Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series)

by Olson, Toby

  He saw it in the look of the farmer’s wife and in the farmer, and though the children glanced up from their play and down those first narrow byways only with bright eyes and curiosity, he knew their time too would come.

  And he knew now that the living he’d longed for again as a calavera held its own profound longing, and that when he reached a new circumstance the force of his look would be doubled in the intensity of its longing, drawing the eyes of the viewers to a bloody familiarity, and would overwhelm the dry extravagance of the dancing bones.

  There was no sound, but the children turned to him as he fell down, the dark robes of the bishop collapsing to a pile of dusty fabric on the chair’s wooden seat. It was bone dust, and it puffed through the weave, then settled into a haze, obscuring the chair’s legs. And the farmer was rising, his wife turning, and the children’s faces were invisible behind their heads. But the face of the farmer was intense, as was that of his wife; their jaws creaked open, the blocks of their teeth visible to the pink gums. All paused as they reached the chair, as if gathered around the last event in an old story. A wind came in at the window. It blew the door open and blew the fine dust of the dissolved bones of the calavera out into a final burial in the night.

  I no longer think of my condition. I’ve grown thin, and the bones press out at my clavicles and the points of my hips, and even my own clothing hangs loose on my body and is blown against my thighs and bony shoulders by the wind leaking in at the tortured frames, all the doors and windows now, and there’s a place where the roof has twisted and torqued shingles free and the rain comes in. I’ve had to place pots in the bedroom and move the rifle, and I can see the lighthouse from the window there. Its tilting is perceptible now, and I wonder when it will fall and if my house will follow or precede it. No longer. Because a condition is something separate and discernible, and though I remember my father and mother and Tampico and the days before my agora, I’ve come to distrust that sweet nostalgia. I was someone else then, and memory’s world belongs only to the dead.

  Arthur is gone. He took the last load. There was a truck at the barricade when he came through, and they told him it wouldn’t be safe to return again, and he told me this when he’d finished loading and that they’d asked if I’d be coming out with him, and he smiled when he told me he’d said he didn’t think so. He paused at the foot of the steps and looked back, and I thought of my last lover and that going, though they are nothing alike, but his hair in the wind, that moment of hesitation before the finality of turning.

  It’s night now, and the gas is gone and they’ve shut the power down again and I’ve lit the candles. The lights are on at the barricades, and there’s no storm, but a star-filled night, and I’ve left their calls on the answering machine and pulled the plug on the phone. I’ll handle all that in the morning, figure a few more excuses to put it off. I can see the shadows of the Manor across the meadow, a slice of white wall lit by the light on the ambulance dock, but there is no light in the solarium, though it’s early, and I wonder where the old men are and I wonder about the other, deep in his dreamless coma, out on the ward. Is it Saturday? The house is quiet now, no hum of pump or appliances, no radio, and what I hear is the drone of a plane, and when I get to the cliffside window I can see it clearly. It’s a small plane, and it’s flying low out over the beach and the edge of sea. Then it’s climbing up into the sky and banking away, and I can see the numbers and letters on the undersides of its toylike wings as it rises against the stars in a world that seems quite impossible, and horizonless, heading for places I will never go.

  BOOK THREE

  Tampico

  The House

  When the breeze came up and lifted the desert sand into a veil that set the few remaining derricks in the distance shimmering, Carlos turned his head and tipped his hat and looked down at the door’s sill, seeing once again those shallow scratches. He was standing at the veranda’s rail beside the stairs, and once the breeze fell and sand no longer showered against his sleeve and he could turn, he saw the two surveyors, one standing at the tripod of his spirit level, peering into the telescope, the other far off to the right, holding a bright yellow stick. They’d finished both sides of the property and would soon get to the back. He’d been there and had seen the rusted iron cauldrons, too large and heavy to be hauled away by scavengers. Inside, they’d taken most everything, if there had been anything, though they’d left the sink and hand pump and the brass bed, which seemed odd, since it was valuable. As the only imposing object in the single open room, it seemed significant somehow, as if it had been readied for some special occasion. There was a rod too, a piece of wooden doweling affixed where walls joined in a corner, a place for hanging a few pieces of clothing.

  This is mine, he thought, as he headed along the broad veranda to the house edge. There was another veranda there, one on the other side as well, and to the rear of the house was a porch and a brief yard that ended beyond the remnants of a ruined chicken coop where the foothills began. He’d never owned a thing, beyond his tools and clothing and a few books. He had new clothes now, fine western boots, twill pants and a tooled cotton shirt, and he’d worn his new fedora and a cotton sports jacket, after he’d had a trim and otherwise prepared himself, when he’d gone to the government records office in Tampico.

  He paused at the house edge and looked off to the side, a few yards of once-cultivated land there, but a strip of barren ground now covered by the house shadow, and he too was in shadow, cool under the veranda’s eaves, and beyond the shadow strip and still in the sun was a rusted metal fence, freestanding, ten yards or more to either side of a gate. The fence may once have gone around the entire place, but he couldn’t be sure of that. Maybe it was just a formal entrance, since beyond the gate was where the path began, meandering away through scrub, to where it broadened and became the narrow dirt road, which disappeared in the near distance at a turning, the mouth of which was like another gate, a canopy formed by tall, gnarled bushes into which wild bougainvillea had wound its tendrils. The mouth was bloody in the sun, startling in its green branches and red blossoms, the only place of strident color, no matter where his eyes rested.

  They’d put him in a waiting room with others. He had the deed and some documentation, his driver’s license and the creased and often folded birth certificate he’d managed to carry along through the years. The others were businessmen, and they wore suits, and he sat away from them and near a window and could see down into the square, the stone fountain at its center, and across on the other side a row of public buildings that pressed against the old church. The square was empty, but as he watched it began to fill as siesta ended, people crossing with purpose, entering the mouths of invisible shopping streets at the corners, carrying fabric and paper bags, in sun hats of no use now as afternoon shadows covered them. Then he heard his name, and someone came for him and took him into another room and sat him down on a bench at the room’s side, where he waited again.

  The room was large and full of rows of desks, computers and typewriters upon them, and people sat at the desks and rose from time to time and went to search in the file cabinets that lined the walls, and while he waited he thought of Peter in his coma and of the deed in his pocket and of Strickland and the note and money he’d left for him. Had he left the deed too, purposely, in that hiding place behind the books? Strickland knew his documents, had studied them, though some had moved through quickly, bought and sold again in a matter of weeks only, and he might have missed Carlos’s name in his perusal. It was the history that held value, the official seal of Obregón, and not the ownership or legal responsibilities that the deeds and contracts, the letters and the other documents, noted. Still, Strickland was a careful reader of his possessions, and he might have seen his name there and not mentioned it, though that would have been a strange violation of their relationship. The nature of our being together in that year, Carlos thought. He couldn’t get it to add up, recognizing that he never would, and he turned fro
m it, slipping in the mild exhaustion caused by his travel, and was thinking then of the city beyond the room’s walls, nothing he really remembered. He’d been too young for that, or too desirous of forgetting it, and yet there’d been a familiarity to the streets and shops, at least something in the attitude of the people he’d passed by and engaged with, a certain reserve that was comfortable. Even on the rickety bus trip down from Reynosa, peasants and merchants, two dogs, chickens in wire cages, boxes of fruits and vegetables, a special corazón. Then a woman came and asked for his papers, and she and a few others gathered at a desk, their heads close together, and in a while she took his papers into another room, then came back with copies and the originals and asked him to return again the next afternoon.

  That night, after he had bathed and rested, he walked the streets of the city, finding nothing that was familiar, but for the language he’d not spoken fluently since childhood and the postures and gestures of the older inhabitants, the few he found among the tourists. He sat on the bank of the Panuco. He entered a few shops, but he had nothing to buy. He ate his dinner, an ancient taste of tamales, at a stand on a busy street. He entered and sat for a while in the dark church. Then, on the way back to his hotel, he passed into a side street and came upon the lights above the door at the Lluvia del Oro and went in and crossed the dark crowded room and sat at the bar and ordered tequila. There were women in the place, prostitutes, but none approached him. They were there for the tourists and they thought him a local Mexican. He liked that, and only had to turn his head away when the eyes of a man fell on him, another kind of prostitute, in loose linen slacks and a shirt opened almost to the navel, whose lids had been darkened slightly with makeup.

  The next afternoon he was back at the office again, this time ushered immediately into a room where a middle-aged man sat in his suit behind a large wooden desk. His hair was greased back in an older fashion, and Carlos could see the glint of wax in his thin mustache. The man rose from his chair and nodded, then pursed his lips, pointing to the chair across the desk, and Carlos sat down and the man settled into the leather of his own chair and swiveled slightly, glancing out the window to the side of the room. Carlos could see the copies of the deed and his documents and some other papers on the desk pad, the man’s fingers at the edge of them, a diamond ring in gold setting and carefully pared nails.

  “English or Spanish?” the man asked, then sighed when Carlos answered, and tapped his fingers on the papers.

  “This could have been so difficult,” he said.

  “¿Por qué?” Carlos said, and the man smiled.

  “Porque the Revolution. Muchos presidentes, generals, bandits, et cetera.”

  “¿Pero?” Carlos said.

  “Pero for this one, this Joaquín Sánchez.”

  He lifted up a sheet of thin paper, and Carlos could see the formal handwriting through it and the impression of the seal under the signature.

  “This letter, and these other documents he filed, perfectly executed. And your deed holds the impression of Obregón, who may well have been a pendejo, but the president of the country then, nevertheless.”

  “Who is this Sánchez?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that,” the man said. “Why he might have been involved in this. This is ancient material. I had to search it out. Lucky for you there was another one here. I didn’t have to look for it this time.”

  “What do you mean, another?”

  “I mean just that. Another person with a claim. Lucky for you it was a bad one, no damn good at all.”

  “When was this?” Carlos asked.

  The man swiveled in his chair again, looked at the wall, then out the window. Then he swiveled back.

  “Well, you know,” he said. “I can’t say nothing about that. Who, and when it was. But it was recently. It was no damn good at all.”

  “And Sánchez?”

  “Of course,” the man said. “That’s how I searched out these papers. He’d filed all the proper references. In the files, you know? Even through the Revolution and after, the files are good, if you knew how to file things.”

  “And Sánchez did.”

  “That’s right. He was a gentleman of connections and influence back then. There were few like him. His name is on papers here frequently from those times. I’ve come across it. Very lawyerly. Though he was not a lawyer I don’t think. Ironclad, do you say?” He waved the letter between them. “This is very good stuff.”

  “What does it say?”

  “Says you are the owner of a house once owned by Roberto Menéndez, also known by Calaca in other papers, transferred to him in 1920, the deed then transferred to you in 1961. The house and whatever objects are within the house that remain, and the land, once surveyed and the survey officially recorded here in this office. And I rise now and offer my hand in congratulations.”

  The land seemed to amount to a good number of acres, four at least to the front and sides, maybe even five, and Carlos wasn’t sure of the rear of the house yet and the foothills, how far the land might extend up into them. He’d hired surveyors who worked for the government and would handle the recording of their results officially, and when he turned from the veranda railing and looked out over the baked clay again to find them, they were gone, most probably working in the back now, he thought, and their truck was gone, a dull green Range Rover he’d ridden out in with them. He’d brought a sleeping bag, a canteen of water and a bag of food. He’d spend a night at the place, at least that, when they were gone. He didn’t know what he’d be doing after that.

  It was late afternoon now, and the sun was sinking, and the breeze came up and stirred his sleeves, then receded and fell away and the air was still, and he saw the sand dust settling over the ruined causeway that had once been a crude landing strip, and the rougher ground and low brush beyond it, until the earth took on a clear solidity and ceased its shimmering, and the cloudless sky hardened into a deep blue, and he saw a few stars in the sky, though it was still day and bright under a milder sun. A man of property, he thought, his fingers stroking the weathered wood of the railing. Then he heard something. He thought it might be the surveyors, their voices and the sharp clack of their instruments in the clear air, the closing of the truck’s door, but it was not coming from the rear of the house, but from the side, and he turned back toward the fence and looked out beyond the gate and down the pathway toward the road.

  He thought at first he was some aged peasant or an injured one, the shuffling of his feet in dusty huaraches, though they were not that, but boots, and his loose pants were conventional khakis, his brief-brimmed straw hat new and domed like a derby, a short, colorful feather in the decorative ribbon at the crown’s side. The hat hid his face, his fingers gathered in the vines and tendrils at the archway’s side, and the flowers shook and petals rained down over him as he shuffled through, and another man, even shorter than he was and wearing a large sombrero that looked ludicrous atop his small frame, came up from behind him and into the archway at his side, gripping his biceps, helping him and shuffling too, and the first shook free of his grip and said something, sharply, and a third man, heavier and lumbering, wearing a new Stetson and a white Mexican shirt, came into the space beside them, and the three were caught there for a moment, as men in a doorway in some old comic movie, their shoulders shifting, hands flailing at the bushes. Then they were through and standing side by side in the dirt road, brushing the petals from their clothing, reaching up to adjust their headgear, and Carlos saw a sort of cart come up to the side of the heavy man, someone behind it, holding handles. He thought it might be a wheelchair, but it was hard to see, so loaded as it was with objects: sleeping bags and a plastic cooler pressed together on the seat, pots and pans, canteens, coats and blankets, woven satchels, small leather purses, cases, all piled on top, or strapped or hanging loosely from the chair’s metal arms, some bouncing against the wheels. The man pushing it was dressed in garments that looked Japanese, some loose linen nightwear, tan, a
s were his tennis shoes. He had a thin mustache and wore a beaded skullcap covering what looked like a bald head. He, like the others, was squinting in the sun.

  Carlos was under the eaves in darkness of shade, and they couldn’t see him, and he stood still and watched them. The man in the straw hat was pointing at the house, his fingers wiggling and gesturing toward the ruined causeway. He held his other hand at the edge of his hat brim, fighting the sinking sun. Then he was pointing toward the rear of the house, then turning toward the smaller man at his side, his hands striking the large sombrero brim as he was forming shapes in the air, and the small man pushed his hat away. It fell down over his shoulders to his back, the cord at his throat, and Carlos could see his face then, the features of someone historical. Then the four men were moving, jostling for position as the road narrowed and became the path, until they were two abreast, the heavy man helping the one in the beaded skullcap with the chair, the two smaller ones in front. They had almost reached the gate when they entered the house shadow and the sun left their eyes. The two paused when they saw him, and the chair banged into the legs of the one who had gestured and he fell back to sit upon the sleeping bags and cooler, swearing through a groan. The one beside him had screwed his sombrero back on his head, and Carlos couldn’t see his face anymore, but he could hear the words as they flew out under the brim. “Christ save us all! It’s the little guy!”

  He had never seen them, but he had heard them, and though it had been in delirium, that occasional waking to metallic voices in which dreams were part of coma and sentient awareness indistinguishable from dreams, he’d had a picture of them, in stories and the muffled talk that proceeded from them and was joined to the sounds of motion, the creak of furniture and that shuffling of slippered feet through doorways, all of it like an audio shadow play, heard from behind a screen. And he may have somehow counted them, for he was not surprised that they were four. Harry Truman, he thought, World War II and The Bomb, as he lay in the crease where the veranda joined the railing in his sleeping bag. He could see stars between the worn, wooden uprights, and the air was cool and fresh. He’d given them the house, the bed for John and Larry, the other two on the floor in corners, and he could hear their voices, almost as before, that metal quality no longer part of a dream image, understood now as infirmity, their tracheotomies and the effort and the whistles in their breathing. Larry in his skullcap and linen and trimmed mustache, stylish even in chemotherapy; Frank, heavy and disheveled, that slightly protruding upper lip he’d pictured, receded now, replaced by the jutting of his lower jaw, slightly bulldogish, skin veined and stretched tight at his sinking cheeks, jowls hanging down below his chin. He wondered if anyone would recognize them in youthful photographs. And at this different desert, though it was not really that, but scrub and ground where crops had been traded in for oil near the sea, he thought of T. E. Lawrence: “The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God’s stage.” It was the way he’d imagined them, the textures of their lives only in their told stories, voices flat like silhouettes behind them. But what he saw in them was faces animated in the present, for they were in a story now and not telling one.