Valdez Is Coming: A Novel

by Elmore Leonard

  “I swear,” R. L. Davis said, “you are sure one dumb son of a bitch, aren’t you? When that pole broke, where did you suppose it was going to go?” He saw Valdez try to raise his head. “It’s your old amigo you tried to swing a scatter gun at the other day. You remember that? You went and shot the wrong coon and you was going to come at me for it.”

  Davis sidestepped the sorrel closer to Valdez, pulling his coiled reata loose from the saddle thong and playing out several feet of it. He reached over, looping the vertical pole above Valdez’s head and snugged the knot tight. “You’re lucky a white man come along,” Davis said.

  Valdez tried to raise his eyes to him. “Look at my back,” he said.

  “I saw it. You cut yourself.”

  “God, I think so,” Valdez said. “Cut my wrists loose first, all right?”

  “Well, not right yet,” Davis said. He moved away, letting out rope, and when he was ten feet away dallied the line to his saddle horn. “Come on,” he said.

  Valdez had to move to the side to free an end of the crosspole and was almost jerked from his feet, stumbling to get between the trees and keep up with the short length of rope. He was pulled this way, through the birch trees and through the brush that grew along the edge of the grove, and out into the glare of the meadow again.

  “You must ache some from stooping over,” R. L. Davis said.

  “Cut my hands and I’ll tell you about it.”

  “You know I didn’t like you trying to hit me with that scatter gun.”

  “I won’t do it anymore,” Valdez said. “How’s that?”

  “It made me sore, I’ll tell you.”

  “Cut me loose and tell me, all right?”

  R. L. Davis moved in close in front and lifted the loop from the upright pole. He kept the sorrel close against Valdez as he coiled the rope and thonged it to his saddle again.

  “Your animal doesn’t smell so good,” Valdez said.

  “Well, I’ll give you some air,” R. L. Davis said. “How’ll that be?” He moved the sorrel tight against Valdez, kicking the horse’s left flank to sidestep it and keep it moving.

  Valdez said, “You crazy, you put me over. Hey!” He could feel the bottom of the upright pole pushing into the ground, wedged tight, and his body lifting against R. L. Davis’ leg. The sorrel jumped forward, sidestepping, swinging its rump hard against Valdez, and he went over, seeing Davis above him and seeing the sky and tensing and holding the scream inside him and gasping as his spine slammed the ground and the splintered pole gouged into his back.

  After a moment he opened his eyes. His hat was off. It was good, the tight band gone from his forehead. But he had to close his eyes again because of the glare and the pain in his body, the sharp thing sticking into his back that made him strain to arch his shoulders. A shadow fell over him and he opened his eyes to see R. L. Davis far above him on the sorrel, the funneled hat brim and narrow face staring down at him.

  “A man ought to wear his hat in the sun,” R. L. Davis said.

  Valdez closed his eyes and in a moment the sun’s glare pressed down on his eyelids again. He heard the horse break into a gallop that soon faded to nothing.

  4

  St. Francis of Assisi was the kindest man who ever lived. Maybe not kinder than Our Lord; that was different. But kinder than any real living man. Sure. St. Francis had been a soldier once and got wounded and after that he wouldn’t step on bugs or kill animals. Hell, he talked to the animals; like the time he talked to the wolf—probably a big gray lobo—who was scaring everybody and he told the wolf to stop it. Stop it or I’ll skin you, you son of a bitch, and wear you for a coat. You would talk to a wolf different than you would talk to other animals. But he talked to all of them, birds, everything; they were all his friends he said. He even talked to the stars and the sun and the moon. He called the sun Brother Sun.

  But not today you couldn’t call it Brother Sun, Bob Valdez thought.

  It was strange the things he thought about, lying in the meadow on a pole like a man crucified, remembering his older sister reading to him a long time ago about St. Francis of Assisi and his prayer, or whatever it was, The Canticle of the Sun. Yes, because he had pictured the sun moving, spinning and doing things, the sun smiling, as his sister read it to him. Today the sun filled the sky and had no edges. It wasn’t smiling; this day the sun was everything over him, white hot pressing down on him and dancing orange, red, and black dots on his closed eyelids.

  He remembered a man who had no eyelids, who had been staked out in the sun and his eyelids cut off. And his ears cut off also and his right hand. He remembered finding the man’s hand and finding the man’s son in the burned-out farmhouse on the Gila River south of San Carlos, after Geronimo had jumped the reservation and raided down into old Mexico. They didn’t find the man’s wife. No, he didn’t remember a woman there. Maybe she had been away visiting relatives. Or they had taken her. No, they had been moving fast and she wouldn’t have been able to keep up with them. It was funny, he wondered what the woman looked like.

  She could look like the Lipan Apache woman and have a child inside her. She could look like the woman with Tanner standing on the loading platform—he remembered her blond hair and her eyes watching him, a blond-haired woman in that village of guns and horses and freight wagons. Her face was brown and she looked good with the sun on her hair, but she should be inside in a room with furniture and gold statue lamps on the tables.

  He remembered the girl Polly at Inez’s place and her robe coming open as she leaned over to look at the green book and then the black one. He should have stayed. It would be good to be there. It didn’t matter about the girl—later—but to be in a bed with the shades down, lying on one side and then the other and moving his arms, bending them all he wanted while he slept. He would only wake up at night when the sun was down and Brother Moon or Sister Moon or whatever the hell St. Francis called it was in the sky with its soft light, and he would drink cool water from the pitcher next to the bed. When the girl came in he would turn his head and see her face, her eyes in the darkness, close to him. She had dark hair, but he thought of her with light hair, and this didn’t make sense to him.

  He remembered turning his head against the thong holding him to the upright post, the thong cutting his neck as he strained to twist his face away from the white heat pressing him and the colors dancing in his eyes. He remembered thinking that if the thong was wet with his sweat it would shrink when it dried and perhaps strangle him to death if he was still alive. Then he wouldn’t be thirsty anymore and it wouldn’t matter if his eyes were burned out. It wouldn’t matter if Brother Wolf came to see him; he wouldn’t have to talk to any Brother Wolf and ask him to go away.

  He remembered the knife pain in his shoulders and back. He remembered feeling sick and trying to calm himself and breathe slowly so he wouldn’t vomit and drown in his own bile in a mountain meadow. He remembered the worst, the heat and the pain and the thirst, and he remembered opening his eyes to a blue sky turning gray and streaked with red. He remembered a numbness in his body, looking at his hands and unable to move them.

  He remembered darkness, opening his eyes and seeing darkness and hearing night sounds coming from the birch trees. He remembered the breeze moving the grass close to his face. He remembered pieces of the whole, sleeping and opening his eyes: the girl from Inez’s place over him, lifting his head and holding a canteen to his lips. Why would she use a canteen when the pitcher was on the table? He remembered getting up, standing and falling and the girl holding his arms, bending them carefully, working the joints and feeling a sweet pain that would have made his eyes water if he had water left in him to come out. He remembered stretching and walking and falling and walking and crawling on his hands and knees. He remembered voices, the voices of children and a voice that he knew well and an arm that he knew helping him.

  Diego Luz said, “Are you awake?”

  Valdez lay with his eyes open, his eyes moving slowly from the ce
iling of the room to Diego Luz, a white figure in the dimness. “I think so,” he said. “I woke up before, I think; but I didn’t know where I was.”

  “You were saying some crazy things.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Find you? You crawled into the yard last night. I heard the dogs; I almost shot you.”

  “I came here myself?”

  Diego Luz moved closer to the bed. “What happened to you?”

  “Maybe I’m dead,” Valdez said. “Am I dead?” He could see the children of Diego Luz behind their father, in the doorway.

  “You looked near to it. Somebody stabbed you in the back.”

  “No, a tree did that.”

  Diego Luz nodded. “A tree. What kind of a tree is it does that?”

  His daughter came into the room with a gourd and a tin cup, and the small children followed her, crowding up to the bed. Valdez smiled at them and at the girl and got up on his elbow to sip the water. He could see the wife of Diego Luz and his wife’s mother in the doorway, staying in the other room but raising their faces to look at him on the bed.

  “I don’t see your boy,” Valdez said.

  “He’s watching.”

  “For what?”

  “To see if they follow you. Or whoever it was.”

  “Don’t worry,” Valdez said. “I’m leaving when I find my pants.”

  “I don’t worry,” the horsebreaker said. “I’m careful. I wonder when I see a man crawl in half dead.”

  Valdez handed the cup to the girl. “Have you got some whiskey?”

  “Mescal.”

  “Mescal then.”

  “You haven’t eaten yet.”

  “I want to sleep, not eat,” Valdez said. “In the back of your wagon when you take me to Lanoria.”

  “Stay here, you be better.”

  “No,” Valdez said. “You said they come by here. Maybe they come by again.”

  “Maybe they know where you live too.”

  “I’m not going where I live.” He motioned Diego Luz closer and whispered to him as his children and his wife and his wife’s mother watched.

  Diego Luz straightened, shaking his head. “Half dead and you want to go to that place.”

  “Half alive,” Valdez said. “There is a difference.”

  Diego Luz brought him in through the kitchen at almost four in the morning. Valdez had passed out in the wagon, his wound beginning to bleed again. But as they dragged him up the stairs and along the dark hallway, Diego Luz and the large woman, Inez, supporting him between them, he hissed at them. “Goddam, put my arms down!”

  “We carry you and you swear at us,” Inez hissed back.

  “God and St. Francis, put me down!”

  “Now he prays,” Inez said. She opened a door, and inside they lowered him gently to the bed, settling him on his stomach and hearing him let out his breath. Inez bent over him, lifting his shirt to look at the bloodstained bandage.

  “In the back,” she said. “The only way you could kill this one.” She looked at Diego Luz. “Who shot him? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “A tree,” Diego Luz said. “Listen, get something to clean him and talk after.”

  Valdez heard the woman close the door. He was comfortable and he knew he would be asleep again in a moment. He said, “Hey,” bringing Diego Luz close to the side of the bed. “I’m going to leave you everything I have when I die.”

  “You’re not going to die. You got a little cut.”

  “I know I’m not going to die now. I mean when I die.”

  “Don’t talk about it,” Diego Luz said.

  “I leave you everything I have if you do one more thing for me, all right?”

  “Go to sleep,” Diego Luz said, “and shut up for a while.”

  “If you get me something from my room at the boardinghouse.”

  “You want me to go now?”

  “No, this time of night that old lady’ll shoot you. During the day. Tomorrow.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “In the bottom drawer of the dresser,” Valdez said. “Everything that’s there.”

  Goddam, he wished he could tell somebody about it.

  R. L. Davis stood at the bar in the Republic Hotel drinking whiskey. He didn’t have anything to do. He’d been fired for not being where he was supposed to be, riding fence and not riding all over the goddam country, Mr. Malson had said. He’d told Mr. Malson he’d gone to see Diego Luz about a new horse, but Mr. Malson didn’t believe him, the tight-butt son of a bitch. Sure he had gone off to Tanner’s place to see about working for him, figuring the chance of getting caught and fired was worth it. What surprised him was Tanner not hiring him. Christ, he could shoot. Probably good or better than any man Tanner had. He saw himself riding along with Tanner’s bunch, riding into Lanoria, stampeding in and swinging down in front of the Republic or De Spain’s.

  He could go over to De Spain’s. At least he’d been paid off. Maybe there was somebody over there he could tell. God, it was hard to keep something that good inside you. But he wasn’t sure how everybody would take it, telling how he’d pushed Valdez over like a goddam turtle in the sun. The segundo had mentioned the turtle and it had given him the idea, though he thought one of Tanner’s men would do it first.

  Maybe if he told Tanner what he did—

  No, Tanner would look at him and say, “You come all the way out here to tell me that?”

  He was a hard man to talk to. He looked right through you without any expression. But it would be something to ride for him, down into old Mexico with guns and beef and shoot up the federals.

  R. L. Davis finished his whiskey and had another and said to himself all right, he’d go over to De Spain’s. Maybe there was a way of telling it that it wouldn’t sound like he’d done it to him deliberately. Hell, he hadn’t killed him, he’d pushed him over, and there were seven hundred miles between pushing and killing. If the son of a bitch was still out there it was his own fault.

  Outside, he mounted the sorrel and moved up the street. He came to the corner and looked around, seeing who was about, not for any reason, just looking. He saw Diego Luz coming out of the boardinghouse two doors from the corner: Diego Luz coming toward him, carrying something wrapped up in newspaper, a big bundle that could be his wash. Except a Mexican horsebreaker wasn’t going to have any wash done in there. He had his own woman for that.

  He waited for him to reach the corner. “Hey, Diego, what you got there, your laundry?”

  The Mexican looked funny, surprised, like he’d been caught stealing chickens. Then he gave a big smile and waved, like R. L. Davis was his best friend and he was really glad to see him.

  Dumb Mexican. He was all right; just a dumb chilipicker. Christ, R. L. Davis thought, it’d be good to tell him what he’d done to Bob Valdez. And then he thought, Hey, that’s the boardinghouse Bob Valdez lives in, isn’t it?

  Each of the seven doors in the upstairs hall bore the name of a girl in a flowery pink and blue scroll—Anastacia, Rosaria, Evita, Elisaida, Maria, Tranquiliña, and Edith. The names were a nice touch and Inez liked them, though only one of the original seven girls was still here. Because of the turnover during the past two years, and because the Mexican sign painter had moved away, Inez had not bothered to have the doors relettered. Maybe she would sometime, though none of her customers seemed to mind that the name on the door didn’t match the girl. They didn’t care what the girls’ names were, long as they were there.

  Inez tiptoed down the hall, but the floor still creaked beneath her weight. It was semidark, with one lamp lit at the end of the hall and a faint light coming from the stairway landing. Polly followed her, carrying a tray of ham and greens and fried potatoes and coffee: Bob Valdez’s supper if he was awake and felt like eating. He had been here since yesterday morning: two days and going on the second night, sleeping most of the time and sitting up drinking water out of the pitcher when he wasn’t sleeping. She had never seen a man drink so much water
. Diego Luz had come yesterday afternoon with a bundle of clothes—at least what looked to be clothing—and hadn’t been back since then. Diego Luz never came here ordinarily, unless he was looking for someone for Mr. Malson, so it would seem strange if he were seen coming in and out. This was why Bob Valdez told him to stay away. No one was to know he was here. “As far as anybody thinks, I have disappeared,” Bob Valdez had said. He had told Inez what happened to him, but she had the feeling he didn’t tell her everything. That was all right; it was his business. He told what he wanted, but he always told the truth.

  At Rosaria’s door Inez paused, listening, taking a key from the folds of her skirt. She turned it in the lock and opened the door quietly, in case he was asleep.

  She was surprised to see light from the overhead lamp; she was even more surprised to see Bob Valdez standing by the dresser. She got Polly into the room and locked the door and saw the look on Polly’s face as she stared at Bob Valdez.

  “Put it down,” Inez said. “Before you drop it.”

  “Over here,” Valdez said. “If you will.”

  Crossing the room, Polly kept her eyes on him as he moved aside the newspaper and oil can and revolver so she could place the tray on the dresser. He was holding his sawed-off ten-bore Remington shotgun, wiping it with a cloth that two days before had been his shirt.

  Inez smiled a little watching him, noticing the shotgun shells now on the dresser, the shells standing upright with their crimped ends peeled open. “Roberto Valdez returned,” she said.

  He smiled back at her. “Bob is easier.”

  “Bob wears a starched collar,” Inez said. “Roberto makes war.”

  “Just a little war, if he wants it,” Valdez said.

  “You get crazier every day.”

  “I ask him once more; that’s all.”

  “You’ve asked him twice.”

  “But this time will be different.”