Against the Day (179 page)

   
“Are
those freckles? Why are they glowing like that?”

“Paprika
flashback,” she murmured, and shortly was asleep all naked and wet in his arms.

Best bet
, it seemed to them, was to stay
clear of the Szeged station, go up the river by steamer instead as far as
Szolnok, catch the local there to BudaPesth, and from there take the WagonsLits
via Lake Balaton to Pragerhof, where they would pick up the GrazTrieste train
and ride second class to Venezia.

That seemed devious enough. But Lake
Balaton looked too good to pass up. They detrained at Siófok and were soon
reclining in the water, along with hundreds of families on vacation.

“Some
headlong escape, here.”

   
“We
really ought to be moving faster than this.”

   
“Trainloads
of screaming Turks headin up the line.”

“Wavin
’em swords and Mausers and so forth.” By now they were looking into each
other’s eyes. Again. There seemed no limit to how long this would go on. The
sun set, the little gaffriggers put in to their home piers, other bathers
departed, the
fogások
swam in close to see what was up, and this
confounded gazing would just not stop. Somewhere on a terrace, a dance band
started playing. Lights came on in the restaurants facing the water, in gardens
and hotel rooms, and there Kit and Dally remained until the first star, when,
as if reminded of all there was to be wishing for, they found their way back to
the ceiling of their room, which is where, in this exuberant elopement, they were
tending to spend most of their time.

“
Somebody’ll
be out looking
for you, won’t they?” Kit said.

“Not sure. Some would feel a lot
easier in their minds if I wasn’t ever found, I guess.” The sun through the
window lit her from behind, as she paced the little room, observing him
carefully. Having had too much attention from peculiar quarters, she had
learned to be careful about what she told men, while more and less nervously
waiting for Kit to start inquiring into her colorful past. He didn’t seem to be
looking for a fight, but men were like storms in the sea, on you before you saw
them coming, and there you’d be, swamped and confounded. She decided to let him
in on what she could. Who else had she ever confided in? You trusted people
until they betrayed you, but the alternative, trusting nobody ever, turned you
into one more Clive Crouchmas, and the world had enough of them already. “Kit,
how much do you want to know about what I’ve been up to?” Had she really just
said that?

   
“How
much of it would I understand?”

   
“A
lot of it’d be international high finance.”

   
“Oh.
No, uh, functions of a complex variable, nothing like that, I suppose.”

   
“Mostly
adding and subtracting, but it does get kind of—”

   
“You’re
right, o’ course, I’d just get lost
. . . .
”

“No, listen—” Mentally she held
her nose and flexed her toes, and cannonballed straight down into her history
with Clive Crouchmas. Kit listened attentively and did not noticeably fly into
a jealous frenzy. “I was spying on him for some people,” she concluded, “and he
found out.”

   
“He’s
dangerous, then? Your old beau.”

   
“Maybe.
I could go back to London, I’m supposed to have a small part in a new show, but
right now I’m not sure if I should. Maybe it’s better to lay low for awhile.”

   
“Thing
that’s really been on my mind—”

She
stopped in her tracks, smooth muscles poised, microscopic golden hairs all
along her bare legs alert in the sunlight.

   
“—is,
is what do we do for money till I find some work up in Italy?”

“Oh.
We’re all right for money. Don’t even worry that darlin brain.” But fair being
fair, she did give him maybe a minute and a half to say something unpleasant
like
“
His
money,” or
“What did you have to do for it?” before tiptoeing purposefully over to where
he sat, and taking him by two handfuls of his hair, and bringing his mercifully
silent face to the fragrance of her pussy.

he light didn’t come in exactly the way it was supposed to in

churches—not mediated by sacred images of stained glass
but by

new leafage on trees outside, holes broken in the adobe by
federal

artillery, accidentally passing shadows of birds and clouds.
It was Holy Week

in the Sierra, still freezing at night but tolerable during
the day. Sometimes a

breeze off the mountain came through. This part of Chihuahua
was safe for

the time being. Though the federales had driven off Madero’s
force at Casas

Grandes, they had no appetite for fighting in the open and
remained for the

moment in their garrisons.

Nearly
every day somebody from the recent battle died here. Wounded lay in ragged rows
on the ancient tile floor, the priest and the doctor passed among them once a
day, women from town came when they could—when there was not a child to
see to, a
novio
to be with or bid goodbye, a family death to
mourn—and tried to clean wounds and change bandages, though sterile
dressings on this side of the border were luxury items.

One
day Frank woke from a dream of running, running without effort or pain at a
speed not even horses got up to, not pursued or in pursuit, just running for
the hell of it, the heaven of how it felt, he guessed. As long as he kept
moving forward this way, easy, weightless, he knew somehow he could never be in
trouble of any kind. Ahead of him there seemed to lie a concentration of light,
something like a city after dark, and he wondered what it might be. At the rate
he was running, he ought to be there before long. But all at once he was back
on the floor of the cold, broken church, immobilized and hungry, among the
smells of casualty and dying, with a face he was about to recognize bending
close, in its mouth, being lit, then held out to Frank, a storebought Mexican
cigarette.

“I saw them bring you in.” It was the
Indian shaman El Espinero, who had once showed him how to fly.

“Well
¿qué tal, amigo?
”
Frank took the cigarette and
inhaled on it as deep as he could given the situation with his ribs, at least
one of which had to be cracked.

The
brujo
nodded and lit one up for himself. “You think you are dreaming,
¿verdad?
No,
as it happens, my village is just
up there,” he motioned with his eyes back up at the mountains. “I was in
Durango for a little while, but now I am here, scouting for Don José de la Luz
Blanco.” He took a quick inventory of Frank’s damage. “You were with him and
Madero at the fighting.”

   
“Yes.
I should’ve been someplace else.”

   
“But
you will recover. Only one bullet.”

“One
more than I needed. The rest was falling off the horse, and underneath the
other horse, and so on.”

“The
Chihuahua horses are the best in the world, but they know it well, and a man on
the ground means little to them, unless he is Tarahumare. They respect us
because we can run faster.”

“This
horse was kind enough to drag me as far as an irrigation ditch anyhow
. . . .
” Frank exhaled smoke into a
momentary sunbeam, and the
brujo
watched it vanish with patient
interest.

   
“Somebody
is looking for you.”

   
“Should
I be jumping up and getting the hell out of here?”

   
El
Espinero laughed. “Yes, I think so. It is your other Estrella.”

   
“She’s
here?”

Yeahp
and on the arm of some impossibly goodlooking Mexican dude. No surprise. Frank
wished he could go back to sleep.

   
“This
is Rodrigo.”

   
“
Mucho
gusto,
”
Frank
nodded. Well she wasn’t about to be traveling alone all her life was she,
besides being, have mercy, even more beautiful now than, what would it be, two
years ago, closer to three, sun in her face and hair, a confidence in how she
carried herself, no more little dainty .22 beneath some ladylike frock but a
serviceable Colt strapped to one of a pair of, he could not help noticing,
interesting legs in britches of trailgrade whipcord.

Old
Rodrigo here was looking down at Frank with a certain disdain, perhaps that of
a Mexican of the landowning class for a gringo saddletramp who has allowed
himself to be stepped on by one or more horses, so the situation was not what
you’d call uncompetitive. Not that Frank could blame him, much.

“Pretty
becoming rig you’re in there, Estrella, but where’d all that high fashion get
to?”

   
“Oh
it and me we got to a fork in the trail, it’s all that straight silhouette

these days, wisdom of the seamstress trade, sad but true,
can’t put no ol’ cowgirl into nothin that narrow, she starts trying to take
what she thinks is normalsize steps, and just wrecks the stitches somebody
spent all night puttin in.”

   
“And
how’s business been?”

“I’m
more of a diplomat these days,” gesturing lazily with her head at Rodrigo.
“Madero’s people seem to have mistook this one for his lookalike, some federal
big shot. Truth is he just wandered up the wrong piece of trail. So now we’re
all dickering.”

   
“Prisoner
exchange. How does ’at pay, good?”

“Sometimes.” Making an effort, he
noticed, not to let Rodrigo catch her eye. Did she think Frank would mind if it
wasn’t all strictly business? And how much, and so forth.

   
“What’re
you smoking these days?”

   
“Storeboughts.
Here, keep the pack.”

Frank
drifted off and when he drifted back, everybody had left including El Espinero.
Stray had put the cigarettes under the rolledup shirt he was using for a pillow
to keep them safe, which seemed such a tender thought he wished he’d been awake
for it.

Next day she
showed up again
, and it
took Frank about a minute to identify her new companion, owing to a beard and a
growth of hair his sombrero was having trouble staying on top of. “This raggedy
excuse for an Anarchistic troublemaker says he knows you.”

   
“By
God it’s ’at there Ewball Oust ain’t it,” said Frank. “Don’t tell me
you—”

“Yeahp,
swapped him for Rodrigo, who’s now on his way back to the family mansion in
Texas. Another one out of my reach.
Adiós, mi guapo
—” She shrugged
and pretended to look sad. “Frank, tell me I got a bargain here.”

   
“Well,
give me a minute.”

“Thought
you was wounded or someth’n
compinche,
this don’t look much worse’n foot
blisters.” Ewball had somehow managed to keep a tin canteen of tequila away
from federal attention, and cheerfully poured
copas
for everybody.

Stray
regarded Ewball, shaking her head and pretending to sigh in dismay. “Maybe I’ll
get back into arms dealin after all.”

“Footsoldiers
like me are a dime a dozen,” Ewball agreed cheerfully. “But for matériel you’re
sure in the right part of the world, here. Artillery, just for openers.
Federales
are hitting us with howitzers, machine guns, time shrapnel,