The Crossing, a short story
Page 4
it found itself forgotten or out of favor and pleaded for the comfort of a reply.
After half an hour the call came for Talisman. The chief cocked his head close to the receiver, although the volume was still enough to set my teeth on edge. Straining to understand, and be understood in, Spanish left me too tired to follow the conversation. I understood the situation well enough—so much fuss—it was bound to cost me. La mordida, the bite, was going to take a chunk out of my ass.
The discussion ended, the chief turned to me with eyes that seemed more birdlike in the descending light, yet still kind, as if the troubles of all travelers fortunate enough to get his personal attention could be solved through his benevolence.
“It is okay,” he said. “You may take the guns across the country with a guarda de hacienda.”
“Guard?”
“Yes. They can arrange it next door.”
“What about the permit?”
“Unfortunately it is no good at present. Much change since September.”
“How can that be? This letter was to your boss, el Ministro de Hacienda. Why should I need a guard?”
As the chief shrugged in reply the feeling took hold of me: all day I’d been at the mercy of persons whose sense of mission was not to get me through to my destination, but to observe rules I had no knowledge of and no way of learning. I was tired of being pushed around, but how do you fight this? I’m talking to the top man, who’s nothing but a conduit for a bodiless voice in Guatemala City. I thought, I’m gonna complain to the US consul tomorrow. Yet I thanked the man in Spanish, like an automaton.
“No hay de que,” he replied, smiling his eyes to slits, ”and good hunting.”
Outside the swelter finally broke with a patter of drops in the dust of the road. A clap of thunder sounded a mile off and the wind freshened. A very serious boy of eight or nine came up to me selling peanuts in the shell. His eyebrows were fixed in a permanent frown, as if the seriousness of earning enough to eat had reached him early.
“How much?” I asked.
“Dollar,” the boy said.
I laughed at the outrageousness of the price. “I have only pesos of Mexico. I will give you two pesos for two of these.”
The boy’s frown deepened while in his mind he debated the rate of exchange against the certitude of a sale. He put out his hand. I put the large Mexican coins in his small hand and took two cones of peanuts out of the bundle. It was the day’s simplest transaction. I could feel his eyes on me as I walked away, followed by the péon with the guns.
As I handed the peanuts to Margot she said, “Clarrisa found some kids to play with. She’s asleep now.”
“That’s good, because she won’t get any later. We’ll have a guard with us to Guatemala tonight.”
“Do you think we can make it in time? It’s almost five.”
“I’m more worried about where he’s going to sit and how much he’s going to cost.”
“Don’t worry about the seating. I can take Clarissa on my lap and Sally can lie in her basket on the floor. How long is it to Guatemala?”
“Five hours, maybe. Depends on how fast I can go in the dark.”
She said, “How about the curfew the man told us about?”
“Let the guard worry about that,” I said. “It’s not my problem anymore.”
“You poor dear; how’s your back?”
“It’s killing me. You should have seen those guys with the guns. They practically slobbered on them.”
I walked over to the office of the Guardia de Hacienda. Fewer persons milled about now. In the heavy atmosphere of the reluctant rain their voices and movements were more subdued. Inside the office they were already typing the orders for the guard, who was standing by, a slightly wall-eyed young man with five o’clock shadow. He was signing out a .38 revolver. The sergeant at the desk asked for forty dollars.
I said, “You’ll have to take traveler’s checks. I don’t have that much cash anymore.”
The sergeant said, “Yes, but the chief will have to sign for it.”
I understood the Spanish perfectly. The chief would okay it. We were of the brotherhood of hunters, cazadores. The orders were cut, the check attached and then the péon hovering in the background said it was time for the inspection.
An American who sauntered with the assurance of a seasoned border crosser came over to admire our rig. He liked the Dodge Power Wagon but especially the Alaskan camper.
“Saw you over at the office of el Jefe,” he said. “Having a little trouble?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “I’m trying to get some guns through.”
“You make it?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I had to hire a guard.”
“Well, you’re lucky; they revoked all the gun permits a month ago.”
That sent a cold chill through my intestines. What if, after all those hours and pesos, we had to go back to Mexico and start all over again?
The American spoke confidentially: “The unofficial word is they used it to nail some ex-president. Revoked the permits at midnight, arrested him at one.”
“Really?” The chill backed up into my throat.
It appeared the chief was going to get me past the inspection without having to unload everything. I recognized the words for ‘nothing but personal effects,’ and at that I closed my eyes and listened to the large raindrops splattering in the dust, almost infrequently enough to be counted. There’s a logic to all this, I told myself. I opened my eyes. The chief was waving his hand in a signal of dismissal. In another time the chief would have been the factotum of a Mayan temple, counting sacrifices or reporting the movement of constellations to the supreme astronomer.
“I should have sent the guns ahead by air,” I said to Margot.
“Who would have known?” she replied
“Yes, indeed, who would have known about this?”
END