[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
those. It will be a while before we are where I can get them.
I considered this. I asked Leonard what he thought.
Well, he said. I ve felt better. But I ve had a lot worse. I think if I get
some antibiotics, some rest, I ll be all right.
Beatrice helped me take Leonard off the boat and onto the dock. I had no idea
what was going to happen from there. Neither she nor her father owed us
anything. They could have just turned us loose in the night. Fact was, they
had put themselves in considerable jeopardy to aid us. But I was relieved when
Beatrice said, We ll take your friend to our home for tonight. I want you and
him to leave tomorrow. Do you understand that?
Sure, I said.
I am sorry for your friend, but we do not need enemies. My father makes
enemies often.
I bet he makes friends often too, I said.
Enemies seem a little more determined than friends, she said. Friends have
a way of going away when you need them.
That isn t my experience, I said. It depends on who you call friend.
She had one of Leonard s arms draped over her shoulder, and I had the other.
He was groaning as we walked along.
I followed Beatrice s lead. We ended up out back of a stucco building where
there were cars sitting in a dark lot near a sign painted on the side of the
building. The sign was for some kind of Mexican pastry and the moon made it
shiny and white and surreal there in the night.
Beatrice unlocked an old white van and we got inside. The interior was well
worn, seats ripped up, patches of cloth hanging from the ceiling. The van had
Page 35
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
no back seat and was empty of possessions, except for some tow sacks in the
back. We placed Leonard on those. I made as comfortable a pillow as I could
for him out of a spare sack. He said, I lost my goddamn hat.
Just goes to show, I said, the day hasn t been a total loss. But we ve
discussed what happened to the hat.
We have?
You weren t feeling too good at the time, but yes, we discussed it. One of
our muggers stepped through it.
Oh yeah. I remember.
I climbed in the passenger s seat and Beatrice started the van. I said, What
about Ferdinand? He said he was coming.
He always says that, but he does not come. He stays with the boat with José
and his brothers. I think he likes it that way. He loves that boat. If he were
coming, he would have come.
The van coughed and sputtered and rolled forward with a protesting lurch,
banged into a couple of potholes, crunched gravel, and off we went.
We drove along bad roads for an hour or so. It had grown very dark because
clouds had bagged the moon. There was just the van s headlights on the road,
and a little glow from the dash light that shone against Beatrice s face and
gave it a ghostly appearance and made her little silver earrings float about
her ears like spectral fish swimming in the ether.
We talked a little, but nothing to take note of. We just rode on into the
night until we came to some sparsely wooded hills that swelled on either side
of the road, and we were swallowed by them. Somewhere along there, without
meaning to, due to the rocking of the van, the kind of day I had had, I
drifted off to sleep, and it was the dying of the motor that brought me awake.
It was a simple house, part adobe, part thatch, just like you see in the
movies about Mexico. There were scrubby trees in the yard and an old white
Ford without tires or wheels sitting out to the side of the house. Prickly
pear had grown up all around it and the moon was out from behind the clouds
again and I could see the car was stuffed with all manner of junk.
Beatrice helped me wake Leonard and get him into the house. I held Leonard up
while she lit lamps. I didn t see an electric light or refrigerator. The house
was very small. Three rooms. Two of the rooms were bedrooms, the other was a
kitchen of sorts with an old wooden stove. After we got Leonard stretched out
on a bed in one of the bedrooms, slipped off his shoes, she took me outside
and showed me where the outdoor convenience was. It was a leaning rectangle of
graying slats with a tin roof and it smelled just like what was under it.
Beatrice seemed a little embarrassed by it all.
We went back inside and she got a large jar of pills and brought them out.
Antibiotics, she said.
Jesus, that s certainly the economy version, I said.
You can buy them like that here. Not like in the States.
Do you go to the States often?
Not anymore, she said. I lived there once. I studied archaeology at the
University of Texas. Austin.
I ve always been interested in archaeology.
She gave me a curious eyeballing.
Seriously, I said, and told her about having done some digs here and there
when I was young, Caddo Indian stuff in East Texas mostly. I had been the
shovel boy for a nice amateur archaeologist named Sam Whiteside. She talked
about going to the University of Texas, then the University of Mexico, and how
she had graduated with a degree in anthropology and archaeology.
She got some water and the pills and took them to Leonard. He was sweating
slightly and had a fever. He was only partially awake.
These, she said, shaking the jar of pills, should get the infection down.
He has not lost much blood. Tomorrow, he rests some, eats, then you go.
Okay, I said, trying not to think too far ahead.
We ll give him the pills now, she said.
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
But not all of them?
She smiled. Not all of them. Just a few.
Leonard, I said, waking him. Time to take your medicine.
I supported his head on my arm while Beatrice gave him the pills and held the
glass so he could sip water. When that was finished, I lowered Leonard back
onto the bed and he went to sleep immediately. Beatrice blew out the light and
we went out of there.
In the kitchen she lit the lamps and poured some water from a pitcher into a
basin, gave me a bar of lye soap. I used it to wash my face and hands. When I
was finished, she handed me a towel.
We do not have many conveniences, she said. I had nice things in the
States, but here my father is very poor and he lives as he has always lived.
That s quite all right, I said. I thank you for helping us.
She opened a metal box on a shelf and took out a loaf of long, brown,
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]