Under the Skin

so they wouldn’t spill, then set the rest of the can next to LQ, together with a tin cup.

“Be back soon as I can,” I said.

“Good Lord willing, I expect I’ll be here.”

I drove to the northeast rim of the bluff behind the compound and got out of the car. From there I could scan the country to the north for miles—a pale wasteland under the blazing white moon. To the northeast I could also see the lower portion of the river, extending into the distance like a wrinkled silver ribbon and ending at a dark patch of ground that had to be the cienaga.

And then I saw something else—a small and barely visible cloud of dust moving slowly north alongside the river. It was them. He had his lights off. Me too. We didn’t need headlights anyway, not under that moon.

I hopped back into the car and wheeled it around and eased it along the dense growth of brush and mesquites at the edge of the open ground, gunning the engine, searching for the road to the river. And then I found it. It wasn’t a road so much as a rocky trail rutted by cartwheels. It went winding through the scrub and was so narrow that mesquite branches scraped both sides of the car. I had to take it easy over the rough ground—but even as slow as I was going, the Hudson swayed and bobbed like a boat on choppy waters.

Finally the scrub thinned out and shortened and the river came into view again, much closer now and shining bright under the moon. It was shallow and packed with sandbars. A few yards from the bank the trail turned north, and it was still rough going. Even at fifteen miles an hour the car bounced and swayed and the steering wheel jerked every which way. Now I was raising some dust too, and I wondered if he’d seen it.

I’d gone downriver about three miles when a front tire blew like a pistolshot. The Hudson pulled hard to the right but I wrenched it straight and kept going, the tire flopping. The river narrowed steadily. Then the ground gradually began to smooth out under the Hudson and the terrain began to darken and get grassy. I’d arrived at the end of the river, at the south end of the muddy cienaga.

I stopped the car and got out to look things over. A cool north breeze had picked up and it pushed the stink of the mudpit into my face. The ground was slick under my heel-less boots. If I’d driven any farther north I would’ve bogged down in the muck.

He couldn’t have crossed the river anywhere along the way. To get past the cienaga he had to go around it to the west. There were no tracks on the smooth ground around me, so he must’ve angled over in that direction before coming this close to the mud. I got back in the car and followed the edge of the mudpit to westward.

In less than a quarter mile I came on the Caddy’s tracks where they came up from the south and I could tell from the shape of them that he’d blown at least one tire on each side. The moon eased around to my right from behind me as I followed the tracks along the curving rim of the cienaga to northward. Then the Caddy’s tracks angled away from the mudpit and I knew we were past it. The ground was hard and rough again. The Hudson jolted and pitched.

I drove on, the Hudson’s shadow slowly contracting against the left side of the car.

And then there the Cadillac was, not a half mile ahead. In the distance it looked like a bug on a dirty tablecloth. It took a moment for me to realize that it wasn’t moving. I drew the Mexican Colt from my pants and set it beside me.

I closed in very slowly, then stopped about thirty yards from the Caddy. I didn’t know how he was armed. If he had a rifle he probably would’ve used it before letting me get that close. Then again, maybe he was trying to get me in so close that he couldn’t miss. If he wanted to bargain I was willing: give her to me and we’d be quits. I was pretty sure I’d mean it.

I eased the Hudson forward, ready to wheel it sideways and take cover behind it if he opened fire. Twenty yards from the Caddy I stopped again. It was slumped forward on two front flats. I pulled up to within ten yards. Then closer. And then I was idling right behind it. The interior of the Caddy was too dark for me to see anything in there.

I put the Hudson in neutral and opened my door wide and waited a minute. Nothing from the Caddy. I had the Colt cocked in my hand. Then I switched on my headlights—if he’d been looking back at me, he’d have been blinded in that moment—and I slid out of the Hudson and ran in a crouch up beside the driver’s door and jumped up and stuck the Colt in the window, all set to blow his brains out.

He wasn’t there.

But she was—slumped against the passenger door—and in the same moment that I saw her I realized what a clear target I made in the shine of my headlights. I dropped down and scurried back to the Hudson and reached in and switched off the lights.

I went around to the Cadillac’s passenger side and tucked the Colt in my pants and eased the door open and caught her as she started to fall. Her eyes were closed and she groaned softly and her breath was warm on my face. She moaned louder as I eased her over on the seat and got in beside her. And I felt the blood.

I examined her by the light of the moon. Her elbow was smashed and her lower right arm was slick with blood. Her right side was sopped—blood oozing from a bullet hole just under her arm and from two more, close together, between the ribs and hip.

There was nothing to do about wounds like that. Not in our circumstance. I went back to the Hudson and got one of the bottles I’d filled with water. Some of it had spilled in all the bouncing around but there was still plenty. I put the water to her lips and maybe she sipped some of it but mostly it just ran out of her mouth. I wiped the dribble from her chin and set the bottle on the floor.

I put my hand to her cheek and said her name. I asked her to open her eyes and look at me, to say something, but she didn’t. I held her and crooned to her. I stroked her hair and spoke to her of everything that came to mind. I told her how beautiful she was, how wonderfully brave. I told her how my heart did a little flip the first time I’d seen her. I tried to sing “Red Sails in the Sunset” but forgot the words in both English and Spanish and told her I was sorry. I described the moon and said she really ought to take a look at it and I laughed for both of us at my attempt to trick her into opening her eyes. I talked to her until the sky turned gray at the rim of the mountains. Then I leaned down to retrieve the bottle of water to see if she might drink a little more and when I turned back to her she was dead.

He hadn’t done it, not wounds like that, not on the side away from him. I didn’t have to take the bullets out and see them to know they were .30–06 rounds from a BAR.

The Cadillac motor wouldn’t turn over. Maybe LQ had hit the oil pan and all the oil leaked out and the engine had finally seized.

I gently laid her on her side and told her I’d be back.

Then I went and got in the Hudson and set out into the deeper desert.

The sun was half-risen behind the jagged mountains and looking like a great raw wound when I spotted him a half mile ahead. At first I took him for another greasewood shrub and then understood what I was looking at. He was lying huddled on his side and the possibility that he was dead made my gut go tight.

I stopped the car ten feet from him and blew the klaxon and he stirred slightly. Praise Jesus.

I got out and walked up to him. His hat had fallen off and I saw the black strap of his eyepatch tight against the back of his head. His lank white hair hung over his face. His breathing was raspy but there were no obvious wounds on him, no bloodstains I could see. His coatflap hung down straight with the weight of something heavy in the pocket and I reached down and relieved him of a .38 revolver and slung it out into the scrub. A portion of his wooden leg was visible between the hem of his pantleg and the top of his lowcut Spanish boot. I gave it a hard kick.

He flinched and groaned. I said for him to look at me.

“Mirame, viejo,” I said. “Mirame bien.”

He struggled to push himself up on an elbow, grunting hard, and he finally managed to sit up. He brushed the hair from his eyes and turned his face up to me, sand clinging to his eyepatch, his good eye baggy and bloodshot.

The sun had just risen over the mountains behind him and it blazed full on my face. I was squinting against its glare. I told him again to have a good look at me, that I was the last thing he was going to see in this world. His eye fixed on me hard.

I pulled down my hat brim to shade my eyes and I took out the Colt. I put the muzzle against his forehead and cocked the hammer.

And the son of a bitch laughed.