North of the Border

by Judith Van GIeson

  “Mira, señorita,” he said. He reached out his hand and plucked a fly from the air. “Mira, mira,” he cried happily, palming the fly, then stuffing it into a little object he carried in his hand. He balanced it on his palm for me to see. The minute object, no bigger than a fingernail, was a wooden pig, and as the fly struggled and flapped its wings to escape, it made the pig’s ears wiggle and its tail move.

  “Only nine hundred pesos,” the boy said, his bright eyes turning narrow and crafty in preparation for the deal.

  “Too much,” I said.

  “For you, señorita, eight fifty.” His English was perfect when it came to money.

  “Too little,” I replied. The kid needed the money, the pig needed the fly, the fly needed out of there. Me, too.

  I plunged into the jardín. People were everywhere—men in plastic sombreros; rebozo-wrapped women with babies; children curled up in the branches of the trees and scooting between the legs of the crowd. They are all children in Mexico, but not for long. The kid with the pig had already left childhood far behind.

  The crowd pressed toward the far side of the jardín and I let myself get carried with them. Wires were strung from the flat topiary trees to the pink adobe police station across the street, where they sold the sweaters the prisoners knit. Papier-mâché figures dangled from the wires, the smaller ones, green demons about a foot high with curved tails and horned feet and red devils with yellow eyes and insane expressions, on the outside. As the wires got closer to the center of the street, the figures got larger. There were birds and beasts, strange combinations of the human and animal kingdom, spacemen in tinfoil suits, a bare-chested, machine-gun-toting Rambo, and one purple-caped dandy that looked suspiciously like Prince. I saw a couple of four-foot Federales and policemen, but the piâèce de râésistance, bobbing suspended in the center of the street like a fat cork, the one demon that had to be exorcised, was a life-size balding fellow wearing sunglasses and carrying a copy of Time magazine in his back pocket, his camera dangling from his neck and balancing on his fat belly—the Gringo.

  I glanced quickly around. There weren’t many live gringos visible, scared off by the impending catharsis. As every attorney knows, there are times when it’s advantageous to be conspicuous, maybe even to be a pain in the ass, but this wasn’t one of them. I’ve always believed that if you don’t put out troublesome vibes, you won’t be troubled. As I was congratulating myself for being only a token gringa, for not even owning a camera, there was a sudden hush. I looked around furtively, just to make sure it had nothing to do with me.

  Drums rolled, and then, kaboom! a green demon exploded, shooting a thousand green bullets through the air.

  With squeals of delight, children laughed and scrambled to pick up the pieces. Another window-rattling blast and a red devil burst. Bang! a mad dog; bam! a bull. Each demise was accompanied by squeals of merriment, another irritant exorcised, but it was just foreplay. The main moment, the one they’d all gathered here to see was the disintegration of Mr. G. After enough explosives had been detonated to change the fortunes of a small country and the jardín smelled like the field of battle, he was the only devil left.

  The climactic moment was extended by a fuse that wouldn’t stay lit. Drums rolled while someone, in a mixture of stupidity and bravado, climbed way out on the swaying limb of a topiary tree and rewired him. As I waited, getting mentally smaller and darker, too embedded in the crowd to leave, too perverse to want to, I noticed moving among the black heads across the street one spun sugar blond.

  La Rubia, not one to adopt protective coloring in a crowd. Her face was as immaculately painted and fixed in expression as a wooden saint’s. She moved with calm authority, ignoring the Gringo overhead, the merriment at her side. As I had expected, she carried a plastic shopping bag, which seemed to be empty. She was intent on something. I didn’t think it was canned peaches for the evening meal.

  I wanted to know what it was, and I was starting to push my way through the crowd to follow her when Mr. G finally blew in a tremendous explosion that sent whatever birds still remained in San Miguel fleeing—possibly forever—that must have startled even the girls in Río Lindo; that made me jump, although I had sworn I wouldn’t. The shock of the event and my neighbors’ glee over it rooted me to my place, but Leona kept right on going, disappearing around the corner and never even bothering to turn her head.

  14

  IT WAS A long trip back by bus and taxi, airplane and car, and it was hard to believe it was the same day—Easter Sunday—when I got home. I argued with the taxi driver in Mexico City over the tip and with the parking lot attendant in Albuquerque about the price of bailing out the Rabbit. “I thought this was the economy lot,” I said. “You want your car back?” he replied. In Mexico City I had filled the cabdriver’s hand with pesos, but it wasn’t enough. His hand changed from a dirty palm with fingers to a deep well while I dropped in the coins.

  “Bastante,” I said finally.

  “But you have so much money, señorita,” he said, his hand reaching out for more.

  “Not that much,” I replied.

  I had a lot of time to think en route, and I didn’t like where my thoughts were leading. They went from Leona to Sam to Carl to a very rich man.

  In my absence spring had arrived in the Duke City. As we made our approach to Albuquerque International, I could see the unmistakable signs of the season—a cloud of dust that buried all the old familiar landmarks: McDonald’s, Baja Tacos, Dairy Queen. Spring in New Mexico means wind—not breezes, wind. Wind that smashes tumbleweeds into your car and dust into your eyes, that whips your hair around, that howls and tears at the windows until it unsettles your brain.

  It was still Easter Sunday. Maybe when I got home I would find a basket with green cellophane grass, yellow duckies, and chocolate bunnies on my doorknob. It wasn’t there, but I found a bottle of Cuervo Gold in the cupboard and a Lean Cuisine in the fridge. I preheated the oven to four hundred, put some ice in a glass, poured the Cuervo Gold over the ice, opened the freezer, took out the frozen dinner, read the instructions. “Preheat oven to 400°,” it said (I’d already done that), “take dinner out of box, take off paper cover, insert dinner in oven.” While it cooked, I turned on KUNM. The Singing Wire was playing Indian chants that were a whole lot sweeter than the sound of the wind. I woke up to find someone pounding on the door and smoke pouring from the oven. It was three A.M. The Kid was at the door.

  “Your house is burning, chiquita,” he said.

  “That’s what happens when you don’t cook very often—you lose your touch,” I told him, opening the oven door. Zucchini lasagna; charred pasta in a tin dish.

  The Kid didn’t know or care that it was Easter. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t Easter anymore; it was the day after.

  “Why do you always show up at three in the morning?” It was the smoke that made my eyes water, but that pathetic whining voice sounded just like Judy Bates, a victim let out of the bag.

  “I’m sorry, chiquita. I play music tonight.”

  “You always come here after you play music.”

  “You care about that?”

  Did I? Did I want it any different? How different?

  The Kid put his arm around me. “I’m sorry, chiquita. I come early some night if you want. I come for dinner.” He looked at the charred lasagna and grinned. I didn’t. “Manny tells me you come to the shop.”

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  “Why you not come to the house? I played music that night, but my cousin was there. She’d be glad to see you.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Sure.” He laughed. I smiled. I threw the Lean Cuisine away.

  But later I thought, his cousin, what does that mean? He was still awake, sort of. “That ‘cousin* of yours,” I asked, “is she pretty?”

  He shrugged. “She’s just a girl. She doesn’t even speak English.”

  ******

  In the morning I let my pink
demon out of the suitcase and showed it to him, as the Kid was finding it hard to believe that I had been to Mexico. He wasn’t much interested in picturesque mountain towns or fiestas, either. He shrugged when I mentioned San Miguel. “Sure I been there. How much you pay for that?” He poked the web-footed demon.

  “Five hundred pesos.”

  “Five hundred pesos?” He shook his head.

  “It’s folk art,” I said. “I like him. Why are you so negative about your country? What’s wrong with parades and fiestas?”

  He looked at me like I’d gone round the bend. “It’s superstition,” he said. “Why did you go down there?”

  “On business. I went for a client who has interests in Mexico.”

  “In Mexico.” The idea that anyone would go to Mexico on business was incredible to him. The U.S. was where you went on business; you didn’t go to Mexico at all if you could help it

  “Listen, Kid, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you know what el perro dogo means?”

  “Sure, it’s a kind of a dog, short but big like a bull. When he take you in his mouth like this he don’t let go.”

  When I got to the office at midday, spring had preceded me to Hamel and Harrison. The door was wide open and Anna and Brink were sitting in the reception room staring into space. It looked like they’d fallen in love, but not with each other, thank God. A big vase of lilacs on Anna’s desk had an essence-of-springtime smell.

  “The lilacs are out,” I said.

  “They sure are,” said Brink with a moony expression. “I picked some for Sally, too.”

  “Sally?”

  “I went there for Easter dinner yesterday. She cooked a leg of lamb. Can you believe it? A leg of lamb for the two of us. What a woman.” He shook his head in sated disbelief.

  “A leg of lamb,” I said. “And you didn’t suspect anything?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Brink suspiciously, wondering if I’d be enough of a shit to say something that would ruin his day.

  I might. “And you let her get away with it.”

  “With what?”

  “The evidence. Didn’t you ever see the Alfred Hitchcock show where a woman kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then cooks it and feeds it to the police so there’ll be no evidence?”

  “Ha, ha,” said Brink.

  “Did you have a nice Easter?” asked Anna. So someone was going to ask about me.

  “Lovely,” I said. “I went to Mexico.”

  “Mexico?” she asked. I gave her a warning, straight-arm look. “Mexico. Oh, that’s right, I just forgot for a minute. How was Mexico?”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  I figured Brink had fallen in love; he didn’t even mention Carl Roberts, and Carl Roberts and Mexico were linked in his mind like Stalin and Russia, the Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran, Nixon and the U.S.A.

  In a generous mood, having already forgiven Anna for forgetting that I went to Mexico, I asked her about her Easter.

  “Fantastic,” she said.

  She spent it with Yellow Mustache, who by now had a name—George—and an occupation—computer salesman. Anna had her George; Brink, his Sally; Neil was reunited with her Kid. What a trio of mismatched couples—but wasn’t that what romance was all about? I was ready to sit on the doorstep and moon with them. There was a rich man out there somewhere needing to be located, but it didn’t have to be right now.

  But it did, because the phone rang and it was Peter Esterbrook on the line. I didn’t know anybody richer than him.

  “I’d like to talk to you Miss Hamel,” he said. “Could you come by the farm this afternoon around four?”

  “I could, but I think the person you want to speak to is Carl. Come to mention it, I’d like to speak to him too.”

  “No, it’s you I want to speak to. I’d appreciate it if you would be here.”

  I went. It was Carl’s problem, and I shouldn’t have gone, but I did.

  15

  THE LILACS HAD come into bloom at Esterbrook Farms, too, a mass of lavender and white. Wind is the bitter part of spring in New Mexico, lilacs are the sweet. Already sprinklers were sprinkling the lawn, nourishing green shoots. Already the gardeners were out supervising the sprinklers, tending the plants. Peter stood waiting for me on the portal, wearing a white shirt, blue jeans with creases in them, and a belt with a silver and turquoise buckle. He looked tall, healthy, tan, southwestern. He smiled, showing perfect white teeth, while his eyes studied me coldly. The pots of pink geraniums on the portal and the hand carved door framed him well, like a page from Town and Country.

  “Lovely day,” he remarked. Of course it was, but getting less so. Even the wind didn’t intrude at Esterbrook Farms. The mass of lilacs kept it from disturbing Peter’s peace, but if an occasional gust did get through the bushes, there was little to ruffle, few loose edges. Every surface at Esterbrook Farms was planted and manicured. No wild chamisa or purple sage snuck in here. The grass kept the earth in place, the walk was closely fitted brick, the driveway graveled, the flower beds tended. The only disorderly elements were the beat-up Volkswagen in the driveway and the gardeners; three Mexicans who played Mexican music on their radio while they worked and an Anglo with a long blond ponytail who was potting some geraniums at the other end of the portal.

  “I see you hire Anglos, too,” I said as Peter led me into the house.

  “I hire people who get the work done. Kiefer happens to be a thorough and sometimes even inspired worker. Very determined to get the job, too, I might add. He thought Esterbrook Farms would be a good showcase for his gardening skills, and he came to me looking for work. I haven’t been disappointed, although I don’t much care for the way he looks. Unfortunately there was a time when all the young people in New Mexico looked like that.”

  “They’re not so young anymore now that that time has come and gone.”

  “It couldn’t have gone soon enough to suit me. But I will say that in spite of his appearance, Kiefer has proven to be a very satisfactory employee.”

  “I talked to him at your party about the wild irises on Hamilton Mesa.”

  “Yes, well, Kiefer is enamored of Mother Nature.”

  “I suppose the Volkswagen belongs to him.”

  “Yes.”

  We walked down the hallway past the living room where Don Quixote stood at parade arrest. I could see the patio, caught in a beam of sunshine. As we walked toward it, I heard the fountain tinkling and a parrot squawk. I also heard the delicate sound of children’s voices, chirping like birds.

  “Carl is out of town. Celina went shopping and I have the children for the day,” Peter said.

  We entered the patio; the decor was Mexican, I couldn’t yet speak for its soul. The children were playing on the tile floor with a toy, a little mechanical dragon that shot fire sparks from its mouth and tottered on the bricks. They laughed as it fell over.

  “Have you met the children?” Peter asked, “Emma and Edward.”

  The children looked up. “Yes,” I replied, “at the party.”

  “Hello,” they said. Even Emma looked animated today, her blond curls tousled, a flush of excitement in her cheeks. And Eduardo—he, too, had that Esterbrook air of being almost too perfect, and I thought again how odd but in a way how right that this child had ended up in this family. They were opposite in type, but alike in beauty. Eduardo, however, was distinguished by his eyes. They didn’t have the sort of ingenuousness that you found in Celina’s, the coldness of Peter’s. Eduardo’s eyes were old and sad and patient and wise.

  Geraniums were blooming in terra-cotta pots shaped like goats and deer. A bougainvillea was growing up the south-facing wall. The chairs were those straight-backed, tippy leather ones from Mexico that are nice to look at but bondage to sit in.

  “Lupe,” Peter called, raising his voice just a notch, but his voice was so controlled, up a notch was as effective as a shout.

  Lupe, the Mexican maid, entered quickly and silently from
a doorway that led to one of the wings of the house. She was wearing a white uniform. Except that she didn’t appear to be pregnant, she might have been one of the girls at Río Lindo. She was dark, with almond-shaped, serious eyes; her hair was pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck. She had flat Indian cheekbones and a wary air. She and Eduardo were cut from the same dignified Mexican cloth.

  “Come, children,” she said. “It’s time to feed the animals.” Eduardo turned immediately, and they seemed for an instant as the sun played across the patio to be connected by fine, shimmery webbing.

  “I always have them feed the dogs and horses when they visit,” Peter told me. “It’s good for them, gives them a sense of responsibility. The horses take the carrots right out of their hands. The children don’t touch the dogs, of course; my dogs are guard dogs, not pets. But I let them pour the food into the pens.”

  “Come, Emma,” Lupe said quietly.

  “No,” Emma replied.

  “Come,” Lupe repeated.

  “I don’t want to.” Emma pouted, sticking out her lower lip.

  “Yes, you do, young lady,” Peter said raising his voice another notch, the Obey notch. “You want to go right now.”

  Emma looked at him defiantly but she went, already aware, no doubt, of doting Grandpa’s prickly side.

  “Lupe seems to be good with the children,” I said.

  “She came to me late last year, well recommended by an associate of mine; I haven’t been disappointed. Perhaps you’d care for some iced tea,” Peter suggested, his voice dropping down again to Host. A pitcher stood on the leather table, amber-colored in the sun, with slices of lemon floating on top.

  “Thank you,” I replied. He poured me a glass and suggested we take it to his study at the other end of the house. I followed him across the courtyard. If the living room was suitable for a Spanish grandee, the study belonged to an English country squire. There was a large fireplace with a mantel, an Oriental rug on the floor, worn leather furniture, and bookcases from floor to ceiling. The only place I’d seen so many books in recent years was the law library at Lovell Cruse. French doors stood open to the balmy spring day and the smell of lilacs, a terrace and the lawn beyond. Across the lawn I could see part of the barn and next to it a bunch of dog pens. Inside their chain link pens the dogs, Dobermans mostly, lazed or slept. Actually, the one thing missing from the room itself was a dog, a floppy kind of spaniel lying on the floor, and I told Peter I thought he should bring one inside.