Feast Day of Fools

by James Lee Burke

  Though a big window fan sucked the cigarette smoke out of the cantina, the drain holes in the concrete floor smelled of stagnant water and spilled beer. R.C. could also smell the ammonia-like reek of the long stone trough in the baño, which had the words SOLO PARA URINAR painted over the open door. Most of the electrical lighting in the cantina came from the neon Dos Equis and Carta Blanca signs above the bar; but there was a purple stain to it, from either the gathering of the dusk in the streets or the tarnished glow inside the clouds west of the mountains, and the faces of the men drinking at the bar had the garish characteristics of cartoon figures. For R.C., the drinks the mulatto had bought him were coming at a high cost. His head was ringing, his heart was beating faster than it should, and the atmosphere around him had become as warm and damp and suffocating as a wool cloak.

  Why was he having these thoughts and mental associations and seeing these images? he wondered.

  The mulatto wore a smoke-stained, greasy wide-brimmed leather hat with a leather cord that flopped under his chin, and a leather vest without a shirt and striped suit pants without a belt and boots that had roweled spurs on the heels. Locks of his orange hair were flattened on his forehead; his eyebrows formed a solid line; his square teeth and the bones in his face and the thickness of his lips made R.C. think of a hard, compact gorilla. The mulatto filled his mouth with mescal and gargled with it before he swallowed, then pulled a bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his chin. “What’d you say you was doing here, man?”

  “Trying to get my tire fixed,” R.C. said.

  “Yeah, me, too, man. That’s how I ended up on a street full of puta. Getting my tire fixed. That’s good, man. You ain’t been in back yet?”

  “I’m here ’cause a guy gave me a ride here.”

  “You want a ride, there’s a chica out back will buck you to the ceiling.” The bartender set a plate of sizzling onions and sliced green peppers and skillet grease and tortillas in front of the mulatto and went away. The mulatto rolled a tortilla full of onions and peppers and started eating. “Put something in your stomach, man. But don’t drink no more mescal. You look like you been on board a ship in a bad storm. Hey, Bernicio, give my friend some coffee.”

  The bartender filled a cup from a tin pot that sat on a hot plate by the line of liquor bottles on the back counter. R.C. lifted the cup to his mouth, blowing on it, hardly able to swallow because it was so hot.

  “What kind of work you do, man, besides drive around in Mexico and have flat tires?” the mulatto asked.

  “I buy and sell livestock.”

  “Wild horses, huh?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “For dog food?”

  “I don’t know what happens to them.”

  “You guys have shot most of them, hombre. There ain’t many left. Where do you go to shoot them now? On the street of puta?”

  “I’m just the middleman.”

  “You’re wearing ironed blue jeans and a clean cowboy shirt with flowers printed on it. You got Tony Lamas on your feet. You got a shave and a new haircut, too. You’re down here for puta, man. You ain’t been buying no horses.”

  “I’ve got me a girlfriend here’bouts, but I don’t call her what you just said.”

  “When you’re in the sack with a woman, hombre, it’s for one reason, and the reason has got one name. Don’t feel guilty about it. It ain’t natural for a man to go against his desires.”

  R.C. drank again from the coffee cup, then set it down on the bar. His throat felt clotted, as though he had swallowed a handful of needles and could not blow them from his windpipe.

  “Here, eat a tortilla,” the mulatto said. “You ever have your throat blessed by the crossing of the candles on St. Blaise’s Day? See, the priest puts the candles in an X on your throat, and for the next year you don’t got to worry about choking on a bone or a piece of glass somebody put in your food. You okay, rubio?”

  “Why you calling me that?”

  “’Cause you’re rubio and macho, man. You’re blond and strong and got cojones and can kick ass, I bet. Here, drink your coffee, then we’ll go out back. It won’t cost you nothing. I got a tab here. The best thing about my tab is I ain’t got to pay it. You know why that is, man?”

  R.C. could feel the skin on his face shrinking and growing hot, the beer signs and long bar and cuspidors streaked with tobacco juice slipping out of focus, the colors in the plastic casing on the jukebox dissolving and fusing together, the grin on the mulatto’s face as red and wet as a split in a watermelon.

  “I’ll tell you why I ain’t got to pay. I’m friends with La Familia Michoacána. You know who them guys are? They’re religious crazies who cut off people’s heads when they ain’t transporting meth up to your country. We got your country by the balls, man. You need our dope, and you like to screw our women. But I’m gonna take care of you. Hang on to my arm. I’m gonna introduce you to a chica out back you gonna love. You can use my spurs on her, man.”

  R.C. felt himself falling to the floor, but the mulatto and a second man grabbed him and fitted each of his arms across their shoulders and carried him through the back of the bar, past a small dance floor and the stone urinal that was shielded only by a bead curtain, and into the alleyway between the cantina and the row of cribs that had canvas flaps on the doorways.

  R.C. heard himself speaking as though his voice existed outside his body and he had no control over it.

  “What’s that you say?” the mulatto asked. “I couldn’t hear. My ears are stopped up, and my mind is slow. It’s ’cause of the way I grew up, working on a gringo ranch for a few pesos a day and eating beans that never had no meat in them. Getting slapped on the ear didn’t help none, either. Okay, go ahead, I’m listening real good now.”

  R.C. heard himself speaking and then laughing like he had never laughed in his life, his legs as weak as tendrils hanging from the bottom of his torso.

  “Oh, that’s good, hombre,” the mulatto said, having listened carefully to R.C.’s words.” ‘Mexico would make a great golf course if it was run by Texans.’ But you’re a narc, man, so guess who we gonna sell you to? You get to meet La Familia Michoacána. They don’t mess around. When they catch informers or narcs pretending to be down here for puta, they put their heads out on the sidewalk with the blindfolds still on and sometimes a cigarette in their mouths. Believe me, man, when I tell you this. What’s gonna happen to you ain’t gonna be like life on no golf course.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WHEN HACKBERRY CAME through the front door of the cantina, he saw the bartender take note of him and Pam, then continue eating from a bowl of tripe, blowing gently on each spoonful before he placed it in his mouth. The bartender was seated on a stool, a napkin tucked inside the top of his shirt, his throat skin as coarse and wrinkled as a turkey’s, his eyes like big brown buttons in a pie-plate face, his head shaved bald and a large black swastika, with red feathers for appendages, tattooed on the crown of his skull. He told Hackberry that he was sorry, but no, he had not seen anyone in the bar resembling Hackberry’s young friend. His hands were big and square and looked like those of a bricklayer rather than those of a bartender. He continued eating, leaning forward over the bowl of tripe, careful not to spill any on top of his stomach.

  “How long have you been on duty here?” Hackberry said.

  “A few hours,” the bartender replied. “But sometimes I got to serve food and drinks in the back. Maybe your friend was here but I didn’t see him.”

  “In back?” Hackberry said.

  “That’s right, señor. We rent rooms to people who have traveled from far away. Sometimes they drink too much and want to rest before they drive home again.”

  “That’s a very intelligent service you provide. How long does it take for you to carry a service tray to the back and return to the bar where your customers are waiting?”

  “That depends, señor. Sometimes my customers take care of themselves. They are poor but honest, and they leave the money on
the bar for whatever they drink.”

  “What’s your name?” Hackberry asked.

  “Bernicio.”

  “You have maybe a half-dozen customers in here. You can see everyone in the cantina from the front door to the back. My friend called me from here. He gave me the name of the cantina and directions to it. My friend is tall and looks very much like an Anglo. Don’t offend me by pretending you were not aware of his presence.”

  “Claro that maybe he was here, but I didn’t see him. I wish I had. Then I could be helpful. Then I could finish my supper.”

  Hackberry found himself trying to think through a peculiar manifestation of dishonesty that is considered normal in the third world and is totally antithetical to the average North American’s point of view. The individual simply makes up his own reality and states that black is white and white is black and never flutters an eyelash. Appearance and denial always take precedence over substance and fact, and the application of logic or reason will never sway the individual from his self-manufactured convictions.

  “Did you see a man with a wound in his face playing pool?” Hackberry asked.

  “No, señor.”

  “You were already shaking your head before I finished my question,” Hackberry said.

  “Because I have no information that can help you. The people who come here are not criminals. Look at those by the pool table. They’re campesinos. Do they have the wary look of dishonest men?”

  “I’m an officer of the law in the United States, Bernicio. I have friends who are officials here in Coahuila. If you have deceived us and put my friend in harm’s way, you will have to answer both to them and to the United States government.”

  “Will you join me, you and the señorita? I can put onions and extra tortillas in the tripe, and we will have enough for three. I would like very much for you to be my guests and to accept my word about what I have said. I also hope you find your young friend. The Americans who come here are not on a good errand, señor. I hope your friend is not one of these. I worked in Tijuana. Marines would be arrested by our police and moved from jail to jail in the interior and never seen again. Your government could do nothing for them. I served time in one of your prisons. It was a very nice place compared to the prisons here in Mexico. Fortunately, I am a Christian today, and I no longer think about these kinds of things.”

  Hackberry studied the swastika that was tattooed as large as a hand and clamped down on the bartender’s shaved scalp. “Do you have to wear a hat when you attend church?” he asked.

  Bernicio leaned forward, lifting the spoon to his mouth, his eyes focused close together, as though he were staring at a fly three inches from the bridge of his nose. “Buena suerte, señor,” he said.

  Hackberry and Pam went back out onto the street. The dusk had settled on the countryside, and the sky was traced with shooting stars that fell and disappeared beyond the mountains in the south. Farther up the street, a band was playing in a cantina, and prostitutes were sitting on the steps of the brothels, some of them smoking cigarettes that glowed in the shadows and sparked brightly when the girls flipped them into the gutters. Across from where Hackberry and Pam had parked their unmarked Cherokee was a squat one-story building constructed of rough stone with steel bars on the windows and a single tin-shaded yellow bulb over the entrance. Through the main window, Hackberry could see a beetle-browed man in a khaki uniform wearing a khaki cap with a lacquered black brim. The man was absorbed in the comic book he was reading, the pages folded back tightly in one hand.

  “You want to check in with the locals?” Pam asked.

  “Waste of time,” Hackberry replied.

  “It’s like prayer. What’s to lose?”

  “It’s not like prayer. The cops run the cathouses.”

  She was chewing gum, looking up and down the street, her hands propped on her hips. “This is what hell must look like.”

  “It is hell,” he replied.

  She glanced at him, then concentrated her attention on the police station across the street. He could hear her gum snapping in her jaw.

  “I was a frequent visitor,” he said. “Not to this place in particular but seven or eight like it. I was educated and had money and power and a Cadillac to drive. The prostitutes were hardly more than girls. Some of them were the sole support for their families.”

  “How many people were in a North Korean POW camp? How many of them spent months under a sewer grate in a dirt hole in winter?” When he didn’t answer, she glanced at him again, still chewing her gum, shifting it from one side of her jaw to the other. “Let’s stomp some ass, Hack. R.C. said the guy with the hole in his face worked for somebody who was visiting a cathouse?”

  “Yeah, one that features teenage girls,” Hackberry replied.

  KRILL WAS FURIOUS. He paced back and forth in the last silver glimmering of sunlight inside the clouds, staring at the open trunk of the gas-guzzler Negrito had parked behind the ruined adobe house where they were staying. In his right hand, he clenched a braided wallet, the shape as curved as his palm and pocket-worn the color of browned butter. “You smoked some bad weed?” he said to Negrito. “Something with angel dust or herbicide sprinkled on it? ¡Estúpido! Ignorant man!”

  “Why you say that, Krill? It hurts my feelings,” Negrito said.

  “You kidnapped a Texas deputy sheriff!”

  “I thought he was valuable, jefe.”

  “I’m not your jefe. Don’t you call me that. I am not the jefe of estúpidos.”

  “It’s clear that he’s a narc. Or maybe worse. Maybe he came down here because of us and the DEA informer we killed. We can sell the Tejano to La Familia Michoacána. They’ll cut his tongue out. He ain’t gonna talk to nobody if he ain’t got a tongue.”

  Krill ripped Negrito’s leather hat off his head and slapped him with it, raking it down hard on his face. Negrito stared at Krill blankly, the orange bristles around his mouth and along his jaw and on his throat as stiff as wire, his lips parted, his emotions buried in a stonelike expression that seemed impervious to pain. Krill whipped the hat down on his head again and again, his teeth clenched. “Are you listening to me, estúpido?” he said. “Who gave you permission to act on your own? When did you become this brilliant man with a master plan for the rest of us?”

  “You keep saying you’re not my jefe. You keep saying we follow or we don’t follow, that you don’t care about these small matters. But when I use my perceptions to make a decision, you become enraged. I am a loyal soldier, Krill.”

  “You are a Judas waiting for your moment to act.” Krill hit Negrito once more, and this time the leather chin cord with the tiny wooden acorn on it struck Negrito in the eye, causing it to tear.

  “Why you treat me like this? You think I’m an animal and this is your barnyard and you can do whatever you want with me because I’m one of your animals?” Negrito said.

  “No, an animal has brains. It has survival instincts. It doesn’t always think with its penis. Who saw you leave the house of puta with the deputy sheriff?”

  “It wasn’t a house of puta. I don’t got to go to houses of puta. It was a cantina. Bernicio the bartender drugged his coffee. We took the boy out the back. Bernicio is a member of La Familia and ain’t gonna tell nobody about it. You worry about all the wrong things. Now you’re taking out your anger on your only friend, someone who has been with you from the beginning.”

  The dirt yard where they stood was blown with tumbleweeds and chicken feathers and lint from a grove of cottonwood trees. A hatchet was embedded in a stump by an empty hog lot, and on the ground around the stump were at least two dozen heads of chickens, their beaks wide, their eyes filmed with dust. Someone had lit a kerosene lamp inside the ruined adobe house, and through the back window, Krill could see five of his men playing cards and drinking at a table, their silhouettes as black as carbon inside the window glass. He tried to clear his mind of anger and think about what he should do next. He gazed at the bound and gagged figure lyin
g in an embryonic position inside the trunk of the gas-guzzler. It is not smart to abuse Negrito anymore, he told himself. Negrito’s stupidity is incurable and cannot be addressed effectively except by a bullet in the head. There will always be time for that, but not now. The others admire Negrito for his muscular strength and his ability to endure pain and the great reservoir of cruelty that he willingly expends on their behalf. Keep this Judas in full view and never let him get behind you, Krill told himself, but do not abuse or demean him anymore, particularly in front of the others.

  When Krill had finished this long thought process, he was about to speak in a less reproving way. But Negrito, being the man he was, began talking again. “See, everybody has been worried about you, man. Bringing that box out here with your children’s bones in it, it’s like you’re putting a curse on us. The dead got to be covered up, Krill. You got to place heavy stones on their graves so their spirits don’t fly around and mess up your head. The dead can do that, man. Even your kids. Baptism can’t do them no good now. They’re dead and they ain’t coming back. That’s why the earth is there, to hide the body’s decay and to make clean the odors it creates. What you’re doing goes against nature. It ain’t just me that says it. You call me a Judas? I’m the only one who tells you the truth to your face. Those inside are not your friends. When you ain’t around, they talk among themselves.”

  Krill squatted in the dirt and began pulling the photos and credit cards and the driver’s license and Social Security card and the various forms of personal identification, including a membership card in a state law enforcement fraternity, from the wallet of the Texan who lay bound in the trunk of the car, his mouth wrapped with duct tape, his forehead popping with sweat. Krill took a penlight from his shirt pocket and shone it on a photo of a girl standing in front of a church. The girl was wearing a sundress and a red hibiscus flower in her hair and was smiling at the camera. The church had three bell towers and a tile roof and looked like a church Krill had seen in Monterrey. Krill focused the penlight’s beam on the driver’s license and studied the photo and then shone the penlight on the Texan’s face. Still squatting, he let the contents of the wallet spill to the ground and draped his hands on his thighs.