Enelio sat on his heels in front of Nesta. “Jerry?” he said softly. “Hey, you. Jerry!”
The head lifted from the hands. The eyes did not match the virility and vitality of the great black beard. They were gray-blue, hesitant, uncertain. And reddened by tears.
“How you making it, boy?” Enelio asked.
“All… all three of them. Jesus! All three of them. I just can’t… can’t start to believe it’s true.”
“Who did it, Jerry?”
“I don’t know! There wasn’t anybody here. I didn’t see anybody. I came in, calling Della on account of I wanted to know where to put the stuff.”
“What Stuff?”
‘The stuff I brought back from town. It was my turn to go in. Nobody felt like coming along. Luz was doing washing, and Mike was going good on a painting, and Della had a headache.“
“You drove the jeep to town?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What time did you leave here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a little before ten. I bought fruit and radishes and beans, and a kilo of masa for Luz to make tortillas. I guess I was gone most of an hour probably.”
“How soon after you got back did the police come?”
“I don’t know. Like two minutes.”
“Jerry, can you think of any way we could pin it down, what time you got back here, man?”
“I don’t know how I can.”
Enelio got up and went over and spoke to the doctor for a little while. They walked over near one of the sheds and the doctor indicated a dark stain on the dust and stones. Enelio came back and sat on the bench beside Nesta. “Did you see anything unusual or hear anything unusual on your way out of town or on the highway?”
“I can’t remember anything.”
“Nothing interesting at all?”
“Oh, wait a minute. There was something. Right near the edge of town, where the railroad tracks are, there was an old truck pulled over and the engine was on fire, and people were running around yelling, and they were throwing dirt on it and a man was beating at it with a blanket.”
Enelio said, “You are one lucky fellow. The cops saw it too and stopped for a minute. They were just putting the fire out. So they were, like you said, a minute or two behind you.”
“What difference does it make?”
“This wasn’t robbers, Jerry. Nobody touched a pocket or a purse. From the blood over there, it had to have happened at least twenty minutes before the police got here, according to the doctor here.”
Jerry stared at Enelio. “Would these damn fools think I’d kill my friends?”
“That’s what most people kill. Their family or their friends. Very few people kill strangers. I got to tell what you said to the sergeant.”
I sat where Enelio had been. “How come you and Luz moved in here with Mike and Della?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “Who are you?”
“My name is McGee. I’ve been trying to locate you. I found where you had been living, out at Mitla.”
“Why have you been looking for me?”
“Just to see what you might know about Bix Bowie.”
“Bix got killed in an accident.”
“I know. And Carl Sessions died of an overdose. So the only ones left to talk to are you and Minda and Rocko.”
“Why should anybody know anything about Bix? Minda, maybe. It happened after everybody had split.”
“A girl named Gillian saw you in Mitla and told a friend. Gillian talked to you and she said you weren’t very friendly. She asked you where Rocko was and you said you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t and I don’t. I was the last one to split. I had to get the hell away from Rocko. I got pretty sick there. I had to try to get clean. I’m not in real good shape yet. I get this ringing in my ears, and I get shaky, and my eyes blur sometimes. I have real bad nightmares, but I don’t hallucinate any more. Luz took care of me when I was real, real bad. I don’t even know how I got to Mitla. It was all part of a bad trip. She pulled me out of a ditch and got some friends to help her get me under a roof. I had the idea Rocko was trying to kill me, you know, like paranoia, and I had to cut out. Jesus! Why would anybody kill Luz? You know she had a beautiful smile? When she smiled… I tell you it was something else.”
“Was it better here than it was in Mitla?”
“Oh sure. I ran into Mike out at the ruins and we started talking, and I took him back to the place and showed him the big timber head I’ve been working on. So he came out to see it and he liked it. I mean there are too many people around just talking about doing something. I told him I was trying like hell to work, because it had been too long. I leveled with him. I said I had been on things that didn’t do me much good, but now I was clean and I was going to stay clean. I said it was lonely, me not being able to talk much of Luz’s language, and he told me about his free place, and how there was room, and Della might like having another woman around to share the scut work. So why not? We got a guy to help and we loaded the big head on his jeep and packed and came here. Luz was pretty weird about Della for a little while, until she got used to her. Then they started to get along. But… they haven’t… didn’t have much time to get acquainted. Oh goddammit all anyway! It’s such a lousy waste. Della was pregnant. That’s why she was having headaches.”
Enelio sauntered back and said, “Jerry, they want to investigate further, but because the time you got back checks out and because they can’t find any kind of a weapon, you ought to be okay.”
“One of them was looking at one of my sculptor’s mallets.”
“And he would like to cry because it was such a nice thing for somebody to use, but there would have to be blood. Blood and skin and hair. And fantastic strength. But they have to take you in anyway.”
“Why?”
“Your tourist card is no good. Got money to get home?”
“Hell no.”
“So they hold you and ask the American Embassy to make arrangements.”
“Look, I forgot the card ran out! I didn’t even think about it. I don’t want to sit in any Mexican jail.”
“Nobody sitting in one wants to be there.”
I took Enelio aside. “I want to talk to this kid, alone and in the right relaxing surroundings. Any way to keep him out?”
“Want to pay for his trip to the States?”
“If it’ll help.”
“Want to give a little gift to the police welfare fund?”
“Like?”
“Five hundred pesos?”
“Sure.”
“Then let them keep him overnight and we’ll see what we can do tomorrow. Tomorrow they are maybe going to be happy to get rid of any little problems. Newspaper people will be here today from Mexico City. This will be one big stink. The Tourist Bureau will be very ogly about it. This is supposed to be such a nice safe country, eh? But always there are damn fools going off into primitive places where los Indios are still damn savage. No Spanish at all. Cruel land and cruel people. Canoe trips. Hiking. Go see the interesting Indios and get your interested throat cut, and get thrown naked into an interesting river, man. So that is one thing, and that is something else. One and a half million cars cross the border and stay for a time. God knows how many more go over into border towns for the day. It is a big industry. Come to beautiful Oaxaca and get a big hit on the head. Travis, my friend, to get this bearded boy with the sad eyes loose, I must make some little kind of guarantee all will be well. You think everything will go well?”
“I’ll know better after I talk to him. If I don’t like the vibrations, he better go back in.”
Meyer came over to us and said, “Come take a look at something.” He took us over to a space against the adobe wall beyond a wooden shed. The wooden sculpture stood there. A head five feet high, carved and gouged and scraped out of old gray beams that had been bolted together. It was the same sort of Zapotecan face of the ancient carvings in stone. It had the same cruel, brooding look of lost centuries and forgotten myths. It was the size and weight and texture of the old timbers that gave it impact. There was no neck. It sat solidly on the great hard width of jaw. It could have been just a kind of self-conscious trick, but somehow he had given it a presence that made you want to speak softly.