Ride the Pink Horse (14 page)

Lightning flickered again in the hidden sky, and with the thunder rumble, the deeper thunder. He wasn’t alone; under the canopy Pancho snored.

He called out, his voice too loud in the silence. “Hey, Pancho. Pancho!” He didn’t expect to wake the sleeping hulk; he was afraid to shout too fully, afraid of the shadowy silence. But the snore choked in Pancho’s throat and the man rose up, alert as an animal stirred from sleep. “Who is it? Who calls Pancho?”

“It’s me. Sailor. Let me in.”

Pancho groaned up from the earth, scratched his belly and his lank black hair as he plodded to the fence. “It is Sailor. Waking a poor old man from his little rest.
Pancho! Pancho!
Waking a man from his slumbers, por que?” He unfastened the gate, grumbling as if he meant it, his face a caricature of sleep, his eyes awake, lively.

“I need some help.” Sailor walked through the gate, waiting within for Pancho to fasten it.

“Que pase? You have another muchacha for whom I must wear out this old arm?” He had turned again to Sailor and the jest went out of his mouth. Out of his merry eyes. “Por que?” he repeated but it was question to be answered now.

Sailor asked, “You know any doctors? One that doesn’t ask foolish questions?”

“Doctors. For what is a doctor?”

“Somebody scratched me.”

Pancho’s eyes were pinpoints. “The police?”

“They aren’t in this. They aren’t going to be. What about a doc?” He was impatient. The pain was slitting him. “The police are not looking for you?”

“For God’s sake, no,” Sailor snarled. “They don’t know anything happened. Somebody stuck a knife in my back while I was up there watching the show—”

Pancho had interrupted lazily, almost happily. “It was a knife.”

“What’d you think scratched me, a pin?”

The big belly joggled. “You are so funny, my friend, the Sailor. A pin?” He went off into fat giggling anew and the jut of pain under Sailor’s shoulder twisted. The black eyes slit soberly at the rage gnarling Sailor’s lips.

“Perhaps I think the gun in your pocket met with a friend, no?” He was reassuring. “The police will not bother about a knife. Certainly no. A gun, yes. A knife, it is nothing.”

Sailor gritted the words. “What about the doc?” The old brigand would stand here gabbing until the Plaza filled up again, until there were eyes to notice a wound in a dark coat. He’d stand blatting until it was time for him to crank up the merry-go-round. And Sailor biting on pain, pushed around by a bunch of kids, bleeding away the strength he needed to take care of the Sen. He put it all into the question, “What about the doc?”

Pancho hitched up his pants. “You come with me. I will take care of you, my friend. You need not be disturbed.” He unlocked the padlock, carefully locked it again after them. “We will be back before the sermon it is over. The little abuelita will make you good like new.” Thunder cracked his words. He shuffled his feet a little faster. “Yes, we will be back soon enough unless it should rain.” He eyed the sky. “A little rain and the sermon it will end more quickly.” He shrugged. “But no one will ride Tio Vivo in the rain. I do not think.” He smiled complacence. “Besides it does not rain in Fiesta. Not often. Zozobra is dead. It will not rain.”

Sailor walked beside him. He didn’t give a damn about rain or sermons, all he wanted was someone to fix him up, fix him enough that he could meet the Sen tonight. His lips pulled back from his teeth. Maybe the Sen thought he was dead by now. Maybe the Sen meant to be awfully surprised when he showed up at midnight and no Sailor met him. He could see the Sen looking for Mac in the hotel lobby, wondering to Mac what had happened to Sailor. Snickering that Sailor was probably lying with a girl and had forgotten to show up. It was Sen who’d get the surprise. Sailor would be there.

He hadn’t attended the way Pancho was leading. Any more than he’d been listening to what Pancho was saying. The streets away from the Plaza were dark; Sailor recognized nothing until Pancho said, “This is where we go.” Familiarity was shock. For they stood on the dark alien street where he had strayed the night before. Returning here now was the fearsomeness of a bad dream. A dream of wandering in a labyrinth, of being unable to escape from the murky maze, of returning over and again to this unknown yet terrifyingly known place. Pancho’s big hand was on the closed wall. He said, “Come. This way, my friend.”

He did not see the rejection on Sailor’s face. The dark masked all but shape. Pancho opened a gate in the wall, bent down and squeezed through. Sailor moved after him. If this was the trap, and it was a trap, he could not refuse to enter. The whole town was a trap. He’d been trapped from the moment he stepped off the bus at the dirty station. Trapped by the unknown, by a foreign town and foreign tongues and the ways of alien men. Trapped by the evil these people had burned and the ash had entered into their flesh. That evil the Sen had seen and known and used. In Chicago he wouldn’t have had a knife in his back; he would have been alert to Sen treachery. Now he was following a brigand into a box from which there was no escape. Only by shooting it out. The Sen would be waiting inside. There was no way to surprise the Sen; Pancho’s bulk crunched loud across the sandy courtyard towards the small lamp shine at the rear. No way to walk quietly after Pancho, only to grip the pain and the ready gun. Pancho knocked at the low door, stooped to enter. Sailor, his temples wet, followed.

The Sen wasn’t there. It must have been part of the bad dream to expect the Sen in this dump. He must be running a fever. Pancho was his friend, mi amigo; the Sen couldn’t buy Pancho away from him. He must have been nuts.

Pancho saw his face. He was gentler. “You are afraid? Do not be afraid. A knife it is nothing. I have many times been scratched with the knife. It is nothing. Nada!”

Sailor said, “I’m not afraid.” He couldn’t explain why he wasn’t afraid now. He couldn’t tell Pancho he’d been nuts. He looked at the room. A low room, rigidly clean, rigidly barren. An oil lamp on a bare wood table, bare wooden chairs; a bench of plaster, part of the wall. There was a small fire, pinon scented, in the little fireplace. A aunt crucifix above it. The woman on the low stool before the fire was older than time. Shriveled, scant hair more colorless than white, her brown scalp shining bald through it—she sat there without words, without life, even in her eyes. Her gums mouthed a cigarette, as brown, as withered, as lifeless as her face, as her needle-thin arms. Pancho crooned over her. In Spanish; Sailor heard nothing but the repeated abuelita; the pantomimic cuchara, cuchara mas grande. He could catch the drift of it; Pancho was describing a great knife battle. But he wished Pancho would stop performing and get the old lady to fetch the doctor. He hurt.

Pancho turned back to Sailor. “It is all right,” he beamed. “The little abuelita will take care of you. Let us now see the scratch.”

Sailor stepped back. “Wait a minute.” Suspicion webbed his face. “Where’s the doc? I want a doctor.”

Pancho’s whole body grieved. “For why you want a doctor? I bring you to the little abuelita. She will take care of you. Because I ask it. Because you are my friend.”

He didn’t want a witch woman mumbo-jumboing over him. He wasn’t a spic; he wanted a doctor. He wanted to be fixed up.

Pancho’s grief quivered his lip. “You do not wish the abuelita to help you? She knows better how to take care of the knife cut than any gringo doctor could ever learn to know.” His eyebrow cocked slyly. “Besides the gringo doctors might tell the police.”

The pain was cutting hard. Something had to stop it quick. Pancho was probably right; the old witch would know all about knifings. She hadn’t moved; she hadn’t even appeared to understand what Pancho had said to her. Sailor reluctantly let Pancho help him slide off the coat. He unbuttoned his shirt; it was Pancho’s hand that eased it away from the wound. Pancho turned him to the fire where the old lady could see the damage. If she was conscious. If she was anything but a grass-stuffed dummy, set before the fire to dry.

Pancho gave a rumble of joy. “It is nothing! Like I say, nada.”

The croak was the old woman. “Nada.” It must be her dirty spike of finger probing the pain. Sailor cursed between his teeth.

Pancho danced about to face him. “A scratch. A pin. You were right, my friend. Nada!” He beetled his brows into Sailor’s face. “You do not worry now about the abuelita? Look!” He ripped off his dirty shirt. His big finger jabbed the scars on the grimy sofa cushion of his chest. He turned his back, feeling for the welts. “This one,” he jabbed. “And this one, how deep! But always the abuelita fix me up good like new.”

The finger had stopped, only the fire heat licked at the sore. Sailor hadn’t heard her leave the room; he didn’t know she was gone until she returned with no more sound than a ghost. She carried a dirty wadded handkerchief. He watched her spread it on the table, watched her old twig of a finger pry into the stuff there, brown and withered old weeds like herself. Herbs! A knife in his back wasn’t enough. He had to come to an old herb woman to get it fixed.

Pancho scoffed. “You are not afraid. You are a man.” Thunder quavered across his voice and the lightning flickered like firelight across the room.

“No, I’m not afraid,” Sailor denied. But the jumps in his stomach shook his muscles. He wasn’t afraid of anything where a gun was good. But a gun wasn’t any use now; you couldn’t turn a gun on the germs of a witch woman and her seed bags and her spittle. You could only stand and take it, take the leap of pain, take her grunts and Pancho’s encouraging, “Now it is good. Muy bueno. You will lie down and sleep, tomorrow you will not know there was an arroyo under your shoulder.”

“Sleep where?” he scoffed. Pancho was helping him on with his shirt.

Pancho rubbed his big nose. He scrubbed at it and as if the thought sneezed out, he cried, “But where? Here with the abuelita. Always she has a room.”

Sailor stopped him. “Thanks. But I can’t go to bed. I’m seeing a guy later. Business deal. Give me a hand.”

Pancho eased the coat on him. “It would be better you sleep—” He shut his mouth at Sailor’s decision. “Okay,” he said cheerfully. “You do not have to sleep. A bottle of tequila—that is as good as sleep.” He directed. “Give me a dollar for the old woman.”

Cheap enough. One dollar for a first-class infection. But the pain already was easing. He handed over a rumpled dollar to Pancho. He stood at the door while the two of them gibbered Spanish, Pancho’s loud and bright, the old woman’s a mutter. He waited, watching the lightning run with the wind across the barren patio. Waited until Pancho said, “We must go. We are now late.”

He followed to the street, the dark, silent, known and unknown street. Walking into the whirlpool of wind towards gimcrack music and flowered lights. He asked, “What about the tequila?” as they breasted the bar of Un Peso. A burning drink would put the bone back into his spine.

Pancho slapped his pocket. “Why you think I need the dollar?” he gurgled. “The little abuelita has the worthless son. He brings from Mexico the best tequila.”

“You mean you didn’t pay her for fixing me up?”

“For that, it is nada,” Pancho shrugged. “Who would not help a poor traveler who has been hurt?” His lips pursed. “Quien sabe? It might have been the worthless son who sharpened the knife.”

“What for? Why would a guy I’ve never laid eyes on want to knife me?”

Pancho said gently, “Why you carry a gun?” He didn’t want an answer. They were entering the Plaza, the Plaza with lights again garlanding it, with music strumming the whirling pink and green and purple horses; with the wind gyrating the smoke from the chimney pots of the little chile booths. He remembered how long since he’d eaten but he didn’t want food. He didn’t feel up to food. The couples, the men and women and children and sleeping babies over tired shoulders were seeping into the Plaza. The prize package which had held vespers and procession and sermon at the cross was consumed. They were buying another box of crackerjack now. Fiesta Sunday evening on the Plaza. In the bandstand the Conquistadores in their shapeless old-fashioned uniforms blared out of tune into the loudspeakers. The lights above the bandstand blazoned the faces circling it, the faces as still and remote as they had been in church or on the hill. In the distance was thunder.

Pancho said, “We are a little late. It does not matter. Ignacio can make Tio Vivo lively enough. Not so good as me. But good enough till I get there.”

He lumbered over the paths; Sailor let the big man break trail. Outside the palings, Pancho pushed through the children to the fence. “Vaya, vaya, chiquitos! Out of my way, you little scrubs.” His big hand lay on the gate.

Sailor touched his arm. “Mind if I sit inside for a little? To get my breath?”

Pancho’s head thrust around, quick and anxious. “It cut deeper than we think?” He scowled. “You come inside, yes. You must rest. You should have this night a bed.”

“I’m okay,” Sailor grunted. “I can’t go to bed until I get my business finished.”

He went inside with Pancho. The string-bean Ignacio wound the crank while the old man made thin music on his old fiddle. Pancho spouted Spanish at both as his great hands took over the windlass. Ignacio plucked quickly at his guitar. The music quickened. Pancho sweated and heaved and Tio Vivo became Uncle Lively anew.

There was no place to sit but on the ground, on the bunch of dirty blankets that was Pancho’s bed. Sailor let himself down before he fell down, he was lightheaded as if he’d just got out of a hospital bed. The earth was good and solid to feel. He lit a cigarette and leaned on his good elbow. Then he lay back, his head crooked on his good arm. Above and around him Fiesta spun and sang and made laughter. He knew he was drifting away from it, knew and didn’t care. It wasn’t his Fiesta. These hicks thought it was something special. They should have seen the Chicago World’s Fair. That was a show. He was thinking about the World’s Fair when sudden panic came upon him and he fought to hold to this small tinkling square. He wondered in his panic if he were dying, if he were drifting out of this unknown into a vaster unknown. But he couldn’t hold on; whatever purpose the witch woman had in her withered skull, it was stronger than he. The fog of blackness closed Fiesta away.