by Tom Ardies
“Enough,” Cavazos decided.
Morel sighed and returned his gun to its holster. Someday the department would buy him another. Until then … ?
Cavazos got out his sunflower seeds and retired to a bench. He sifted through them, picked a likely looking specimen, and popped it into his mouth. “You saw that?” he asked.
The bus driver examined the hole in the crown of his hat. That had been a very close call. He could put two fingers through it. “No,” he said wisely.
Actually, it was the worst case of police incompetence that he had ever witnessed, but any fool knew when blindness served best.
“I saw it,” Morel volunteered.
“And I, too,” Cavazos declared, spitting out a husk. “The situation is much worse than I feared. Twice now that gringo has managed to escape against all odds. He is what you call a master elusionist.”
Morel nodded solemnly. “Shall we call in the Federales?”
Cavazos sat thinking it over. He was tempted, sorely tempted, to ask for help, and the more the better. This was probably the cleverest gang ever to invade Mexico. What chance had two poor policemen? Would they not surely die in the showdown? And yet …
Like others before him, brave men and true, Cavazos had his dreams of glory. There were many awards and honors a grateful country could bestow upon an able and heroic servant. The money to be had was only part of it. Medals could be pinned, promotions granted, or—the thought made him dizzy—statues erected.
“No, gracias,” Cavazos said at last, thinking that he should be careful in all he uttered from this moment onward. His sergeant could very well be the lone survivor. He should be left a legacy of immortal quotations. The press would be interested in the famous Cavazos’ last words.
Morel accepted the ruling with a fateful shrug. It wouldn’t bother him if the captain died of a fit of heroics. The truth known, it would be an occasion for rejoicing, for who, after all, was next in line for the post?
“We will separate,” Cavazos announced. “I will scour the village. You will guard the road.” He started to move away and then stopped. “That pistol of yours. Do you mind if I try my luck with it?”
Morel quickly handed it to him. Gladly.
Cavazos sighted at a chicken crossing the square. He pulled the trigger and another window broke in the Burócrata.
“Hmmm,” Cavazos said. “Perhaps I’d better keep this. You can use mine.” He unfastened his gun belt and passed the works over. “You’ve no objection?”
Morel was speechless. God, no. Tears came unbidden to his eyes. To think that a moment before he had willed this heroic man’s death.
“Adiós,” Cavazos said, bracing himself for the unknown. He smiled bravely and strode across the square and kicked through the door of the hotel. Let him be remembered that way. A cop never knocks.
Morel walked back down the road and took up position on a small hill several hundred yards outside the village. Half an hour later, his crying jag over, his eyes clear enough to see, he at last was able to test Cavazos’ gun. He fired at a rabbit and missed.
Hmmm, Morel mused. The gun pulled to the left, didn’t it? About a block to the left.
Buchanan, meanwhile, was already many miles down the mountain, barely in control of the plunging bus. The brakes grew weaker at every boggling turn. Soon they’d burn away completely. And then?
Buchanan tried to blot out the horror movie that kept running through his fevered mind. The bus plunging off a cliff, tumbling end over end, bursting into flames. His flesh peeling in the inferno. His eyes popping and his belly bloating. His pitiful pig squeals.
Why couldn’t they be his and hers? That damn Marina, this was all her fault, and he would cherish her company this one last time, in the only heat ever generated between them.
He had all but resigned himself to death—the bone bag’s absence his only true regret—when a dust cloud suddenly billowed into view.
Who could that be up ahead? Gonzales in his overburdened Volkswagen?
Two more wild hairpin turns and he had confirmation. Yes, it was Gonzales, all right, the Volkswagen hell-bent, but nowhere as foolishly as the bus.
Buchanan started honking wildly. They were closing rapidly and there was no way to avoid a collision on the narrow road. Mere moments more and he would ram the rear and the bug would be squashed. Poor Gonzales—flatter than a tortilla.
But wait! Why should they both die? Could he not spare Gonzales by committing suicide? Since his own fate was sealed, the decent thing to do, the right and proper thing, was to drive the bus over the cliff and into eternity. Right?
Wrong, Buchanan decided. He aimed the bus at the rear of the Volks. He closed his eyes and prayed. For himself.
There was a resounding crash but the bus held the road, the only damage, apparently, a stiffening in the steering. The impact also seemed to have served to slow him slightly.
Buchanan squeezed his eyes tighter. The Volks was no doubt on the death tumble he had conjured up for himself. He had taken another man’s life to buy a few seconds more of his own jackal existence—and he didn’t have the stomach to look.
Marina was right. He was a coward. A sniveler. A quavering yellow pansy …
The blast of a horn shook him out of it. He opened his eyes and stared in disbelief. Gonzales had not gone to his Maker after all. The bus and the Volks were riding in tandem, their bumpers hooked together, and Gonzales was leaning out of his window, shaking a fist and screaming.
Buchanan wondered what he was so mad about. The bastard should be thankful. He leaned out of his window to see if he could hear above the roar of the motors.
Gonzales’ shouts were barely audible. “Your brakes! Put on your brakes!”
Buchanan thought it should be apparent but he shouted back anyway. “I have no brakes.”
“Fool! You’ll kill us both,” Gonzales cried.
Perhaps, perhaps not, Buchanan decided, feeling much better in his new predicament. Gonzales had brakes—see how he was pumping them?—and he was also out front. Now, if they only had the luck to meet a third vehicle coming up the mountain. A head-on crash would ensure a halt and the Volks would do much to cushion the impact.
Gonzales reached the same conclusion at the same time. His frantic braking was having almost no effect and he had no control whatsoever over the steering. What the hell was he doing here?
With surprising agility, he squirmed out of the window, hoisted himself over the boxes lashed to the roof, and then slid down the back to stand precariously on the locked bumpers. He took out his pistol and rapped it against the bus windshield.
“Let me in,” he ordered.
Buchanan, wrestling manfully with the steering, was too stunned by Gonzales’ athletics not to comply. If he could get around to it, God bless him, Buchanan thought, cranking open the door.
“The window, jackass,” Gonzales screamed, barely keeping his balance.
“It doesn’t open,” Buchanan yelled back. Wasn’t that obvious?
“Break it,” Gonzales shouted. “Kick it open.”
“And steer, too?” Buchanan demanded. The doctor was asking the impossible. They weren’t all jocks.
Desperate, Gonzales opened fire with his pistol, reducing the windshield to a few scattered shards, and sending Buchanan sprawling on the floor.
“Steer, damn you,” Gonzales muttered, pulling himself inside, but Buchanan was having none of it. He had barely escaped the hail of bullets through the windshield. Do another jig for this maniac’s gun? Never.
Buchanan scooped up a tire iron and threw it with all the might he could muster. It was off target—he had aimed for the head—but did serve its purpose. Gonzales screamed in pain as the iron struck him a glancing blow on the shoulder. The pistol dropped from his hand, bounced along the floor, and then down the steps, stopping a few inches inside.
Gonzales bent to pick it up. He again had saved one bullet—and he was angry enough to use it wisely.
Buc
hanan scrambled to his feet. He saw his opportunity and he took it. One well-placed boot and the doctor went flying out the door.
Good riddance, Buchanan gloated, retrieving the pistol. So what if the bus was doing sixty? Enough, after all, was enough, and …
The plaintive bleep of a horn once more awakened him to the continuing realities of his journey. He turned and grabbed for the wheel but it was too late to do anything.
Up ahead, completely blocking the road, an old wreck of a truck, burdened with crates of squawking poultry, stolidly waited for the inevitable.
Buchanan sighed. What a way to end it. He had imagined such a dramatic death. Spit on the mocking fates and rape the hellfires, see how fiercely you burn, Buchanan! That was poetic and fine and good. But to succumb with a bunch of other chickens?
The Dodge panted up to Doña Otelia’s hut on the other side of Santa Luisa. As always, Sebastian had no idea where he was, and his passengers also had their doubts. Merci, her palm crossed by another, had not met them to act as a guide.
“Quién sabe? Who knows?” Sebastian asked, refusing to budge. He was a child of the city with a child’s fear of brujas. He’d heard many tales of the foul ingredients used in their supposed medicines.
“I will see,” Marina said, stomping out, and Adele quickly followed, dragging Herbert. Buchanan’s desertion demanded that he act the man.
Leaning on a crooked stick, Doña Otelia limped to the door of her hut, astounded to see so much repeat gringo business. Her patient of last night—the drunk with the sore head—had surely been pleased with her ministrations. Who else could have sent these three prospects?
“Bienvenida, welcome,” Doña Otelia said in her fractured English. “You grace my humble clinic. Who among you is sick?”
“We all are,” Marina replied, a pre-arranged lie which was rapidly becoming the truth. How could this wrinkled crone be the fabled Doña Otelia? How could any miraculous medications be spawned in this awful pigsty?
Doña Otelia peered closer and nodded knowingly. Yes, yes, they all need treatment, all right. The skinny one was a hollow shell, suffering, no doubt, from advanced dysentery. A little something to constipate and she’d be a new woman. The cow with the long nose? Well, her milk had hardened, had it not? Work her over with a toilet plunger and all could be well. And the hairy little pip-squeak? That was the easiest diagnosis of the bunch. He probably hadn’t raised it for years. An aphrodisiac was the answer for him.
“Enter, enter,” Doña Otelia urged, rubbing her hands together gleefully. She’d sleep for a week on the fees earned this happy morning. The pip-squeak would pay a fortune for a handful of uppers.
Marina led the way in tremulously, holding her breath against the stench, which was oddly familiar. Hadn’t the same smell assaulted her at breakfast?
“You defecate often, señorita?” Doña Otelia asked.
Marina answered with a black look. It was not her. It was this place.
“It is a common complaint among tourists,” Doña Otelia said, her heart touched by that pained expression. “You call it what? The trots? Montezuma’s Revenge?” She pawed among the old jars and bottles set out on her dispensary table. “I have something here that will seize you up. You won’t pass for a month. The will of God.”
Marina pushed it away. “No, no. You don’t understand. I came to buy your magic salve.”
Doña Otelia shook her head. “The magic salve doesn’t work.”
Marina, Adele, and Herbert all spoke at once, ashen-faced. “It doesn’t work?”
“Not for The Revenge,” Doña Otelia said, thinking that she had perhaps not spoken highly enough of the proper prescription. “This is what you need. Take a double dose and you will never pass again. The will of God.”
Marina pushed it away once more. “No, no. Listen to me, por favor. I do not have diarrhea.”
Doña Otelia peered at her patient more closely. She was seldom wrong in a diagnosis and doubted if she was in this case. To be that hopelessly skinny there must be something rotting inside. “Oh? Then what is wrong with you?”
Marina was suddenly flustered. After all that, she had forgotten. “A pain …”
“Where?” Doña Otelia demanded, not inclined to argue further. These gringos who knew everything. Let them make their own diagnosis. She’d take their money and laugh.
“My wrist.”
“From what?”
“Arthritis.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Doña Otelia said. “What you need is the magic salve. That will be fifty pesos, por favor. Next?”
“I also have a pain,” Adele said.
No doubt, Doña Otelia thought, and the remedy was the toilet plunger, plus a larger brassiere size, but let the cow continue. “Where?”
“In my, uh, back.”
“From what?”
“Lumbago.”
“The magic salve,” Doña Otelia said, passing over another jar. “Fifty pesos. Next?”
Herbert hesitated and Marina elbowed him out of the way to conduct the important part of her business. Obtaining a salve sample was only half of it. Determining the ingredients was the crucial thing. Despite Gonzales’ claim that the old woman wouldn’t co-operate, there were ways, many ways, to make her talk.
“Your fame is spreading, you know,” Marina began, trying to think of how Buchanan would do it. “I’ve heard many claims made for your wondrous salve. I’ve even read where it was described as a panacea—a cure-all.”
Doña Otelia shrugged beneath her filthy shawl. “My patients—they are happy.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Marina said quickly. “I’ve noticed it myself. The people of Santa Luisa are very, very happy, and much of that is your doing, I’m sure. The villagers are most fortunate. To have such a famous doctor in their midst. To have such a marvelous medicine at their disposal …”
“The secret is not for sale,” Doña Otelia said.
“Now, now,” Marina soothed. “Don’t speak too soon. If the claims I’ve read are even partially correct—if proper medical tests substantiate them—you stand to make a great deal of money.”
“The secret is not for sale,” Doña Otelia repeated, much louder this time. “I tell you the same as I told the man last night. It is not for sale—not at any price.”
Marina was immediately on the alert. “What man?”
“The one with the sore head.”
Marina quickly opened her purchase and sniffed at it delicately. Oh, the smell was familiar, all right. The smarcky rat!
“Who?” Adele asked.
“Buchanan,” Marina said, wondering how she could have been taken in so badly. “Didn’t you hear? He came last night. He offered to buy the curadoras secret—any price.”
“Hmmm,” Adele said. “Did you hear that, Herbert?” “Hmmm,” Herbert said.
Marina tried to think. Was Buchanan merely an amateur out for a fast buck? Or did he actually know what he was doing? If her worst suspicions were correct—if he was on his way to have the salve analyzed—there was little time to waste.
Doña Otelia wanted nothing more than to have them gone. She turned to Herbert. “Next?”
“There is nothing wrong with him,” Marina said, equally anxious.
“There is, too,” Herbert said. “It’s my turn and I want it.” “What for?”
Herbert started to turn red with embarrassment. He had a problem, a very real problem, which the best medical minds had yet to solve, and he was desperate enough to try the curadora. Yet he could hardly discuss it in front of Marina.
“This is, uh, something personal,” he blurted, face crimson. “Would you ladies mind leaving?”
Marina was immediately suspicious. What was he up to? “Why?”
Herbert pretended an interest in the ceiling. “Because.”
Adele moved over and whispered in Marina’s ear.
“Oh,” Marina said, turning red herself, and beating a hasty retreat.
Herbert took a deep breath,
conscious of Doña Otelia’s impatience, wondering how to begin. It was a difficult thing to tell an old lady. “You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m, uh, quite a sportsman,” he began on a circuitous route. “Very athletic in my, uh, own way.”
Doña Otelia nodded. Yes, yes. Her earnings had taken her as far as Guadalajara. She had seen the fat gringos at their play. Golf. Tennis.
“This has got to do with, uh, sex,” Herbert said. He pointed to his privates. “My, uh, you know …”
Doña Otelia was at a loss. She had heard of the ailment tennis elbow. But never tennis balls.
“I have tried many salves and ointments,” Herbert said, gathering up his courage. “They have all proved useless. Nothing works.”
Doña Otelia nodded. Yes, yes. But what was the problem?
Herbert looked at the ceiling. “Premature ejaculation.”
Oh. Doña Otelia considered long and carefully. Should she, or should she not? Finally she went to her dispensary table.
Herbert waited, unable to speak, barely breathing.
Doña Otelia opened an apothecary jar and removed what appeared to be a very small tea bag. She held it up by the string for Herbert’s inspection.
“That’s it?” Herbert asked.
“Sí.”
“It works?”
“Sí.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positivo. Again and again. You simply dip it into boiling water to make a brew. It may be used up to a dozen times before losing its potency.”
“You drink the brew?”
“Me? Of course not, and it’s not to be drunk, anyway, fool. You dunk your member into it and stir for precisely two minutes. Then …”
Oh, my, Herbert thought. Oh, my, oh, my. “How much?”
Doña Otelia hesitated. “It is very expensive.”
“How much?”
“One hundred pesos.”
“I’ll take two,” Herbert said, grabbing for his wallet. “No, three. Four …” He stopped. What was he doing? Had he gone mad? “How many have you got there?”
Doña Otelia dumped out the jar. “Diez. Ten.”
“I’ll take them all,” Herbert said, quickly counting the money. “You, uh, don’t give discounts, do you?”