“I’ll tell you what we can do now that we’re here,” Lu Anne suggested. “We can have a pigshit fight. How’s that sound?”
“That’d be fine,” Walker said.
For a while they exchanged handfuls of pigshit, heaving it toward each other in an increasingly halfhearted manner.
“This is the scene they left out of Porky’s. The pigshit fight scene. We should have one in The Awakening.”
“When you’re washed in the blood,” Lu Anne said, “the shit is sure to follow.” She looked down at her bare breasts, fondling them. “And milk. But I have none and never will.” She held each breast between her filthy fingers and squeezed her nipples. “I should have tits all around,” she said. “I should have seven like a dog.” She lay back resting her head and shoulders in the chaff; her lower body stayed in the muck. “I wish they could take me out for fertilizer with the pigshit. I’d be worth more as fertilizer than I ever was as an actor.” She sat up, looking at Walker with cool curiosity. “What’s with you, Gordon? What you all seized up about?”
Walker tried to compose himself.
“I’m a little tired,” he said.
Walker saw her gaze sweep past him toward the top of the road. When he turned he saw two Mexicans in the green uniform of the tourist police. One of them was holding a shotgun pointing in their direction — not quite aiming it, but coming close. Both of the policemen wore expressions of profound melancholy.
“Hi, you all,” Lu Anne said to them.
A cluster of little brown children were at the foot of the posada stairs waiting to watch them as they passed. Walker led the descent, holding Lu Anne by the hand. Both of them stared straight ahead, affecting a sort of blindness. A woman shouted from the kitchen and the children scattered to conceal themselves.
The woman who had shouted came out to be paid. She had the physique of the valley people; dark and round with high cheekbones and bold intelligent eyes. Her husband was hiding in the kitchen.
Walker gave the woman fifty dollars. She raised her chin and lowered it.
“Ochenta,” she said. Walker gave her the extra thirty dollars without complaint. It was good, he thought, to be in a place where people knew what they needed.
When she had been paid, she backed away without turning, her eyes downcast. The afternoon sun streamed in through the open front door and it seemed to Walker that she was avoiding the shadow Lu Anne cast.
Outside, the two tourist police were waiting and the man who had driven them to Monte Carmel, standing at something like attention beside his car. Walker and Lu Anne got in the taxi and the policemen into their cruiser.
“How much did you give her?” Lu Anne asked.
“Eighty,” Walker told her.
It had not been a bad buy. They had been able to shower at the posada and children were sent out to buy clothes for them. The tourist police and a state policeman in town had been paid a total of four hundred dollars.
“Fortunately,” Walker said, “money’s waterproof.”
They were both barefoot. Walker was wearing a pair of Mexican jeans he could not button and an aloha shirt with red palm trees on it that said MAZATLAN. Lu Anne had a white rayon blouse and a wide print skirt that was too small for her.
At the airfield, young Benson was pacing beside his plane, drinking a can of Sprite. He managed a warped smile and a silly little wave as they drove up. When they got out, the taxi driver turned at once for town. The police parked beside the runway and stayed there.
As they took off into the sun, a score of children and teenagers broke from cover and ran out for a closer glimpse of them. The goats that had been grazing beside the strip fled. Not until they were truly airborne did the police car drive away.
Within minutes they saw the dazzling sea ahead. They were both in the rear seat. The Benson boy pulled his headphones from his ears and turned to speak to them. His expression was one of grave perplexity.
“Don’t ask questions, son,” Walker said to him. “Fly.”
One of the Benson drivers took them back to Bahía Honda. When they passed China Beach, just outside the mouth of the bay, Lu Anne said that she wanted to get out and walk.
“I’m exhausted,” Walker said. “I can’t believe you’re not.”
“I’m fine,” Lu Anne said. “I walk here all the time at low tide. It’s a much shorter distance at sea level.”
The driver pulled over and they went to the edge of the bluffs.
“See how low the tide is?” Lu Anne said to Walker. “And we can be back at my bungalow before dark.”
Walker looked into his friend’s eyes. It was obvious enough that she was bone weary. Only exhaustion was keeping her devils in check. The easygoing tourist who stood before him contemplating a stroll was an illusion.
Yet, he thought, it would be horrible to arrive at the hotel’s front door in broad daylight. He decided it would be unthinkable. They could walk slowly, bathing in the surf, watching the sunset colors, and then he would put her to bed.
“O.K.,” he said to her. “Why not?”
He helped her down the short thorny path from the highway and they walked across the beach to the edge of the surf.
China Beach was altogether different from the beaches on the bay. The unbroken Pacific landed there and that afternoon there was a strong west wind, a tame follower of the storm. It gathered great rollers before it to break against the black sand.
“What a sight you are, Gordon,” she said. “In your sexy trousers and your rip-roaring sport shirt from the sin city of surf. Devil take the hindmost, Gordon Walker. My one true pal.”
“That’s me,” Walker said.
“Don’t you love the black sand?”
“I do,” he said. They walked on the sand at the tide line, beyond the waves’ withdrawing.
“Black is enough,” Lu Anne said. “Basalt. Obsidian.”
“I think,” Walker said, “we have got beyond fun.”
“I don’t know about that, Gordon. It doesn’t sound good.”
“We’re going to have a sunset,” Walker said. “Can we handle it?”
“As long as our money holds out,” Lu Anne said.
“If it costs more than two hundred we can’t have one.”
“We’ve got to,” Lu Anne said. “Otherwise the fucking thing will just sit there.”
“I’d like that,” Walker said. “It would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, if the sun just …?”
She put a hand against his chest to interrupt him. They stopped at the water’s edge.
“We can’t be apart now,” she said.
He nodded.
“Of course, we could never be together.”
“That’s true,” Walker said.
He started on but she stayed where she was.
“Oh, I am rather tired now,” she said. “Let’s rest.”
They lay side by side on the dry black sand. It was cooling beneath them as the disc of the sun declined.
“Hey, Lu Anne,” Walker said, “can I ask you a question? It’s about your concepts.”
“You mean my delusional system, do you not?”
“Yes, of course. You’re insightful.”
“My insightfulness,” she said, “has been remarked upon.”
“So — what’s a bone god?”
She put her hand across his mouth, but after a moment she laughed. The laugh was strange; it seemed not quite her own.
“Well,” she said, “a bone god is a little old African knuckle deity.”
“I should have known that when the son of a bitch hit me.”
“Poor man,” she said. “Poor thing that thinks it’s a man and plainly isn’t.”