Corbera was about ten minutes away; one drove through it completely in five minutes — he had therefore only fifteen minutes to devise a ruse or a confusion in which he might make his escape.
He lay back and considered his prospects — Willie and Fencer had fallen silent. They passed the Purina plant which marked the outskirts of Corbera. Fourteen minutes. Fletch took another drink; the parrot squawked to alert Willie Wings. Thirteen minutes.
Fletch considered the peculiar question of whether there had ever been an element of choice connected with his excursion. One thing was certain: he had not refused to come. He thought this significant.
At the moment when his rational process was most acutely engaged, his thoughts were frighted by the hated voice of Willie Wings.
“Now that man in Chattanooga didn’t claim to be no poet,” Willie told him. “But all by himself in that there hotel room he wailed. He set his consciousness on fire! That was life I was witnessing, Fletch, at my peephole. So when I meet guys like you…”
Fletch stared wide-eyed at the telegraph wires outside. Twelve minutes … Eleven minutes.
Willie Wings had raised both arms above his head like a bouzouki dancer and was waggling his thick fingers over the reddened dome of his head.
“Then I think, Wow, man, how groovy it is to be human! What a beautiful thing to be alive and conscious. And I think of that summer night in the shadow of Lookout Mountain — the cat on his own self and me on my peephole — the two of us there, human and conscious, the perceiver and the perceived, man, and I think that’s the most beautiful night of my life spiritually.”
He turned to look at Fletch, but seeing only the rear window he cried out in alarm. “Fencer! Where’s Fletch?”
Fletch had sunk to the floor and was gripping the tire with both hands.
“Fletch!” Willie called and leaned over the seat to discover him. “You once-born emptiness, you better hide.” He bent himself double over the back to shout in Fletch’s ear. “In spite of you, man, the world is rich!”
Fletch twisted on the thought. He pulled himself upright and took a drink.
Fencer watched him in the mirror. “Stay in it, Fletch. Everything’s gonna be groovy.”
“You fucking repulsive baldheaded rat,” Fletch said to Willie. “Who wants to hear about your lousy life?”
Willie Wings stared in astonishment.
Fencer looked concerned.
“Don’t be an asshole,” he cautioned Fletch. “Don’t overreact.”
The world is rich in spite of me, Fletch thought furiously.
“You creepy bastards! All I know is creepy bastards!” Fletch could not contain himself. “My life is poisoned!”
Willie Wings recovered himself.
“Nobody sounds me,” he declared violently. “No literary poet abuses me! It’s love me — love my thing! I got my own thing, Fencer. I got friends that love me and revere me and protect me from the literary poets that want to destroy me because the literary poets have always wanted to destroy me. I don’t know how many times I been bum-tripped and burned by poets and I hate the bastards!”
“You…” Fletch began.
“You think I can’t protect myself from you?” Willie shouted. “You think I’m defenseless?” He laughed derangedly. “I got a hard desperate side for my own protection,” he told them. “I got a piece!” He began to claw at the inside of his leg, which was where he strapped his pistol.
“Yeah,” Willie Wings said. His eyes were fixed as though confronting some inevitability; his hand was on the concealed holster.
Fencer began to slap at him blindly with his free arm.
“Willie, Willie, that ain’t the way.”
“Whaddaya mean it ain’t the way, Fencer? What’s the way then?”
“The way,” Fencer said, “is to go up the mountain and make it all complete.” He sought Fletch in the mirror again. “Right, Fletch?”
Fletch stared glassy-eyed at the bulge along Willie’s calf where the gun was.
“Let me out,” he said dully. “I get out here.”
They were in the zócalo of Corbera. On the left Fletch saw the veranda of the Hotel Volcánico, on the right the Azteca Cinema was playing Sangre y Plata with Errol Flynn.
“No,” Fencer said. “We got to finish it.”
Willie Wings had regained his composure. “I’ll go along with that,” he said. “Fletch stays.”
There was a wall of peanuts on the north end of the square where the vendors had set up their stalls outside the municipal market. Fletch was suddenly inspired. He thrust himself over the seat and seized the wheel. Fencer hung on and decelerated.
“Let me out,” Fletch told him. “I’ll run us on the peanuts.”
A vendor approached them with a basketful of nuts.
“Cacahuetes,” he moaned. “Cacahuetes?”
Fencer and Willie Wings sat in silent fury.
Fletch gathered up his thermos and prepared to alight. He was trembling.
“Cacahuetes,” sang the peanut vendor.
Without warning, Fencer rammed into gear. Fletch saw the market fall away in a spray of peanuts as he flew into the back seat.
“Gringo!” the stricken peanut man called after them. “Gringo!”
Fletch floundered in the seat. His trousers were soaked in Coke and alcohol.
“Take it easy, Fletch,” Fencer said earnestly. “Show him, Willie.”
“Don’t panic, Fletch,” Willie said. “But the Sinister Pancho Pillow was just pulling up behind us.” He pointed tensely through the rear window.
About thirty yards behind them was a new Lincoln with California plates. The driver; barely visible, was a fat, dark-skinned man who wore a goatee and dark glasses. A girl in a straw hat sat beside him, and there was a third person in the back.
Fletch stared at them.
“Well there it is, Fletch,” Fencer said. “You panicked. You balked. And you nearly set us up for Sinister Pancho Pillow.”
“And his woman, La Beatriz,” Willie Wings said.
“And La Beatriz. And Pancho’s Odd Buddy.” Fencer whistled through his teeth. “Don’t that show you somethin’ about how the world is set up, Fletch? There you were, acting like me and Willie Wings was a menace, and in the next fuckin’ instant Sinister Pancho Pillow makes the scene.”
Fletch thought of prayer. He addressed a prayer to his perception, which he felt was in danger of obliteration, together with its frail equipage. He beseeched his perception to overcome panic and confusion.
“I have nothing to fear from Pancho Pillow,” he told them. “What do I care if he pulls up behind us?”
“Let us not leave those evils which we got,” Willie Wings said, “and flee to others which we know not of.”
Fencer nodded vigorously. “That’s a relevant quote, Fletch. Hey, man, are they still behind us?”
“They turned off,” Fletch said. “They’re going back to the coast.”
“That’s a feint,” Fencer said. “They’re gonna stay out there behind us somewhere.”
The sloping plains they drove through were bare, although patches of cypress forest rose in the barrancas below them.
They were above Corbera now. Ahead the road ran quite literally to the clouds.
Fencer was rolling a joint while driving. He was one of the few people in Mexico who could do so. Fletch watched him jab the lighted end toward Willie with an impatient gesture. That, Fletch thought, must be why they called him Fencer.
Fletch had resolved to turn on in order to buy time. If he accepted the new joint, it seemed to him that he would not get very much higher than he was. Moreover the forms of order would be maintained, perception stimulated and panic postponed.