Wraiths of the Broken Land

by S. Craig Zahler

  The quintet played another round. Once again the gringo bid high and was called out by the small mestizo.

  “Drat!” exclaimed Nathaniel.

  Juan Bonito flashed a kind smile at the American naïf and said, “Do not begin with big numbers. With so many men playing,” he swept his hand in a circle, “you will not reap.”

  “Gracias.”

  “I will begin the next time.” Juan Bonito amicably patted Nathaniel’s shoulder.

  Gamblers rattled their dice and slammed their cups. The round began with the mestizo and ended with the gringo’s bad bid.

  “Drat!” exclaimed Nathaniel. (He hoped that he was not overdoing his display of ineptitude.)

  The woman with strong arms placed a glass of scotch at the gringo’s left elbow.

  Nathaniel reached for a gold coin, but had his wrist seized by Juan Bonito.

  “No,” admonished the mestizo. “I am taking your money. I pay for the drink.”

  “Gracias.”

  The diminutive man handed the woman a twenty-peso piece, which was an extraordinarily generous payment.

  “I think we should alter the direction of the bids,” Juan Bonito suggested to the gringo, “so that I cannot call you a lying deceiver.”

  “Gracias.”

  It was difficult for Nathaniel to picture this conscientious fellow paying to violate a captive woman, but he knew that men could become something else—something that they loathed—when the wolf of lust growled within them. The mestizo might very well have some dark reservoir filled with the unkind looks and remarks that his appearance, stature and ironic name elicited.

  “We go in the new direction,” stated Juan Bonito.

  The gentleman with the unlit cigarillo between his lips changed the corner of his mouth in which the soggy cylinder sat, as if it were a weathervane for the order of bidding.

  Nathaniel set down fifty pesos.

  “Empezamos.”

  Cups became ersatz maracas and were slammed to the whitewood. Two rounds of bids circled the table. The man with the damp unlit cigarillo called the fellow to his right a liar and lost fifty pesos when the dice were revealed. The victor (whose name was Victor) left the table with his winnings and another round was played in which Nathaniel called Juan Bonito’s bluff and won back some of his money.

  The night trudged.

  Nathaniel bought his gambling mentor a drink and had the courtesy twice returned.

  “Dishonest liar deceiver!”

  The last time Nathaniel had seen a watch, its small hand was reaching toward the number five. It was difficult for him to believe that less than twenty four-hours ago, he had stood in the Footman’s house, outside the door of the baby’s room, listening to his fiancé’s quiet anguish. That somber moment now seemed almost as remote as his childhood in Michigan.

  The man with the unlit cigarillo decided that he needed to light the damp tobacco leaves that had tantalized his nostrils all evening (his wife only allowed him one smokable per day since his lungs were bad) and so he left Nathaniel and Juan Bonito alone at the table.

  After three hours of gaming, the moment of inquiry had finally arrived. Nathaniel wet his mouth with a sip of scotch and turned to his quarry.

  Juan Bonito, who had stopped speaking English after his third tequila (excepting when he called someone a ‘dishonest liar deceiver’), announced (in mildly slurred Spanish) that he must return home.

  A pang of fear lanced Nathaniel. Calmly, he suggested that they share one final round of drinks.

  Juan Bonito contemplated the offer.

  “Uno mas, mi amigo,” insisted the naïve American. This was the first time that the gringo had called the mestizo ‘friend.’

  The little man ruminated upon the offer. “Si, amigo—uno mas.”

  “Bueno.”

  Juan Bonito reached beside his chair, raised a crocodile skin briefcase, rested it upon the table and said that he would clean his money.

  Although Nathaniel found the proposed chore to be quite odd, he nodded nonchalantly and ordered the final round from a serving woman who had an inexhaustible supply of curls, smiles and energy.

  Juan Bonito undid several steel latches and opened his heavy briefcase. Affixed to the lid were a five-shot revolver and a serrated knife. (It was clear that no brigand was going to shoot off the little man’s good ear.) The mestizo spread his newly-acquired banknotes across the surface of the table, raised a perfume bottle labeled ‘Agua’, sprayed water onto the wrinkled bills and arranged them in four neat stacks that he covered over with a damp cloth. The little man glanced at the gringo and remarked that he liked clean money.

  “The best,” agreed Nathaniel.

  Juan Bonito produced four candles, stood them in an empty glass, struck a match and lit each wick. He shook the phosphorous head until the fire became a zigzag of smoke, dropped the tiny tinder and withdrew from his reptilian briefcase what appeared to be a small clothing iron.

  “Muy inteligente,” complimented Nathaniel.

  Eyes full of serious purpose, the mestizo held the underside of his small iron to the quartet of flames. The smell of heated metal overpowered the duller odors of cigarillo ashes and vanished drinks.

  Casually, the gringo remarked how much he liked what he had seen of Nueva Vida.

  Juan Bonito rotated his iron and recommended the pernil tamales at Casa Jorge and the barbacao shacks on the west side of the town, which were superior to their eastern siblings.

  After thanking the mestizo for the advice, Nathaniel leaned forward and, in a quieter voice, mentioned that there was something else that he desired, especially while he was away from his wife.

  “Bebidas por Señor Bonito y el Americano,” the serving woman said as she set down a glass of tequila and a tumbler of scotch.

  Nathaniel withdrew a coin from his greatly diminished purse and paid for the drinks.

  “Gracias.” The woman stirred a curl with a lascivious finger and departed.

  Juan Bonito pressed his iron to the damp cloth that covered the bills, and water hissed. Through the vapors, the mestizo asked the gringo if he wanted a sporting woman.

  Nathaniel confirmed that he indeed desired the company of such a lady.

  The mestizo remarked that there were two brothels in Nueva Vida and three discreet women of luxury who received clients at their homes.

  After a meaningful pause, the gringo proclaimed that he desired a type of woman who would be uncommon in this region.

  “You would like…scotch…instead of tequila?” inquired Juan Bonito in slurred English.

  “Yes,” confirmed Nathaniel. “I prefer scotch.”

  Juan Bonito’s expression became somber. “There is a place that has two gringa women.”

  Nathaniel’s heart raced.

  “They are…” Juan Bonito searched for the correct words. “One is filled with drugs, sick, and the other…she is a drunk and her right foot is missing—chopped off.”

  Sickened by the news, Nathaniel turned his head down and cleared his throat.

  “These gringas,” Juan Bonito added, “they…they are not happy women.”

  “I would pay them very well for their time, and I would be kind to them.” It was hard for Nathaniel to feign any carnal interest in the described captives. “Muy, muy generoso.”

  Juan Bonito nodded his head. “Bueno.” He gathered his banknotes and supplies, placed them inside his alligator skin briefcase, withdrew a jar half-filled with amber fluid and unscrewed its top. “Bueno,” repeated the little man while his mind pictured things that brought a dolorous expression to his face.

  “What is the location of the establishment in which they work?” inquired Nathaniel.

  The mestizo dropped a dirty coin into the amber solution, and it
clinked against the bottom of the jar, bright and clean. “Come here tomorrow night at nine and look for the crimson stagecoach. For fifty pesos, it will take you where you want to go—to Gris’s place.” A dirty coin struck the solution and twisted.

  “Gracias amigo.” Nathaniel’s employment of the word ‘friend’ no longer seemed to please the little gentleman. “Where is Gris’s establishment?’

  A silver coin twisted through the solution, settled at the bottom and shone. “Through the mountains.”

  Suppressing his apprehensions, Nathaniel inquired, “Does it have a name?”

  Juan Bonito admitted a mirthless grin. “Catacumbas.”

  Nathaniel was chilled by the utterance of the Spanish word for catacombs.

  Part II

  Catacumbas

  Chapter I

  A Portrait of Gris

  Dawn beams sneaked past gray clouds that looked wrought in clay by brutish hands, entered the picture window of an arrogant mansion built from the stones of three Aztec temples and cleaved the seated subject of portraiture into bright and dark halves. The orb of the sun was reduced to a single brilliant pinprick in the man’s lone eye. His name was Gris.

  “Eres muy guapo,” complimented Carlo, who stood behind his easel, opposite the man from Spain.

  Gris remarked that all frivolous comments should be withheld.

  The admonished artist nodded and studied the portrait that he had worked on every morning for the last five days. Some of Carlo’s subjects liked to talk, while others preferred to read a book or listen to music (produced by either a phonograph or a string quartet), but Gris had thus far preferred to stare forward and ruminate in silence. Additionally, the atypical man from Spain had asked to have himself accurately depicted. Gris’s scarred neck, prematurely white hair, thick feminine lips, long eyelashes, narrow nose and sunken right eyelid were to be accurately detailed. This unique and oddly handsome face was to be captured and conveyed—unaltered.

  After two hours of utter silence, the Spaniard looked at his pocket watch.

  Carlo informed the subject that the painting was nearly finished, excepting only the walls of the room and the still life, which required more detail.

  Gris said that this was acceptable.

  “Bueno.” The painter asked if he should include the flies that crawled across the festering still life.

  Gris told the man to render the tableau faithfully.

  The putrescent emanations were partially obscured by the whisky-soaked kerchief that Carlo had tied over his nose (as if he were a bandito), but the odors had grown stronger throughout the week and were currently capable of bypassing any filtration. Untroubled by the smells of rot, Gris lazed in a brown leather chair, the heels of his knee-high leather boots resting upon a footstool that was a dead man’s agonized head. From the ‘X’ carved into the corpse’s swollen stomach spilled black oil that was decorated with blood flakes and yellow bits of congealed fat. Within the ichor lurked many gray scorpions, three of which still moved.

  Carlo did not wish to know why the man had been filled with oil and scorpions. This tableau existed, and the artist felt that his only responsibility was to render it well. He eyed the nascent flies, joined dots of blue, yellow and green paint with an obsidian dollop, mixed them thrice and added a dab of linseed oil.

  With iridescent black paint, the artist detailed the fly that stood upon the pierced and bitten tongue of a man who had somehow displeased the Spaniard. Two inches below the wet mark that was a two-dimensional corpse inspector sat the placard that bore the name of the portrait.

  El Decreto de Gris (The Decree of Gris)

  The subject had named the piece himself.

  Chapter II

  The Insides of Men

  Brent Plugford was galvanized, and a disorienting numbness filled his head, as if he were drunkenly dreaming. He punched a tree to rouse himself, but was rebuked by reality.

  “Hell.”

  The cowboy wiped bark and sap from his red knuckles and looked up at the dandy.

  “I am sorry.” Upon Nathaniel’s right shoulder sat the sun, a fiery epaulette that glared directly into Brent’s eyes. “I thought that you should know exactly what Mr. Bonito said to me.”

  “I needed to hear it accurate correct.”

  “I am sorry.”

  The cowboy looked away from the dandy and over toward the fire pit, where lazy smoke wafted up from dwindling embers, and his father, his brother and the negro slept inside moth-gnawed bedrolls. Beyond the trees that surrounded the camp stood the ten mountains referred to as Gran Manos, and somewhere within that rock were two white whores who were probably Brent’s sisters. “Did the red Mex’can name them?” He wanted to believe that his sisters were not a drug user and a drunken amputee. “Maybe it’s some other women.”

  “The place where they are being kept is owned by the man for whom you are looking.”

  “Gris?”

  The dandy nodded.

  “Okay.”

  Brent was not certain that he would relay the conditions of the women to his father and brother.

  “I am sorry.”

  “Did Bonito rape them?”

  The dandy hesitated for a moment. “He did not detail his assignations.”

  “You were there,” grumbled Brent. “You played games with him for hours. You ain’t got no damn opinion on what kinda fella he was, and what he done?”

  “He was disturbed by their conditions and was loath to mention them to me at all.”

  “But he did! He knows they’re pris’ners and still he went and gave out his goddamn recommendation, so you could—” Brent hated the end of his sentence too much to say it aloud. “Goddamn that little red Mex’can.”

  “My sympathies are with you,” said the dandy, apparently out of equivocating remarks. He placed his left hand upon the cowboy’s right shoulder and squeezed.

  The sun disappeared behind a mountain that was John Lawrence Plugford.

  Brent swatted Nathaniel’s hand from his shoulder. “You don’t need to go and touch me.”

  The dandy was perplexed by the admonition.

  “Where’re my angels?” asked the patriarch. His voice sounded as if it traveled across a far greater distance than three yards.

  “A place called Catacumbas,” replied Brent. “The dandy’s goin’ there tonight.”

  Ashes fell from his father’s wild beard. “We’ll follow.”

  “Yeah.” Brent hoped that his father would not ask the dandy to repeat the purported details. “We’ll follow.”

  The huge man strode away, but the sun, smothered by thick clouds, did not return.

  Brent looked over at the dandy. “You better get some sleep for tonight. It’s cooler ‘neath the wagon.”

  The tall gentleman yawned enormously and nodded.

  “But let me grab out some supplies first.”

  Brent and his dizzy brother removed the black trunk from the wagon, took it to the other side of a high creosote barbican and set it upon its end. Inside the prison, something thudded.

  The cowboy went to the edge of the bushes, removed his phallus (which already smelled overripe from the long day in the saddle), dampened triangular leaves and said over his shoulder, “Pull the stopper.”

  “I’ll be sick if I do—I’ve got dizziness and some sour tastes.”

  “Confound you and that whisky.” Brent tucked away his extrusion, buttoned his pants and walked toward his brother. “I see you in the flask again, and I’m givin’ you bruises.”

  “You can’t lick me.”

  “I done it every time.”

  “When we was younger, okay, sure, before you became a drover boss. But I’m big now—a adult—and I see how things are. I know what kind of man I am, and I know what kind you are.” Stevie smirke
d.

  Brent did not at all like the look upon his brother’s face. “And what kind of man am I?”

  “Why don’t you go an’ ask that fiancé you used to have? Why don’t you ask Janie Dill what—”

  Brent slammed his fist into his brother’s stomach.

  Stevie doubled over, fell against the trunk and took it to the ground. Within the prison, the captive groaned.

  The red-faced young man clutched at stalks of purple three awn, convulsed twice and heaved his breakfast. Pale detritus spattered flora. “Go roast.” Stevie coughed. “Roast in Hell.” He spat bits.

  Brent was mortified that his little brother had goaded him so successfully. “You okay?”

  “You’re a sneak,” Stevie griped, “gettin’ at me…like that.”

  “I was right there in front of you and came at you straight.”

  “Well…”

  Brent knelt beside the prone young man. “You didn’t deserve that treatment.”

  “I didn’t,” confirmed Stevie.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The younger sibling neither accepted nor refused the apology, which was as amenable a reaction as the cowboy could expect at that time. “C’mon.” Brent helped Stevie to his feet, swatted the dust from his back and wiped detritus from his face. “Let’s take care of this.”

  The siblings righted the trunk. Holding his breath, the cowboy slid a stick into the loop of twine that depended from the stopper and jerked his arm. The rubber plug popped out of the wood. Urine and darker substances drained through the aperture and colored the dirt.

  Shielding his nose and mouth, Brent asked, “See any blood?”

  Stevie rapidly shook his head.

  A dismal moan sounded within the trunk and was muted by the reinsertion of the stopper.