Ride the Pink Horse (2 page)

And then he realized. They weren’t hawking the stuff; they were as silent as if they didn’t know he was standing there. But they knew. Their black eyes, even the kids’ black eyes slanted like Chinks, were watching him. Not with curiosity, not even with particular interest. They looked at him as if he were some kind of a specimen they hadn’t seen before. There was no expression on their brown faces. It gave him a queer feeling, as if he, not the Indians, were something strange.

He stood there, helpless anger knotting his nerves. Monotonously cursing the Sen, the dirty, double-crossing, lying, whoring Senator Willis Douglass. It was the Sen’s fault he was in this God-forsaken town and no place to rest his feet. He hadn’t wanted to come here. He’d wanted it less and less as the bus traveled further across the wasteland; miles of nothing, just land, empty land. Land that didn’t get anywhere except into more land, and always against the sky the unmoving barrier of mountains. It was like moving into a trap, a trap you couldn’t ever get out of. Because no matter how you tried, no matter how far you traveled, you’d always be stopped by the rigid mountains. He didn’t like it at all when they moved into this town, his destination. Because this was the center of the trap; it was a long way back to civilization in any direction. The only thing to do was get out quick.

As he stood there he heard again the tinkling music. He turned as if he wanted to find where it came from, as if that were important. As if he hadn’t been routed by the guard of silent Indians. A small merry-go-round was in the corner of the park, motionless at this hour. Two spies were sitting there, playing a violin and a guitar. Playing for themselves; there were no customers. For all its gala disarray the park was deserted.

He stepped off the curb without direction, crossed the narrow street and entered the little park. He walked to the merry-go-round, not intending to, but because there was life there and the absence of life on the streets and in the holiday square was suddenly a little fearful. He didn’t intend to speak to the spies but there he was leaning against the enclosure.

“Not much business,” he said. He saw the third man as he spoke, a big brigand, a Pancho Villa, fat and shapeless and dirty, but his brown face was curiously peaceful. He was leaning against the weathered, dark-red pickets of the enclosure. His overalls were worn and faded, held up by dirty knotted string; his blue shirt smelled of sweat and his yellowed teeth of garlic, his hat was battered beyond shape. But his face was peaceful, even happy.

The fat man said happily in his spic accent, “It is because they burn Zozobra.”

The tinkling music kept on in the background. An old man squeaking a violin, so old his fingers were warped, so old his face was without meaning, a small man shriveled into age. The man at the guitar was thin to gauntness, greasy black hair falling over his eyes, his empty black eyes.

“What’s Zozobra?” Sailor asked.

“You do not know what is Zozobra?” The brigand wasn’t patronizing, he was surprised. He hitched up the dirty string. “It is Old Man Gloom.” He chuckled deep in his fat belly. “We must burn Zozobra, Old Man Gloom, before the Fiesta commence. When Old Man Gloom he is dead, we have no more troubles. We laugh and dance and make merry. Then there is La Fiesta.”

The man at the guitar began to sing in a flat, nasal voice. The fat man chuckled, “See? Ignacio sings to you how Zozobra must die.”

Sailor lit a cigarette, scratching the match hard on his heel. “So Old Man Zose is dead and there’s no business, Pancho?”

Pancho Villa hitched up his pants. His sigh was light as a leaf falling. “There is too much business. Tio Vivo grows old. Tomorrow, the next day, too much business for poor old Tio Vivo. He is happy to rest a little while.”

Tio Vivo was the brigand’s little merry-go-round. A hand-cranked merry-go-round, gondolas alternating with fierce white and pink and brown wooden horses. The big paw rested tenderly on the neck of one pink horse. The brown eyes were soulful with love of his battered old carousel.

“Tio Vivo grows old and I grow old too. We are happy to rest this little moment in the Plaza while everybody he goes to burn Zozobra.”

He saw then the direction Pancho’s eyes pointed. He saw the twos and threes hurrying away from the Plaza. Everyone goes to burn Zozobra. Everyone. If that was the thing to do, that was where the Sen would be. It might be possible after all to see him tonight, under cover of the celebration, to get it over with and out of this dump.

He said, “Thanks, Pancho. I guess I better get on my way if I want to see Old Man Zose kick the bucket.”

The fat man laughed and laughed. As if Sailor had pulled a good one. He said, “Yes, you had better hurry.” and he laughed some more, hitching himself comfortably against the palings. “Hurry, hurry,” he laughed because he didn’t have to hurry. Because he was comfortable here by his old Tio Vivo, with the violin and guitar stroking the deepening twilight. Because he had learned long ago that Zozobra could burn without his moving from his comfort.

Sailor flicked away his cigarette stub. He would follow the late stragglers and find his way to Zozobra. To Zozobra and the Sen.

It was as he turned that he saw McIntyre. And for the moment the works thumping inside of him were frozen.

The man was leaning against the pale wall of the little bank. A tall, thin man with a horsey face. A quiet man who didn’t belong here. Who didn’t belong against the wall of a hick bank with a red ribbon tied around his pants and on his head a flat black hat with little colored bobbles hanging from the brim. If Sailor hadn’t frozen for the moment he’d have doubled up laughing. But he was frozen, the hand that had flicked the cigarette was frozen in mid-air.

Softly from behind him, softly and in sympathy he heard Pancho. “Trouble?”

The works started ticking again that fast. “No,” he said shortly. His mouth twisted into a grin that the big greaser couldn’t see. “No trouble at all,” he said.

He walked on out of the Plaza then, sure of himself. Trouble wasn’t waiting for him. McIntyre hadn’t followed him here. Mac had been here first. There wasn’t another bus in until midnight; he knew the schedule. There wasn’t a train into Lamy until morning. The trains didn’t come to this town. Mac hadn’t just driven in from Chicago. He’d been here long enough to buy a silly Spanish hat and a red sash. To know about Fiesta. He wasn’t after Sailor; he was after the Sen.

The grimace held on Sailor’s face as he walked up the darkening street the hurrying stragglers had taken. Past a library, a vacant lot, past houses. He wasn’t the only one who’d caught up with the Sen. McIntyre was here. Tonight the villagers were burning up their troubles. But the Sen wasn’t burning his. They’d caught up with him at last.

2

He’d walked two blocks before he got a sense of direction. There was a swarthy policeman on duty here, diverting cars. There were more people hurrying up the hill. He walked past the cop without even an under-the-eye glance. When he’d passed the big pink building he could see the lights beyond and across. Across on the other road a million pinpoints of light headlights trying to move forward. Ahead the lights of pageantry. The stragglers were walking faster now; they weren’t laughing and talking; they saved even that energy to spur them on before the show began. There was a current of excitement transmitted to him in their rapid silence, a current that lengthened his own stride. He pushed on with them until he came to the footbridge that led into the dark arena.

But he stopped there on the outskirts. He hadn’t expected anything like this. He hadn’t thought a hick town had this many people. The football field was packed with them, a shifting electric mass of people, like State Street on the day of a big parade. The day Roosevelt was there. He couldn’t find the Sen in this haystack. He’d have been better off to have stayed with Pancho and Tio Vivo. Better to be hunting a room.

He could have turned around and beat it back to the Plaza but he didn’t. He did what the others were doing, threading forward for a better position in the crowd. And he saw Zozobra.

A giant grotesquerie there ahead on the terrace, a gray specter at least forty feet tall with a misshapen head, hollow eyes, pointed flapping ears, shapeless flapping mouth. A giant puppet with giant clawlike hands, palsied hands lifting and falling. Out of the flapping mouth a sepulcher voice was threatening, scolding. Little threats, yet mouthed by him they were as purest obscenity.
It’s going to rain. It’s going to rain and spoil your fun. . . .

Zozobra. Made of papier maché and dirty sheets, yet a fantastic awfulness of reality was about him. He was unclean. He was the personification of evil.

For the moment the personification held Sailor motionless. Then the spell passed and he could see the figures behind the effigy. He could recognize the under-rasp of the loudspeaker that made words for the giant to speak. About him Sailor could hear scraps of conversation.
Shus outdid himself this year . . . the best Zozobra yet . . . isn’t Sloan wonderful . . . wouldn’t be Zozobra without his voice . . .
The evil was manmade; it wasn’t real.

Scraps of conversation but nothing about the Sen. Voices but not the Sen’s voice. He threaded further forward and was halted by the quiver of excitement from the crowd. White sheeted mounds were creeping down the far stone steps to posture and scrape before the obscene specter. A lean devil dancer bounded forward in frenzied ritual. A quiver went through the mass as the sheeted figures stooped and laid fire on the dry fagots piled before the evil god. The figures scuttled. Only the danger remained on the steps before the giant, now ranting hysterically before the onlicking flames. The words became hideous groans. The danger leaped free of the consuming fire. The mob cheered as the crimson tongues caught the skirts of Zozobra, lapping higher and higher.

Sailor turned his eyes away. Noise was staccato, skyrockets flaring into the sky, fire crackers exploding as the flames ate away the body of evil. He’d had enough. He’d wasted enough time with this charade. He was here to find the Sen. He began edging through the crowd.

But wherever he turned he found himself looking up again at the terrace where that hideous groaning face floated above the fire and smoke and noise, above the crowd’s lust for destruction of evil. In destroying evil, even puppet evil, these merrymakers were turned evil. He saw their faces, dark and light, rich and poor, great and small, old and young. Fire-shadowed, their eyes glittered with the appetite to destroy. He saw and he was suddenly frightened. He wanted to get away.

He couldn’t get away. Even as Zozobra couldn’t get away. He was hemmed in by the crowd. By the unmoving crowd waiting for the final consummation, holding their cheers until the ghost face alone floated in the flame and smoke. And a band somewhere in the darkness struck up a lusty dirge.

The crowd broke then, laughing, talking too loud, as if for a moment they too realized the bestiality they’d conjured in themselves. As if they would forget. Children squeaked and skipped, here and there a baby in arms cried. People were moving and their feet kicked dust to add to the fumes of smoke. Across on the far road the traffic jam squawked horns and on this side of the field the police held back the people to let pass the cars with badges. The big shots’ cars.

He knew then he’d been a fool to think the Sen would be on foot, would be part of a motley crew. One of those cars would be carrying the Sen out of the dirt and confusion. He’d be back in La Fonda with a fancy drink and a fancy woman before the plodders were halfway down the hill.

Sailor pushed with the crowd out of the dark field. He hadn’t noticed before how many were in fancy dress, Spanish and Mexican and Indian. All dressed up for the Fiesta. He understood now why McIntyre was wearing a Spanish hat and sash. In his dark city suit and hat, Sailor stuck out like an Indian would on the Gold Coast. He ought to get himself some fancy duds if he didn’t want to be conspicuous. Even here, stumbling over the dark stubble, people were giving him the curious eye.

And suddenly he saw the Sen. He was so close he could have touched him. Only the Sen was behind the glass-and-steel protection of an official car and the cops were holding back Sailor with the other peasants to let the tin gods roll by. It was the Sen all right. You couldn’t miss that weasel face, the long snout, the sleepy-looking eyes, the thin brown hair receding from the forehead. You couldn’t miss him even if he was dressed up in a Spanish black velvet jacket with a red bow under his sloping chin. The car rolled by too fast for Sailor to see who else was in it. He saw only the Sen and he wasn’t uneasy any more. His hunch was right. The Sen was here, not hiding out but playing it big, thinking he was safe. Like as not still wearing the mourning band on his sleeve. Sailor spat in the dust after the big black limousine.

When he reached the pavement he cut through the people hurrying down the hill. It might be he could reach the hotel as quickly as the Sen. The cars weren’t making much headway. Even those of the elect, allowed to travel on this side of the field, had to creep down the street. There was a traffic tangle at the corner of the pink building. He might beat the Sen to La Fonda, be waiting for him when he came into the fancy lobby. Be waiting with his hand in his right-hand pocket where it was now. Not looking for trouble, just a few words with the Sen. No action, just words, but the comfort of a hand on cold steel. When you came up against the Sen you needed what comfort you could find.

He was delayed on the corner while the cops let a line of cars pass. He looked into each one as it crept by, not seeming to look, standing there with the other sheep waiting by order of the law. The Sen wasn’t in any of these cars. Sailor was restless waiting and he watched his chance to break through the line for the opposite sidewalk. The cop yelled something as he broke but Sailor didn’t pay any attention. He was safe on the other side with another endless stream of people. No spic cop was going to keep him standing on a corner all night. He had business.

The Plaza was alive now. It was wriggling with people, and the street that surrounded it, blocked from traffic, was filled with people. He could hear the tinkling music of Tio Vivo before he reached the Old Museum. He didn’t enter the Plaza, he walked big along the bank side of the street not even remembering McIntyre until he had reached the bank. Mac wasn’t there any longer. Mac had business here too.

It wouldn’t be so bad if McIntyre too were waiting for the Sen in La Fonda lobby. Give the Sen a scare. He’d be easier to talk to scared. Not that Sailor would talk before a Chicago copper, but it wouldn’t hurt to have the Sen think he might. Sailor had been striding along feeling good but at the bank he was stopped.

Stopped by an unmoving mass of people jamming to the corner, jamming the walks and the streets, packed like cattle here in the open street. Sailor shoved off into the street behind the crowd where he could crane his neck up and see what they were looking at. Zozobra was dead. His ghost couldn’t have beat the crowd downtown.

He looked up just as music blared through the loudspeaker, just as the crowd sighed and sucked its breath and whistled, just as the floodlights were flung on the high terraces of the hotel. He saw it all as a kaleidoscope, the lights, the Spanish orchestra in the corner abutment, the pretty boy leader with the lavender powder on his face. He saw the throne and the dark girl in crimson velvet robes ascending it, the old duck in knee britches and plumes placing the crown of gold on her head. The crowd cheered and the Spanish princesses in white satin preened before the throne. There wasn’t a chance of eeling through to the hotel. These weren’t separate people; they were a solidified mass. Only darkness on the terraced roof would give them fluidity again.

Sailor stubbed on across to the one familiar spot in this alien night. Knee britches was blaring through the microphone. He spoke in Spanish and the crowd cheered. When he finished he spoke again in English, spic English, and the crowd again cheered. “Viva las Fiestas,” he cried and the crowd echoed, “Viva las Fiestas,” he cried and the crowd echoed, “Viva las Fiestas.” Anything went with these peasants; Old Man Gloom was dead, bring on the Fiesta.

A woman was singing in Spanish, her voice, distorted by the mike, deafened the night. Sailor leaned against the tired fence palings of the merry-go-round. The musicians were standing at the far end, peering up into the sky. Only Pancho Villa was where he was before, big and motionless, one hand on the neck of the pink wooden horse.

He had a wide smile for Sailor. “You see Zozobra burn, no? Zozobra is dead. Viva las Fiestas!” It was as if he were host and anxious that Sailor should enjoy the carnival.

“Sure.” Sailor took out his pack of cigarettes. This time he passed it to Pancho. He scratched the match on the peeling, dark-red paint “Sure he died, but where’s the customers?”

Pancho laughed deep. His hand stroked the pink horse. Smoke trickled out of his nose and his big mouth. “This time it is the Queen. The show on the roof for the Queen. After it is over, Tio Vivo and I must work.” The sigh came out of his belly but he brightened. “Tonight not so much work. It is late and the muchachos must go home to bed. Tomorrow, ah—” The sigh was long.

Music again blasted the speaker and the sound of dancing, heels tapping, castanets clicking. Sailor dug his elbow between the palings. “This is a spic town. Why’d the Sen pick a spic town?” He didn’t know he’d spoken aloud until the brigand answered.

“Spic?” He said it “speec” like a spic. “Spic? I do not know that spic.”

Spic. Hunkey. Mick. Kike. Wop. Greaser. Sailor felt for translation. “Mex,” he said.

Pancho was solemn. Big and sweaty and shapeless, he was dignity. “No,” he said. “This is not a Mex town. This is an American town.”

”Then why does everybody talk—” He halted at the word. He supplied, “Spanish?”

Pancho was no longer offended. “It is Spanish-American. The Fiesta, it is Spanish. It tells of my people who come so long ago and conquer the Indian. So long ago.” His sigh wasn’t unhappy now. It was the leaf falling. “Before the Gringo soldiers, the English-speaking, come and conquer the Spanish. Now we are all one, the Spanish and the Indian and the Gringo.” His yellow teeth smiled. “If I were Ignacio I would make a song about it. We are all one in the Fiesta.” He shook his head. “I do not like spic. We are not Mexican, Mister. Mexican is south, below the border. I have been to Mexico,” he boasted.

A gourd rattle and a chorus of harsh voices broke over the mike. Pancho’s eyes leaped with love. “The Mariachi! Ah . . .” He started lumbering to the far end of the enclosure. “The Mariachi are Mexican,” floated over his shoulder. “From Guadalajara of Jalisco.”

Sailor circled the paddock to where he could crane up to the roof. The Mariachi were singing, strumming and beating their crude wooden guitars. “Guadalajara . . .” they sang. The shouting proud song of the homeland. They wore enormous straw sombreros and white peasant suits with red sashes, woven rugs over their shoulders. Their faces were carved of wood, brown, wrinkled, impassive. The faces of cut-throats, but they carried guitars not machetes; they made fierce music not war. This was Fiesta. The solid mass went wild but the Mariachi showed no emotion. They sang again, a wild, cruel song, baring their teeth, pounding with their knuckles on the gourdlike guitars, sweeping the catgut strings with maniacal speed.

Fiesta. The time of celebration, of release from gloom, from the specter of evil. But under celebration was evil; the feast was rooted in blood, in the Spanish conquering of the Indian. It was a memory of death and destruction. Now we are one, Pancho said. A memory of peace but before peace death and destruction. Indian, Spaniard, Gringo; the outsider, the paler face. One in Fiesta. The truce of Fiesta. Why had the Sen come to this strange foreign place? Did he think he’d be safe in a Spanish— American town? Did he think the native truce was for him too?

Sailor’s mouth twisted. This dump might seem out of the world but the busses came in regular from Chicago. It wasn’t that far from Chicago.

And again he saw the Sen. Not standing down in the street cricking his neck; not the Sen. He was up on the second roof, where the pretty young Queen sat; trust the Sen. All dressed up in his tight black velvet pants and velvet monkey jacket, the red bow flopping under his chin. He was too far away for Sailor to see his face; he was too far up. There wasn’t a guy so far up he couldn’t be pulled down. The Spanish pulled the Indians down and that’s why there was the Fiesta. Then the Gringos pulled down the Spanish and that’s why the Spanish were spies cranking up an old merry-go-round, smelling of dirty sweat. While the Sen sat on a roof leching at a phoney Queen.