The World in Pancho's Eye - J P S Brown

by J P S Brown

  A shadow covered him. A heavy hand struck him on the back and pounded out all the manure and a strange voice asked, "¿Qué te trai, Chamaco? What's got you, boy?"

  "Esta mulada," Mikey said. "This whole pack of mules."

  "Does it seem that the owls have flown away with you and are about to let you fall?"

  Mikey could not see the man's face. He saw the moonglow on the blade of a machete in his hand.

  "I can't move because Sarah is on my legs," Mikey said.

  The man laughed. "Are you hurt?"

  "No."

  "Why were you choking? What's that below you?"

  "The Goo Goo mule hangs on the edge and his weight holds Sarah on my legs." Mikey would never, never tell anyone he had inhaled fresh mule manure.

  "Ah, yes, El Goo Goo, I am not surprised. I know Goo Goo. Is he the last one in the string?"

  "Yes, he is always falling down, so he must have. . ."

  "Menos mal," the man said. "Small loss." The moonglow on the machete sliced through Goo Goo's lead rope and he sailed away silently into the ravine.

  "Goo Goo!" Mikey squalled. The man with the machete led Sarah back on the trail. Paul returned Negro to the trail with the as help of other arrieros, drover companions of the man with the machete. The man and Mikey followed as Paul led the string away from the chasm to an open bed-ground. The arrieros built a fire and unsaddled the mules. When Mikey reached the bed-ground, Paul told him to unsaddle Pancho. Mikey took a canteen of water off a mule and went away from everyone in the dark to wash his face and the front of his shirt.

  When he returned, Paul said, "We'll have a little drop of mezcal and some meat with these friends and unroll our beds here, son. They want us to stay, and where would we be if they had not come along and helped us? We sure had our tails in a crack, didn't we?"

  "What about Goo Goo, daddy?" Mikey cried. "He fell into the ravine."

  "To hell with Goo Goo, son. We almost lost our lives and a whole string of mules because of Goo Goo. Forget Goo Goo."

  "But that man just cut him loose and let him fall."

  "Son, I asked him to do what was needed to get our string moving. Let's forget it now."

  Mikey helped the men gather dry cow manure chips off the bed-ground to use as fuel for the fire. The manure was easy to gather in the dark and made colorful flames and a smooth bed of coals, but Mikey was sad because Goo Goo had not made it away from the ravine with the rest of the string. One of his countless false steps had finally been the end of him.

  Paul sat by the fire and grinned at the arrieros' jokes, but Mikey could tell he was in pain with the sore hand and a foot that was probably broken. The man with the machete was young, tall, redheaded, and very formal and polite. He was called El Mochomo. The mochomo is a large red ant that hurts farmers by colonizing the centers of crops in the fields in places that cannot be seen from the outer edges of the crops. Before they are discovered, the mochomos often eat large expanses of crops right down to the bare ground. Looters in the revolution were also called Mochomos. They could not afford firearms and they carried only machetes, but they killed, hacked, and destroyed everything they could not carry away while they laid whole regions bare.

  Two of the arrieros were El Mochomo's younger brothers. Paul and Mikey were not introduced to the third companion, an uncle. The uncle stationed himself on the dark edge of the savannah with a rifle and did not go near the fire.

  El Mochomo's father, a rancher named Ernesto Vigil, was a friend of Paul's and he often stopped at Cabezon's mountain camps to visit. When Paul told the story of an adventure he had shared with Ernesto, El Mochomo said, "Ah, sí, sí, eres El Ligero, el Pablo Ligero. Ah, yes, yes, you are the Fast One, Fast Paul. I know you. When l was a little boy you came to Caborca to buy cattle from my father. El Gato Canez is my uncle. Gato works with you at La Morita, does he not?"

  One of the brothers came to the fire with a twenty-liter barrica, a small wooden cask bound in brass hoops. Another brother lined up tin cups on the ground, broke a wax seal on the cask, opened the bung, and sloshed mezcal into the cups. The fumes of the spirit dodged the fire and played right up Mikey's nose.

  The arrieros carried little in the form of camp comfort. Eleven mules carried two barricas apiece. Two mules carried blankets and provision. These men were not poor, though. They carried a lot of prosperous meat and muscle on their bones, and they were mounted on sleek horses. El Mochomo wore two coarse gold chains around his neck with golden medallions that bore the images of Jesus and Our Lady of Guadalupe. He wore gold rings on both hands and carried a gold pocket watch on a gold chain. His smile showed a gold acorn inlaid in the center of an eyetooth.

  As leader, El Mochomo did not do much of the hard work. He ordered his brothers to unpack and unsaddle all the animals and to bring Paul's and Mikey's bedrolls to the fire so they could sit on them in comfort. He prepared Paul's and Mikey's plates of fried jerky and beans and brought them coffee. He treated Paul as an esteemed elder and Mikey as an honored guest. He did not allow Paul to empty the last drop out of his cup before he replenished it with mezcal. He prepared warm water so Paul could wash his sore hand, and he dressed it with the paste of yerba el pasimo that he prepared from the supply in Paul's morral.

  Another twelve-mule pack string arrived led by another cousin of El Mochomo. The leader dismounted and walked straight to Paul and Mikey, nodded respectfully to them, and shook their hands. He turned back to shake El Mochomo's hand, then walked back to supervise the unpacking and unsaddling of his string and had not said a word.

  Before the second string was unpacked, a third string arrived, led by El Mochomo's father, Ernesto Vigil, Paul's friend. Guards were posted and Paul and don Ernesto spent the evening telling quiet stories. Mikey usually could not get enough of the stories of Paul's life as a vaquero in Mexico, but he did not put up a fight to stay awake. Sleep dropped him before the end of the first story and his dad put him in his bedroll.

  In the morning, El Mochomo made Paul and Mikey sit still and visit with don Ernesto while the arrieros saddled all the animals and lined Paul's string out on the trail for him. He ordered Paul's and Mikey's horses saddled and brought to them and stood by while they mounted. He and don Ernesto mounted their horses, ordered one of the brothers to bring up the rear, and rode with Paul and Mikey for the first half hour of the way to Carrizal. In this way, by helping with their departure and keeping them company on the first part of the trail, they sealed their friendship with Paul and Mikey. When the last bad place on the trail had been left behind, they said good-bye and went back to their own business.

  "What are they going to do with all that mezcal, daddy?" Mikey asked after their escort was out of sight.

  That made Paul smile. "Why, son?"

  "That was an awful lot of mezcal."

  "And?"

  "It sure smelled good last night when we were all tired and the man opened the barrica."

  Paul laughed at that until the tears came to his eyes. "Son, are you getting to like the stuff?"

  "I never saw or smelled that much of anything so good before."

  "I know, and those people made us feel that we could have all we wanted, didn't they?"

  "El Mochomo must be awful rich, daddy. Is that what it's like to be rich?"

  "He is rich, but most of all he's splendid and generous with his time and his help."

  "He's like you, isn't he, daddy?"

  "Son, you gotta be splendid about the way you give if you're to have any style and if it's to do you any good."

  "What's he gonna do with all that mezcal?"

  "I guess as long as people like the stuff the way you and I do, he won't have to worry about that. He'll just keep selling it and getting rich. He'll sell that load across the line and when he comes back his mules will be loaded with bales of American money."

  "Isn't that wrong, daddy?"

  "It would be wrong for you and me because we don't need money but it might not be wrong for don Ernesto and E1 Mochom
o. They probably have a big use for money and need to be rich."

  Just then Paul and Mikey heard a lost creature gag on a desperate call to his mates. The whole train stopped and looked back. The battered carcass of a mule rounded a bend behind the string, stopped, raised his head, and choked out another pitiful, hacking cry.

  "Well, I'll be damned, son, it's Goo Goo," Paul said.

  The apparition did not look much like Goo Goo. He had been scraped and gouged, gashed, bashed, and bloodied from his ears to his hooves. He limped and his voice cracked, but he showed great joy at the sight of his mates. The tree of his saddle had been crushed and was held together only by shreds of the wood in one crossbar. Twenty feet of lash rope dragged behind him.

  Paul had a tear in his eye when he dismounted and walked up to Goo Goo. He praised him and patted him, removed the shreds of the saddle, then tied him back in his place on the end of the string. Goo Goo did not stray off the trail again.

  At dark Paul and Mikey did not stop at the old folks' house at El Aguaje de la Vereda because the lamps were out. When they topped the last hill above El Carrizal, the sight of Balbaneda's lighted kitchen freshened the trail for them and they forgot their tiredness as they rode off the hill. As they unsaddled the horses and mules in the corral, the girl called from the house and told them their supper was ready.

  The next day Paul and Mikey started back to Nogales in the ranch truck. At the line, Paul asked El Cabo to tell him what day it was. El Cabo told him happily that the date was December twenty-third and tomorrow was Noche Buena, Christmas Eve.

  Paul asked El Cabo if the police had caught Kelly, the gangster who had robbed the bank at the time he and Mikey crossed into Sonora in October.

  "Yes they did, but he was not the famous one with the ametralladora, the Machine Gun Kelly."

  "He wasn't?" Paul asked.

  El Cabo laughed. "No, this one was only a local single shot from Douglas, a pillito, a would-be thug of no importance."

  "I bet he was important to the widow of the man he killed in the bank," Paul said.

  The day was cold. Paul and Mikey drove through the Altar Valley to Tucson and stopped at a bar by the rodeo grounds to warm up. Mikey listened for a while as Paul made friends with other cowboys, and then passed out in a booth. About dark Paul carried him out to the truck and he woke up as they headed into a cold wind toward Nogales.

  HaIfway home, Paul stopped at a wide spot in the road to sleep off the whiskey and Mikey stepped out of the truck to throw rocks at cans. A big, new Studebaker loaded with three merry couples stopped nearby and woke Paul up with their laughter and shouts. The driver was a pretty blonde in nothing but her petticoat. She fell out of the car, stood barefooted on tiptoes, reached for the sky, and stretched. Mikey could see that she was very drunk, but her balance was good. Her calves and toes were pink and pretty. She arched her back and stretched again. At that moment she must have decided that she no longer enjoyed the gladsome time that she had been having with her companions. She proclaimed to them that she was angry and did not want to be drunk anymore. Her companion in the front seat threw open the door and shouted for her to shut up and get back in the car before she caught pneumonia.

  Paul started the truck and drove by the Studebaker to get back on the road. A man leaned across the front seat and grabbed at the woman through the open door. He glanced up at Mikey with his hair in his eyes.

  Fifteen minutes later, on a long, narrow bridge, the left front tire of the truck went flat. Paul drove on to get off the bridge, and then turned off the road to fix the flat. The two spare tires had been unloaded at El Carrizal to make room for a load of hay, but the hay haulers had not loaded them back on the truck. Paul and Mikey did not have a spare. They stood and looked at the flat tire. The Studebaker stopped on the highway above the truck.

  Mikey thought that even though his dad's hand had been maimed, their luck had been good as far as getting help was concerned. E1 Mochomo had come up the trail at the right time and now a pretty woman with a carload of decent people had stopped to help them only minutes after they found more trouble. Paul would make best friends of this bunch with his first smile.

  The blonde lady unloaded herself out of the driver's side of the car, rushed around the front, and scolded Paul. "Are you and that brat so stupid you can't tell when a tire goes flat? Goddammit, do you have to look at it like idiots before you can tell it's flat?"

  "Shoot, Dick Tracy, is that what's wrong with it? We would never have known! We were waiting for someone like you to come along and tell us," Paul said.

  A cold wind swelled the woman's petticoat and she hugged herself and pranced back into the driver's seat in the car. The man in front laughed at her. Paul thanked the man for stopping. Mikey saw that he was shamefully drunk, but appreciated that at least it had not kept him from being concerned for a man and his boy who were stranded on the highway.

  Paul stepped up on the pavement in front of the car and told Mikey to come on so they could go with the people to get help. The car's rear wheels squealed and it almost reared up as it roared straight at Paul. Paul threw himself backward and slid upside down into the barpit. Mikey saw the woman cover her eyes with both hands and twist away from the steering wheel when she thought the car would hit Paul. The man's hands were on the wheel, so Mikey figured his foot was probably the one on the accelerator as the car roared away toward Nogales.

  Paul got up off the ground. "Well, I'll be damned," he said. "I thought that lady wanted to help us, but I think she lured me up there so she could run me over."

  Soon after that, a wood hauler friend of Paul's named Gabriel Amado came by in his loaded truck and stopped. When Gabriel drove into Nogales to make deliveries, he always slowed down when he saw Mikey and Billy Shane in front of their houses and invited them to hop on the back of his truck. He knew they liked to run and overtake him, hop on the tailgate, ride to the Nogales curve with their feet dangling above the highway, then drop off and wave him on.

  Gabriel jacked up Paul's truck and pulled off the tire, loaded it on top of the wood, and took Paul and Mikey to Carmen Unincorporated to fix it. Paul produced his amphora of El Mochomo's mezcal and shared a few nips with Gabriel and Abe Fernandez while they helped each other fix the flat. Then Gabriel took Paul and Mikey back and bolted the tire on the truck.

  Paul and Mikey did not get home until midnight. All the lights were out in the house. Granny's porch light went on, but she did not come out. Baxter met Mikey at the door, showed that he was happy, but made no sound. Mikey hugged him and became a five-year-old boy again. Paul switched on the kitchen light and began to fix supper. He knew all the ways to make a hand in a kitchen and he was quicker, cleaner, and more efficient at it than a lot of women.

  After a while Maggie came to the kitchen in her nightgown and negligee. She looked rested. Every hair was in place, but she did not wear makeup. Paul and Mikey could tell that she did not look upon them as friends. Mikey did not go up to give her a kiss, because the look on her face made it clear that she did not want any darned kisses.

  "Hi, honey," Paul said. "You look goooood."

  "What are you doing here?" Maggie asked. "You're supposed to be way down in the Big Germ country."

  "Well, no, we're back. Aren't you glad to see us?" Paul could only hold half a grin when he asked that. Anybody could see the woman was still as mad as she had been when they left home in October.

  "I'm not."

  Paul poured himself a drink from his amphora and went on fixing supper. Maggie walked over to the sink, arched one eyebrow at him, and took a big swallow out of his glass. "Well, what brought you home?"

  "Mama," Mikey said, to remind her that she was his mother and he was her son. "Daddy lost a finger in the dallies." He thought, "Oh, my Lord, what will she do when she sees his ear?"

  Maggie picked up Paul's bandaged hand. "Did you try to rope with your left hand? Idiot. No wonder you lost a finger."

  "I don't know how it happened except I tied
on to a bull in rough country and my ring finger came apart."

  "Well, you don't like to wear a ring, anyway."

  "Hell, a cowboy can't wear a ring. Sooner or later he's bound to snag it."

  "That's right, there's lots of wedding ring snags down in the Big Germ."

  "Aw, Maggie, don't be mean."

  "I'm not mean. I'm just not surprised that you're out of work again as the result of another wreck that was probably all your own fault."

  "I won't argue with you about that, honey."

  "Did you perchance bring home some money?"

  "No, I haven't seen Cabezon to get my pay."

  "That's just great. Did you know that a few days after you left I went flat broke? The bills came and I couldn't pay them. I've never been broke before. Before you, the men in my family protected me from that. Now, since there's not enough money coming into this house to suit me, I've had to find new ways to get along."

  "As soon as I can find Cabezon I'll get you some money."

  "Oh, I'm not broke anymore. I sold Little Buck and the milk cow."