by J P S Brown
"Handyman? Maintenance man? Engineer?" Kane shook Miguel’s hand.
"He’s Vicenta’s all-around man. Her day and night man," Vogel said.
Miguel smiled.
"Ah," Kane said.
"La senora would like you to come to supper. I’ll stay with the horse," Miguel said.
"I’ll stay with the horse too," Ursulo said.
"I’ll stay," Cody Joe said.
The partners and Marco Antonio went to the house that Kane had built. He loved that house. He had built it square with each side a hundred feet long. Every room opened to a cobblestoned patio inside the square. Livestock, wagons, trucks, and cars could be parked or corralled in the patio. The two rooms on each corner shared the same fireplace. Vicenta had built a long bar in the kitchen with heavy wooden stools and the partners and Marco Antonio sat there while Vicenta gave them drinks.
The woman was trim as the day Kane had left her forty years ago, eighty pounds and no fat. The little brown girl with the big smile, the little Zapotec from Jalisco, had lived with Kane during his first eight years in Rio Alamos. No woman in the world had more heart, more perseverance, more integrity. No one was more jealous-hearted of her property and loved ones either. The young Jim Kane had been a tomcat. He still carried a .22 long rifle bullet with the rim crimped by her pistol’s firing pin. He had come home after a week of tomcatting and she had opened the door, stuck her pistol in his brisket, and pulled the trigger. The pistol said, "Click." Kane took it away so she would not try to shoot him again, and she fainted. When she returned to herself, she was glad again that she had not killed him.
Now, she sat on a stool across the bar and smiled at him. Kane might as well have been an old friend of her brother’s, which he was, or the godfather of her son, which he was, or an old drunk whose hangovers she had cured many times, which he also was.
"How does your horse’s conditioning go?" she asked Vogel.
"Not mine, my compadre Kane’s," Vogel said.
She gave Kane a tolerant, and patronizing, look. "You look good, Jim, for a man who almost died . . . for a man who might as well have died, because he stayed away from us for a year and a half and did not bother to send us any word."
"I meant to, but I was too busy recovering." Kane laughed.
"Yes, it must be hard for an old jade to try to recover his stature after a half ton of horse smashes him into the bottom of a canyon. I bet it finally thinned out your girlfriends. How many you got left now?"
"None. How many boyfriends have you got?"
"Only one. I try always to keep one."
"You’ve always been good that way. You were good to me."
"Well, I am good. And men make me happy. Anyway, what kind of horse is Lupino’s horse? How good are my chances of winning money?"
"My compadre Juan and I drew all the money we could scrape out of our accounts to bet on our horse, so we will win."
"All your money?"
"All of it."
"How can you do that? Your horse could drop dead."
"He’ll have to drop dead to lose. He can’t lose any other way."
"Still, that’s too much a gamble."
"It’s no worse than the gamble on cattle,” Vogel said. "No worse than the gamble with livestock on the weather, sickness, or the market. Those are bigger gambles that a cattleman takes longer to win or lose. This gamble is also on our livestock and will be resolved tomorrow. It’s the best thing we could do with our money. We don’t have to wait for a good rain or worry that our stock will starve, or get sick, or that the market will go bad."
"There are other things that could happen to your horse, you know," Vicenta said. "That’s why I brought him here. He’s safer here than in his own home now that the Indians from Chihuahuita surround him."
"Thank you, Vicenta. We appreciate it," Kane said.
"I mean it. Your horse is in danger. If he had stayed at the racetrack, he would have been harmed. It still might happen."
"What do you mean?" Kane said.
"I was going to tell you," Marco Antonio said. "Somebody told dona Vicenta that Gato would be shot."
"Who would do that?"
"The Lupinos, probably," Vicenta said.
"Old Lupino wants the race. It’s his idea."
"Did you make him put up a hundred thousand dollars and his horse against your horse alone?"
"Nobody was supposed to know about the terms of the wager except me and Juan Vogel. We told Adan Martinillo. Not even Marco Antonio and Cody Joe knew about it. Did you Marco Antonio?"
"No."
"Everybody here knows about it. The Lupino brothers know," Vicenta said.
"They must," Kane said.
"What did you expect from them? They don’t want to lose that money. It comes out of their pockets too, doesn’t it?"
"Of course. They’re Lupino’s heirs."
"They handle his money. Everybody knows it."
"Well, what of it?" Kane said. "A bet is a bet. Lupino made the race to see which horse is best. He doesn’t care about the money."
"The grandsons care about it plenty. They plan to kill your horse. The word is that they will kill him as publicly and sensationally as possible, probably while the race is run, so you won’t decide which is the best horse, and you won’t take home a hundred thousand of Lupino’s big dollars."
"Vicenta, how do you know all this?"
"From the Molino Rojo. I still have friends there. Why wouldn’t I? I’ve never been without friends in that place, and there is no better place to hear the truth."
The Molino Rojo was the main establishment in the zone of tolerance, the red light district of Rio Alamos.
"If it comes from there, it’s true," Vogel laughed.
"It not only comes from there, it comes from Rafa Lupino’s favorite whore, Carmelita, the granddaughter of Carmela, one of your favorite whores, Jim Kane."
"Carmela’s granddaughter is there?" Kane asked.
"Of course. Her mother was born there. Your Carmela gave birth to Carmelita’s mother in the Molino Rojo. You knew that. Her mother might even be related to you, Jim."
"Oh, no. I didn’t leave any bastards in whorehouses, or anywhere."
"Still, Carmela was your friend, still is."
"That’s right. How is she?"
"Don’t ask me. I’ve never been her friend. She had eyes and a pair of buttocks for you when you belonged to me. How could she be my friend?"
"You had much in common."
"Yes, and she did what we whores used to do. She got you in bed as soon as she could."
"No, Vicenta. She was a good friend to both of us."
"Well, the granddaughter of your friend is a favorite companion of Rafa Lupino’s and word came from her that they plan to shoot your horse. The word they used is venadeur. They’re going to venadear your horse, whatever that means."
"That means they’ll lay for him and sniper him from seclusion, the way a hunter shoots a deer."
As soon as the girl told me about Rafa Lupino’s plan, I got your horse over here where our friends the Mayos could protect him. He’s safe here. Who knows what will happen when you take him to the racetrack."
"You still visit the Molino Rojo? I thought we agreed to put that behind you."
"Why not? That's where I came from. That’s where I met you, Jim. My being there got me here where I am now, a happy woman. Those women are still my friends. I’m still their kind of woman. I’ve never been accepted by the ’decent’ ones, except one or two like Alicia Vogel and your Adelita. I was only your mistress, but that got me out of there. Besides that, you were the best man any of these women in Rio Alamos had ever seen. For eight years I was the envy of every woman in this region."
"Seven years," Kane said.
"Eight years. Count them again."
"I took you away from there because I wanted you. Not to save you from anything."
"Best of all, you showed me I could go. Before I met you I thought I would never have a bett
er life than the one in the bordello. Thank you, Jim." Vicenta walked around the end of the bar, stood on tiptoes, and kissed Kane on the lips. "That’s in case the next time you fall off your horse, you get finally killed."
"I didn’t fall offhe fell on me."
"Whatever. I didn’t want you to go away and die on us again without having thanked you for being good to me."
"You were a lot better to me. Who wouldn’t have been good to you?"
"Anyway, one hundred Indian families on the Mayo River are watching out for your horse Gato, and everybody’s on the lookout for Muslims."
"What? Now, how in the world will they identify a Muslim?"
"Aren’t they the tattooed baldies who have been swaggering through the town?"
Kane and Vogel laughed.
"That’s right," Vogel said. "The enemy has been identified. There’s no mistaking how he looks and acts. Tell everybody not to go near those Muslims and to watch for them at the racetrack."
TEN
Vicenta brought out a bottle of Presidente brandy and poured large measures for Vogel and Marco Antonio. Kane went out to sit with Gato for a while. He found him alone. Cody Joe and Miguel had stepped away, but he could hear them talking. Ursulo was trying to pry Cody Joe loose from his new pocketknife.
That made Kane think of his own knife, Abdullah’s gift. He did not think he could call it a new knife, for all the material in its makeup was probably aged. Certainly its maker was aged, if not ancient. Kane carried it in a new sheath in his belt, under his shirt, the way Abdullah carried his knife. He did not want to put it away. He thought it to be the kind of gift Abdullah meant for him to keep handy.
He unsheathed the knife and let the soft light from Vicenta’s kitchen play on it. He liked to feel the blade. The steel was not soft, but it felt soft, like a big tooth. To him, a tooth was not soft, but felt soft under the tongue, or the touch. He ran his fingers along both sides of the blade in the dark and found a rough line on one side. He brought it closer to his face and ran his fingers carefully along the rough line, just below its backbone. He shined the boys’ high-powered lantern on the blade.
Abdullah had carved an inscription on it in tiny letters that Kane had missed. It said, "Yo soy el colmillo de Jim Kane." I am Jim Kane’s fang. Colmillo, also eye tooth, or canine, has another connotation. To have colmillo also means to be sagacious, farsighted, not easily imposed upon or fooled, not easily bullied, because the person with colmillo has a big, dangerous tooth to support his sagacity. Kane was sure that only the sight of his blade would stop any bully, but he did not intend to threaten anybody with it. If he showed it, it would be to cut some flesh. It would bring awful unhappiness to anyone to whom it grinned. Right then enemies who needed to be grinned at were revealing themselves
in every part of his world.
Kane admired the orderly way Cody Joe and Marco Antonio kept their camp. Marco Antonio crossed Vicenta’s yard and joined Cody Joe, Ursulo, and a group from Chihuahuita at a fire they had built behind Gato’s stable. Kane felt proud of the admiration and respect his grandson and godson gave him. They were still young and shy but had taken all the responsibility for the horse race upon themselves. Now that Vicenta had alerted him to the danger of the post to which the boys had been assigned, he felt grateful to them for handling it so well. Without realizing it, he had placed all the responsibility of the race on them and given them no advice or guidance. This would be their first race as trainer and rider, and Kane and Vogel had been so busy with their own business that they had not helped at all. He hoped they had done a good job, because he and Vogel had bet their last dime on them.
At that moment the young men returned to their stall and were surprised to find Kane there. "I brought you some beer," he said. "It’s on the front floorboard of your nino Juan’s pickup."
He noticed that the boys had bathed and shaved. Their clothes were clean and unwrinkled. Kane knew they must have washed them in the canal and hung them in a mesquite to dry. That was the cowboy way, to carry everything they owned in their bedrolls and warbags to a job. When these two boys had only been buttons on their first sashays with Kane, he had shown them how to wash their change of clothes, dry them in a tree, and roll them in their bedrolls to press them. Cowboys could always keep a clean change of clothes if they had a canal handy as these boys did. Cody Joe brought back six cans of beer in a bucket of ice. He offered Kane the first can he opened, but Kane refused it. "I thought you might want to take the evening off, if you can get somebody to look after your animals," he said.
"Ursulo said he’d do it," Cody Joe said. "Marco Antonio wants to go to town this evening"
"And you, Grandson?"
"Me, too, Pappy," Cody Joe said shyly.
"You got girlfriends lined up or something?"
"No, we thought we’d eat a steak and then cruise around awhile."
Marco Antonio looked down and smiled.
"You want to ride into town with Nino Juan and me?" Kane asked.
"No, dona Vicenta loaned us her pickup," Cody said.
"You won’t get drunk and stay out all night, will you? Tomorrow’s a big day for all of us. Godson?" Kane stared at Marco Antonio until he looked up.
"We want music tonight," Marco Antonio said.
"My partner wants to impress girls." Cody Joe laughed.
"And you?"
"También. Me too."
"¡Eso! I approve. A serenade for a girl at her window is the surest way I know to get her to like you," Kane said.
At two o'clock in the morning, El Trio de Sonora, the classiest three musicians in Rio Alamos, unloaded with the boys from a taxi in front of Vogel’s house at Hidalgo #308 and began to tune their guitars on the sidewalk. Dolly Ann awoke, looked out her window and saw Cody Joe and Marco Antonio, awakened Luci, and they put on their robes.
"Begin when you’re ready, Manuel," Marco Antonio said to the trio's leader. "Play ’Two Little Trees’ first."
"Quietly," Cody Joe said. "Softly."
With wide smiles, the three mariachis stepped back from the window and put their hearts into the song. The two partners took hold of the iron bars that protected the window and pressed their cheeks against them to see inside. They grinned and the girls laughed, because the girls’ faces were already there, side by side, only inches away and each faced the person he or she most wanted to see.
On the morning the race was to be run, Juan Vogel went to see Gerardo Cepeda, the chief of the traffic division of Rio Alamos, and asked him to protect Gato. The chief said he would double his usual guard of cops at the racetrack and assign two patrolmen as bodyguards for the horse before he left La Escondida.
The international highway ran north and south along the west side of the racetrack. A row of alamo trees, an alameda, lined the road on the track’s east side. Bleachers were set up on both sides of the finish line. A pasture on the west side of the highway was choked with a monte, a jungle of spiny brush.
Kane thought the best place for a sniper would be in that brush. A sniper could hide there and be close enough for an easy, hundred-meter shot at the racetrack.
The Mayo community of El Datil lay along the north side of the thicket. Placido Ruiz, another of Kane’s compadres, lived there and pastured his daughter’s cows in the thicket. Kane had been trying to get Placido to come and live with him on the 7X. The man had worked for Kane since Kane first came to Rio Alamos. He still worked for him when he was needed, but he would not work for Juan Vogel. He liked Vogel, but he worked for no one except Kane.
He had been out of work while Kane was laid up. First, he could not work because of the worry when Kane lay near death. Then he could not work because he got on the Viva Villa mezcal. Vogel told Kane that Placido had been on the Viva Villa since Kane’s accident. The Viva Villa was tough stuff and only cost two bits American per liter. Kane knew that when Placido was on it, he required at least two quarts a day to function. He always ran out before he went to bed at night and suffered when he
woke up in the morning until he could walk a league hung over to buy another two quarts.
On the morning of the race, Kane went to an expendio, bought two quarts of Viva Villa, and drove Alicia’s sedan to El Datil to look for Placido. He found his compadre sitting in the shade of the same ramada where Kane had last seen him. An empty Viva Villa bottle lay on its side beside him. He stood and embraced Kane and began to weep. Kane sat on a cot and cracked open a new bottle, handed it to him, and stopped the weeping.
"I knew you were here, compadre," Placido said. "I’ve known about the race and that your grandson Cody Joe came here with the horse. I saw them the evening they arrived. I went over there with all the rest of the common folk to 1ook at your horse. He’s a nice horse, even prettier than Pajaro, but I bet he's no Pajaro."
Placido had been Pajaro’s personal bodyguard until Kane put the horse down at the age of thirty-three. Pajaro and Placido had been as close as any two persons could be.
"He’s still young," Kane said. "He might be as good a cowhorse as Pajaro, but he will probably never have the life that our old horse did. No animal will ever be the horse to us that Pajaro was."
"De veras, that’s true," Placido said. "If we talk about this horse, we should not talk about Pajaro. Pajaro should not be mentioned in the same breath with any other horse."
"For a long time, I thought no horse could love a man the way he loved another horse, but I was mistaken," Kane said. "I’ve known one horse who 1oved one man. Pajaro loved you. I knew that when you cared for him and I know it now. However, I never thought of you two as man and horse. I thought of you as único, as one. You had more than a love. You had a oneness."
"Ah, thank you. I miss him." Placido’s face started to break up again. Kane pushed the hand that held the bottle toward his mouth. "Have another swallow and don’t break down on me, compadre."
"Sí." He curved his lips to meet the mouth of the bottle exactly and took five big swallows of Viva Villa. The stuff that stayed in the bottle roiled like the surface of the sea in a typhoon, the way the sea acts when a typhoon sucks at its waves, takes big swallows, and spits them back. "Viva Villa," Kane said quietly, then gave Placido time to allow the mezcal to have its way and bring him back to his responsibilities. When he saw that he felt better, he said, "What do you hear about a plan to shoot my horse, compadre?"