Jim Kane - J P S Brown

by J P S Brown

  Fiestas had better remain for Kane times to watch, fill the belly as Chato said, fill the spirit with wine, and listen to music. Listen to the music from here by the fire. The music is plainer, less noisy, and does not carry with it good-looking dancing legs here by the fire. Legs you'll want to get into bed and then legs that would drive the spur to make you go someplace you don't want to go. Better not be nice and polite and join the race after those legs.

  Kane picked up a maguey and sat down with his feet on the platform the fire rested on. He built a small loop in the maguey and began roping the toe of one of his boots. He roped the boot and tried to jerk the slack quickly before the loop settled on the platform. In this way the rope would touch only the toe, never catch the boot below the instep. Very diverting.

  Juan Vogel came into the clubroom. "What the chingados are you doing here, gringo? Have you quit the fiesta or what?" he asked Kane.

  "No. I came to look at the tack. I was going right back," Kane said.

  "I thought you would like the fiesta. That is why I brought you. This is a Mexican fiesta,. a time to get drunk, dance, and steal a girl. Not a time to think and look at saddles. Are you afraid of the girls?"

  "Now you are being funny."

  "Just grab their little soft hands with one hand and their nice little waists with the other hand, get up close to them, and you will see how nice and helpless they are."

  "Lead the way then," Kane said.

  At the patio Juan Vogel quit Kane and picked on one of the girls of the escaramuza to dance with. Mariano was dancing with another of the escaramuzas. His hat hung by its chinstrap from the butt of the pistol he wore. He was hugging the girl tightly and barely moving her around. His face was vacant and preoccupied with the great amount of getting acquainted he was doing. The bull rider was dancing with Adelita. The rhythm of the ranchera song they were dancing was exactly the same as the high pace or prance of a horse. Kane knew how to dance a little but he knew he would never be able to dance the ranchera the way it should be danced because he had not been born with the exclusively Mexican hitch in his getalong for the dance. Adelita and her partner were dancing the way the ranchera needed to be danced to. They were kicking up their heels to the tune of the music and doing it for the joy of what the music made their feet want to do.

  Kane sat down in a chair under the portal while he watched the doings. Chato and Placido, arm in arm, came over to him.

  "What a beautiful dance this is," Chato said.

  "What a beautiful dance!" Placido, who was no longer smiling but was dead-eyed, wobbling drunk, said. Chato's hat was on the back of his head. The ends of the chinstrap hung over one ear. He and Placido settled themselves in chairs beside Kane.

  "My drinks are risen," Chato said. "I must rest. Hee, hee, hee."

  Kane heard the tap of high heels on the brick walk, a sure stimulant to his interest wherever he was.

  "Adelita, preciosa!" Chato announced.

  "Isn't she the lovely one?" Placido said confidentially in Chato's ear. "Isn't she the fine one?"

  The girl walked directly up to Kane and he saw how trim and light she was.

  "Move over, Chato," she said. Chato and Placido moved over one chair, leaving the chair next to Kane. Adelita sat between Kane and Chato.

  "Senor Kane, you are not dancing," she said.

  "I'm not very good at it," Kane said.

  "Let Adelita show you," Placido said.

  "You have not danced with me yet, preciosa," Chato said.

  "You have not asked me, borrachito, little drunk, " Adelita said.

  "But what could I do now that I am drunk? What a shame!" Chato said.

  "Adelita, you should show our jinete how to dance," Placido said. "He is a very good jinete. He fell off today because he was not prepared. I let the buckskin out of the chute before he was ready," he lied nobly.

  "Why do you not dance?" Adelita asked Kane. '"All the girls of the escaramuza want to dance with you. They are waiting for you to invite them."

  "That seems like a good idea," Kane said, "but I'm taking care of Chato and Placido at the moment."

  "Leave them to get drunk. They will do nothing worse than that for the rest of the night. They aren't going to dance with anyone. Don't you want to dance with me?"

  "Yes. I like the idea," Kane said.

  On the dance floor the girl was tiny. She could have weighed no more than eighty pounds. Kane thought this over for a few minutes.

  Suddenly the girl shrilled in the artificial voice of the mascarita, "You are American?"

  "You are my mascarita," Kane laughed.

  "Yes. Your mascarita friend."

  "It was you I danced with the night I fought with Juan Vogel."

  "Perhaps. Maybe I tell you someday," she said in English.

  "This is a joke on your brother-in-law, Juan Vogel. You should have heard what he said about the mascaritas?

  "Don't say anything. My brother would hit me if he found me out. Decent girls don't go to the Paris de Noche cantina."

  "If it is so bad what were you doing in there?"

  "We saw you go in with Juan Vogel and the Lion. I wanted to dance with you."

  "What if I had removed your mask?"

  ''You would have gone to jail. The identity of the mascarita in Carnaval is protected by law. "

  "I wouldn't have. But some other drunk might have. Anyway, you were safe knowing the Lion and Vogel would have protected you in the Paris de Noche."

  "Oooooooo, Vogel would love to find out something like that about me. He would have threatened to tell his wife and my brother and would have made us go all night all over town with him."

  "That would have been fine."

  "You don't know him. He would have kept us out all night and the only all-night bars are in the zone of tolerance."

  "The zone of what?"

  "Where the prostitutes are."

  Kane laughed.

  "Don't laugh. It isn't funny."

  "Why did you go in the bar then if it was so dangerous for you."

  ''I told you. To dance with you. All of us wanted to dance with you."

  "I bet. Who were the other girls?"

  "I won't tell you. The one that had to dance with Juan Vogel was afraid that Juan Vogel knew who she was."

  "He didn't know who she was."

  "Well, she has stayed far away from him since. He was sticking his hands where they didn't belong."

  "What did she expect?"

  "Nothing better. My cuñado, Juan, is an animal when he is drunk."

  "Who were the other girls that were with you that night? There were three of you."

  "Why do you want to know? It is none of your business.'"

  "You said they wanted to dance with me."

  "Forget it. You don't know how to dance. They wouldn't like you."

  "Teach me."

  "Move your hips . . . up and down . . . move your feet too . . . with the music . . . forget it. Come on. I want to show you something." She held Kane's arm through hers and walked him off the dance floor. They passed Mariano standing alone under the portal watching an escaramuza girl dancing with Vogel and laughing. Mariano stared at Kane.

  Kane knew that whatever had been started toward a friendship between Mariano and himself might end now because Kane was leaving the dance with his sister. The girl walked Kane out the rear passageway of the house.

  "Hurry, Señor Kane. Right now is the best hour for what I want to show you," the girl said. She took him to the center of a corral completely surrounded by pitahaya. The silhouettes of the long, symmetrical stalks climbed in clusters, curving, thrusting, toward a full moon.

  "This is my favorite place on the night of the full moon. I have always wanted to show this place to someone," the girl said.

  "When did you decide to show it to me?" Kane asked.

  "I don't know. Maybe since the first time I came to this place. Maybe all day today. Maybe just a minute ago."

  "This is a beautiful place.
Thank you for showing it to me," Kane said.

  "They say the fruit of the pitahaya is good for potency and fertility. Do you think it is true?" she asked.

  "It must be. All the Mexicans I know that eat pitahaya have plenty of buquis, children."

  "Do you have any, Señor Kane?"

  "No."

  "Do you have a wife?

  "No."

  "Do you ever want to marry?"

  "I haven't been thinking about it," Kane said. "Is that what you want?"

  "Yes, someday?

  "And now what?"

  "And now I would like you to kiss me."

  "All right, " Kane said and he kissed her. "And now we go back," he said.

  "Let's give more first."

  "This is your day, your fiesta. Your guests will miss you."

  "For that reason. This is my day."

  "No. Go back now. I'm not your novio, your suitor, nor will I ever be. Do this with a novio. Then marry him."

  "All right. Later then."

  "Not later," Kane said.

  "Later," the girl said. "I'1l go in now but I'll see you later."

  She took off the high heels and carried them. She ran across the corral and back to the house in her stocking feet. Kane lit a cigarette and walked back slowly. Here you go again, and what the hell are you doing here, he thought. In the passageway he heard the girl arguing with someone.

  "I asked you where you had been," Mariano was saying.

  "I told you. Are you deaf? In the corral."

  "With the gringo!"

  "Exactly. The same one you saw me go out there with."

  "You fool! He fooled you."

  "Fool? I like it. I am a woman. The gringo is a man. You hear? A man. Do you know what that is?"

  "He will leave here when he is finished with you and with all of us and go back to the United States to his gringa."

  "So what?"

  "So he will make fools of all of us."

  "Speak for yourself. Don't worry about me." The girl put on her shoes and walked away.

  "Is everything all right?" Kane asked. He had walked up and surprised Mariano close in the dark.

  "¡No hay problema! There is no problem!" Mariano said.

  "Is there anything you need of me? Any way I can be of service to you?" Kane asked him quietly.

  "No. Nada. No hay problema, Señor Kane," Mariano said.

  Kane walked away from him and joined Chato and Placido, who were sharing a large glass of tequila with Don Tomás. Don Tomás handed the glass to Kane.

  "How do you like the dance?" Don Tomás asked Kane.

  "Everyone is happy and enjoying himself," Kane said.

  "The jinete is happy diverting himself," Placido the vaquero announced. "He has found friends here."

  "Hee, hee, hee, Jim Kane," Chato said.

  "Have you danced, Señor Kane?" Don Tomás asked.

  "Twice. With Chato's daughter and with your daughter. My duty dances. I don't know how to dance these rancheras very well," Kane said.

  "All in good time," Don Tomás said. "Poco a poquito. Little by little. You must take your time and take everything at its own little pace. Slowly and carefully. That is the way everything is done here in Mexico."

  "¿Qué chiste? What fun would he have in doing it our way?" Chato said.

  "In dancing or in anything, the slow, careful way is always the more diverting," Don Tomás said.

  "It is true what Don Tomás says," Placido said solemnly.

  "True. Very true."

  "I think I'm too old now to learn to dance in your way," Kane said.

  "But you are not," Don Tomás said. "You are young, presentable. You should have no trouble finding girls to give you their slow, careful lessons."

  "But then I would have to go around in the role of a suitor. I am past the age of the control, patience, and long-suffering necessary for being a suitor. No, I believe I will let the others do the dancing. I have retired as a dancer."

  "¡Lástima! Too bad! A man so big and so impatient!" Don Tomás said.

  "Life is short, Don Tomás. Too short for a man to press suit to girls to teach him dancing."

  Don Tomás laughed. "I enjoy your views, Señor Kane. They are different, but they carry reason."

  "Thank you, Don Tomás."

  Don Tomás rose from his chair and stretched. "Now I must retire. Placido, you take Chato and some blankets to the clubroom. Señor Kane will sleep in the bedroom in the corner next to my room. Build him a fire in the fireplace. Good night!"

  He shook hands with Kane and walked away.

  Placido staggered ahead of Kane and Chato, leading the way to Kane's room. He wanted that chore out of the way before he passed out. He turned and motioned Kane to follow him each time he remembered what his errand was. The mariachis were still playing. The dance floor was crowded. Mariano and the other young charros were still dancing. Adelita was dancing. This was the shank of the evening. Placido muddlingly chose a key from a ring on his belt and unlocked the heavy door of a corner room. The room contained an iron cot with mattress and blankets rolled at its foot. A small table with two chairs stood beside the bed. An oil lamp was on the table. The fireplace also served the adjoining room, Don Tomás' room, and when Kane sat down to share the glass of tequila with Chato he could see into the other room through the fireplace.

  Placido built a fire and sat down on the bed. The three men, at the end of their fiesta now, smoked and watched the fire as they finished their last glass of tequila.

  "What a good fiesta we had!" Chato said.

  "A good fiesta! Good fiesta!" Placido repeated, smiling now again because the fiesta was over and he would not drink any more after this glass he was sharing with Kane and Chato.

  "With this drink I will go and sleep with the little angels," Chato said.

  "Me too. Surely yes. But with my little old lady," Placido said.

  "Don't you have at least one little song left in you, Chato?" Kane asked.

  "No. Ya no. I have had my fill of music now for a while," Chato said tiredly and took one last swallow and stood up.

  "Let's go, Placido." They shook hands with Kane and left. Kane was not ready for bed, but he did not want to leave the room Don Tomás had so carefully corraled him in for the night. He took off his clothes, turned down the covers and blew out the lamp. The room had no windows. He opened the door. He lay down and he could see the sky under the eave of the portal. The music was outside his door. He had been given the room adjoining his host's. What more did he want?

  In a quiet dream, not asleep, he heard only one guitar playing softly, a guitar that seemed to hold vigil on the fiesta. The fiesta had not died but was slipping away contentedly toward tomorrow.

  19

  The Sierra Madre

  A serrano is an inhabitant of the Sierra Madre. He is a mountain man. He is very much more his own man than the city man is. He has to do so much more with only his own faculties, his own hands. I know serranos who have to walk seventy miles to get to a store that stocks axes. Automobiles will never be available to him. He doesn't miss them. He can make better time in his mountains on foot or horseback.

  The serranos lead very uncomfortable lives compared to what people in Brentwood, California, believe is comfortable. Serranos live at all times on the sides of the real mountains. They hang their corn crops on vertical slopes. They herd their cattle around rocky, brushy cliffs where, they should slip and fall, they would starve to death and the buzzards would eat them before they hit bottom. There is no level plain upon which the strolling is good. The streets fall through the villages and are so steep that they have been washed deeply by the fast water of the summer rains and only the bedrock of the mountain remains.

  The serrano's life is not cluttered with possessions, nor with luxuries such as "fine" foods, liquors, bedding, entertainment, or roomy abode. He has little use for money, which is probably the reason he always has a little. He is a rich man as a rule, not only because he has little use for
money but because he has such a superabundance of what he needs.

  The little Cessna 170 bucked and yawed and fought to clear the oak-topped peak in the high wind of the Sierra Madre. It cleared the oaks by yards, pointed itself down the other side of the peak, and leveled off It landed on the side of a hill going uphill on a narrow strip of rain-washed red earth by a rock wall that swept past the right wing. It rolled to the top of the hill and stopped.

  Kane and the Lion stepped to the ground. The leather-jacketed pilot unloaded two boxes of oranges, a bundle of blankets, and a new radio and set them on the side of the strip. He looked impatiently down the hill at a group of whitewashed buildings that shone in the clear mountain air at sunup. He walked back to the plane and opened the planes cowl and checked the oil. A cold wind uncombed his long hair and he put both hands on the hair to hold it down. He ran a pocket comb carefully through the hair and patted it back down.

  "Too much wind," he said.

  A vaquero spurred a black mule up over the hill. The armas over the vaquero's knees flapped in the wind. The mule shied at the shiny contraption parked on top of the hill, too much gleaming metal for his comprehension. The vaquero spurred the sidestepping mule around the pile of provisions the pilot had stacked by the runway.

  "Where is the doña and the little girl?" the pilot asked.

  "They are on their way," the vaquero answered.

  "Please go back and tell them to hurry. There is too much wind, the pilot said.

  The vaquero spurred his mule into a running walk and went back down the hill and out of sight.

  "When shall I come back for you?" the pilot asked the Lion.

  "Day after tomorrow," the Lion said.

  "Please be here early in the morning. We should have come much earlier than this. Too much wind."

  A young woman riding a mule came over the hill. A metal suitcase was tied behind the cantle of her saddle. She wore a large straw hat with the brim pulled down. A white cloth under the hat protected the back of her head and neck and was tied under her chin. She was bundled in coats and sweaters and long skirts. She sat the mule sidesaddle but when she dismounted she uncovered a common, goose-necked vaquera saddle. She was very light-skinned and her face was pinched by the cold wind. A little girl rode up behind her on a small corriente pony. The woman helped the little girl dismount. The pilot loaded the woman's blankets and her suitcase and helped the woman and the little girl into the plane. The woman took off her hat and white cloth and shook and fluffed her long brown hair. The pilot started the plane's motor. The tail swung around. The plane taxied over the hill out of sight. The plane roared, came back, lifted into the air past Kane and the Lion, and banked around the oak peak toward Rio Alamos.