Dress Her in Indigo

by John D. MacDonald

  A madman is curiously deadly. When the strictures and restraints of civilization and conscience are wiped away, the animal can move with ancient shrewdness. Man is a predator.

  He stood downhill from me, slowly swinging the stone ball from side to side at the end of the stick, planning what to do next. Stocky little storekeeper in blue beret and new goatee, and just as calmly intent on killing me as a Bengal tiger would have been.

  I squatted by my wall and picked up a rock the size of my head and held it in both hands and arched it at him, like taking a shot from the foul line. He squinted up at it and stepped to his right. It hit, bounced and rolled down through coarse grass and brush toward the temple level below. All the ruins were silent. For perhaps the first time in my life. I desperately wanted to see a chattering flock of tourists, festooned with Instamatics, leaving a spoor of yellow boxes.

  I knew that if I didn’t come up with something workable, fat Wally would, and I wouldn’t like it.

  Misdirection is the name of the game. I couldn’t point behind him and yell, “Hey! Tourist!” and hope to bounce a rock off his skull as he turned and stared.

  But he had looked up at the big rock, hadn’t he? Indeed he had. So I palmed a couple of good small ones, holding them in place against my palm with ring fingers and little fingers, and picked up another big melon of a rock and gave it as much height and distance as I could, and as he looked up at it, I let fly with the first small stone. He glimpsed my movement and looked at me, moving swiftly to his left along the slope. He ducked away from the first small one, had to check the one in the air again to be sure he was out from under it, and moved forward, taking the second small rock high on the forehead and going ass over teacup into a backward somersault as I came bounding down the slope. He peered up at me, on hands and knees, a bright rush of blood on his face. He had lost the ancient fake weapon and the blue beret and his glasses. But he reached and grabbed the weapon and took a blind full-arm swing and got me on the outside of the left thigh, just below the hip bone. It felt to me as if he had smashed the hip. I fell and rolled and got up, surprised to be able to get up. He wiped blood out of his eye and started toward me and I made ready for him, telling myself I would catch that damned rock, catch it in my teeth if I had to, and take it away from him and feed it to him. He hesitated and ran down the slope. I saw him fall and roll and get up and disappear into the maze of walls behind the temple facade. I was trembling with reaction. I picked up the sweaty beret and the eyeglasses with the tilt-shades attached, and saw that one lens was shattered.

  I went hobbling on my broken, ground-glass hip to the opened tombs and heard myself saying, “Sorry. Sorry, Meyer. Sorry.”

  I got him by the belt and pulled him out of the tomb. He seemed very heavy. I rolled him onto his back. He was very loose and sloppy. He had a lump over his ear the size of half an apple. His cheeks and forehead were scratched and torn from rolling down the slope. I put my ear against his chest, and the mighty old heart of Meyer said, reassuringly, “Whup tump, whup tump, whup tump.”

  So I thumbed an eyelid up, and a blank, sightless, and bright blue eye stared out, stared through and beyond me.

  The other one opened, unaided, and slowly the focus came back from ten thousand miles in space, down through all the layers with fancy names, and stared at me. Tongue came out and licked dusty lips. Rusty voice said, “So? So hello.”

  “Are you dying?”

  “The point is debatable. What happened? I saw McLeen way up on the hill. We started up. Here I am. I fell?”

  “You got hit on the head with a rock.”

  A slow hand came up and the fingers touched the lump. “This is part of my head? Way out there?”

  “Do you want to sit up?”

  “I would like to think about it. We economists have very thick skulls. It is a characteristic. Everybody knows that. But we are happy people with a great sense of rhythm.”

  “You are talking a lot.”

  “It keeps my mind off my head. So let’s try this sitting up part.”

  He sat up and spent a little time moaning. And then he stood up, and we started down the slope, very slowly.

  “Why are you limping?” he asked.

  “I, too, got hit with a rock.”

  “What do you have there in your hand?”

  “A blue beret and a pair of broken glasses. Shut up, Meyer.”

  “Ask a stupid question and you get …”

  “Shut up, Meyer.”

  “Sit up, Meyer. Stand up, Meyer. Walk, Meyer. Shut up, Meyer.”

  I had been listening for the snoring sound of the Honda heading down the hill, and I hadn’t heard it yet. It made me thoughtful. So I made Meyer sit on a short, wide, restored wall, and hold the beret and glasses. I went over to the side and climbed up onto a high wall. I could see a portion of the parking lot. I could see the Falcon and the cycle. I looked around. I could see the pattern of the maze, but not down into the rooms and corridors.

  I dropped down from the wall, and managed not to scream out loud. Just silently, in the brain. I listened for a long time. I moved a few feet and listened again.

  With an explosive grunt of effort he came scuttling out of a doorway, blinking and swinging, forgetting that part about the wrist action, and forgetting how tall I am. I stepped inside the arc, so well inside it that the lethal rock which I had expected might wrap around me and splinter a rib, smacked the wall behind me instead. I got one paw on the stick and the flat of my other hand against his chest, pushed and yanked and took away the toy. He ran backward, kept his balance, turned, and kept running. I went after him with no hope of catching him—not on a leg that felt as if I were wearing it backwards—but to see where he was headed, and if there was anyone interested in stopping him.

  He came out onto the wide stone plaza that ran along the front of the temple façade. By the time I got to the end of the unroofed corridor and made the turn, he was scooting along toward the nearest set of big steep stone stairs leading down to the lower courtyard level, to the same level as the ball court a hundred yards away.

  As I came hitching and galumphing along, I saw him make his turn and slow to go down the stone steps. He tried to take the steps in stride, but he had not slowed quite enough, probably because perceptions of depth and distance were flawed without the thick lenses. So momentum carried him to the outside edge of the stairs. There was no railing. And he flailed his arms to recover balance but momentum took him over, leaning further and further, his feet trying to stay on the edge of the steep stone.

  He dropped out of my sight. I heard a single cry which could have been “Oh!” and which could have been “No!” The sound ended with a whacking, dusty thud. I went down the steps and around and back to where he lay, half in white sunlight, half in black shadow. He lay on his right side in white dust, using a rock for a pillow, left arm curled around the pillow.

  I went down onto one knee with some difficulty, and as I placed the pads of three fingers against the big artery in the side of his throat, I could see into his half-open mouth, see the neat gleam of a reasonably new filling. The dentist probably belonged to the same luncheon clubs and called him Wally, told him jokes and told him when to spit. The artery throbbed once, and in about three seconds throbbed again with half the vigor, and then did not ever move again. Escaping air rattled in his throat. All my life I had heard about the death rattle. Thought it was a myth. Now it was confirmed. A classic sample. A collector’s item.

  I stood up and walked beyond the steps. No tourists. A thousand years worth of silence. Baked rocks. Shards. Dust. A lot of Indio blood had soaked into the soil of Yagul, enough to chill the back of my neck. And I had to go up and get Meyer and did not relish the climb.

  But Meyer was sitting up on the stone plaza, his feet on the top stair. His color was pasty.

  “I told you to stay put.”

  “I came to tell you I feel very dizzy. And … in all truth, a little bit frightened.”

  I got up
those stairs and got him down them, taking a lot of his weight. I then put the blue beret next to the stone pillow, and tucked one bow of the broken glasses under Wally’s cheek. I had shoved the wooden handle of the weapon down inside my belt, above the right hand pants pocket, and put the stone ball in the pocket, so that only the braided leather showed.

  Walked by the ball court, out along the path. No new visitors. Tourists go to Monte Albán, to Mitla, not often to Yagul. I shouted the gnarled little ticket-taker out of his shady nest, and pointed back in agitation, and then at the Honda, saying in my pidgin Mexican that the man had fallen, the man was hurt. He looked absolutely blank, and then there was sudden comprehension and concern. I said I would have the ambulancia come, the Cruz Rojo, los doctores. He went trotting to find the dead daddy of the dear daughter, and I wedged Meyer into the Falcon and took off. Before we got to the main highway, he toppled over against the door on his side.

  The large modern hospital was on the fringe of La Colonia, toward the city. I was glad I had taken Brucey and Davey there. I left rented rubber on every turn, using one hand to hold Meyer in place when I made turns to the right.

  A birdlike little nurse came hurrying out of the emergency entrance. She ignored my linguistics. She looked at Meyer, sucked air audibly as she saw the lump on his head. She directed the attendants who lifted him onto the stretcher and rolled him in. I refused to understand their instructions to get my car out of the way, knowing it was perhaps the quickest way to contact somebody who could speak English.

  A big brown man in a white smock appeared and said, “Would you please move your car out of the ambulance gate, sir. You can park it in back.”

  “My friend and I saw a man fall from in front of the temple at Yagul. While we were hurrying to tell the man who sells the tickets, my friend fell and struck his head. The man who fell was an American tourist, and I think the fall may have killed him, Doctor. What about my friend?”

  “He is being examined right now. If you will move your car and then go to the office and help with the admission papers …”

  “Is he in bad shape?”

  “Please move your car.”

  And so I did. Then a large, billowly, benevolent lady in the office helped me interpret their form and put Meyer’s name, rank, and serial number in the right spaces. I caught Enelio Fuentes just as he was leaving the agency. I was using the phone on her desk. Enelio came through with that clout and speed that only a certified member of the local establishment can provide. A Doctor Elvara arrived twenty minutes later to be a consultant on the case. He was young, brisk, authoritative, and emotionless. After fifteen minutes he came back to the waiting room and made his report.

  “There is no fracture. The patient regained consciousness and seemed rational, and then lapsed again into a comatose condition. It is obvious there is a severe concussion. The question of tissue damage cannot be resolved as yet. Pulse, respiration and pressure are good. It is safe to say there is no major area of hemorrhage in the brain, according to present symptoms. There could be a slow seepage from small blood vessels and torn capillaries. If so, the indication will be a deterioration in pressure, respiration, and pulse. We have no mechanized intensive care installation, and so the procedure here is to use student nurses on one hour shifts, constantly taking the pulse rate and the blood pressure and the rate of respiration and marking them on a special chart form which carries a column for cumulative change. If percentage change exceeds specified limits, she will immediately alert surgery. I will be on call and be here by the time the patient is prepared. The chief resident in surgery will assist me. In almost every instance the seepage is subdural, evident, and readily accessible, with a favorable prognosis. When a deeper area is traumatized, the problem becomes more grave.”

  “Do you think you’ll have to operate?”

  “I do not make guesses.”

  I knew he would make his guess if I could word the question correctly. “Doctor Elvara, if you had ten patients with exactly the same test results as my friend, the same lump on the head, how many do you think would require surgery?”

  “Hmmm. Ten is too small a sample. Make it a hundred. At least twenty would require surgery, perhaps as many as forty.”

  “Out of a hundred operations, given the same conditions thus far, how many wouldn’t respond?”

  “Perhaps five, perhaps four.”

  “How long does it usually take before you know whether you have to operate?”

  “There will be a deterioration in the first twelve hours. But we would keep close watch for eighteen to be safe, then two more days of observation before the patient would be discharged.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “You are most welcome.” He stopped outside the door and turned and looked in at me. “You … ask very nice questions,” he said. It was probably his compliment for the whole calendar year.

  So then, three chances out of ten they’ll have to open your skull, Meyer, and, if they do, it’s twenty to one in your favor. Your friendly neighborhood oddsmaker can thus put up fifty bucks against the dollar you don’t make it, and still have a twenty percent edge in his favor. But with your pants showing above the edge of the tomb, you didn’t look all that good.

  But nothing in the world could keep it from being a very very long twelve hours.

  Seventeen

  At eleven on Thursday night the twelve hours were up. Enelio, Margarita, and I got in to see him. Small room. Hospital gown. Side bars on the bed up. Blue beard on Meyer’s jaws. White compress on the head lump. A squatty little girl in gray and white, skin color like old pennies, was pumping the bulb on the blood pressure gadget and reading the levels.

  “Well, well, well,” said Meyer.

  Fuentes said, “Meyer, if you were a gentleman, you would tell the young lady there is a beetle crawling right across that little nurse cap.” When she did not move, Enelio smiled and said, “No English.”

  “Some day,” said Meyer, “kindly tell me what happened. Memory stopped. Travis, you are not limping as much.”

  “They stuck something in there that works like novocaine.”

  The girl posted her chart and started taking his pulse, moving her lips as she watched the sweep second on the gold watch pinned to her uniform.

  “Meyer,” I said, “it now appears that they do not have to open your skull and examine the contents.”

  His eyes went wide. “They were thinking of it?”

  “All day long.”

  “Too bad,” he said, “to deprive them of the chance. Better luck next time.”

  “Now we’re going to the Victoria and celebrate. We’ll order drinks for you too and take turns drinking yours.”

  “Salud, and happy days.”

  Margarita, however, was not going. She had pulled a chair close to the far side of the bed. The squatty student nurse made querulous objection. Margarita blazed up and exploded several packages of Spanish firecrackers around the girl’s head. It backed her up and shut her up, and she soon resumed her testing.

  Margarita looked content as a cat on a warm hearth. She held Meyer’s hand, and with her free hand, she gave that odd little Mexican good-by wave, which looks more like a summoning than a dismissal.

  Meyer gave us an inordinately fatuous smile. I told him I’d be back in the morning. He told me not to put myself out. Elena was waiting in the Falcon. She did not seem at all surprised that her sister had stayed with Meyer. I got the feeling it would have astonished her if Margarita had not stayed. Enelio followed us back to the Victoria. I left Elena off at the main building and told her to wait for me in the lounge. I parked the car there, and concealed the weapon once more, and walked down to the cottage with Enelio. Inside the cottage, with the blinds and draperies closed, Enelio stood and held the handle and let the stone ball swing from side to side, then swung it a few times, cautiously.

  “Hey, one hell of a thing. I have seen the autenticos, in collections. Very much the same thing. Any weapon, they ke
ep changing it, changing it, until it is as dangerous as they can make it. I think you better throw this thing away, my friend.”

  “I have that feeling about it too.”

  “By God, they were a bloody people. A thing like this, there’s no halfway. What it does is kill.”

  I took it and put it in the closet on a shelf. I got out a bottle of genuine bottled-in-Guadalajara House of Lords gin, and phoned up for ice for both of us, and some mix for Señor Fuentes.

  “What about the camper?”

  “Fonny thing. One of our pilots saw something shiny in that arroyo and reported it to the Federales. Maybe they went out today. Maybe in the morning. No talk about it yet. I tell you, Martinez and Tielma are getting damn sick and tired of dead American tourists. Telephone calls come from Mexico City. ‘What are you trying to do down there, you estupidos! Ruin business?’ But I think the little fat man is no problem. Mexico is full of pyramids and temples and they are all of stone, and Mexico is full of tourists, and some of them are feeble and some are careless and some are dronk, and some have bad hearts and faint and fall, so it is not something special, one more little man with a sack full of pieces of pots, eh?”

  “If anybody else had shown up, it would have been a different ball game.”

  “Not so many go to Yagul. Some days probably nobody. Maybe two or three days, nobody.”

  The ice and mix came. We fixed our own. He give a little lift of his glass and gave that Spanish toast that covers everything there is. “Health, money, love, and time to enjoy them.” I’ve never been able to think of anything it doesn’t cover.

  “So,” said Enelio, “your friend will be all right, and now it is finished, and now you go home and you tell nice pretty little lies to the father, eh?”