by J P S Brown
"Absolutely not," he remembered telling the Ministerio Público.
Kane recognized the pugnacious queer Juan Vogel had unmasked at the dance of the mascaritas in Old Town the night Kane had arrived in Rio Alamos. This queer was short and slight in build with a heavy beard and plucked eyebrows. He paced barefoot up and down the length of the bullpen, his hand on one hip. This was the hand with the painted fingernails. Once in a while he would go to a bowl and throw up. Then he would continue his promenade, his expression unaffected by the ravages of his throwing up. Periodically he would check his paseo at the bars of the door to the pen and inquire politely, quietly, but with much perseverance, for a drink of water. He would put his forehead to the bars, stick his nose through the bars, gaze down the side of the building, and when he saw a movement of someone in the courtyard would utter quietly, "Ssssst, ssssst, agua. We have no water. Sssssssst, sssssssssst, ssst. " Not achieving a response, he would gaze another long moment and then resume his promenade, speaking to no one, noticing none around him, with one plucked eyebrow raised.
The pugnacious queens partner in crime, the one who had been accompanying him when he had been caught breaking the law, was a tall, well-built queer who was evidently not crudo, rawly hungover, nor thirsty. The tall queer was busy putting on his face. He lounged on his pallet of blankets, arching his arches and keeping his bare toes pointed while he daubed a blue cream on his face with one hand and held a small mirror daintly to his face with the other. His hair, which he was careful not to muss as he probably had not the tools or concoctions to care properly for it in jail, was done up high and well lacuered in a wild-beehive-like, nest on top of his head. He told another prisoner conversationally the blue cream was for removing his whiskers.
One of the wheels of the bullpen was a lightweight professional fighter called the Combustible Kid. He was serving two years for burglary. He rated a private room off the courtyard but was well-liked by the guards and the mayor's son and so was allowed his preference of staying in the bullpen for the companionship it offered him. Kid Combustible's chest, back, arms, hands, and abdomen were covered with tattoos. He was telling the other wheel of the bullpen, a tall, narrow shouldered, potbellied, spindly-legged, blue-eyed Indian about the brief-day's respite the Kid had enjoyed in town the day before.
The mayor's son had needed the Kid in order to settle an account with a citizen of the town. He had promised the Kid the day off and supper and a movie in town if the Kid would help him settle the account. The mayor's son wanted the citizen pasted in the mouth.
The Kid had rapped on the citizen's door at suppertime. "Telegram for Señor Fulano," he had called. Señor Fulano came to the door chewing on a bite of his supper and the Combustible Kid hit him and the bite stuck on the porch ceiling. After the Kid's supper and movie the mayor's son had taken the Kid back to jail altogether satisfied with the account. The Kid's scarred face was contented as he told the story of his Sunday outing.
The Combustible Kid and the tall, blue-eyed Indian kept the bullpen very much in order. They supervised the morning sweeping and the arranging of the pallets. They had their pallets spread next to those of the queers. Everyone else in the bullpen except a reserved, very noble-looking, quiet, young Indian, was either too old, too young, too senile from wine and age, too idiotic, dissipated, unconcerned, too hungover, or lacking the will to have any force in the bullpen. Anyone that had cigarettes or received extra food from outside always offered some of the booty to the wheels before partaking themselves, showing an inclination to keep the brains and the power of Blue Eyes and the Kid on their side. In order to keep this balance of power Blue Eyes and the Kid befriended Kane since Kane was bigger than they were by at least fifty pounds and they knew Kane was in there for fighting and they had no idea how long he would be in there. Neither did Kane. He also wanted to be friends. "Absolutely not," he had told the Ministerio Público loftily.
The two wheels were also in control of the bullpen's social betterment program. They joked with the queers and the feeble-minded without bullying them, making it clear to the community that these lowest companions were also human and had equal rights in the bullpen. They advised the hang-overs about what they could do under the cell's meager facilities to relieve their aches and carried water to those who were too weak to get up when the water ration was brought in by the guards. A gallon of water disappeared like a drop of sweat in hell. The Kid and Blue Eyes saved their cigarette butts for those who had no means of getting their own tobacco. They were respectful and compliant to the feeble, old, and demented.
The guards, knowing the extreme thirst of their charges, drank cold, giant Cokes outside the bullpen door. They hoped in their warm hearts that the thirsty prisoners would thus, to a small extent, vicariously find relief The guards saluted each other before the bars of the door, clinked the full bottles together, crooked their little fingers on the bottles, and sipped Coke unctuously. The Combustible Kid told Kane that Kane could tip the guards and extend to them the correct submissive tone and be allowed to pass the day in the sun and fresh air of the courtyard. Kane said he did not wish to overcrowd the courtyard and perhaps take the guards away from their business of relieving the thirst of the prisoners. He preferred to stay in the bullpen where he would be no trouble to the guards.
Kane wasn't worried about his comfort. He was only cautious about not sitting down and not leaning against the walls because of the lice. He would have to spend a full night there before he stopped guarding against the lice. He calculated he would possibly be able to go one night in there on his feet without sleep and maybe another day with hopes he would get out of the bullpen in the day. He already had one sleepless night in his head. If he didn't get out tomorrow he would have to relax his vigilance against the lice and let them graze on him for no one can go two nights on his feet without sleep and without knowing when he is going to get out of jail. Other than the discomfort of worrying about the lice and having to stay on his feet away from the wall, Kane was getting along well enough in jail because he was sure the Lion was going to get him out. Kane had suffered other forms of jail and he didn't feel as though he was losing a maidenhead. The jail was no different than other ways of being closed up with other people with no way of getting away from them and nothing to do. Kane felt discomfort only because in this situation everyone in the cell was forced to become the complete social animal and show only the sides of himself that were common to everyone else in order to subsist under bullpen conditions. The real life of everyone in the bullpen had been suspended. The selves they showed were their most unattractive selves because they were all alike.
The bullpen life was to Kane worse than solitary confinement for in the bullpen his every act—his eating, his drinking, his bowel movements, his smoking, his talking—would have to be done as carefully common to everyone else as possible. This sort of existing was deadly as it had absolutely no human object. "Absolutely not, " Kane remembered stating to the Ministerio Público. "Absolutely."
It seemed to Kane that passengers on an express bus suffered a sort of bullpen confinement except that they had the objective of destination. But if the express had motor trouble and suddenly stranded the passengers way out, frighteningly lost to the destination, with no idea of when the destination would be attained, the real lives of the passengers stopped and the ugly, social, common selves emerged more with each hour of the suspension. Kane didn't mind the bus too much when it barreled along smoothly. He could cover himself on the bus with a newspaper or he could go to a bar during the rest stop to drink as many gin and tonics as possible. Almost nobody that rides the express bus goes to the bar during the rest stop.
The guards finally came for Jim Kane and took him back across the empty courtyard they had been guarding with their Cokes, through the steel doors, and down the corridor. He saw big hats on the other side of the last door and Juan Vogel and the Lion were under them, grinning at him. Kane talked and answered their questions offhandedly, half-consciously,
while he waited for the guard to come on and open the last door. Then Juan Vogel said Chavarin was going to settle for $200 and that Kane had better pay it and get the trouble finished. The Lion said the police had officially taken Kane back to Teresita's restaurant because they had reported this on the mileage ticket of their squad car. No charges had been filed against Kane and there had been no warrant for him. Officially, the Ministerio Público didn't know Kane was in jail. Vogel and the Lion weren't going to be allowed to see him anymore because he wasn't going to be in the jail officially anymore. They also said a lawyer would probably cost $200 and Kane would have to wait in the jail until he got a trial. Kane did not say "Absolutely not" this time. He called the guard and got his money out of the envelope and handed it back through the bars to the Lion. Kane was then escorted back to the bullpen where his fellows expressed sorrow he had not been released.
Time stopped for Jim Kane. He thought, here I am again in the very old familiar place here and now again and he presented himself to himself again. He realized he had not seen himself for some time. He allowed that realization to pass because he might realize something unbearable about the here and now and he didn't want anything unbearable hanging around for the unknown time he had left to him in the jail. About sundown Juan Vogel and the Lion were back and Kane was passed all the way out until the last indifferent iron gate shut behind him.
Driving back to Rio Alamos in Juan Vogel's car, Juan Vogel started shaking with quiet laughter.
"Now what?" Kane asked him, smiling through his injuries.
"I was just thinking how funny it is that you put yourself in jail."
"How do you figure I put myself in jail?" Kane asked him.
"All you had to do this morning was offer to pay one hundred dollars in a kind way before the Ministerio Público was forced to put a price on Chavarin's hurts. Then he would have only asked for two hundred dollars and you wouldn't have had to go to jail."
"The only trouble with that idea is that I wouldn't have given two hundred dollars. I wouldn't have given a veinte centavo piece."
"Ah, you wanted to go to jail?"
"Now how do you figure I wanted to go to jail?"
"You went, didn't you? You could have paid to get out
before you got in. He had the jail for you when you went in to see him. He always has the jail. Didn't you know he only wanted money to keep you out of his jail? Didn't you know he was Chavarin's uncle?
"I knew he was Chavarin's uncle all right."
"Then you went to jail because you wanted to," Juan Vogel laughed.
"Ah, these Americans and their philanthropy," the Lion sighed.
"What philanthropy? I was blackmailed."
"What philanthropy. See how generous you are? You don't even realize the good you have done this day. First, you spent a solid day in public lamentation for the harm you did a poor working man. Second, you donated a fortune in gold for the poor man's future well-being. And third, you have remedied a shame that has plagued him for years," the Lion said.
"What shame?" Kane asked.
"You know how he has always hidden his mouth behind his hand when he laughed? Now he can smile without ever again having to hide his teeth from the world. Now he has Jim Kane's smile. A brand new set of teeth, even and white. You paid for them. His smile will be even more brilliant than yours.
32
The Drive
Santiago Brennan flew Jim Kane and the Lion to Chinipas. The plane flew close over Kane's cattle by the river, cleared some big guamúchil trees, and landed on the short, crooked, dippy, uphill strip.
Kane had cleaned up all his business in Rio Alamos. He and the Lion had shipped the last fifty head to Hermosillo, the cattle Chavarin had waylaid. They were in the hands of the rancher who would be quarantining them. Room and board and telephone bills were paid in full in Rio Alamos. Kane had left the town without looking back.
Santiago was going on to Creel to tell Batista to meet Kane's herd with his trucks at Cuiteco on the new railroad in fourteen days. Kane and the Lion watched Santiago take off and then walked to Chinipas.
Ezequiel Graf was not at the store. The Lion borrowed Juan Vogel's bay horse and saddle and Kane saddled Pajaro. They rode out to see the herd. The cattle had rested and filled in the four days since Kane had left Chinipas.
The vaqueros started the cattle on the drive for Creel the next day. Kane was happy to be making tracks. Each track Pajaro made was carrying Kane farther away from some demand on him in Rio Alamos; the honorable claim on him by a polite man who would like Kane to do right by his daughter; a girl who wanted Kane to provide for her in his future; a legal system which was probably planning new ways to make Kane provide for future meals for the new teeth he had bought for Chavarin.
Kane and the Lion were the only men on the drive who were going horseback. They led two packmules with the blankets and provisions. The ten vaqueros worked the herd afoot. The cattle were driven in three separate bunches and allowed to graze the whole way. The drive started south along the Otero River and would head east on the third day. Two of Don Marcos Aquilera's bulls, a brindle and a black, kept trying to turn back. They wanted to go back to their home ground. They constantly, persistently, pressed more work on the vaqueros as they tried for escape. The brindle would amble slowly and stubbornly at right angles to the path of the herd. The black was a fence crosser. Every time the herd neared a fence he got on the other side of it and separated himself from the herd.
Finally the Lion roped the black to bring him back from across a fence. Kane told him to hold the black while Kane roped the brindle. The brindle had wide horns that spread out straight from the sides of his head. When he separated himself from the herd again Kane cut in behind him and rode to him. Kane caught only one horn at the base. He stopped Pajaro and the brindle kept running. The nylon rope stretched, held fast to the horn, the brindle twisted his head slightly and the rope came off his horn, snapped back like a rubber band, and hit Kane on the cheekbone, unhorsing him. Pajaro ran a few steps and stopped. He turned and looked back surprisedly at Jim Kane as if to say, "Now I know that wasn't right." Kane heard the roar of the Lion laughing at him.
One of the vaqueros led Pajaro back to Kane.
"You are supposed to catch both horns, jefe, chief, the vaquero said solemnly. Kane sat on the ground rolling a spur rowel with his finger while he waited for his eyes to uncross and the numbness to go out of his legs so he could get back on his horse. The vaquero picked up the nylon rope and held it up to Kane's face.
"The cable left its signature firmly on your face, jefe," he said. Kane felt his cheek and cheekbone gingerly with the smallest, most tender tips of his fingers and with them sensed ' a four-inch length of broken skin far away on the edge of his numb face.
"A perfect imprint of each coil of the hard twist, jefe. The chavinda almost unmothered your face," the vaquero said sympathetically. Kane thought, a lot is happening to unmother me lately.
"What is this cable used for ordinarily?" the vaquero asked, comparing the nylon with the soft coils of his well tallowed reata.
"Ordinarily for roping bulls by both horns," Kane said. It is called a nylon rope."
"Ah, sí, sí, sí, sí. The lasso would be very heavy for me."
"The nylon can be very heavy on the headbone," Kane said and got back on his horse. He caught the big brindle and led him back to where the Lion was holding the black fence-crosser. The vaqueros brought a mancuerna, an iron swivel with a ring on each end, and tied the two bulls to the rings, necking them together. The black and the brindle bucked and strained against each other, then went straight for the center of the herd and stayed there.
The first night's sabana, or bedground, for the cattle was in a rock corral under a sheer cliff on the edge of the river. The vaqueros shut the cattle in the corral at dark and laid their own beds around the outside of the corral.
The Lion had elected himself cook for the drive. He had made sure all the fresh provisions were pack
ed on the mule he was leading. His saliva began flowing as he unpacked his mule. It increased as the intended dinner gathered momentum with his slicing of the meat into thin steaks and with Kane's building of the fire. His appetite grew larger and manifested itself in a low, grumbling laugh as he warmed the cooked beans he had bought that morning from a woman in Chinipas. His tastes burst forth into grunting, gasping laugh when he salted the meat, bunched coals away from the fire, and laid the steaks on the coals. He unwrapped a bundle of flour tortillas from clean flour sacks, unfolded big sheets of tortilla, and laid them on the coals, grinning at Kane for approval for his foresight in buying the tortillas from the Chinipas woman. When a tortilla was warm and smoking in spots from the coals, he picked up a steak with the tortilla and handed it to a vaquero. There were no dishes on the drive. Tortillas were used to pick up and hold meat and wipe up beans from a common bowl. Each vaquero carried his own cup for coffee and his own knife.
Breakfast was coffee, beans, and tortillas. Lunch was sardines, canned fruit, and tortillas. When no fresh meat was available supper was canned meat, beans, tortillas. The Lion made the tortillas on the trail, the tortillas called gordas, thick tortillas of corn meal or flour. When the herd was near a ranch where he could borrow a stove or a large flatiron he made big, sheetlike tortillas.
Kane had never seen men work so hard requiring so little food and clothing. The vaqueros dressed in thin cotton shirts, baggy jeans pegged at the bottom, huaraches, and straw hats. Each carried a water gourd slung on a string or net from his shoulder, and a reata. The vaqueros smoked coarse, home-grown tobacco rolled in com leaf. They lighted the cigarettes by striking white rock to the steel of their knives and livening the spark in pieces of yesca, the spongy pulp from the center of dead oak.
