He realized the boy was shutting his mind to the inevitability that even in Texas—with his father—he’d have to go to some school or other. If Rafo had fabricated quite another dream, Mike had to confess he had given the boy the materials. The dream of a loving father who belatedly had begun to long for his child and had sent for him. The kind of father Rafo had always hoped for—a man of the rodeo, of horses, of action, of muscle—a macho man. A companion-father who would wake him in the morning, have breakfast with him, drive him out to the rodeo grounds, show him off as the owner’s son, give him the run of the stables and the choice of fine horses, order his employees to teach him everything, how to throw ropes, to wrangle bulls to the ground, to break wild broncs, to rassle his way to glory. And never the chalky dust of the schoolroom, never the slate-gray life of the blackboard. That was the dream.
The reality: Howard couldn’t ride a horse and couldn’t stand the musky odor of a bull. Howard had little affection for the rodeo and less affection for his son. If the boy was even half expecting an embrace from his father, he’d have to settle for a cold, appraising smile, a disapproving one. And if the boy were to make one sign of affection, he’d have his heart broken.
The best he could expect from his father was separation. The man would put him away at some boarding school, get rid of him, keep him in school storage while the lawyers litigated over dollars and pesos. An expensive private school, perhaps, a strict one with overtones of the military, to delouse the boy and shape him up.
A school for Rafo to run away from. Only it would be the last school the boy would ever desert. For he’d be a tougher renegade by then. Embittered, he’d be a case history in one of Mike’s pop-psych books: Polk, Rafael. Cheated, brutalized by mother. Abandoned, betrayed by father. Defrauded by society. Vicious.
Defrauded, yes, and Mike was part of the fraud.
No, it wasn’t his responsibility. He had nothing to do with love lost or love found between a child and his parents. If Rafo had been Mike’s son, the boy would not have lacked for love. He had no responsibility except the one he had contracted for, to bring the child safely to his father. From then on, washed hands.
He certainly didn’t have the burden, Mike assured himself, of warning the boy, of telling him he would not find the kind of father he expected nor the rodeo life he dreamed. On the contrary, Mike was accountable only to the man with whom he had made the compact. And if he were to let Rafo in on his father’s secrets, the boy would bolt, he’d disappear into his dark alleys again—and this time Mike would never catch him. Another failure.
So, forget it. If the boy had to find out that his father was a son of a bitch, let him find out the way other boys do—from his father. Growing up, it was called.
Rafo had finished his second cigarette now, and was coming toward him. Mike started toward the boy. They were not far from each other, perhaps a hundred feet, when Rafo looked suddenly to his right.
“Look,” he yelled. “Look—look!”
Mike turned toward the side street and saw it: the truck. His own truck, the stolen one, riding in dust around the perimeter of the plaza. It was followed by the thieves’ three horses, now riderless, tied to the rear bumper of the vehicle.
Mike yelled. So did Rafo. “Alto!” he cried. “Alto!”
Totally forgetting about Macho, they started running, Rafo along one path of the zócalo, Mike across the green, converging toward the side street into which the truck was turning.
“Alto!”
The hoofbeats and the noise of the truck kept the thieves from hearing their pursuers. Besides, the brigands were making noises of their own, all seated together, all shouting at once, in the cab of the truck. The vehicle went up one block toward the main street, then turned the corner.
Mike and Rafo kept running, unable to yell anymore, with barely enough breath to keep them going.
The truck and horses bumped along the main street of Janasco and came to a stop outside the fishmonger’s. The man who’d been called Carlos was the first to get out, from the driver’s side.
“Ito! Miguel!” He shouted hoarsely, telling them to hurry.
Ito, the one with dirty white calzones, tumbled out of the right side of the truck. He was laughing and yelling something about peyote and fried mushrooms and his friend, Miguel, came out after him, also laughing and slapping his belly with his torn sombrero.
None of them saw Mike and Rafo turn the corner, catapulting themselves down the street. It was only when Mike grabbed Carlos, wrenched him around and threw a fist into his face that the men realized they were being attacked.
Ito started running back to the truck but Rafo tripped him. The man was half up from the ground, debating whether to stay and fight or make another dash for the truck, when his decision was made for him. He got a kick in the chin from Rafo and Ito was out.
Mike, however, had two of them—Carlos in front, kicking and punching, and Miguel behind, rabbit-swiping at his neck. One of Miguel’s blows came down like a rock and Mike, wheeling to avoid another, started getting it harder from Carlos.
Rafo moved in on Carlos, punching low, kicking low. But Carlos quickly took charge of him. He had the boy’s arm contorted behind him and was smashing a fist into the kid’s face when Rafo saw the fish stand. He kicked at the leg of one of the metal basins and lurched forward. The basin collapsed, the fish slid in a silvery wetness all over the sidewalk. Rafo twisted into the slime of them, yanking Carlos with him. Carlos slipped, fell, got up and started for the boy again. Rafo reached for something, an eel, an eightfoot eel. He wielded it—a bullwhip, a baseball bat, a wet and whacking blacksnake—he slapped it across Carlos’ face. By this time Mike had disposed of Miguel, whose body was spread out on the pavement, taking up more room than it needed.
Carlos decided he’d had enough and started to run. Mike went after him. But the pavement was now so awash in haddock, roosterfish and eels that Rafo slipped and blocked Mike’s pursuit. Carlos leaped onto the middle horse and kicked at the animal’s ribs. All three horses responded to the kick, for they were all tied together and when Carlos rode down the street it was like a cavalry dust cloud.
Ito was still sprawled on the ground, out as cold as the fish he lay in. But Miguel was stirring. Mike helped him to consciousness. He grabbed the man, pulled him upright, shoved him against the truck and whanged him a few times. Then, holding him by the throat, he shouted into the man’s face, “Where’s our money, you crumb? Come on, bughead—money! Money—pesos!”
Miguel, quaking with terror, let out a spate of Spanish, weeping and wailing that he had no money, never had any money, would not know what do to with money. To prove it, he turned his pockets out, sobbing, calling on the saints to bear witness to his poverty-stricken integrity. Mike, not seeing Rafo, yelled to him, “Search the other bastard.”
“What the hell you think I do?”
Mike turned a little to see Rafo going through the unconscious man’s pockets, turning them all out systematically, one by one. “Nada!” the boy said. “Two lottery tickets. Old ones. No good.”
“Throw me a crab,” Mike said.
Rafo didn’t understand. Mike pointed to the fish on the ground. “A crab—a crab!”
Rafo reached down, gingerly lifted one of the crustaceans and handed it to Mike. The latter grabbed the prickly thing and, shoving its pincers toward Miguel’s face, shook the spiny animal so that its wetness splattered in the man’s eyes.
“I’ll claw your eyes out, you bastard! You want to get clawed? Where’s our money? Pesos—pesos!”
The man’s sobs were now wails, loud bloody caterwaulings out of which only one word was intelligible. “Carlos,” he sobbed. “Carlos!”
“Let him go,” Rafo yelled. “He say Carlos have everything.”
Mike threw the crab away and released Miguel. The frenzied thief ran in one direction, then another, then back the way
he came, around the corner.
It amazed Mike that there had been no crowd while the fight was going on, but the instant it was over, people began to gather. The first, of course, was the fishmonger who came shouting out of his store, screaming threats at Mike and Rafo and kicking the unconscious Ito. The tobacconist and grocer, both on the side of the fishmonger, were taking violence and/or arrest under advisement.
Arrest seemed the more likely. For, just as Mike and Rafo got into the cab of the truck, the policeman arrived. He had no resemblance whatever to a city officer. Nothing like the powder-blue trimness of the Distrito Federal, with its white gloves on dress occasions. There would be no dress occasions for this hard-bitten hombre. His uniform was made of whipcord that had been tailored to turn instantly into gray-green dust. He carried a treacherous carbine over his shoulder, not for looks but for use. He had a pockmarked skin. One eye had a scar over it and was half-closed; the other was wide open and unforgiving.
“Momento,” he said.
It was what Mike had most dreaded. Questioning by a small-town cop who would be more officious than a city policeman, with local honor to derive from being inquisitive—and rough—on a lawbreaking gringo. If Mike’s answers weren’t satisfactory, he would detain them awhile, checking perhaps in Mexico City. With the boy’s mother. Or with the police.
Mike looked at Rafo. The boy was in complete control of his facial expression—unperturbed; but he couldn’t control the color of his cheeks—ashen.
The policeman growled some Spanish.
Rafo’s voice came out huskily. “He wants to know is this your truck?”
“Tell him it is.”
“I told him. He wants to see registration.”
Mike started rooting in his trouser pockets, then stopped. A terrible thought hit him. Not only had his money been in his coat pocket—all his papers were there too, his driver’s license, registration, tourist card, everything.
“Tell him . . . my coat . . .”
Rafo wasn’t listening to him. He was clambering over the seat of the truck into the rear of it, over the blanket, the sleeping bag—and there it was, the coat, bunched up alongside Mike’s broken suitcase.
“I got it!”
The identification was all there, nothing missing, but not a trace of pesos or dollars. Rafo tossed the wallet to Mike who selected the owner’s registration and handed it to the policeman. The latter looked at it briefly, not comprehending what it said but satisfied by its existence, and handed it back to Mike. Then started the questioning: What had caused the fight, who damaged the fish stand, why was the theft of the truck not reported to the police?
Rafo, explaining that his friend knew no Spanish, seized the initiative. This time he combined his whimpering childhood act with the very stupidity of which Mike had accused him. Not only couldn’t he answer questions, he couldn’t even comprehend them. And Mike, watching Rafo’s degeneration into idiocy, resorted to his role of fatuous tourist, injured by thuggery—and he pointed a vague finger at Ito who was just beginning to stir a little.
Unhurriedly the policeman turned from the truck and looked at the man with the dirty calzones. Ito was coming awake now, moaning with loud virtuosity. Seeing the cop and seeming to recognize him, he stopped his noise and tried to smile. The policeman smiled in return. His smile was frightening not only because of the scarred eye but because smiling looked like a kind of agony to him. The policeman said something to the man on the ground. The words were unclear but there was no question that he knew the thief, had a long acquaintance with him, an old customer. It was clear that the cop didn’t like the thief, possibly because the latter put him to the torture of smiling. So he kicked Ito hard, not the way the fishmonger had done, with tentative small proddings of the foot, but with the full heft of his leg. The bystanders laughed and applauded, encouraging encores.
Ito struggled to his feet, started to make aimless flailing movements with his arms which might, by an offended cop, be interpreted as resisting arrest. So the policeman grabbed him, full force now, and marched him toward the side street, where the staircase went down to the lower town. As they departed, the crowd applauded louder than ever and the policeman had achieved his moment of glory.
As quickly as he could, Mike started the truck, put it in gear, and moved off the main street.
“Where’s Macho?”
Rafo now remembered that they had left the rooster back in the zócalo.
They turned one corner, then another and drove back to the plaza. The gamecock wasn’t hard to find. He had made friends—pigeons, a score of them—and was nipping away at the same indefinable feed the other birds were pecking at. Nor did he seem to want Rafo to pick him up and put him back in the truck. He liked it in the zócalo and was content to remain a pigeon.
While Rafo was catching his rooster, Mike was inspecting the truck. In the brief time the thieves had driven it, less than a full day, they had nearly wrecked the vehicle. The hood had been bent so it didn’t close completely, one of the back-up lights was shattered, the rear bumper was missing and, most seriously, so was one of the two rear doors. It confounded Mike how they could have had an accident that would damage both the front and the rear.
Rafo tried to find something optimistic. “Well, anyway—it rides.”
“On what? Damn little gas.” Not so little really; they had about a third of a tankful. But it wouldn’t take them far, especially since the thieves had stolen their money.
“How much we need to get to Texas?” Rafo asked.
“Whatever we need, we don’t have it.”
Actually, they didn’t need much. Even traveling the back roads, as they were forced to do, and even considering mountains and detours, it was perhaps only five hundred miles to the border. For that distance, car expenses—gas and oil—couldn’t be more than sixty or seventy dollars, likely less. That is, if there were no emergencies and repairs were unnecessary. As for food, Mike could get along on very little and he could feed the boy tortillas and beans, beans and tortillas. A hundred dollars, barring an unforeseen crisis, would be enough, and to spare. But where to get it?
Rafo had a simple solution. “Call my father.”
It stopped Mike. He had no ready answer for the boy. Could he tell him of the one time he had phoned Howard and the man had refused the call? Here was the time to confess it. Your father wants you up north not because he loves you but because he’s going to start a haggle with your mother. You’ll be bartered. In case it goes to court, he wants to keep his legal hands as clean as possible—no trouble with the Mexican police. He doesn’t give a damn about you, kid—you’re only a medium of exchange.
Silence. Rafo insisted. “Is only a hundred dollars—ask him.”
“No!”
“Why not? Cristo, why not?”
Mike’s temper flared. “I said no, goddamn it!” Then, mollifyingly, “It’s part of the deal. Between your father and me—part of the deal.”
He was surprised how it satisfied the boy. He hadn’t known how much store Rafo put in such things—deals, treaties, promises. The kid was quickly off the subject and moving forward. “Then what do we do?”
They didn’t hear the man’s approach. They heard his words first.
“You would like to buy a horse?”
He was an old man. He didn’t behave that way, but sixty was old for an Indian and he was unmistakably an Indian, with a wide, high-cheekboned face, as handsome as it was strange. All the features added up to something frightening, dark, intense, foreboding, yet the smile said kindness. Showing them his smile now, he offered the ingratiating gift of it.
He was leading the horse by reins. The animal was wide-eyed and wayward, a chestnut stallion, with a bloody gash across its flank.
The man spoke English of a sort, with an accent more strongly Indian than Spanish. “Eh, amigo,” he said, grinning at Mike, “you speak
English?”
Mike smiled, liking him on the spot. “A little.”
The man poked his gnarled finger into his own face. “Porfirio,” he introduced himself and, not asking for any reciprocal introductions, went right on. “This horse is for selling. You want to buy?”
“We have no money.”
Porfirio laughed. Everybody knew that Yankees always had money.
“No,” said Mike. “No money.”
Still not believing, Porfirio continued. “Much cheap. Five hundred pesos.”
There was no use trying to convince the man. Mike changed the subject. He pointed to the horse’s flank. “He’s bleeding.”
“Sí. When I catch him, he fall.”
Mike didn’t quite understand. “You caught him?”
“Sí.”
“You mean he’s . . . wild?”
“Ah, sí.” Porfirio nodded his head a few times, pleased that their discourse was so satisfactory, “Potro mesteño de Janasco.”
“What’s that?” Mike asked.
“Moostank,” Porfirio answered.
Mike turned to Rafo. “What’s he saying?”
“He say wild horse of Janasco,” the boy replied. “Moostank, moostank.”
“Mustang?” Mike looked quickly from one to the other. “Wild?”
Rafo and Porfirio caught his excitement and spoke together. “Yes—wild, wild . . . Sí—Sí!”
Mike couldn’t believe it. There weren’t any wild mustangs, not here in Mexico. At least he’d never heard of them. Once, many years ago, he had read an advertisement put out by some department of agriculture—was it Utah, was it Montana?—telling of wild horses multiplying on eroded tablelands. Multiplying, yet dying of starvation. The ad begged for horsemen to go up and capture the animals, to save them. Not many horsemen went—the mustangs were too crazy and too much trouble and, as Croag might have said, not worth the time, the pellet. The last news Mike had of them was that the herds were being killed off, gunned down from helicopters—and canned as pet food. Multiplying and dying. But that was north of here . . .
Cry Macho Page 18
