coarse jokes, he was assigned to drive the jeep and carry supplies. Only Culio, Carlos, El Indio, and Hernando were going to join Jackson and his grandfather on the hunt. Tomas would head the three-man team assigned to stay behind and guard the lodge. The departure time for the hunt was six in the morning.
After his shift of sentry duty, Jackson lay in bed with Maria basking in the warm afterglow of passionate lovemaking. He knew he should be trying to rest, but sleep was far away. He was thinking about returning to the United States. The prospect filled him with dismay. He didn’t want what he had with Maria to stop. He had begun to think about asking her to leave Mexico and return with him. Doubt assailed him and his uneasiness increased as he considered the possibility of asking her. He knew that she was awake as well, for she was caressing his back slowly.
“You should sleep,” she urged softly. “Tomorrow will take all your strength.”
He turned to her and stared at her dark outline against the white sheets. In the room’s darkness, he couldn’t see the expression on her face, but he could feel the warmth of her body. “What if I told you I didn’t want this to stop, that I want to be with you?”
“I would love it,” she answered with a sigh.
“I don’t want it to stop,” Jackson declared.
“Neither do I,” she whispered.
“Would you come to America with me?”
“I would go anywhere with you! To go to America would be like a dream come true, a fairy tale come to life!”
“We’ve got to figure out how we’ll do it!”
“You just ask your grandfather! He will do anything that you ask. He complains often that you never ask him for anything. He says that he gives more to other people than he does to you.”
“Maybe it’s easier for them to ask than it is for me.”
“If you truly want to take me with you, I promise that I will do everything to please you! You will never regret this decision!”
“Well, I’ve got to find a way to tell my grandfather,” Jackson said with obvious trepidation.
“Perhaps it’s time for you to rest and leave that for later,” Maria suggested. “Hunting the javelina is dangerous work. It requires alertness and attention. I’ll worry about you if you don’t get enough rest. Let me hold you.” Jackson lay down and entwined himself with Maria and tried to let the silence and darkness bring sleep, but it did not come. The first light of morning found him still awake.
Jackson and the five horsemen started out before the sun rose on Wednesday morning and arrived at nine o’clock at the top ravine leading to the box canyon where the peccaries sheltered during the night. The animals had already left the canyon to forage for tubers in an arroyo where a small creek still ran.
Jackson’s grandfather rode his horse alongside the jeep into the valley at the mouth of the canyon. His grandfather explained the strategy behind the hunt and what Jackson would be expected to do. At the end of his explanation, he gave Jackson a long look and said, “I see you with Maria. She ain’t what I’d call a good girl, but she’s got a good heart. She a hard worker and a straight shooter. And she got gumption too! You could do a whole lot worse. If’en you treat her right, you can’t have a better friend.”
Jackson didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His lips couldn’t form the request to ask
to take Maria back to the States with him, and those were the only words he wanted to say. It was fear of the look that would cross his grandfather’s face that kept him from asking. He decided it wasn’t the right time. After the hunt would be better.
Jackson assisted Carlos in building a barricade across an intersecting ravine. They didn’t want the pigs to avoid the trap and circle around behind the waiting hunters. They stretched red dyed canvas across the ravine and collected dried branches and small boulders to heap behind it. The barricade would not stand an assault, but they thought the appearance of a new obstacle would frighten the pigs and keep them on their regular route to the box canyon. Jackson was positioned in the jeep above the barricade so that he could warn the hunters of any breach. He didn’t much care for his location because he was at the top of a steep ravine with no easy way down unless he reversed and went back a half mile. If the pigs climbed up to him, he had no ready escape. The low sides of the jeep would present no challenge for the enraged pigs.
Jackson checked and rechecked his guns, ensuring that they were in full working order. He had the short, double-barrel shotgun in a holster across his chest and his 30.06 Winchester in the seat next to him. He settled down to wait as he had been taught. He positioned himself so that he had a view of the direction in which the pigs would come and pulled his straw hat down over his forehead. The essence of hunting was absolute stillness. Only the eyes were allowed to move. Soon his thoughts were drifting toward Maria and her luscious body.
The sky to the west had grown dark above the mountains and there were flashes of lightning among the dark gray clouds. Distant rumblings foretold thunder. It looked like a rare summer rainstorm was moving in their direction. Jackson had experienced a few of these summer thundershowers and knew them to be extremely dangerous because of the tremendous forces that could be unleashed. A summer shower might only last an hour, but the amount of water which fell upon the cracked and thirsty earth was staggering. It could rain so hard that one could not see farther than thirty feet in any direction. The lightning would branch across the sky like the crooked finger of God and smite the earth with the thud of a giant fist.
A shot echoed across the landscape. The pigs were coming. Jackson put two fingers in his mouth and gave out a loud, high whistle. He heard a whistle in response and turned on the jeep’s engine. He wanted to be ready to go. The sound of thunder rumbled more distinctly. The storm was moving fast. The herd appeared coming out of a jumble of sagebrush and tumbleweed. He saw them through his binoculars. The pigs were running hard, but not at top speed. They were scared but not pressed. There were about twenty to thirty animals in the group led by a couple large adults. The wind was blowing toward him so he could smell their gamey odor, but they could not pick up his scent. He sat without movement. Waiting.
The first part of the pack passed in the ravine below him, high ridge-backed bodies, covered with short, bristling brown fur. Their grunting and the sound of their hooves pounding on the hard clay filled the air. His grandfather, El Indio, and Carlos awaited the pigs at the entrance to the box canyon. Their plan was to shoot the first five pigs that spilled out of the ravine. Generally, killing the leaders would turn a pack, but if that failed the three hunters had found a steep path of retreat up the far side of the valley which lay at the mouth of the box canyon. Jackson put the jeep in gear and bumped along on the rough and uneven terrain that lay along the brink of the ravine, trying to keep the pigs in sight. They were outrunning him. The last of them disappeared around the curve of the ravine.
Jackson maintained the highest speed the broken land would permit. He had to circumnavigate a landslide leading steeply down to the bed of the ravine. A fusillade of rifle fire rang out amid the loud squealing of peccaries. Several more rifle shots echoed through the twisted maze of gorges and arroyos. Then there was the sound of a horse shrieking in pain. Jackson drove the jeep around to the end of the ridge and climbed up on the hood. Below him on the far side of the valley lay his grandfather’s horse on its side, waving its legs frantically. His grandfather was not visible. Jackson picked up the binoculars and saw that his grandfather was still in the saddle and that his leg was caught under his horse.
Behind him he heard the squealing of more pigs. He turned and saw the rest of the pack hurtling down the floor of the ravine straight toward his grandfather. They were about a quarter of a mile away and closing fast. Jackson couldn’t get a good estimate of their number as they ran through the brush, but it looked like the herd was in excess of twenty animals. He had no time to go back and find a suitable way down; he had to go straight down the steep side of the ravine. It was thirty-five feet deep, and the sides were about a sixty-degree slant. He realized he stood a good chance of killing himself, but he sat down in the jeep, fastened his seat belt, and drove it directly over the lip of the ravine. First there was a momentary free fall, then the jeep bounced lopsidedly down the slope, slowly turning sidewise. Jackson gunned the accelerator and got the nose of the vehicle leading his downward plunge. The front tires hit the hard bed of the ravine and Jackson’s forehead banged hard against the metal frame of the windshield and the jeep bounced across the hard clay surface and came to rest within twenty feet of the downed horse and rider.
Blood ran down Jackson’s face and there was a strange drumming in his ears. The pain in his head was so severe that it was numbing. The sensation in his hands seemed to be gone. The edge of his vision was filled with exploding black and red dots. Then he heard a new drumming sound in his ears. The pigs were three hundred yards away and running hard. Jackson pulled the shotgun from its holster and cocked both barrels. The herd was coming right toward him, but at least the jeep was blocking his grandfather. He waited. At twenty yards he would fire both barrels into their leaders and if they didn’t turn perhaps he would have time to reload once.
Rifle shots reverberated along the walls of the ravine. Jackson saw pigs falling, but still the herd came on, a juggernaut on a sea of sand. He waited until he could see the animals’ beady eyes and their tongues lolling out of their mouths. He fired both barrels. The sound deafened him. The gun kicked high. He hit the release and popped it open, discarding spent shells and loading two more in their place. There was a loud thud as a pig’s body collided against the rear fender of the jeep. Jackson waved his gun around seeking a target, but in the time it took him to reload the herd had turned and escaped into the brush. Culio, El Indio, and Carlos rode down into the ravine. Carlos was off his horse before it stopped and he ran to El Negro.
When Jackson’s grandfather had been pulled from beneath his horse and he had dispatched the animal with a pistol shot, he came over and stood in front of Jackson. He pointed to his grandson and shouted to the other men, “That’s my grandson! That’s my blood. That’s my goddamn blood pumping in that body! He’s a man’s man! Ain’t a lot of steam to him, but there’s a hell of a fire in the boiler!”
Both Culio and Carlos nodded knowingly as if to say they expected no less, he was El Negro’s heir. El Indio took the feather out of his hat and walked over and handed it to Jackson. The act was done without affectation, but everyone knew it was significant. To earn a feather in the field, a man had to show uncommon courage and daring. Jackson was extremely moved. His grandfather was smiling and stalking around like a proud, old rooster. Jackson took off his hat and put the feather securely in the band of his hat. The hat seemed heavier when he put it back on his head.
The men collected nine pigs and concluded that they could take no more. They decided not to field-dress the pigs until they had cleared out of pig country and left the land of arroyos and flash floods behind. It took them an hour and a half to reach the rolling foothills of the mountains. Even though the storm was pressing, his grandfather decided to gut and butcher the pigs away from the hunting lodge. The pigs were hung in a stand of trees ten miles from the lodge and Hernando was sent to bring Alma and Maria to assist with the butchering.
Jackson was digging a hole in which to
bury the entrails when Hernando rode off. Culio was building a small, smokeless fire while Carlos, El Indio, and his grandfather moved from pig to pig, gutting each animal. Jackson noticed there was a difference in the way the men treated him. He had earned respect independent of his grandfather. It wasn’t so much his act of bravery that they respected, but rather the nerve he had demonstrated in waiting until the last moment to fire upon the stampeding pigs. El Indio had called him muy macho and he had received many claps on the back from the men in the hunting party. Since he had performed a deed that had even earned his grandfather’s grudging acknowledgment, Jackson decided that he would ask him about taking Maria back with him when they returned to Mexico City; that way it would not seem so impetuous a decision. He glanced around at the surrounding countryside, the rolling hills covered with the gold of dried grass. Even with the dark charcoal and gray sky above it, it seemed to be one of the most beautiful spots on earth.
Jackson was not aware of when Hernando had returned, for he had become engrossed in carrying shovelfuls of offal to the hole he had dug. Jackson was concentrating on not letting the slimy, bloody mess get on his clothing. However, he heard the notes of urgency in the voices, then he heard his grandfather barking out orders in Spanish. Jackson dropped his shovel and went to find out what was causing the stir.
Carlos was coming toward him as Jackson ambled over. “What’s going on?” Jackson asked. He saw Hernando’s horse and looked around for Maria and Alma, but there was no sign of them. “Where’s Maria?” he asked.
Carlos hesitated a moment then said without inflection, “The lodge was attacked! Tomas and the rest of the guards are dead. Alma’s been killed and we think that they have taken Maria.”