Under the Skin

Laughed and asked if I was a hallucination. “O eres un espanto?” he said—and laughed even harder, as if the possibility that I was a ghost was the funniest thing in the world.

All these years, he said, all these miserable years gone by and here I was again, threatening his life once more. Well, go ahead and shoot, he said—he was no more afraid of me now than he had been back then.

My finger quivered on the trigger. If he had gone insane he couldn’t appreciate the moment. Then what satisfaction could there be?

He laughed again and said, No, no, of course I wasn’t him. How could I be him, all these years later? I was just one more of his brute kind. There was no end to our kind. Our mongrel breed had robbed him of everything once before, and now, even now, we would rob from him yet again? We would have the girl too? Well, fuck the lot of us. Did I think he was afraid? He spat on my boots. That was how afraid he was. Go ahead, he said… shoot.

I saw the lie in his eyes. He was afraid. He was afraid I wouldn’t shoot him. He wanted to die but didn’t have the balls to shoot himself. Jesus. Who knew what the hell anybody was like under the skin?

I knew that to let him go on living would be greater punishment than to put a quick end to his misery. But it would also be punishment for all the people he would continue to make miserable as long as he was alive.

Or as long as he was able.

I put a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him and tucked the Colt away under my coatflap. His eye went wide with alarm as if he knew what was coming and he tried to break away but I seized a fistful of his hair and held his head fast as I brought out the icepick. He screeched and shut his eye tight and I swiped the tip of the pick through the pinched eyelid and a thin jet of bloody fluid caught the sunlight for one sparking instant—and then his hand was over his eye and blood was running between his fingers and he was screaming.

I left him there, screaming and screaming, staggering around in his darkness under the glaring white sun.

I carried her to the Hudson and then cut the seat-covers out of the Cadillac and used them for a shroud. I replaced the flat tire with the spare and then followed our earlier tracks as I drove back around to the south side of the mudpit. That’s where I buried her. I dug the grave with the tire jack and my hands, working shirtless. It was a long process even in that soft earth. My shoulder wound opened again and blood streaked my chest. When the hole was finally deep enough, I gently laid her in it. And then I covered her up.

I was slow and careful driving back and the tires held up all the way. The sun was directly overhead when I emerged from the scrub trail and pulled up to the compound gate. LQ and Brando were sitting in ladderback chairs in the shade of the gate archway, staring at me. I turned off the motor and got out of the car.

LQ’s left arm had been splinted and freshly bandaged and it was cradled in a clean white sling. He held the tommy gun under his good arm. Brando had the BAR slung on his shoulder and wore no visible bandage but he grimaced and pressed a hand to his side as he stood up.

“Thought you might be dead,” he said.

“Thought you might be,” I said.

LQ gestured at my bloody shirt. “You bad?”

“No. Who fixed you guys up?”

“Bunch of peons,” Brando said. “Took me over to a hut and bandaged me pretty good. Then we come out here and found this peckerwood still alive and they patched him too.”

“Where’re they now?”

“Went home, I guess.” He gestured toward the peon housing on the other side of the compound. “They talked a whole bunch but I never got a word of it.”

“From what I could make out, it was mostly bitching about Calveras,” LQ said. “What a son of a bitch he was and how they hoped he never come back and so on.”

“Well, he aint coming back,” I said.

“Glad to hear it,” LQ said. “Where’s—”

“She aint coming back either.”

They stared at me for a second. “Shit,” Brando said. “I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

“He do her?” LQ said. His eyes gave away what he was really asking. I figured he’d been thinking things over, his mind replaying the exchange of gunfire with the guy in the car.

“Yeah. He did.”

He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and let out a long breath.

Brando put his hand on my good shoulder. “Listen, Jimmy. What say we quit this goddamn country and go home?”

“Let’s do it,” LQ said.

“Let’s,” I said.

Late that night we were back in Villa Acuna. Sanchez’s filling station was closed, and we left the Hudson parked in the rear of it. The car looked a lot less snappy than it had two days ago. LQ wanted to take the Thompson with us, but I said we’d never be able to smuggle it past the border guards, and we left it in the car trunk with the BAR.

A norther had kicked up and steadily strengthened. It gusted hard and cold. We turned up our collars and hugged our coats to us and squinted against the blowing sand. We held tight to our hats as we crossed the bridge. LQ yelled, “So long, Mexico!” and spat over the railing—but just then the wind turned and slung the spit on his hat. He cussed a blue streak and Brando laughed.

They slept as the train rocked through the night. I sipped coffee and stared out at the moonlit landscape, catching sight of a lone coyote now and then, a solitary tumbleweed bounding alongside the tracks. The country regained grass and hills and trees. Brando had cleaned out my wound with tequila and bandaged it with a clean cloth he got from somewhere, but the shoulder had stiffened through the day and the ache of it ran deep under the muscle, down to the bone.

We went through San Antonio, chugged through Seguin, Luling, Columbus, and still I couldn’t sleep.

The day broke gray and very cold and the trees were shaking in the wind. In Houston we changed trains. And then we were over Galveston Bay and at last I fell asleep for the few minutes it took to arrive at the station.

We stepped down from the coach and here came Big Sam through the crowd, smiling his movie star smile— then making a face of sympathy at the sight of LQ’s armsling. He shook our hands and said he was happy to see us all back.

Rose was waiting at the station’s front doors.

“Welcome home, Kid.”

I nodded.

He smiled—and then led the way out, checking his watch as he went, because there were things to tend to, as always. Deals to close, payments to pick up, promises to collect on, warnings to deliver, accounts to settle…

About the Author

Under the Skin is JAMES CARLOS BLAKE ’s seventh novel and eighth book of fiction. Among his literary honors are the Quarterly West Novella Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Chautauqua South Book Award, and the Southwest Book Award. He resides in Arizona.

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