the countryside. The sun had gone down inside the clouds west of the mountains but had not died. Instead, a dull silver luminescence had pooled like smelted nickel in the clouds, accentuating the darkness of the valley and the poplar trees along the broken highway and the red-lit stucco houses along the street where the prostitutes sat in the windows, wearing flip-flops and loose dresses and no underwear because of the heat and the summerlike deadness in the air.
Though a big window fan sucked the cigarette smoke out of the cantina, the drain holes in the concrete floor smelled of stagnant water and spilled beer. R.C. could also smell the ammonia-like reek of the long stone trough in the bano, which had the words SOLO PARA URINAR painted over the open door. Most of the electrical lighting in the cantina came from the neon Dos Equis and Carta Blanca signs above the bar; but there was a purple stain to it, from either the gathering of the dusk in the streets or the tarnished glow inside the clouds west of the mountains, and the faces of the men drinking at the bar had the garish characteristics of cartoon figures. For R.C., the drinks the mulatto had bought him were coming at a high cost. His head was ringing, his heart was beating faster than it should, and the atmosphere around him had become as warm and damp and suffocating as a wool cloak.
Why was he having these thoughts and mental associations and seeing these images? he wondered.
The mulatto wore a smoke-stained, greasy wide-brimmed leather hat with a leather cord that flopped under his chin, and a leather vest without a shirt and striped suit pants without a belt and boots that had roweled spurs on the heels. Locks of his orange hair were flattened on his forehead; his eyebrows formed a solid line; his square teeth and the bones in his face and the thickness of his lips made R.C. think of a hard, compact gorilla. The mulatto filled his mouth with mescal and gargled with it before he swallowed, then pulled a bandanna from his back pocket and wiped his chin. “What’d you say you was doing here, man?”
“Trying to get my tire fixed,” R.C. said.
“Yeah, me, too, man. That’s how I ended up on a street full of puta. Getting my tire fixed. That’s good, man. You ain’t been in back yet?”
“I’m here ’cause a guy gave me a ride here.”
“You want a ride, there’s a chica out back will buck you to the ceiling.” The bartender set a plate of sizzling onions and sliced green peppers and skillet grease and tortillas in front of the mulatto and went away. The mulatto rolled a tortilla full of onions and peppers and started eating. “Put something in your stomach, man. But don’t drink no more mescal. You look like you been on board a ship in a bad storm. Hey, Bernicio, give my friend some coffee.”
The bartender filled a cup from a tin pot that sat on a hot plate by the line of liquor bottles on the back counter. R.C. lifted the cup to his mouth, blowing on it, hardly able to swallow because it was so hot.
“What kind of work you do, man, besides drive around in Mexico and have flat tires?” the mulatto asked.
“I buy and sell livestock.”
“Wild horses, huh?”
“Sometimes.”
“For dog food?”
“I don’t know what happens to them.”
“You guys have shot most of them, hombre. There ain’t many left. Where do you go to shoot them now? On the street of puta?”
“I’m just the middleman.”
“You’re wearing ironed blue jeans and a clean cowboy shirt with flowers printed on it. You got Tony Lamas on your feet. You got a shave and a new haircut, too. You’re down here for puta, man. You ain’t been buying no horses.”
“I’ve got me a girlfriend here’bouts, but I don’t call her what you just said.”
“When you’re in the sack with a woman, hombre, it’s for one reason, and the reason has got one name. Don’t feel guilty about it. It ain’t natural for a man to go against his desires.”
R.C. drank again from the coffee cup, then set it down on the bar. His throat felt clotted, as though he had swallowed a handful of needles and could not blow them from his windpipe.
“Here, eat a tortilla,” the mulatto said. “You ever have your throat blessed by the crossing of the candles on St. Blaise’s Day? See, the priest puts the candles in an X on your throat, and for the next year you don’t got to worry about choking on a bone or a piece of glass somebody put in your food. You okay, rubio?”
“Why you calling me that?”
“’Cause you’re rubio and macho, man. You’re blond and strong and got cojones and can kick ass, I bet. Here, drink your coffee, then we’ll go out back. It won’t cost you nothing. I got a tab here. The best thing about my tab is I ain’t got to pay it. You know why that is, man?”
R.C. could feel the skin on his face shrinking and growing hot, the beer signs and long bar and cuspidors streaked with tobacco juice slipping out of focus, the colors in the plastic casing on the jukebox dissolving and fusing together, the grin on the mulatto’s face as red and wet as a split in a watermelon.
“I’ll tell you why I ain’t got to pay. I’m friends with La Familia Michoacana. You know who them guys are? They’re religious crazies who cut off people’s heads when they ain’t transporting meth up to your country. We got your country by the balls, man. You need our dope, and you like to screw our women. But I’m gonna take care of you. Hang on to my arm. I’m gonna introduce you to a chica out back you gonna love. You can use my spurs on her, man.”
R.C. felt himself falling to the floor, but the mulatto and a second man grabbed him and fitted each of his arms across their shoulders and carried him through the back of the bar, past a small dance floor and the stone urinal that was shielded only by a bead curtain, and into the alleyway between the cantina and the row of cribs that had canvas flaps on the doorways.
R.C. heard himself speaking as though his voice existed outside his body and he had no control over it.
“What’s that you say?” the mulatto asked. “I couldn’t hear. My ears are stopped up, and my mind is slow. It’s ’cause of the way I grew up, working on a gringo ranch for a few pesos a day and eating beans that never had no meat in them. Getting slapped on the ear didn’t help none, either. Okay, go ahead, I’m listening real good now.”
R.C. heard himself speaking and then laughing like he had never laughed in his life, his legs as weak as tendrils hanging from the bottom of his torso.
“Oh, that’s good, hombre, ” the mulatto said, having listened carefully to R.C.’s words.” ‘Mexico would make a great golf course if it was run by Texans.’ But you’re a narc, man, so guess who we gonna sell you to? You get to meet La Familia Michoacana. They don’t mess around. When they catch informers or narcs pretending to be down here for puta, they put their heads out on the sidewalk with the blindfolds still on and sometimes a cigarette in their mouths. Believe me, man, when I tell you this. What’s gonna happen to you ain’t gonna be like life on no golf course.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Hackberry came through the front door of the cantina, he saw the bartender take note of him and Pam, then continue eating from a bowl of tripe, blowing gently on each spoonful before he placed it in his mouth. The bartender was seated on a stool, a napkin tucked inside the top of his shirt, his throat skin as coarse and wrinkled as a turkey’s, his eyes like big brown buttons in a pie-plate face, his head shaved bald and a large black swastika, with red feathers for appendages, tattooed on the crown of his skull. He told Hackberry that he was sorry, but no, he had not seen anyone in the bar resembling Hackberry’s young friend. His hands were big and square and looked like those of a bricklayer rather than those of a bartender. He continued eating, leaning forward over the bowl of tripe, careful not to spill any on top of his stomach.
“How long have you been on duty here?” Hackberry said.
“A few hours,” the bartender replied. “But sometimes I got to serve food and drinks in the back. Maybe your friend was here but I didn’t see him.”
“In back?” Hackberry said.
“That’s right, senor. We rent rooms to people who have traveled from far away. Sometimes they drink too much and want to rest before they drive home again.”
