by Blake, J
Edward smiled back. “They pretty well dead enough, sir,” he said.
“Dont see nothin of him, sir!” the soldier named Johnson yelled from the corner. “Nought but a bunch a Meskins on the sidewalks. He musta run down around the next corner.”
“Shit!” the lieutenant said through his teeth. “If he’s got friends in town we’ll never find the sonofabitch.”
“Mugroso condenado?” the señora suddenly cried out. “Eres de la compañía de traidores! La compañía de Dominguez!” She was struggling in the guard’s grasp as though she would lunge at Edward and batter him with her bare hands. “Maldito mentiroso!” She spat at him.
“Lordy,” a soldier said, “these Meskins sure aint got no love for you Spy Compny boys, do they? Even if you aint no damn Mexican.”
“Por qué?” the woman shouted. “Why did you liars come to me? What was the purpose? Tell me!”
“What the hell she talking about?” the lieutenant said.
“Damn if I know, sir,” Edward said. “Woman’s loony, you ask me. Like the fella there said, this uniform makes lots of the locals crazy to see it.” He took up the black’s reins. “I got to get, sir. Got a report to deliver to General Scott and this here horse to Colonel Hitchcock. I was on my way to do it when I seen you-all shooting.”
“Why” the señora cried. Her face was bright with tears. “What did you want? You and damned Dominguez, the filthy traitor! It was him with you that day, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”
The lieutenant looked quizzical. “Dominguez is your C.O., aint he?”
“Damn good man,” Edward said. “All these Meskins hate him cause he’s fighting for us. They’ll tell any lie about him.”
He chucked up his horse and rode off down the Calle Patoni and glanced back to see the woman speaking to the lieutenant and then he turned the corner where John had gone.
20
He ran down the Avenida Dolores with the pistol held under his cloak and wove through the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk and came to a plaza where a band was playing to a festive crowd and the trees were hung with colorful paper lanterns. He turned onto a side street and strode past brightly lighted shops and cafes and spied now a dark alleyway and he entered it and paused to catch his breath. He listened hard for sounds of pursuit but heard none, only the clopping of horses and the rumble of wheels on the cobbled street and the laughter and song of evening revelers. The beard felt askew on his sweated face and he readjusted it as best he could by feel. He wondered where Edward was, if he knew what had happened, if he’d been close by and seen it.
On the busy street a few feet away the indifferent world passed by. The alley was dark and long, extending about sixty yards to the street bordering its far end. The sole illumination was an oily cast of yellow lamplight spilling from an open door midway down the alley where a line of horses was hitched to a long post and even at this distance he could hear a raucous din from within. Thinking it the wiser course to avoid the bright lights of the streets he made toward the door. Its clamor grew as he approached.
The alley reeked of piss and rot and the cobbles were slippery under his bootsoles. He tucked the pistol into his waistband and closed his cloak over it and stepped to the doorway and peered around the jamb. It was a tavern inside hazed blue-yellow in the smoky lamplight. A raucous crowd of men cheering and cursing and shouting bets was gathered around a small rectangular cockpit enclosed by wooden walls about three feet high. Through gaps between spectators he could see the cocks leaping and coming together again and again in a flurry of feathers and flash of spurs and beaks and flicks of blood. There was a row of tables along the wall to the left and a bar ran the length of the right side of the room and he could see the swinging-door front entrance at the other end of the long cantina. The air of the room touched his face like hot breath and carried on it the smells of smoke and sweat and spirits. He thought to have his first drink in weeks while he pondered his next move.
He eased through the door and skirted the crowd around the cockpit and went to the bar and ordered tequila from a cantinero with wavy hair so heavily pomaded it shone like black satin.
The cantinero poured tequila in a small clay cup and set it before him. “Dos reales,” he said.
Only now did he remember he was penniless. He patted his empty pockets and grinned abashedly at the bartender. “Bedamn if I aint a bit shy here.”
The cantinero sighed and shook his head and reached to retrieve the cup but John snatched it up and drained it in a gulp and banged the empty vessel on the bar and grinned at him. The tequila burned its way to his belly in a wonderful rush.
The bartender scowled and muttered, “Hijo de la chigada,” and pulled away the cup and made an abrupt backhand gesture for John to remove himself.
“How bout another?” John said. “Otro más. Te lo pago mañana.”
“Quítate de aquí, carajo!” the bartender said, “Andale.”
“Uno más y me voy,” John said. “Por amistad, amigo.”
“Ya no te digo más,” the cantinero said, his face darkening. “Ya, vete!”
“Shit, boy, don’t beg the greasy sonofabitch.” He had not been aware of the American soldier standing a few feet to his right and leaning over a mug of beer on the bar, a sergeant with a white scar angling across one eye. “Aint no greaser gonna give us one on the house,” he said, “and it don’t matter a damn you can speak Mexican.” He snapped his fingers at the cantinero and jerked his thumb at John and said, “Give him one.”
The cantinero rapped his knuckles on the bar and turned his palm up for payment. With his fingertip the sergeant slid two coins away from the pile of specie before him and pushed it across to the cantinero who picked them up and gestured at the cup John had emptied and held his palm out again.
“Son of a bitch,” the sergeant muttered and slid another two reales toward him. The cantinero replaced the cup in front of John and filled it. John raised the drink to the sergeant and said, “Obliged,” and but sipped at it to make it last.
Now the cheering at the cockpit rose to a crescendo and a moment later came a piercing cock crow and the cheering abated amid curses and happy whoops and the crowd began to break up. One grinning gallero cradled his gamecock to his chest while the other disgustedly flung his dead bird against the wall and another man kicked it out the back door into the dark alley. Now John became aware that some of the excited talk was in English and he saw a handful of Yankee soldiers advancing on the bar to join the sergeant, some of them bragging about their winnings on the fight and some cursing the cowardly nature of the losing cock. All of them wore sidearms.
As they pressed in close against the bar one of them jostled John’s arm and some of his cup’s contents slung out and splashed on the countertop and splattered the soldier’s sleeve. The trooper turned a hard face to him and then saw that John was an American and his thick black handlebar widened over his grin. “Sorry, friend. I’ll buy you another.”
The cantinero poured John’s cup full once again and John smiled and raised it to the handlebar in thanks and saw that the soldier was not grinning now but staring fixedly at his face. “Shitfire,” the handlebar said. “You boys lookee this here.”
The other troopers were joking and laughing and now turned to look at John and their smiles vanished too.
And John knew what they saw. He could feel now the false beard gone awry. He put his hand to his face and his fingers brushed the crusty proud flesh of the exposed brand on his cheek.
Well, hell. He pulled off the beard and held it up with two fingers like something dead and tossed it and all eyes followed its arc over the bar and out of sight and then swung back to him.
The cantinero’s eyes were on his brand too and now he quickly removed himself from behind the bar and went out the front door. Other of the Mexicans now saw what was happening and hastened for the exits as the soldiers formed a loose half-circle in front of the branded boy.
“What we got here,” the sergeant gr
owled, “is a fucken deserter.”
John tossed off the rest of his drink and let the cup fall to the floor and the soldiers flinched back a step as it shattered at his feet. He grinned at the lot of them. About damn time, he thought. About damn time. He heard Daddyjack’s laughter from somewhere in the outer dark and he pictured for an instant Maggie’s smiling face.
“What you got here, you sonofabitches,” he said, feeling his smile tight and fierce on his face, “is John Little come to give what ye got comin.”
He threw open his cloak and they saw his Mexican uniform and the cocked Colt already in his rising hand and John grinned hugely at the sagging look on the sergeant’s face as he pointed the pistol squarely in his eye and pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell on the empty chamber with a dull tick.
For one long moment the soldiers all stood gaping. Then John lashed the sergeant across the mouth with the pistol and teeth flew in a spray of blood.
And then they were on him.
21
He trotted his mount up the Avenida Dolores, looking in the doorways of cantinas and shops and cafés as he passed. A string band was enter-went taining at the plaza at the end of the street and he turned left onto a side street and paced the horse slowly as he scanned the sidewalks and open doors, peered into every dark alleyway. He passed a church with a wall bearing the freshly painted exhortation, “¡Mueran los yanquis!” Some passersby glanced curiously at him and the saddled horse he led alongside but most paid him no mind.
A gunshot cracked somewhere in the near distance—and then another, and then two more. Some of the people hurriedly removed themselves from the street but most merely looked about and then went back to whatever they’d been doing. Gunfire in the capital had been more frequent than usual since the Yankees took occupation of the city and snipers were everywhere. Small skirmishes sometimes broke out in the crowded streets. But the capitalinos were long familiar with sudden public violence and most of them went on about their lives in much the same way as always.
He hupped his mount back to the plaza and crossed it to the next street and now spied a flock of Mexicans, some mounted but most on foot, rushing out from an alley two blocks away, a few glancing behind them as they turned onto the street and scattered. He spurred his horse forward and drew the black along and clattered into the alley and almost ran down some stragglers before he reined up. He spied the lighted doorway farther down the alley and faintly heard voices, laughter, shouts from within—then saw a handful of American soldiers come running out the door whooping and laughing.
They sped away down the alley in the other direction and then around the corner and were gone. He unholstered a Colt and put his horse forward and slowly advanced on the lighted door. When he hove to within a few yards of it he reined up and dismounted and hitched the two horses to a post. He drew the other Colt and with a pistol in each hand stepped up to the doorway.
John hung by the neck from a rope slung over a ceiling beam. Blood dripped from his boot toes, from his chin. He had wounds to his crotch and leg and one of his eyes was gone and a bullet hole showed red-black under his remaining and wide-open eye.
There was no one else in the room. Edward sat at a table and stared up at his brother and thought of nothing and felt as if his chest were utterly hollowed.
After a time he got up and cut him down. Then he went out to the black stallion and took the Spy Company coatee from its wallets and went back inside the tavern and stripped John of his Mexican jacket and put the coatee on him. He went to the bar and poured himself a drink and drank it and then went back to John and carried him outside and heaved him belly-down over the black’s saddle and securely tied him in place. He put a Spy Company black hat on him and snugged the tie tightly under his chin. Then he went back in the cantina and retrieved two full bottles of tequila and stuffed them in his wallets and mounted up, and hupped the horses out to the street.
People on the sidewalks stared as he went by, stared and whispered to one another and pointed after him.
He rode through the city and encountered no army patrols either horsed or on foot until he came to the pickets at the north end of the Tlalnepantla causeway. He told the officer in charge that the dead man was a comrade who’d been killed not an hour ago by a goddamned Mexican sniper and he was taking him back to their unit’s reconnaissance camp near Pachuca so Colonel Dominguez could decide where to bury him. The officer expressed his condolences and cursed the Mexican snipers for the cowardly bastards they were and waved Edward past.
22
He rode at a canter all that night and all the next day over the tableland between towering violet ranges to east and west. He slept in the saddle, pausing only to water the animals. He thought on little but the physical world about him. The skies drew his intent reflection, the shifting clouds. He studied distant rainstorms trailing across the horizon like mysterious purple veils.
The following day he angled northwestward into the brown foothills and then through a steepwalled canyon where the light was dimly blue and the horses’ hooves echoed like hammered anvils. He put down in a clearing ringed by junipers and catclaw, nearly numbed with exhaustion. A cold wind whistled in the rocks and his campfire lunged and twisted frantically as if in mute agony with its own burning. A baleful yellow eye of moon fixed narrowly on this hard dark world below. He wondered about the origins of comets streaking across the black void and wondered too where their fires did extinguish. He woke before dawn to find a sidewinder coiled beside him. The snake’s eyes might have been fixed on his or might have been staring at some inner vision forever the secret of snakes. He closed his eyes and slept again and when he next awoke the snake was gone.
He was in the saddle before daybreak and followed trails made by no man before him, winding routes formed by runoff and rockslide and the passings of wild animals, cutting through the thorny growth so narrowly in places that his clothes were soon rent to rags and he and the animals streaked bloody with deep scratches. The going grew tenuous as they ascended. The horses shrilled and laid their ears back as they struggled for purchase and moved forward in lunges and yaws and loosed great clattering slides of rock behind them. The next sunrise found him on a climbing siderock trail jutting from a sheer rock wall and barely wide enough to accommodate the horses before dropping away into misty nothingness.
He came that afternoon around a long curve in the mountainside and arrived at a broad clearing overlooking a vast and darkly dappled bolsón that lay a half-mile below like a roughly tattered rug all the way to the blue-misted northern rim of the world. The clearing was shaded by a growth of pines and water trickled from a fissure in the rockwall and issued into a small pool. He let the horses drink and then bent to sate his own thirst and gave a momentary start at his reflection on the water’s surface. He found that the ground to one side of the pool and at the base of the rockwall was soft enough to be dug up with knife and hands. He sat on his heels and considered. Then looked to the black horse where the body of his brother yet carried. Then looked for a time out to the vista below. Then set to work with the bowie and his hands and dug quickly and easily until he had fashioned a shallow grave. And there he laid the mortal remains of his brother, John Jackson Little.
He set his hat over John’s face and then covered him over with dirt and tamped down the soft earth and then sought out heavy rocks he could barely heft in both arms and he grunted with the effort of carrying them to the grave and positioning them on top of it. And when he had covered the entire grave with stone to keep the scavengers from his brother he retrieved a bottle from his saddle wallet and took several deep swallows of tequila. He sat down crosslegged at the rockrim and looked out in the closing twilight at the vast and hazed horizon to the north where their home country lay in the mists.
Long low reefs of clouds burned redly to the west. And now, without turning to the grave behind him, he addressed his brother. Told him he was sorry. For everything. Sorry for their mother and their daddy an
d their little sister. Sorry for being a no-good brother. Sorry for deserting him in New Orleans and now in Mexico. Sorry for not even getting him to that part of Mexico where Maggie now lay.
“It’s the wrong country, bubba, but leastways you both in the same one.” He took another deep drink. “Hell, boy, I would of had to sleep sometime. The wolves would of had at you while I did. The damn coyotes. You know it’s true.”
He looked off toward the faraway end of the world. “Sorry,” he said, “is all in the hell I am.”
In the gathering darkness he looked out upon the empty waste and could feel the world spinning under him as it had been spinning since before time was measured and as it would spin long after time ceased to exist for lack of anyone to mark its passing. A lone wolf howled in the timber.
“Hell, bud, I hate to say it right out, but you’da started rotting pretty bad before too much longer. I expect you’da pretty soon been dropping off in pieces ever coupla miles. Being in pieces all over this damn Mexicio—that’d be a hell of lot worse than buried up here all in one piece. You know that’s true too.”
And then as he took another drink he was abruptly moved to laughter and the tequila came up through his nose in a fiery gush and he choked and his eyes flooded.
Gasping, he turned to the grave and said, “God damn, bud—you’da been ate by crows and buzzards and vultures, and Lord knows that’s plenty bad and shameful enough, but it aint the worst of it, no sir. The worst of it is they’da soon enough shit you out again!”
He threw his head back and laughed with all his teeth. Thumped his fist on his thigh and swayed and snorted and snuffled with laughter. The horses turned to see what affliction had befallen him and the alarm he perceived in their shadowed faces made him laugh the harder. His jaws ached with his laughter, his belly cramped. His eyes burned.