Damned If I Do (10 page)

They parked in the backyard behind the shed and sneaked inside to hide the rifle behind the drums of corn that Maria fed the wild turkeys. The birds were actually guinea hens, but one day Maria had jokingly referred to them as turkeys and Rosendo had said, “And fine-looking birds they are, too. But, Maria, they don’t sound much like turkeys.”

“Hasta luego,
Rosie,” Mauricio said, back in his car and waving good-bye to Rosendo as he drove away.

Rosendo took a deep breath and walked through the back door of the house and into the kitchen where Maria was sitting and chatting with Carlita Hireles. “Hello, Maria,” he said and proceeded to wash his hands at the sink.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to Father Ortega?” Maria said, sharing a smile and a quiet chuckle with her friend.

“I’m sorry,
Padre,
I didn’t see you,” Rosendo said. He dried his hands on a towel, left it on the counter by the sink, and reached to shake the father’s hand.

Carlita lowered her voice and said, “It’s good to see you, Rosie.”

Rosendo paused at the softness of the hand and then considered it not unlikely that a hand that had never seen manual labor should feel so. “What brings you way out here?” Rosendo asked. “Somebody die?”

“No, no, just saying hello.”

Rosendo nodded, knowing as he passed from the kitchen into the living room that he had just spoken to Carlita Hireles. He knew because he recognized the smell of her, perfume and makeup and fancy soap that she bought from the mall down in Santa Fe. They were having a laugh on him, but that was okay, especially today as Grasa wouldn’t be showing up for dinner. It was enough that he knew it to be Carlita.

Later, as Rosendo sat eating his dinner of posole, chiles, and sopaipillas, Maria stood at the screen of the back door looking out for Grasa.

It was then that Miguel Rocha, Mauricio’s nephew just out of the army, and Willard Garcia drove into the backyard with much loud noise from their big-wheeled pickup. They came into the house, full of excitement.

“Que le ocurre?”
Maria asked.

“A lion,” Willard said.

“Yes,” said Miguel, “there is a cougar around. He killed two sheep over in San Cristobal.”

Rosendo listened to them, then stood. “You say there is a lion?”

“Si,
Rosie.” Miguel caught his breath. “From the size of the tracks, a big one, too.”

“We’re just going around and making sure everybody knows,” Willard said. “You know, so people are careful and watch out for their stock and things like that.”

“Well, you boys are doing a fine job,” Maria said.

“A cat,” Rosendo said to himself, sitting again.

Maria took the basket of sopaipillas from the table. “Here, take a couple of these with you,” she said.

Each took a couple, thanked Maria, and left.

“Imagine that,” Maria said, sitting at the table with Rosendo and shaking her head. “A lion. I hope Grasa hasn’t met up with him.”

Rosendo chewed a mouthful of posole. “A dog would have little chance against such a beast. Poor Grasa.”

The old man finished his meal and went into the living room where he sat and rocked and listened to the radio. He enjoyed particularly the call-in talk shows that had people arguing about such strange things. “That there are such people,” he would say, getting up to grab a bran muffin from the basket on the kitchen table. Rosendo stayed up later than Maria, as was his custom, then went to the door and looked out over the yard. The moon was full and Rosendo sensed it more than he saw it. He ate the last bite of muffin and heard a sound. He stopped chewing.

“Rosie,” a voice called to him in a whisper.

“Moe? Is that you?”

“Si.”

Rosendo listened for movement from Maria’s room and finding none, walked out into the yard. “Moe?”

“Rosie?”

“Moe?”

It took the men ten minutes to find each other by sound, but they did. They stood by the shed.

“I didn’t hear your car,” Rosendo said.

“I parked it down the road. I didn’t want to wake up your sister.”

“Why have you come here so late?” Rosendo asked.

“I left early, but it was a very long drive. When it got dark the way became even longer.”

Rosendo nodded.

“Did you hear about the lion?” Mauricio asked.

“Miguel was here. He told us. There has not been a lion in these parts in many years.”

“Miguel and Willard and some of the other men are talking about tracking the animal and hunting it down,” Mauricio said. “What do they know about tracking lions, about hunting them? I asked them that and they laughed at me.”

“They’ve never even seen a lion. You and I have seen a lion. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“That was a big animal,” Mauricio said.

“It killed a bull, I recall that.”

“I believe it is we who have to get this monster,” Mauricio said.

Rosendo looked back in what he thought was the direction of the house. “I believe you’re right. We have to hunt down the lion. But we mustn’t tell anyone.”

“They would try to stop us for sure.”

Rosendo sighed. He then invited his friend to stay the night in his house. “It will be too long a drive for you tonight. We will rise early before Maria wakes up.”

Mauricio agreed and retired to the sofa where he slept until first light. Rosendo made sandwiches of chiles and cheese, collected some apples and other foods, filled a couple of canteens, and tied two rolled-up blankets to his knapsack. The men went into the backyard to the shed, where they took their rifle from behind the drums. They found Mauricio’s blue Datsun down the road, got in and, after a moderate amount of driving, found the mouth of some canyon.

The two men wandered most of the day, putting distance between themselves and the car by following an arroyo up the mountain. They stopped once to eat and rest, but were driven by great excitement and so moved at a decent clip through the forest. They were serious about their mission, talking little and walking with ears open for noises that might alert them to the cat’s presence. Neither had any doubt that they would find the animal. As to what would happen when they did, they were split; Rosendo claiming the right to shoot the lion because he had paid for the shells and Mauricio claiming the same right because the hunt had been his idea. They argued the point off and on, deciding that it just mattered how far away the lion was when the moment arrived. They sat down in a clearing by the creek at dusk and built a small fire. They ate their little wieners from a can with day-old sopaipillas.

“Just like old times, eh, Moe?”

“I can’t wait to see their faces when we show up with the lion’s head,” Mauricio said.

Rosendo pondered this for a few seconds. “The head will be very heavy,” he said.

“Perhaps a paw then.”

Rosendo nodded. “I wish I had remembered the radio.”

“Just something else to carry,” said Mauricio as he stood. He stretched his back and legs, then walked some yards away from the fire and into the trees to relieve himself.

Rosendo, who had not noticed his friend’s movement, also did not notice that the cougar was now sitting in his friend’s place.

“It’s cooler out here than I thought it would be,” Mauricio called from the trees.

“You sound like you’re in a tunnel,” Rosendo said.

The lion just sat there and panted.

Rosendo chuckled. “You’re getting old,
amigo.
This little walk has fatigued you.”

“What was that?” Mauricio asked.

The lion belched.

Rosendo fanned at the odor. “Say ‘excuse me.’”

“I’m sorry,” Mauricio said. “I didn’t know you could hear.”

The cougar found its legs quietly and stepped away into the darkness.

Mauricio finished his business and returned to the fire, approaching Rosendo from the other side. “Any more of those wienies left?”

Rosendo jumped at the voice on the wrong side. “What?”

“Did I scare you?”

“How did you do that?”

“Do what?” Mauricio sat down and found the little tin of wieners, took a bite of one. “What are you talking about?”

“Moe, I think the lion was just here. Did you get up and go somewhere?”

“I went back into the trees to take care of some business.”

“Hmmm,” said Rosendo. “And you were not here beside me?”

Mauricio laughed. “I cannot be in two places at once.”

“Let me smell your breath,” Rosendo said.

“What is wrong with you?”

Rosendo leaned forward. “Just breathe and let me smell.”

Mauricio did.

“Oh my, just as I thought,” Rosendo groaned.

“Bad?”

“The lion was here, Moe. He was sitting right beside me.”

Mauricio said nothing. The men sat back to back and covered themselves with the blankets, taking turns tossing sticks into the fire. They tried to stay awake. They wondered about things, asked questions like: Did state troopers shift their pistols from hip to hip to avoid becoming lopsided? and, How many yards long was the town of Red River?

“They’d have to,” Mauricio said concerning the state-trooper question. “Do you know how heavy those pistols are?”

“I know how heavy they are.”

“It would damage their legs if they didn’t switch back and forth.”

Rosendo shook his head. “People are right- or left-handed. You can’t just wear the thing on any side. It has to be on the side of the hand they use.”

“They’d end up walking in circles if they didn’t switch and even things out,” Mauricio said.

“We’ll have to find a state trooper and watch him over a period of time,” Rosendo said.

Mauricio agreed that that was the way to clear up the matter. That’s the way their arguing went, and they didn’t know they had gone to sleep until morning came and the birds sang loud songs and squirrels and chipmunks rattled branches.

“Do you think we should continue on up the mountain?” Mauricio asked.

Rosendo looked up the split in the mountain and then down. “What do you think?”

“I think the lion went down.”

Rosendo nodded his agreement and that was the way they went, retracing their steps of the previous day.

“There is one thing,” Mauricio said.

“What’s that?” Rosendo asked.

“We were closer to the beast than anyone else. You were near enough to smell the lion’s breath.”

“Yes, I was,” Rosendo said.

The Appropriation of Cultures

Daniel Barkley had money left to him by his mother. He had a house that had been left to him by his mother. He had a degree in American Studies from Brown University that he had in some way earned, but that had not yet earned anything for him. He played a 1940 Martin guitar with a Barkus-Berry pickup and drove a 1976 Jensen Interceptor, which he had purchased after his mother’s sister had died and left him her money because she had no children of her own. Daniel Barkley didn’t work and didn’t pretend to need to, spending most of his time reading. Some nights he went to a joint near the campus of the University of South Carolina and played jazz with some old guys who all worked very hard during the day, but didn’t hold Daniel’s condition against him.

Daniel played standards with the old guys, but what he loved to play were old-time slide tunes. One night, some white boys from a fraternity yelled forward to the stage at the black man holding the acoustic guitar and began to shout, “Play ‘Dixie’ for us! Play ‘Dixie’ for us!”

Daniel gave them a long look, studied their big-toothed grins and the beer-shiny eyes stuck into puffy, pale faces, hovering over golf shirts and chinos. He looked from them to the uncomfortable expressions on the faces of the old guys with whom he was playing and then to the embarrassed faces of the other college kids in the club.

And then he started to play. He felt his way slowly through the chords of the song once and listened to the deadened hush as it fell over the room. He used the slide to squeeze out the melody of the song he had grown up hating, the song the whites had always pulled out to remind themselves and those other people just where they were. Daniel sang the song. He sang it slowly. He sang it, feeling the lyrics, deciding that the lyrics were his, deciding that the song was his.
Old times there are not forgotten …
He sang the song and listened to the silence around him. He resisted the urge to let satire ring through his voice. He meant what he sang.
Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.

When he was finished, he looked up to see the roomful of eyes on him. One person clapped. Then another. And soon the tavern was filled with applause and hoots. He found the frat boys in the back and watched as they stormed out, a couple of people near the door chuckling at them as they passed.

Roger, the old guy who played tenor sax, slapped Daniel on the back and said something like, “Right on” or “Cool.” Roger then played the first few notes of “Take the A Train” and they were off. When the set was done, all the college kids slapped Daniel on the back as he walked toward the bar where he found a beer waiting.

Daniel didn’t much care for the slaps on the back, but he didn’t focus too much energy on that. He was busy trying to sort out his feelings about what he had just played. The irony of his playing the song straight and from the heart was made more ironic by the fact that as he played it, it came straight and from his heart, as he was claiming Southern soil, or at least recognizing his blood in it. His was the land of cotton and hell no, it was not forgotten. At twenty-three, his anger was fresh and typical, and so was his ease with it, the way it could be forgotten for chunks of time, until something like that night with the white frat boys or simply a flashing blue light in the rearview mirror brought it all back. He liked the song, wanted to play it again, knew that he would.