Death of a Citizen Page 8

  Along about dawn, I got tired of fighting the steering wheel and turned off onto a dirt road leading west across somebody’s ranch. I followed this for a mile or two, until the growing light showed me a kind of hollow to the left where the desert cedars grew more thickly than elsewhere. I headed down there without benefit of road.

  Parking in a little clearing among the low, twisted evergreens, I climbed out stiffly and eased the door closed without latching it, so as not to wake Tina, who was curled up asleep under her furs at the far end of the seat. Then I walked to the top of the nearest rise and stood looking at the brightening yellow-pink sky to the east. It was going to be another clear day. Most of them are, in our part of the country.

  Little weak lights crawled across the dark plain under the beautiful sky, over where the highway was. I had that curious feeling of unreality you sometimes get after a sleepless night. It didn’t seem likely that, some hundred-odd miles to the north, there was an abandoned mine containing a pretty girl with a sheathed throwing knife at the back of her neck and a bullet in her head—laid out neatly at the side of the black tunnel with a raincoat over her and her luggage beside her, and covered with as much protection in the way of rocks and earth as we’d been able to scrape together with the tools at our disposal. Tina had considered this a sentimental waste of time, and she’d been perfectly right, but I felt better for having done it. As she kept pointing out, I was soft, these days. I couldn’t help thinking of things like rats and coyotes.

  Nor did it seem very plausible that, only a few score yards from where I stood, there was sleeping a beautiful dark female in mink, who was not my wife…

  I’m not a wood-fire enthusiast where cooking is concerned, preferring just about any kind of stove if I can get it, but I hadn’t got around to filling the can of white gas for the Coleman, and there was an autumn chill in the air and several dead trees around. We’ve got some kind of a bug that’s been killing off the nice old evergreens at a fearful rate the last few years. I got out the axe, and presently I had a pleasant blaze going under the coffee pot and frying pan. I heard the cab door open. When I looked up, Tina was standing there, pushing the hair back from her face with both hands, stretching and yawning like a waking cat. I couldn’t help laughing. She cut her yawn off short.

  “What is funny, Eric?”

  I said, “Baby, you should see yourself.”

  She looked down at herself in the light of the newborn day, and made a gesture as if to smooth down her clothing, but let her hands fall helplessly to her sides; the situation had obviously passed far beyond such simple remedies. She’d never again make a grand entrance in that particular outfit. Her gloves and hat were missing, already mere debris scattered about the truck. The smart black cocktail dress, its hem torn and dangling, was smeared with mine dust and creased with sleeping. Her pumps were rock-cut and grimy, and she had runs in both stockings. Only the furs about her shoulders seemed unaffected by the night’s adventures. Their glossy perfection made the rest of her costume seem even more forlorn by comparison.

  Tina laughed, and shrugged cheerfully. “Ah, well,” she said, pushing her hair back from her face, “c’est la guerre. You will buy me some new clothes when we come to a town, nicht wahr?”

  “Si, si,” I said, to prove I also knew some languages. “The dressing room is behind the third cedar to the west, and I hope you’re a quick mover, because these eggs are almost done.”

  While she was gone, I spread an army blanket for us to sit on, dished up our breakfasts, and poured the coffee. When she came back, she’d combed her hair, pulled up her stockings, and put on some lipstick, but she still wasn’t the most glamorous female in the world, even for five o’clock in the morning. The women’s magazines to which Beth subscribes would have considered her case with pity and horror. She wasn’t dainty, fresh, and sweet-smelling; it was clear that, in her present dilapidated condition, the poor girl had no chance whatever of attracting a man.

  Sometimes I wonder where those mags get their data on male psychology. I ask you, gentlemen, is your beast generally aroused by a lovely lady looking like an angel and smelling like a rose? I’m not speaking of love and tenderness now; if you’re looking for someone to protect and cherish, okay, and maybe that’s what the female editors have in mind; but for purposes of passion, I think you want another stinking lowdown human being like yourself, not a shining and immaculate vision from above.

  She sat down beside me. I handed her her plate, put her cup on a level spot beside her, cleared my throat, and said, “We left tracks all over those hills back there, but if anybody knows enough to look for them, and follow them to the mine, they know too much already. Do you want some whiskey in your coffee?”

  She glanced at me. “Should I?”

  I shrugged. “It’s supposed to be good for warding off the chill, also for softening up members of the opposite sex for immoral purposes.”

  “Are your purposes immoral, chéri?”

  “Naturally,” I said. “I’m bound to be unfaithful to my wife before I’m through with you. It was inevitable from the moment I saw you last night. Well, this is a nice quiet place. Let’s get it over with, so I can relax and stop wrestling with my conscience.”

  She smiled. “Somehow, I do not think you’re wrestling very hard, my dear.”

  I shrugged and spread my hands. “It’s not much of a conscience.”

  She laughed. “Your approach is so crude and I am so hungry. Wait until I’ve finished my breakfast before you rape me. But I will take a little whiskey in my coffee, thank you.” She watched me pour it into her cup and mine. After a little, she said, “Your wife is very pretty.”

  “And very nice,” I said, “and I love her dearly, in another existence, and now let’s shut up about my wife. That’s the Pecos River down the valley. You can’t see it, but it’s there.”

  “Indeed?”

  “It’s a very historic stream,” I said. “There was a time when ‘West of the Pecos’ meant something wild and wonderful. Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving were ambushed by Indians—Comanches, I think—not too far from here. They were taking a herd of Texas cattle north. Loving was wounded in the arm. Goodnight slipped away and came back with help, but Loving’s arm got infected and he died from blood poisoning. The Comanches were great horsemen, some of the finest fighting men who ever drew a bow. I’ve never written much about them.”

  “Why not, Liebchen?”

  “They were a great warrior nation. I can’t dislike them enough to make them villains; and on the other hand, most books about noble redskins make me want to vomit, even my own. Now, the Apaches are much better suited to literary purposes. In their way, I suppose, they were kind of great, too—certainly they kept the U.S. Army running in circles for a hell of a long time— but they didn’t have many admirable character traits that I can discover. As far as I can make out from the available records, the biggest thief and liar was the most highly respected Apache. Courage was for the birds, in their book. Oh, an Apache could die bravely enough if he absolutely had to, but it would always be a blot on his record: he should have been able to pull a sneak somehow. And their sense of humor was fairly gruesome. They liked nothing better than raiding a lonely ranch, eating the mules—they were very fond of mule meat—and leaving the inhabitants behind in what they considered a hilariously funny condition. I mean, take one prisoner, scalp well, chop off the ears and nose, gouge out the eyes and tongue, slice off the breasts if female and the private parts if male, and sever the heel tendons. Then, if they were Apaches of the old school— they’re all civilized and respectable now, of course— they laughed themselves silly watching the bloody, croaking thing flopping blindly around in the dirt. Then they rode off, leaving it still alive, so that the next white man who came along, if he was merciful enough to take the responsibility on his soul, had to shoot it. This wasn’t a ritual, you understand, not a ceremonial test of courage like the tortures of some other tribes. It was just a bunch of the boys
having themselves some good clean fun. Oh, the Apaches were a wonderful, uninhibited people in their day. They kept New Mexico and Arizona practically deserts for years. They make fine heavies. I don’t know how I’d make a living without them.” I reached for her plate as she set it aside. “More?”

  She shook her head, smiling. “You do not encourage the appetite, Eric. And you have a strange way of setting the mood for love, with this talk of gouged-out eyes and sliced-off breasts.”

  “I was just talking,” I said. “Just showing off my vast store of specialized knowledge. A man’s got to talk about something while he waits for a woman to feed her face. I’d rather talk about Apaches than about my wife and kids, as you were starting to do.”

  “It was you who mentioned her first.”

  “Yes,” I said, “to keep the record clear, but you weren’t supposed to take the ball and run with it… What the hell are you doing?”

  She looked a little startled by the question. She was lying back against a duffel bag with her dress bunched carelessly and much leg showing; and she’d been idly picking at one of her stockings with a sharp fingernail, and watching the resulting run, encouraged, travel in a pale streak over her knee and down her shin and instep, to vanish inside her dusty shoe. Even though the nylons were already past saving, it seemed like an immoral thing to do.

  She moved her shoulders. “I… like the way it tickles. What does it matter? It is already ruined. Eric?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you always loved me?”

  I said, “I haven’t thought about you for ten years, darling.”

  She smiled. “That is not the question I asked. One does not have to think, to love.”

  Then, although the morning was chilly, she took off her glossy furs and laid them carefully away on a far corner of the blanket. She turned back to face me in her rumpled sleeveless dress. The bare arms made her look very vulnerable at that temperature; I wanted to take her just to keep her warm. Her lips were a little parted, and her violet eyes, half-closed, looked both sleepy and bright, if such a thing is possible. Her meaning was clear. She had put aside the only thing she’d brought here that she cared to preserve. The rest, already in disrepair, did not matter; I needn’t concern myself about it. I didn’t.

  16

  I bought a pair of jeans, 24 waist, a denim shirt, 14 neck, a pair of white athletic socks, size eight, and a pair of blue Keds, size seven and a half—she was no real Cinderella where her feet were concerned. Then I bought two boxes of .22 Long Rifle High Speed cartridges and a bottle of bourbon. We were heading towards Texas, and although you won’t believe it, that great big he-man state is practically dry. There are no bars, and the restaurants serve only beer and wine. Of course, there are ways of circumventing this strange legislation but… Texas, for God’s sake!

  The town wasn’t large and they had all the stuff in one dark, dusty old general store—called a trading post out here—except the whiskey, for which I had to go to the shiny little drugstore across the street. Starting back towards the truck, I had to wait for a four-wheel-drive jeep station wagon to go by. It was one of the more recent glamorized jobs, green and white. Why anybody would bother to try to glamorize any kind of a jeep with two-tone paint I couldn’t tell you. It seems kind of like tying a pink ribbon around the tail of a hardworking jackass.

  There were two men in the front seat. One was an older man with a mustache. He was driving. The other was a young fellow in a big, flat-crowned black hat with the wide brim curving up at the sides—real cool, man. I couldn’t see his feet, but his boots would have at least two-inch heels to go with that headgear, and his black leather jacket completed the ensemble perfectly.

  I let the sturdy vehicle go past; then I crossed over, got into the truck, and drove out of town, heading south. It was getting close to noon now. We weren’t going to set any mileage records for the day, having already wasted half the morning in one place—if you want to call it wasted. But then, we weren’t going anywhere in particular; at least, if we were, I hadn’t been informed of it yet. In the meantime, since no better itinerary had been offered me, I was sticking to my planned route down the valley of the Pecos.

  It was a nice, bright day, with the sky clear blue, the land yellow-brown except for some distant purple mountains—the Sacramentos or Guadalupes—and the road black and clean and uncluttered by the herds of Texans and Californians who make our highways hideous during the tourist season. The Texans drive as if they own the country, the Californians as if they merely want to be buried in it, preferably with a few local yokels for company. But they’d all gone into hibernation for the year, and I cruised along at an easy sixty and grinned as I came up behind a little British car, on the rear of which was pasted a sticker reading: DON’T HONK, I’M PEDALING AS FAST AS I CAN.

  I passed the little bug, jacked the speed up another five, and pretty soon found a dry creek bed crossing the highway, with a road—two wheel-tracks, rather—leading along it in the direction that would be upstream when the water was running. I turned in over a cattle guard and bounced along for a few hundred yards until a bend in the watercourse put some brush and cottonwoods between us and the highway—some, but not too much. There didn’t seem to be anything of note around, except some Hereford steers, and they never bother anybody.

  I got out and went into the bushes to pass the time convincingly, meanwhile watching the highway through the screen of brush and trees. The little import went buzzing past. Pretty soon the green and white jeep wagon came barreling along, containing only the mustached driver. I saw him start to turn his head as he went by, and think better of it; but he saw us all right, as he was supposed to. It wouldn’t do for him to think we were hiding from him.

  I went back to the truck, took Herrera’s little revolver out of my hip pocket, and wedged it out of sight between the back and seat cushions. I’d been going to buy extra shells for that, too, and play around with it to see what it would do, but on second thought it had seemed better not to advertise that I had it. Sometimes an extra weapon, conveniently cached away, can be quite useful.

  I went back and opened up the rear of the truck. Tina had made herself a kind of nest of duffel bags and bedding. She was lying there quite comfortably, wearing one of my old khaki shirts, open, and a black pantie-girdle that had survived the recent emotional storm with only minor damage.

  Tina smiled at me. “This country of yours, chéri! One moment you are freezing, the next you are being roasted in a hot oven. Did you get me something to wear?”

  I tossed her the paper-wrapped package. Looking at her, I felt a kind of constriction in my throat that had, I suppose, something to do with love, of one kind or another.

  “I’m going up the wash and fire off a few rounds,” I said. “Just to get my hand in. Come along as soon as you’re ready, but don’t rush it. Take everything nice and easy. We’ve been spotted, and we’re probably being watched from up on the ridge right now.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. She looked at the cigarette she had been smoking, and pitched it past me, out the open door. “You are sure?”

  I turned to grind out the smoldering stub with the toe of my boot. You get so it’s a habit, particularly in a dry season, even when you’re out on the desert where there isn’t a damn thing to burn.

  I said, “We’ve had an overgrown delinquent behind us in some kind of a jazzy Plymouth with fins like a shark, for the past fifty miles. Black hat and sideburns. Back in town, he came rolling past in a jeep station wagon with another fellow at the wheel. Now he’s vanished, but the jeep’s on our tail. Pretty soon, I figure, the jeep will drop out and another guy will take over in some other kind of machinery, maybe a pickup for variety, and then perhaps we’ll go back to young Mr. Blackhat and his Plymouth dreamboat.” I reached out and patted her bare ankle, which, slender and nicely formed, was worth a pat or two. “Make it casual. Comb your hair and put on lipstick, out where they can see you, before you join me.”

  �
�But, Eric—”

  I said, “Just get dressed, honey, we’ll talk later. If they’ve got glasses on us, I don’t want them to think we’re holding a council of war. I almost walked into the side of their wagon, back in town, and they’re probably wondering if it was just a coincidence or if they’ve tipped their hand.”

  I reached up to lower the canopy door. She said, “All right, but leave it open, please, or I’ll smother in here, now that we’ve stopped.”

  I shrugged, and sauntered around to get the .22s out of the cab. I wandered away upstream until I found a place where the hank of the wash was steep enough to stop a bullet without causing it to ricochet and endanger the local cattle population, but not so high as to hide what I was doing from any vantage points in the surrounding territory that might be occupied by interested observers. I set up a tin can, backed off about twenty yards, took out the Woodsman, and emptied the clip, hitting with seven out of the nine shots. Barbara Herrera had received the tenth bullet out of that load. I filled the clip and tried again, this time getting only one miss in ten shots. While I was shoving fresh cartridges into the clip, Tina came up, carrying a bundle.

  I turned to look at her. She wasn’t exactly the blue-jeans type as you see it portrayed locally. Her breasts and buttocks didn’t threaten to erupt through the tough new cloth, which made her strictly a square, I guess, by current high-school standards. As a matter of fact, with her short black hair, she had kind of a boyish look.

  “Everything fit?” I asked.

  “The shirt is a little large,” she said. “What do I do with this?”

  She held out the bundle, which seemed to contain her discarded party clothes.

  “Toss it into the bushes,” I said, and grinned. “It’ll give them something to investigate.” She did as instructed. I offered her the gun. “Here. Shoot slowly and don’t seem to pay much attention to me.” I sat down on a boulder to watch her. She examined the pistol, shoved the safety off with her thumb, and fired once. “A couple inches low,” I said. “Don’t hold at six o’clock, she’s sighted to shoot center… I know you’ll have to report that we’ve got an escort, but an hour more or less isn’t going to make too much difference. If we’d hung around that town long enough for you to scramble into some clothes and dash to the nearest phone, they’d have known we were on to them. I think it’s better that we seem to be loafing along without a care in the world, so they feel they can take their time with whatever they plan to do—both here and in Santa Fe.”