Half World: A Novel (36 page)

3

The streets were nearly empty and so he walked exposed toward the center of town. A warm morning after all that cold. He kept looking back at Inés and Esmeralda’s house until he turned a corner and it disappeared from sight. He’d given Hannah the gun, for all the good it would do. He tried not to think about her needing to use it. He would be gone a day, or most of a day, and these would be the riskiest hours of the whole thing.

He found an open
carnicería
. The butcher was hacking at something on the counter above the display case. When Dickie entered the butcher glanced up. His face was flushed with exertion, like he’d already been working for hours.

“Buenos días.”

“English?” Dickie said.

“Yes.”

“What can you tell me about the bus that goes north from here?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Where does it pick up?”

“In the plaza across the street.”

“When?”

The man checked a clock on the wall behind Dickie. “Sometime in the next hour.”

“When does it come back?”

“It makes a circle.” The butcher drew one in the air with a red-stained finger. “It carries through the towns and then up to the ranchos in the north, dropping off workers. It comes through again at the end of the day, picking up workers, then back down to the towns for the night.”

Dickie nodded at a carton of cigarettes on the counter and the butcher wiped his hands on his apron, handed a pack over, took the money Dickie held out.

The butcher said, “You have a job up there?”

Dickie lit a cigarette, nodded.

“You can take the bus or if you want to pay more for a faster ride there are trucks that will take you.”

“Who rides the bus?”

“Whoever can’t afford the trucks. Maids in the ranch houses, men who work in the fields, who do odd jobs.”

“Americans?”

The butcher smiled. “We are all Americans.”

“North Americans?”

“Some.”

“Are they here long?”

“A few weeks. Then they are gone and someone else comes and works for a few weeks.” The butcher scratched at his chin with his forearm, his hands stretched away from his face. “They are running from your war.”

The butcher resumed hacking. There was a table by the window, so Dickie sat and watched the plaza on the other side of the street. A church stood at the far end, its doors open, a few elderly women hobbling inside for morning Mass. There was a small tile fountain in the center of the plaza. It looked like it had been dry for some time. Wires had been strung between the stucco buildings on either side, a few faded fiesta decorations hanging limp in the early heat.

There were a few men in straw hats sitting on the edge of the fountain. Another came. Another. And then an American, Dickie’s age, maybe a little younger. Same haircut, same build. More Mexicans, a couple of women carrying large canvas bags. An older man, walking slowly, shielding his face against the sun. Dickie sat forward but when the man turned
Dickie could see that he was Mexican as well. Another American kid arrived, curly-haired, a backpack slung over one shoulder.

Earlier that morning, as he’d dressed in the bedroom, he’d apologized to Hannah. He knew that she’d assume it was for all that had happened, and he’d had to stop himself from saying more. He was sorry for the lie, another lie, that is what he’d meant. She wouldn’t meet her father. She couldn’t. Walter and the Sons were here, somewhere, the bald man was here, and Dickie was going to lead them all, he was the Pied Piper, running south, heading straight to the ghost. He would trade Henry March for Hannah. He was sorry, but it wasn’t even a choice.

Dickie checked the clock and stepped out of the
carnicería,
walked across the street to the plaza and the fountain. He sat beside one of the women with the bags, drawing quick looks from the other American kids, sizing him up. Dickie kept his eyes on the street, smoked his cigarette.

Another older man entered the plaza, holding an empty shopping bag that folded in the breeze. He walked to the fountain and leaned in, pulling coins from the dry tile and setting them into his bag. The others made room for him as he shuffled along the edge. When he’d circled the fountain he twisted the bag closed and walked off toward the other end of the plaza.

There was a squeak of breaks and a long pneumatic sigh and then the bus appeared. Everyone stood. The bus looked like an American school bus that had been painted pink. There were faces in the windows and Dickie looked for an old white man. He waited in line and stepped up onto the bus and handed his money to the driver. The seats about half full. Another look at the faces before him. He found an empty seat toward the back and sat against the window. The bus started again, rolled away from the plaza.

The white ghost came aboard in the next town over. He was tall and thin, carried a cardboard suitcase in one hand, a battered camera tripod in the other. The legs of the tripod were bound tight with twine. He pressed its feet to the floor as he walked down the aisle to an open seat. He wore a loose shirt and linen pants, both almost white. A straw hat, the brim low and straight across his forehead. His face was roughened and
browned by the sun, cracked to long wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He wore glasses with dark lenses clipped onto the frames.

Dickie had no doubt it was Henry March, what was left of Henry March. He recognized him from Hannah’s photograph, despite the toll of years and sun.

March made no show of it but he had seen every face in every seat before him, quickly, even Dickie’s before Dickie could look away. Dickie knew men whose eyes moved that way. His own eyes moved that way.

March sat in an empty seat in the middle of the bus and the rest of the passengers from the plaza got on and the bus started again. They moved through the last coastal town and picked up a few more riders, then turned north on the dirt road, the bus bumping along, up through the low hills that ringed the towns, then into flat, barren country. The harvest was over for the year. The work on the ranchos at this point probably maintenance, cleanup, preparation. Men smoked on the bus, leaned across the aisle to share cigarettes or talk. March faced forward, or out the window, and when he turned toward the glass Dickie could see him in the narrow strait between seat backs. He thought of whispering the name up the thin passageway to the face at the other end to see what reaction those words would provoke.

There were small wooden signs every few miles, signaling dirt roads that led back to the ranchos. At each sign, the bus pulled over and let off a rider or two, Dickie watching the man or woman walking down a path through the brown stumps of a harvested field in the bus’s wake of dust. At the third stop March stood and walked to the front of the bus, got off alone. Dickie watched him through the back window, March walking with his suitcase and tripod toward a large ranch house in the distance.

Finally, only the curly-haired American and Dickie remained on the bus. The driver approached another wooden sign, slowing, and the American kid stood, looked at Dickie in the seat behind him, asked for a cigarette. Then he gestured out the window to the rancho across the field and asked if Dickie was looking for work. Dickie said that he just needed to get out of the town for a while and the kid nodded like he understood. He thanked Dickie for the smoke and walked to the front, waiting for the bus to stop and open its doors.

4

He followed them to a residential area north of town. They stopped in front of a house with a sign in the window and Jimmy watched from the next street down. The March girl spoke with someone at the door and then she went back to the hatchback and talked with Ashby and then got out again with a backpack and went inside the house. Ashby drove away, probably to dump the car. Jimmy waited and a while later Ashby returned on foot, looking over his shoulder before quickly entering the house.

Jimmy spent most of the day in the Ford, moving streets every few hours, watching the house. The windows of the car were streaked with bird shit and dead bugs. He’d started drinking the firewater early and by nightfall he’d finished off the bottle and the next thing he knew he was waking to the sun pouring through the windshield, his body splayed across the front seat, bladder and head pounding. Stupid old fool. He got out of the car in a panic and pissed in the weeds. Pure alcohol, smelled like. Felt like liquid glass. He hitched up his pants and crouched, watching the house two streets over. There was no movement. His watch had gone dead but by the sun it looked to be midmorning. He got the gun from the car and shoved it into his waistband and walked, sweating from the top of his sunburned head, his mouth dry, legs stiff and slow.

There were some kids playing in the backyard and then he saw
the March girl standing by the fence, taking pictures of them. No sign of Ashby. He watched for a while longer and when there was still no sign he walked down to the house, knocked on the front door. An old woman answered, smelling of a fresh cigarette. Jimmy told her he was a police officer, an American. He knew jackshit in the way of Spanish.
Americano,
he said, which he then thought might be a drink. I’m here to see the woman, he said. The American woman. I have news about her friend. Her
amigo
. Christ, he sounded like a fucking comedy routine.

A younger woman appeared in the hallway, looking concerned, and then the March girl was there. She made him immediately, turning and disappearing around the corner, so Jimmy pushed past the old woman into the front room, following the March girl deeper into the house. Down the hallway, to a room at the end. He entered in time to see her legs waggling through an open window. He turned back down the hall, the old woman yelling at him in Spanish, Jimmy pushing her aside, marching into the warm yellow kitchen and then out the door into the bright back lot.

Three kids, two girls and a boy, riding a tricycle in the dirt. The boy steering, the girls holding on to his shoulders. Other houses and back lots crammed in close. A fierce-looking pit bull chained to a metal stake on the other side of the fence. The March girl stood at the end of the lot. She wouldn’t try to climb. Slow as he was, he’d get to her before she made it. The children stopped riding and looked up at the commotion. One of the girls rang the metal bell strapped to the handlebars. Jimmy looked up and the March girl was moving toward him. He wasn’t sure what she was doing and then she stopped in front of the kids, blocking them somewhat. She yelled to them and they moved away. Jimmy tried to smile, took a step forward. Held his hands out, empty. Said, Honey, I just want to talk.

There was a roar and the March girl yelled and something blistered open in Jimmy’s left leg, the meat just above his knee. He fell forward into the March girl and she assumed his weight reflexively and then backed away, letting him fall. Jimmy turned his head to see the old woman standing in the kitchen doorway holding a battered rifle, smoke leaking from
the barrel. He looked down at his leg. Not a direct hit, but direct enough, knocking out a chunk of his thigh. He felt nothing. This was shock or this was his leg numb already from the sickness.

Faces in the windows of the neighboring houses. Dogs barking at the gunshot. There was a man in the next lot, unchaining the pit bull and dragging the animal toward the gate, pointing the dog at Jimmy. Jimmy pulled his gun from his waistband and pointed it at the old woman but the rifle she was holding looked single-shot, so he turned it back on the man with the dog on the other side of the fence. The March girl had gathered the children and was moving them back inside the house. Black spots swimming in Jimmy’s eyes. He tried to stand, fell, tried to stand again. Upright at last. He kept the gun trained on the man with the dog and walked through the gate into the neighboring lot. Into the house there, through the kitchen, the front room, out onto the street. Dizzy, the sun too bright. His legs working, though, so he made his way toward the Ford. Listening for he didn’t know what. A siren, men shouting. Oh, this was fucking rich. They’d love this story back at the station. Jimmy shot by an old woman with a rifle that looked like it had been at the Alamo. Hobbling toward the car. No feeling below his belt, his legs moving purely by instinct. Left, right, left. Even a baby could do it. They’d love this back at the station, this would get some real guffaws at his expense. He’d left the March girl back there. He’d made a very loud noise. This was not the way things were done. He was trailing blood along the street and listening for whatever might be coming. The Ford was very far away. He fell to his knees and knew that the pain should be tremendous but there was nothing. Tried to get up but could not. He would not stay on his knees, though, he had never been on his knees for anyone and he wouldn’t start now, so he unfolded all the way down, lying on his belly in the street. Arms out, the gun still in his hand. Dust in his mouth, the aftertaste of the firewater.

They’d love this back at the station but he’d be damned if they’d ever see him on his knees.

5

The bus drove back through the towns. Dickie sat alone, looked for the bald man, for Walter. Even if the change in appearance had worked and Dickie had lost them for a night, they’d have recovered, would be gaining ground.

They pulled over for a few hours so the driver could sleep in his seat. Dickie fought the impulse to get another car, go back to Hannah. He fought the impulse to find a drink. He sat in the shade outside the bus and watched the few faces that passed, hummed a tune in his head, one of the records Hannah had played back in L.A., a wordless blues that had seeped into his dreams.

In the afternoon, they started again. The bus passed low stands of manzanita, sandy tracts of pitchfork cactus, an open field where there was some police action, men staring at bodies in the grass. They drove through the third town and Dickie looked at the rooftops of the houses beyond the main street, trying to discern which one belonged to Inés and Esmeralda.

They stopped for gas at a station by the plaza and Dickie asked the driver how long they’d be staying. It wouldn’t take much time to run back to the house to check on Hannah, but the driver said he was just filling the tank and then they would leave again. He didn’t seem to care why Dickie had been riding his bus all day.

The plaza was empty except for birds. At the far end Dickie could see the old man with the shopping bag walking down the steps of the church. The driver finished and gave a short whistle to Dickie and they got back onto the bus.

They made the reverse circuit, most of the same riders getting on at the stops by the rancho road, sitting heavily in their seats, their faces streaked with sweat. A few of the men passed bottles of beer across the aisle. The sun was low, disappearing behind the far hills. Henry March got back on the bus, carrying his suitcase and tripod. He looked over the riders’ faces again, quickly, before taking his seat.

It was dark by the time March got off at the plaza in the center of his town. Dickie waited for the bus to continue on a few streets before he stood and walked to the front and told the driver to let him off. The streets were getting full again, night crowds spilling out of the bars. A mariachi band was playing in a far corner of the plaza. The brass echoed off the surrounding walls, receding as Dickie moved past. A few blocks later, he found March on a quiet road of mostly abandoned storefronts, walking with his head down, in and out of the streetlight glow. Dickie stood back and watched March stop and unlock a door and enter. The door closed behind him. Dickie waited another few minutes and thought of Hannah again and started down the street, keeping out of the lights.

The door March had entered was a thick metal slab in a wall without windows. But the door just prior was open and the space was lit. Dickie stepped inside. It was a gallery, with framed pictures hanging on the cinderblock walls. A work light was blazing in the far corner, flooding the room. The room so bright that the windows facing the street now looked black. Dickie blind to whatever moved outside.

He walked forward and looked at the pictures. Images of faces, mostly Mexican men and women, workers like the people on the bus, looking straight ahead, or just slightly to one side, with a similar oblique gaze, almost always intent, questioning, as if they were attempting to make sense of what they were seeing. The faces close to the lens, but seemingly without any knowledge of the camera. No vanity or ego. Private things.

He turned. The pictures mounted on the wall behind him were the
same as those behind the subjects in the pictures he’d been staring at. To the side of the image he’d been studying there was a small hole. He covered it with his thumb. There were other holes along the wall, between the picture frames, all at different heights. He stood between the two pictures in front of him with his thumb over the first discovered hole. It seemed that if he took a step to either side he would fall into something, through something.

There was no noise but there was a presence and Dickie looked to the front of the gallery and Henry March was standing in the doorway. He was without his hat, and his white hair was combed back from his forehead. The sunglass clips were off his glasses. His voice was deep and even and quiet. A ghost’s voice.

“Someone sent you.”

Dickie nodded.

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Dickie couldn’t see the man’s eyes. Even without the sunglass clips, March’s lenses held the glare from the work light.

“I’m looking for a man named Henry March,” Dickie said. He didn’t know if the man still thought of himself by that name, if the name still meant anything to him. Dickie knew how possible it was to forget. Names, connections, memories. These were things they were supposed to leave behind.

He could see no change in the man with the name now in the room. March stood perfectly still except for a slight movement in his right hand, his thumb and forefinger rubbing together. A tic, maybe, or the neuron misfirings of age.

Dickie said, “People are coming for his daughter to get to him. They might already be here. Her name is Hannah. I don’t know how long I can keep her safe.”

The movement of March’s thumb against his forefinger. Dickie realized he still had his own finger pressed to the hole in the wall. He let his arm drop slowly to his side.

“If I’m speaking to the wrong man,” Dickie said, “then I apologize for
bringing you trouble. If you’re the wrong man then they’ll just continue on after his daughter. And that’s none of your concern.”

Dickie watched March for some sign or recognition, some spark of memory. The man made no movement except for his thumb, his finger.

This was what happened. Dickie understood. This was what happened to men like them. Everything cut away. Even color cut away. The white ghost in this place. Dickie here, someday. A man in a room looking through holes in the walls.

Dickie walked toward the door. When he was a few feet away March stepped to one side to let him pass.

“I came here,” Dickie said, “because I was told that you have a reputation for cleaning things up.”

Dickie crossed into the doorway, their bodies close, and the ghost spoke again.

“And his son?”

Dickie stopped.

The ghost said, “This man’s son?”

Dickie shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“His wife?”

“She’s gone,” Dickie said. He passed over the threshold, back onto the street. “I’m sorry. She’s already gone.”