by George Wier
The front door of the house opened and Samuel and Candace stepped outside. Candace hugged me and kissed my check, and Samuel shook my hand.
“You need a shower,” Samuel stated.
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re right. I do. I’ll be going back to the hotel in a few minutes to do that, then to the hospital. Uh, can you tell me where the hospital is?”
“I will take you to both,” he replied.
“Before I go, I have a few questions. A couple of them only your daughter can answer.”
“Herlinda!” Candace called.
The girl came running from the side yard. She had the wet saddle blanket over her arm.
There was a brief exchange in Spanish between mother and daughter, then they turned to me and Candace nodded.
“First,” I said, and looked down at her, “how did I get from the street to my bed? I recall falling off of Señor Burro. And then I woke up in my hospital bed.”
I waited while mother translated for daughter. The girl replied, and I waited again.
“She found you and got the hotel manager and a couple of his men to carry you. They thought you were drunk.”
I laughed. “Okay. So, I wasn’t expecting more than a few dozen people to show up yesterday. Before it was all over, half the town was there. What did you tell them?”
Again I waited, until the answer came back.
“She didn’t tell them exactly what you told her to tell them.”
“What did she tell them?”
“She told them that the hero of Texas had come to save them, and they should come and watch.”
And then I laughed hard. Herlinda laughed because I was laughing, and shortly both mother and father were laughing as well.
Once I regained my composure, I said, “Tell her...she did well. Tell her that I would like for her to come visit me someday, and meet my daughter, Jennifer. My daughter has many animals. What she needs is more friends.”
*****
The call came while Samuel was driving me from my hotel room to the hospital. It was Elizabeth. Former Texas Governor Richard Sawyer had passed away in Memorial Hospital in Houston. She specifically requested my appearance at his funeral as a pall-bearer.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Walt Cannon awakened when I came into his hospital room.
“Well hell,” he said. “I should have known it was you.”
“Who else would it be?” I asked.
“That’s just it. Nobody. Nobody else is damn fool enough to come down here. You could’ve gotten your ass shot off.”
“But I didn’t.” I thought about the previous night. About Walt Cannon sticking a gun into the back of his daughter's half-brother and pulling the trigger. “You don't remember anything about last night, do you?”
“Last night? No. Can't say as I do.”
“That's a good thing.”
“Who led you to me? There’s no way you could have found me on your own.”
“I had help. The strangest help of all. Your donkey.”
“Esteban?”
“I didn’t know that was his name,” I said. “But yes, if that’s your donkey’s name, then yes. Esteban.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been kind to him.”
“Of course I have. Once you get to know him, he’s not all that bad. He plays fewer tricks on you, once you’ve petted him and given him a carrot or an apple.”
“Oh my God, you’ve ruined a perfectly good donkey. Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to be nice to ‘em? That way, they can keep their ornery disposition intact, and you can keep yours, and neither one of you has to change.”
“Change,” I said. “That’s what this is all about. You coming down here, ostensibly to get Sunlight. But really, you came down here to die. Didn’t you?”
Walt lapsed into silence. He looked down at his hands, turned them over, observed them for half a minute to see if they shook. I’d seen him do that before—as if not shaking was ever so important to him. But, then again, a dyed-in-the-wool Texas Ranger, retired or not, would likely consider it damned important.
“No shake,” I said.
“No. They were shaking the night before I went up against Phillippe. The first time since I was a kid, too. It’s why I wrote you that letter. I knew I wouldn’t live through the encounter.”
“But you did,” I said. “You’re alive and you’re here.”
“I did. That’s sort of your fault, now isn’t it?”
“Guilty,” I replied.
Walt pushed himself up into a seated position. His thinning, silver hair was this way and that. The bruises on his wrists, hands and face were less pronounced since they had been washed.
He looked up at me, his steely-gray eyes penetrating mine. “Would you do a favor for me, Bill? One last favor for all time?”
“Name it.”
“Take that donkey back with you.”
“Nothing doing,” I said, and laughed. “I came here flying an old Cessna 152 Commuter. It’s a co-op plane, so I have to take it back. Esteban would never fit.”
“It figures. Just remember, I begged you to do it. I won’t be held responsible for the outcome. I’ll blame you.”
“What could happen?” I asked. “You’d have a nice donkey that doesn’t try to throw you every chance he gets. If it weren’t for that donkey, I never would have found you in the pyramid complex, so I’d say you owe him one. He broke away from Herlinda in the night and came running to find you, all on his own. You should be extremely nice to him. Besides, your granddaughter loves him.”
“She loves everyone and everything. I intend to buy her a horse, once I get out of this damn place. A tall white gelding.”
I snorted. “That sounds fine. But why don’t you also do something...different, for a change?”
“What’s that?”
“Be patient. And be a good patient while you’re at it.”
“That wouldn’t work either.”
“Didn’t think so. When are you coming back to Texas?” I asked.
“Don’t you get it? I came down here to...this trip was my last hurrah. I’m here for the duration. I won’t be coming home.”
“You’ve got Mexico Fever,” I said.
“What’s that you say?”
“Something your friend said. Dick Sawyer. He said you’ve got Mexico Fever. A bad case of it.”
He laughed. “I suppose I do. Apparently, it’s a terminal case.”
I waited for the next question.
Walt looked up at me again, and I thought he might ask it. But again his eyes assessed mine.
“When did he die?” he asked.
“This morning. About thirty minutes after he received word that you were alive and well.”
He took the information, processed it.
“The last time I saw him,” I said, “he was in a bad way. I knew he wasn’t long for this world. He was hanging on for you. It’s what kept him going so long.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’d sort of like to be alone for a bit.”
“Forget about being alone,” I said. “Your daughter and your granddaughter are just down the hall. I asked them for five minutes with you before they came in, so they’ll be here any second. You’ll have plenty of time later.”
Walt nodded.
At that moment, Candace and Herlinda appeared at the door of the hospital room. A huge grin of joy instantly spread across Herlinda’s face, and she shouted, “Abuelo!” Grandfather. She ran to him and threw her arms around him. I noticed that Walt was trying hard not to smile, but his face reddened and the corners of his lips turned upward. Also, a single tear tracked down his cheek.
*****
I walked out of the hospital alone and into the sun. A curtain of soft rain slowly advanced toward me, making the street wet as it came. I decided I would stand there until it passed over me.
Esteban was waiting there. “Hello, Señor Burro,” I said.
And damned if the beast didn’t smil
e back.
*****
Captain Monsiváis drove me to the airport in a Pisté police car.
“You know,” I said, once we passed the edge of the city and were out into the countryside, “it would have helped to know that Candace was Walt’s daughter. That this whole thing was a family affair.”
“I told you that Phillippe stayed with us.”
“It’s not the same thing. You made it sound like no more than a visit.”
“It was a visit. He visited us often.”
“Right. It also would have helped to know that the donkey belonged to him.”
“Why would this be important?” he asked, and then he took his eyes off the road and hit me with an appraising and quizzical look, as if I were crazy or something.
“Because everything is important.”
“Everything is important,” he repeated.
“You’re a policeman,” I said. “An investigator. You know that everything’s important.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes back on the road. “Yes. But only when it is.”
We lapsed into silence until we came to the fork in the road. He took the lefthand way.
“Tell me, Señor Travis. Did you like your stay in Mexico?”
I thought about that for a moment, and went with the feeling in my stomach—that place from which most of my decisions are made. “It was...a special trip. Not exactly a vacation. But yes, I think I enjoyed it. I’m lucky I didn’t catch it, though.”
“Catch...it? Catch what?”
“Mexico Fever. I’ve heard it’s a terrible disease. You lose all perspective and forget where home is. You pull up your old roots and sever all your ties and you come here and live out the remainder of your days in warm sunshine, rain once a day, good food, good music, special friends, no clocks, and cheap prices. And you begin to forget. I must say, though, that in coming to know your family, I came awfully close to catching it.”
“Maybe next time you will,” he said, and made the turnoff into the airport.
*****
Enrique, who had been so helpful and instrumental the night before, was waiting there for me, along with the men who had gone with me to the pyramid. It’s not every day one has an honor guard to see you off.
When I got out of the car, Enrique stepped forward from the line of men. Their backs were to my plane. In a manner of speaking, I wouldn’t be able to get to it without going through them, so I would be forced to endure their goodbyes.
“Mr. Travis,” Enrique said. “Going home, I see.”
“Yeah, it’s about time.”
I held my backpack by the small hook strap at the top, and he gestured for me to hand it to him. I complied and he tossed it to one of the fellows, who took it and stashed it in the plane for me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Go ahead,” Captain Monsiváis said. “Give it to him.”
“Give me what?”
Enrique turned behind him and gestured. One of the men stepped forward and placed a wooden box in his hand. He turned to me and placed it in my hands.
“What’s this?”
“Open it and find out,” Enrique said.
I’m not much on presents, parting or otherwise. I suppose I’m downright embarrassed by them.
The box was inlaid wood, solid, fine craftsmanship, and polished. Also, it was heavy. I thumbed the catch on the front and flipped the lid open. Inside, sunk down into plush, crushed navy blue velvet, was a .357 Magnum revolver, silver with gold filigree, polished to a mirror finish.
“I—I can’t...”
“Take it, Mr. Travis. Along with our thanks.”
“Where did you get it?”
“It was Sunlight’s. He won’t be needing it anymore, and it’s too...beautiful to throw away. Also, down here, having something like that is just too dangerous. Someone will always be trying to steal it.”
I closed the lid and put the catch back in place. I tried to act all nonchalant about it, as Enrique shook my hand.
There was a lump in my throat that swelled as each man stepped forward in turn and shook my hand. “Thank you.” “Gracias, Señor Travis.” “Thank you.” “Gracias.” “Gracias, Señor.”
As they shook my hand they filed past me and to the road going out of the airport and into the forest.
“You have quite an effect upon people, my friend,” Monsiváis said.
“You’ve got that wrong,” I said. “It’s people that have quite the effect on me.”
And then he shook my hand.
“Vaya con Dios,” he said, then turned and made his way back to the car.
I stood there until they were all gone, then made a slow turn, taking in the forest—what I had thought of as jungle when I had first arrived. I knew I would miss it.
But I had people waiting for me at home, and the sky is an awfully big and lonely place. Then again, that was part and parcel of its allure.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I left the runway behind me as the rain peppered my wind screen. This was a monster of a storm, as they sometimes have in the Yucatan. I climbed up into it until the world became a caul of gray cloaking nothing more than the ghosts of what could have been. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so instead I settled back into my seat, eased back on the yoke and continued to climb.
At seven thousand feet I came up out of it, and the yellow sunlight was bright and pure, evidence that this is not merely one world, but many, and the passage between these myriad realms is not a barred gate, but instead a gauzy, whill-o-the-wisp curtain, no more substantial than discarded thought.
I made good time coming home. Instead of risking a flight across the lower rim of the Gulf of Mexico, I took the incoming flight plan in reverse.
During that first leg of the flight home, I ruminated over the events of the past several days—of Dick Sawyer sitting up in the hospital bed in his home, a cigar between his lips; of the Generalissimo crouching behind his desk while his compound was blowing up around him; of Captain Monsiváis dispatching one of Sunlight’s guards while I drew a bead on Sunlight himself with the gun the General had given me...and fired; images of brave little Herlinda Monsiváis running from house to house on bare feet came into my thoughts—not a scene I had witnessed, but one I imagined as I lay dozing on her mother’s couch in their tiny living room. And then there was Sunlight himself, his face, contorted in insanity. That man could have been a real study. How one goes from would-be savior of the downtrodden to defrocked priest, to drug lord and revolutionary, would be a tale for many books, or, better yet, none at all. It’s interesting to me that people will attempt to understand insanity, forgetting all the while that, by definition, insanity is the state of complete lack of understanding, and one cannot understand a thing that contains none at all. One would do as well to try drinking from an empty glass.
As always, I shook the images from myself the way one might shake out a gasoline-soaked rag, and put my attention back on my aircraft; on my wind speed, ground speed and altitude. Even though I was making good time, it would be a long trip home.
I landed Lola at Villahermosa, gassed up and took a fifteen minute coffee break, then got back in the and headed for Poza Rica de Hidalgo. When I finally made it to Aeropuerto Internacional General Servando Canales, just outside of Matamoros, a black Dodge Diplomat was waiting for me. I recognized the man instantly. It was Raymond Gonsalmo, the customs inspector I had met on the flight down.
“Buenos Días, Señor Travis.”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “The same to you.”
“How was your stay in Mexico? And where is your friend?”
“The stay was...fine. My friend decided to stay. He managed to get out of the tight place he was in, and for that, I’m glad. It wasn’t a wasted trip.”
“That is very good to hear,” he said. For some reason, Señor Gonsalmo smiled. I didn’t particularly like this smile, but I could find nothing overly hostile in it. It did carry with it, however, the hint of a not
ion that he knew something I didn’t. I don’t much appreciate that kind of smile, for some reason.
He stood silently, his arms crossed, and continued to smile.
I waited.
“Do you have anything to declare?” he asked.
Nervously, I thought of the gun that Enrique and his men had given me as a parting gift, then thought better of mentioning it. “One thing,” I said, “I want to declare that you had better tell me why you’re smiling before I start to get good and ticked off. People don’t like me when I get ticked off.”
“I am certain this is true,” he said. “How was my brother?”
“Your brother?”
“Generalisímo Roberto Gonsalmo.”
He could have knocked me over with a feather. So the whole thing, for me, had actually begun here, at the spot in Mexico where Lola and I first touched town.
“Your brother’s fine,” I managed to say. “When you talk to him, give him my regards.”
“I will do that. Do you think you will be returning to Mexico in the near future?”
“Probably not, but one never knows. I never know from one minute to the next what’s going to happen. That’s a by-product of having a wife and many children.”
“I understand all too well,” he said.
“I thought you might. You’re lucky you started when you were young. I wish I had. How many do you have?” I asked.
“Seven. Five girls, two sons.”
“You’re a damned lucky man, Señor Gonsalmo.”
“I know this. I am glad your stay in Mexico went well. However, I must inform you that there may be some issue with your papers. Please, have no worry. I am certain that this will be a minor inconvenience to you. We should go into the airport office to sort it out...”
*****
I played the game until it became all too apparent that I would not be offering a bribe. Once this impasse was reached—and crossed—Señor Gonsalmo abruptly changed his tune. It seemed that there was no real problem after all. He didn’t know that the specific regulation that I had somehow inadvertently breached had been struck down by a recent re-issue of official policy on the matter. I was free to go. He seemed overly well-pleased. I’d lost two hours. Hell, it could have been weeks.
