Wraiths of the Broken Land (12 page)

The gentleman held the undulating pouch by its drawstrings. “They will not fly away?”

“I removed their legs and wings.”

“Oh.” Nathaniel was displeased to learn that his fate depended upon the lambent glow of mutilated insects.

“They are a tool,” Deep Lakes said, “but I’ll be able to track you whether or not you use them.”

“I shall surreptitiously deploy a few should the mode of transportation change.”

“May your decisions be wise.” The native departed.

Nathaniel delicately placed the pouch of dismembered fireflies inside his jacket, set his black stovepipe hat atop his head and walked up the paved avenue.

Before him expanded the bright white façade of Castillo Elegante, which was attended by the same two pine green guards whom he had met the previous evening. Parked immediately beside the pair was a very large crimson stagecoach. Nathaniel was chilled by the sight of the vehicle, yet strode toward it, undaunted.

Amidst the black steeds that were harnessed to the stagecoach stood a pale man, who was clothed in a blue tuxedo and had an odd discoloration in the middle of his face. He emerged from the beasts, looked at Nathaniel and inquired, “Are you the American friend of Juan Bonito?”

The gringo replied that he had very recently become acquainted with Juan Bonito.

“Bueno. Good.”

Nathaniel continued forward and soon apprehended that the fellow’s nose was made out of wood and affixed to his face with metal wire. When the distance between the two men diminished to a yard, they stopped and shook hands. The pale individual was almost as tall as the gringo, and his clasp was indelicate.

“Buenas noches.” Nathaniel focused his gaze upon the man’s brown eyes.

“Buenas noches.”

They released each other.

The gringo asked the man with the wooden nose if his name was Gris.

A smile came to the fellow’s lips and his false proboscis shifted. “I working for Gris. I am called Ubaldo.” His breath smelled like pungent chicken soup.

“I am Thomas Weston,” replied Nathaniel. (This name belonged to a horse thief who was lynched in Michigan in eighteen forty-two.)

“You would like to go to Catacumbas?”

“Si.”

“It is one hundred pesos to go.”

Nathaniel told Ubaldo that Juan Bonito had stated a different price.

Ubaldo nodded and said, “The price normal is fifty pesos. Pero est—but tonight is big fiesta.” He pointed to the crimson stagecoach. “You may ask them—they all pay one hundred.”

Through a window, Nathaniel saw two luminous orange dots, which were the ends of cigars, and the vague shapes of four men. “I do not need to enquire with them.” The gringo withdrew his wallet.

“No pay now—I do not want to hold so much moneys.” Ubaldo walked over to the stagecoach, twisted a wooden handle and opened the door. “Please enter.” He smiled, and his nose shifted.

Nathaniel removed his stovepipe hat, set a black loafer upon the lowermost step, ascended its superiors and entered the plush and capacious lavender interior of a stagecoach in which four men sat quietly with their lascivious imaginings. The quartet nodded cordially to the arrival, but proffered no words.

“Make yourself a seat.” Ubaldo shut the door. “One more person is come and then we go.”

Nathaniel pulled his tuxedo tails to his buttocks and sat upon a spring-supported velvet bench, in-between a smoking hombre and the left window. Upon his thighs, he rested his stovepipe hat.

“Buenas noches Señor Bonito,” greeted Ubaldo.

Nathaniel looked through the window and saw the little mestizo walk toward the stagecoach. Although the gringo did not know how the Plugford crew would endeavor their rescue, he assumed that bystanders with varying degrees of guilt would receive a thrown fist or something invisible that was accompanied by a loud bang. Nathaniel wanted to warn the little man away from Catacumbas, but he could not think of any way to do so without arousing suspicion. And Brent’s comment about the ‘red Mex’can’s’ complicity was correct—Juan Bonito had recommended two whores whom he knew to be captives.

The mestizo wore a bright blue suit, yellow shoes and a matching bowtie, and his ruined ear was somehow whole. He shook hands with Ubaldo, and presently entered the stagecoach.

“Buenas noches, Señor Weston.”

Nathaniel wished the mestizo a good evening.

The little man looked at the smoker seated beside the gringo and asked him if he would yield his seat.

Without hesitation, the hombre stood from the bench.

Juan Bonito sat beside Nathaniel. “Tonight is a fiesta, and it is more pesos to get submerged in Catacumbas.”

The gringo stated that the driver had asked for one hundred pesos.

“It is the price—but for you it is free.” Juan Bonito smiled.

Nathaniel understood that the little man intended to treat him. “Thank you, but I cannot accept your money.”

“I should not have taken so much from you in the games last night—that was improper. Now I have the opportunity to make more fair. It is why I come along tonight.”

The stagecoach sagged as hard boots thudded upon the wooden ladder that led to the top of the vehicle. “Vamos al Catacumbas,” announced Ubaldo from the roof. He punctuated his proclamation with a whip crack.

Behind Juan Bonito’s smiling face, Castillo Elegante and the two pine green guards slid from view.

“Gracias—eres muy generoso,” Nathaniel said to the mestizo’s half-rubber ear.

“I like to have friends in America for when I visit there with my childrens.”

Nathaniel nodded absently.

“Do you have any childrens?” inquired Juan Bonito.

“I do not.”

“You would like childrens?”

“I would.”

“They are a great joy, though my third child killed my wife when he was born. And he was sick and did not live for many years.”

“You have my condolences.” Nathaniel did not want to hear any more personal information about Juan Bonito.

“His name was Benino. The doctors say—if Benino had growed up—he was going to be very tall.” The little mestizo smiled proudly, and Nathaniel had to look away.

The western remainder of Nueva Vida disappeared, and the vista expanded. To the southwest stood the ten peaks of Gran Manos, silhouetted before moonlit clouds that were pock-marked and gray like the lunar orb itself. Three stagecoach inhabitants reclined in their seats and placed derbies over their faces.

“It is not a short travel,” informed Juan Bonito.

Nathaniel leaned back and stretched his legs.

“Would you like to see pictures of my childrens?” The mestizo reached into a jacket pocket. “I have one of Benino from the last birthday fiesta—”

“I am very tired. Perhaps you will show the photographs to me on our return journey home?”

“Si. You will peruse them later.” Juan Bonito withdrew an empty hand from his jacket.

After a brusque nod, Nathaniel shut his eyes so that he no longer had to look at the wounded man’s face.

The horses cantered briskly. Stagecoach wheels sizzled across firm grit and clicked upon occasional roots and stones. The weary gringo would have fallen asleep were he not juggling apprehensions for his own safety, as well as concerns for the captive women, Patch Up (whom he liked), Brent (who was simple, but meant well), John Lawrence Plugford (whom he pitied and feared) and Juan Bonito.

The lanterns upon the sides of the vehicle were extinguished and the plain became a dark ocean. “¡Alto, muchachos, alto!” Ubaldo shouted at the horses. The animals whinnied and their pace slowed. “¡Alto!”

Nathaniel and the other passengers looked outside. The landscape stopped moving, and the steeds quietened. Suddenly, the gringo wondered if he were about to be robbed or executed.

Boots slammed upon the dirt, and a silhouetted figure appeared outside the stagecoach window. The man with the wooden nose told the stagecoach passengers to extinguish their cigars.

Concerned that Deep Lakes or the Plugford crew had been descried by Ubaldo, Nathaniel asked if something was amiss.

“He always check for robbers,” stated Juan Bonito. “Some people knows that this stagecoach has rich mens.”

Ubaldo raised a spyglass to his right eye and scanned the terrain. Nueva Vida, the plains, dark flora and clouds were slowly captured, warped and released by the bulbous glass. The driver paused, and frozen in miniature upon the iridescent lens were the northern mountain peaks, distended into the shape of a clutching hand.

Nathaniel asked Ubaldo if he had descried anything of concern.

“No.” The man with the wooden nose screwed and collapsed his spyglass. “I am just cautious.” He climbed the wooden ladder, disappeared onto the roof and said, “Vamos muchachos.” The lanterns had not been relit, and the stagecoach became a rolling shadow.

Outside the vehicle, black protrusions that were rocks, branches, cacti and yucca glided across the dark gray plain, while opaque mountains gnawed at the horizon. Upon the expanding range appeared onyx daggers, which were huge valleys, and crushed tumbleweeds, which were arid woodlands. The mountains climbed, and Nathaniel felt as if he were shrinking.

A whip cracked. “Mas rapido,” exhorted the driver.

The tattoo of the horses’ hooves quickened, and black aberrations sped past, blurry and elongated. Nathaniel wondered at the wisdom of driving horses so quickly across a poorly-lit plain.

“No have concerns,” the perspicacious mestizo said, “the horses could wear blindfolds and it would be safe. They know the way.”

Nathaniel nodded, yet remained unconvinced that it was safe to travel at such a speed through the badlands on an unclear night. Even if the animals traversed some previously established route, a significant stone or a sinkhole could tumble a horse and heave its contemporaries and the vehicle into the air. Every anomaly in the road engendered an acute jolt that touched the gringo’s stomach with a cold finger, and he suspected that his retreating hairline would yield a little more ground before he made it back to Leesville.

The mountains raced toward the front of the stagecoach.

“There is a throat,” Juan Bonito informed Nathaniel. “A place where we enter.”

Nathaniel nodded and leaned back in his seat. On either side of the rumbling vehicle, tilted dark flora, elongated and blurry, raced across the gray canvas.

“¡Hombres, cuidado!” cautioned the driver from above.

Hombres clasped the leather straps that dangled from the cabin ceiling, and so did the gringo. The stagecoach tilted back. Outside the windows, stone walls shot up and confined the vehicle.

A whip cracked. “¡Muchachos!”

Within the defile, gravity tugged at Nathaniel’s guts.

Chapter V
Fidelity, Faith and the Black Circle

The luscious mystery within Marietta’s cleavage deepened as she leaned toward Humberto Calles, and the kiss that she placed upon his bare scalp felt like a benediction.

As the barmaid stood upright, she complimented the balladeer’s performance, which had ended thirty minutes earlier.

Seated at his favorite table in the sunken back room, Humberto pointed to his guitarrita and stated that his unique instrument is what gives his songs a special quality.

Marietta touched a fingertip to his throat, ran it gently to his lips and remarked that the mouth is the most important instrument of all.

Her digit lingered, suggestively.

The sounds and lights within the bar dimmed, and the balladeer saw only the face of the woman who stood over him, as if descended from Heaven directly to Nueva Vida, Mexico. His heart thudded, his phallus swelled and warm light filled his blood. The beauteous arrival leaned forward, and her luscious mystery expanded.

Anxious, the faithfully married, fifty-four-year-old man slid his chair away from the table and rose to his feet.

Marietta asked him why he had withdrawn.

Thinking about his wife and daughters, Humberto stammered.

“¿Crees que soy bonita?”

The balladeer said that she was pretty—dangerously pretty.

Marietta pressed her lips to Humberto’s mouth and connected their tender interiors with her tongue. The man was eighteen years old, quick and hale, with long dark hair that ran down to his buttocks in a braided tail; he was a skilled musician who knew everything and was too smart to commit himself to one town or one woman.

“P-por favor,” Humberto pleaded as he pulled away from the kiss, warmth and youth proffered by Marietta. “Por favor.” He looked at her befuddled eyes, apologized, took his guitarrita case, retreated and plunged through the checkered blanket into the night, where cool air turned the perspiration that covered his face into clammy oil.

Humberto looked up at the smoldering plaster that hid the heavens and asked the Lord why the barmaid had behaved so aggressively this evening.

During the silence that followed his inquiry, the balladeer removed a linen kerchief from his blue shirt, wiped his chilled face and felt a soft warm kiss upon his neck. His heart pounded.

“Por favor, mi amor.” Marietta pressed her breasts into Humberto’s back, slid her palms across his stomach, interlaced her strong fingers and held him tightly.

Firmly, the married man pulled away.

The barmaid stated that she had watched the balladeer perform for nearly twenty years.

Retreating from temptation, Humberto thanked her for her patronage.

Marietta confessed that she had longed to share a bed with him throughout the duration of her womanhood.

From a distance of five yards, Humberto announced that he was a faithful husband.

“Por favor—hacer una excepción.”

“No.” The man explained that even one indiscretion would sunder the vow of marriage.

Defeated, Marietta told Humberto that he was an excellent man in every way imaginable.

The balladeer tapped an index finger upon his bald scalp and said that he possessed a flaw.

Marietta laughed. “Por favor, vuelve dentro de la barra.”

Humberto thanked the woman, but declined her invitation and said that he intended to go home and spend some time with his family before they were all asleep.

The barmaid kissed the balladeer’s left cheek, presented her round buttocks and walked through the checkered sheet. Pondering wondrous treasures refused, Humberto began his journey home.

Beneath imposto lunar clouds sat the sturdy and unchanging house that the balladeer had built sixteen years earlier. The tangible memories of Marietta’s embrace and kisses stirred Humberto’s blood like a third cup of coffee, and he rambled around his home in an attempt to diminish the surfeit of energy.

During his sixth moonlit orbit, the balladeer paused at the wooden swing set that he and his cousins Pablo and Pablito had erected on Anna’s third birthday, one year before it became apparent that she would need to use crutches for the remainder of her life. The fifty-four-year-old man sat upon a dangling wooden seat, withdrew his crushed timepiece, rocked forward and watched the reflection of the moon shatter upon the cracked glass.

Unrecognized by the device’s dead hands, time passed.

Humberto secreted the crushed pocket watch, stood up and carried his guitarrita into his quiet home. The delicious specter of pernil and roasted chilies greeted him, and he hungrily proceeded across the woven rugs toward the kitchen.

“Papa.”