Gary Wayne, who seemed convinced now that Lancaster wasn’t going to pop up from behind a tumbleweed or cactus, turned back to the conversation. “Boris, what the Sam Hell are you talking about? You don’t know this kid’s father.”
Boris looked at his friend as he squeezed the boy’s shoulder reassuringly. “Yessir, Gary Wayne, I believe I do. You do, too, unless I’m woefully mistaken.”
Gary Wayne gazed intently at the kid’s face as if seeing him for the first time. A brief look of recognition crossed his faced, and he blinked twice. “Boy,” he asked in almost a whisper, “what’s your name?”
“Percy.”
“Percy what?”
“Murratt.”
Boris gave Gary Wayne an I-told-you-so look. “Percival Murratt, Gary.”
Gary Wayne shook his head slowly and sighed. “You Jim’s boy?”
“Jim Murratt, yes sir.”
“Big Jim Murratt’s boy,” Gary Wayne ran his left hand through his hair as Boris nodded with a hint of a smile on his face. “I’ll just be Goddamned.”
III.
“Boris, what are we gonna do?” Gary Wayne and Boris had moved off from Percy and were pretending to check the harnesses on the horses prior to moving on.
“I don’t know, Gary,” Boris replied as he adjusted the blanket and padding under Valiant’s saddle, “what are you suggesting?”
“Well, we cannot just leave Jim Murratt’s boy out here in the wilderness; that’s for damn sure.”
“Well, that may be true, but we also cannot turn around and take him to Bretton,” Boris reasoned, sliding his fingers under Valiant’s straps to make sure they weren’t too tight. “As you have spent the better part of the day reminding me, we have lost enough time on this little wilderness sojourn already.”
“I ain’t suggesting we do,” Gary Wayne jerked Gringo’s up-tugs enough to pull the saddle almost completely off the blanket and up the horse’s neck, “but maybe we can take him with us. After all, he’s got just as much right to hunt Lank down as me. Lank wasn’t any better friend to Jim than he was to Ardiss, you know.”
“That may be so,” Boris finished tightening the straps on Valiant’s saddle and moved over to readjust Gringo’s saddle as Gary Wayne seemed oblivious to his mount’s obvious discomfort. “However, taking him with us is just as impractical as escorting him to Bretton. Have you seen the boy’s mule? Even if he could make the trip where the hell ever we’re going, he won’t be able to keep up. Bottom line is the boy will just slow us down.”
Gary Wayne seemed to consider this, furrowing his brow and absently chewing his lower lip. Finally, he seemed to arrive at a decision. “Well, if we can’t take him with us and we can’t escort him to Bretton, we can take him back home. We’re gonna have to talk to Laney anyway since she’s the last person to see Lank.”
“I reckon we can ask him,” Boris glanced at the boy who was himself folding his blanket over his mule’s back and preparing to ride, “but he don’t seem like he’ll be too keen to go back home after traveling all this time.”
“Well, I reckon we’ll just see about that,” Gary Wayne averred. “Seems to me the boy don’t have a lot of choice in the matter if we give him our say-so,”
Boris said nothing to this, simply smiled to himself and returned to Valiant’s saddlebags.
“You boy!” Gary Wayne called over his shoulder, “Come here; we got to palaver.”
IV.
Boris kept his distance while his fiery-tempered friend tried to reason with the boy. He pretended to take inventory of his saddlebags and studiously avoided meeting either of their eyes.
Gary Wayne seemed as nervous and awkward as a cherry. His feet shuffled erratically, and his hands fidgeted in the air while he tried his level best to stay calm and speak firmly. For his part, the boy remained aloof, staring blankly and slowly nodding his head as the older man explained in painstakingly awkward stammers that they were going to take the boy back to his mother.
“So you see,” Gary Wayne was explaining, “I mean what I mean to say is that … Well, the fact is …um… Look, boy, we cannot take you to Bretton.”
The boy nodded and smiled absently.
“I mean we’d like to, no doubt about that, but we’re kind of in the middle of something here that we do not … I mean … We are under an obligation to find Lancaster… Mr. O’Loch … you know that … um, gentleman we were asking you about?”
Another slow nod.
“And if we turn around now, we run a very good chance of losing his trail.”
The boy said nothing, just stared blankly at Gary Wayne.
“Now I know what you are thinking. We could take you with us.”
The boy neither confirmed nor denied that he was thinking this.
“This cannot be,” Gary Wayne explained. “Y-You have a mule, you see.” His hands were either conducting a phantom orchestra or trying in vain to motion in the mule’s direction.
“Lippy,” the boy confirmed. “Ma gave him to me.”
“Lippy, yes. Well, I’m afraid Lippy will not be able to keep up with our horses so we will not be able to catch up to Lank… Mr. O’Loch… um, if we have to keep slowing down for you.”
“Lippy is much slower than a horse,” the boy agreed. “He’s a mule.”
Boris tried, mostly successfully, to disguise his snicker as a sneeze. He could tell that Gary Wayne’s fuse was just about spent.
“Yes,” Gary Wayne pronounced every letter clearly and slowly, “Lippy is a mule. He cannot keep up with our horses so you cannot go with us to find Mr. O’Loch.”
The boy smiled and nodded, and otherwise said nothing.
“So I am afraid we have no choice but to take you with us as far as your mother’s place.”
“No sir.”
“That way you will not be lost out here in the Waste Land, and we can get more information from your mother about … what did you say?”
Boris tied down his saddlebags and prepared himself to divert Gary Wayne’s inevitable diatribe.
The boy had that same steely look he had earlier when Gary Wayne had accused him of lying. “I said ‘No sir’ sir.”
The boy may be feeble-minded, Boris thought, but he has grit. I’ll give him that. He will not be trifled with.
Gary Wayne had reached the end of his patience again; Boris could all but see the steam works in his head over boiling and sending plumes from his ears. “You listen to me, boy,” Gary Wayne’s voice began to steadily rise in both pitch and volume, and his finger began poking furiously into the boy’s chest with each successive word. “I will be damned if some pube is going to tell me what I will or will not do.”
The boy did not so much as flinch from Gary Wayne’s onslaught. He merely blinked patiently each time the older man’s finger made contact with his flannel shirt and stared.
“If I aim to go to your mother’s place and ask her about my quarry, that’s exactly what I will do.”
“Mister,” the boy interrupted, “I don’t begrudge you a trip to see my ma. I just prefer to go on my way to Bretton. I figure it can’t be too far from here.”
“Couple days ride,” Boris interjected, “maybe three, four at the most on that mule.”
Gary Wayne stared slack-jawed at his partner as if Boris had just quietly sheathed a boot knife between his shoulders.
The boy nodded his thanks at Boris and continued. “If I go back to Ma’s place, I don’t reckon Lippy’d make another trip out here, and there I’d be, so no sir; I would prefer to keep going, but I thank you for offering to help me.”
Gary Wayne's face had become as red as his shirt. “Now you listen here, you ungrateful puke…”
“Gary Wayne,” Boris moved in between his partner and the boy. “The boy has a point. We have no authority over him, and if his heart is set on Bretton, I suppose that is where he will go. Like as not, he would simply wait for us to bed down for the night and continue on his way while we slept.”
The boy
considered this with a look that told Boris that while he had not at all considered it before, that was of a certain his plan now.
“Your whole aim in taking the boy back to his mother is to ensure that we do not leave Jim Murratt’s boy in the wilderness to die of exposure or worse.”
“Well, sure, Boris” Gary Wayne’s temper, as was his won't, was subsiding now as quickly as it rose, “so I am not entirely certain of your point in taking the boy’s side here.”
“Gary Wayne, I have not taken anyone’s side; I am merely taking the world as it is. We cannot dictate to this boy, and we cannot in good conscience leave him to his own woefully deficient devices. We must, therefore, do what we can to smooth his passage.” Boris turned to the boy. “Do you know your letters, boy? Can you read a map?”
“Yessir, I can read some. Gramps taught me maps and Ma taught me the Bible.”
“Good,” Boris went back to his horse and removed a ledger from his saddlebag. He returned and opened it to a blank page and pulled a pitiful stub of a pencil from his pants pocket.
“Here is where we are,” Boris drew a circle with an X in the middle of the paper, checked his pocket watch, and noted the direction of the sun. He then drew an arrow in the top corner of the page and wrote “N” at one end and “S” at the other. He then drew another line through the middle marking “E” and “W” at either end.
“You need to travel east and a little south of here, and you will run into our campfire from last night.” Boris drew a small x below the circled X and a little to the side.
The boy looked confused, and Gary Wayne motioned for his attention. “Just go straight that way.” He pointed in the direction from which the two men had come. “You cannot miss it.”
The boy nodded and looked back at the paper. Boris had drawn three more X's in a relatively straight line and finally another circle. He was just writing “B” in this circle. “You keep in that direction, son, and you cannot help but run into Bretton. When you get there, you ask for the sheriff, tell him Gary Wayne and Boris sent you, and then tell him who you are.”
“Don’t be surprised,” Gary Wayne put in, “if he gives you a broom and shows you the stables.”
The boy nodded, took the map, and folded it into his hip pocket. “I thank you both for your help,” he said and stuck out his hand. Boris grasped it firmly, but Gary Wayne turned away and moved toward the horses and fiddled with the saddlebags.
“Don’t be mounting up quite yet,” he said as he returned with a canteen and a wrapped package. “You won’t get very far without water and at least some food.” He handed the boy the canteen and package. The boy unwrapped the bundle enough to see that it was half a loaf of not-too-stale bread. “Make it last,” Gary Wayne said and then stuck his own hand out. His eyes widened a bit at the boy’s grip.
Boris smiled at this and mounted Valiant.
“You’re going to be awful thirsty this afternoon,” Boris teased as Gary Wayne mounted Gringo, and they watched the boy riding his mule out of the campsite.
“I don’t see why “ Gary Wayne answered, “I gave him your canteen.”
Chapter Five – Guernica
I.
She has been in this dank and musty cave for days ever since he left her here with a week’s supply of rations.
“I will return as soon as possible,” he said with his thick brogue. “I need to scout the terrain and make sure we are not under pursuit. There is a spring at the back of this cave, and the water is safe. I will be back before the food runs out.”
That was four days ago. Sometimes, she thinks about going home, but she knows it has gone too far for that. Ardiss would never believe or forgive her now. Too much sangre under the bridge.
She sighs and looks again out of the cave towards the eastern horizon, brushing a strand of black hair from her eyes. The sun has almost risen to noon, and still no sign of him. No one would believe her. Cada uno cuenta de la feria segun le va ella, she thinks. Everyone tells their own story. Why should they believe mine?
Her family had owned and worked a modest plot of land outside Delicias, Chihuahua, raising tomates for generations, ever since her ancestors came with de Vaca to settle the territory and fell in love with the land. As a young girl, Guernica had hoped to marry one day and take over la granja when her father, Leonardo Gracia, grew too old to work the land himself. Sadly, however, that was not to be, for that was before the bad times, before Porfiriato.
Guernica sighs and turns away from the cave’s opening. She moves deeper in to escape the sweltering heat of the desert sun, to the spring at the back where she dips a dented tin cup and moves again to her bedroll to lie down.
She still remembers the day of her fifteenth birthday when shortly after she had successfully beaten the donkey piñata into submission, the well-dressed men came to her father’s house, waving a piece of paper they claimed came directly from Don Porfirio, himself, and granted their employer sole ownership of her father’s land. The Gracias were, however, welcome to stay on and work the fields for Señor Malevolo as sharecroppers.
“What is it, Papi?” she asked, while her young friends, oblivious to the inane discussions of the adults, scrambled about gathering as many treats from the shattered donkey as their shirts and skirt-laps could hold.
Leonardo seemed not to hear his daughter. He stared blankly at the paper as the men walked into their cuadra to take inventory of the farm’s livestock.
“Papi,” little Guernica asked again, “What has happened?”
“El fin, hija” he said quietly, “Es el fin del mundo.”
It may not have been the literal end of the world for Señor Gracia and his daughter, but it certainly marked the end of Guernica’s childhood. Even more effectively than the shattered piñata spilling its sweets and toys on the ground outside their casita, while strange men in fancy clothes counted their livestock and appraised their ancestral land which was no longer theirs to own but still theirs to work.
Señor Malevolo did allow them to stay on as caretakers. He even permitted them to remain in the main house unless, of course, he and his esposa, a particularly sour looking woman in her late forties, were in residence. During such visits (which grew increasingly more frequent as Guernica grew into her young womanhood), Guernica and her father had set up pallets in the cuadra with the burro and the cow.
Not so different from this, Guernica thinks as she rolls to her side on her bedroll to better spy the cave’s entrance. A little drier, tal vez. But otherwise much the same. The memories have done little to relieve her brown study; she sighs heavily and stares aimlessly out of the cave mouth into the past.
Desiderio Malevolo was in his sixties when Presidente Porfirio Diaz ceded him the Gracia farm to secure his financial support for the completion of the Central Mexican Railroad. Guernica remembers clearly the day he first strode onto what she continued to think of as their land. As his driver helped him out of his carriage, he motioned impatiently with his free hand for his stick, a polished black cane with a bone handle, which his wife, Dolores, handed to him with an irritated grumble. Though he was stooped, Guernica could see that he had once been imposingly tall, almost six feet, with broad shoulders now withered a bit from too many winters spent at leisure, and too few summers spent at hard work. His once firm belly now tended to paunch when not held in by a waistcoat half a size too small. He wore a dark gray suit with a black ribbon tied about his stiff white collar. His hair he wore long in the front, but heavily oiled and combed back, ineffectively hiding the thinning patch on his crown.
When Delores stepped from the carriage, she took her husband’s arm and together they moved toward Leonardo and his daughter. Señora Malevolo was a large woman, twenty years her husband’s junior, but Guernica could not tell by looking at her. Her dress seemed to fit almost as tightly around her oversized waist as her husband’s waistcoat fit him. When the woman moved, the flesh beneath her dress seemed to ripple like water lapping ashore with every step. Guernica had to
hide a chuckle behind a minor coughing fit when she saw the woman walk towards them.
Like two rutting cerdos, Guernica thought as she embarked on another coughing fit. Her father gently nudged her with his elbow and gave her a stern look.
When the new masters of the farm approached the Gracias, the old man merely nodded at Leonardo.
“The house is in order, I trust?” he asked as he surveyed the yard.
“Si, señor,” Leonardo replied keeping his eyes cast low.
“Muy bien,” Señor Malevolo nodded but still did not look at Leonardo turning his attention instead on Guernica. “When we are done here, you may return to the fields and finish your work there.”
“Si, señor,”
The old man met Guernica’s eyes, and she abruptly looked to the ground with a blush. He tried to smile, but the best he could manage was a crooked leer. Beside him, Delores noted this exchange with a sneer.
“You are the daughter,” he asked.
“Si, Señor Malevolo,” Guernica spoke softly.
“Please, chica,” Señor Malevolo licked his lips with a slight slurp, “call me Desi.”
Delores rolled her eyes and glared at Guernica but said nothing.
“And look at me when I speak to you.” Again he tried to smile unsuccessfully. “I promise I won’t bite.”
Guernica turned her face towards the old man. He reached out his gnarled hand and stroked her cheek. Guernica closed her eyes to hide her revulsion.
“Such nice skin,” he said, “Nice color, so soft.”
“Gracias, Señor … Desi” Guernica opened her eyes, and Señor Malevolo grasped her chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger.
“See, chica, that was not so hard, was it?”
“No, Señor Desi,” Guernica struggled to speak above a whisper.
Guns of the Waste Land: Departure: Volumes 1-2 Page 5
