“Son of a bitch,” Enelio said slowly.
Jerry Nesta came up behind us, a man in uniform with him. He said, “I had to find hunks of metal and make the tools. I kept them sharp by rubbing them on stone. I kept thinking of the whole 1 figure, and the way he would stand, so the head would carry the look of the whole figure. I thought of it as being something that would stand at the corner of an old temple, looking out. Not a priest or a soldier, but one of the laborers that built all these ruins and died building them. Like maybe the priests decided those unknown people should have a statue, but not out of stone. Mike thought it was… said it was…”
He turned away. Pretty soon they put him in a car and took him in. They left a car and two men to keep watch over the place. As we drove away, the silent people were still under trees, looking toward the place of murder.
Thirteen
THE HOURS spent on the Coyotepec Road had taken too big a piece out of Enelio Fuentes’ available time, and he said we would have to delay the exploration of the unmarked road until later.
He drove us into the center of town. The girls from Guadalajara had planned to spend the morning shopping and have a late lunch on the veranda at the Marques, where we were to join them if we got back in time. Otherwise we would see them after the siesta time. But it was too early for lunch. Enelio said he might as well clean off another square foot of his desk and see us later. We let Meyer off near the big camera store on Hidalgo and Enelio took me around the zocalo to drop me in front of the hotel. There was, by some freak of chance, a parking space available, so he braked and swung in.
“Momentito, my friend.” He sat with his big hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead, frowning.
“One thing I did not know. I did not know I would be so busy, so many things would happen to keep me busy. So what. I have done, I have made you two hombres into tourist guides and taxi drivers for the three little crumpets. I had been telling my conscience, why not? What man could not have pleasure to be with the tiny little flock of bright birds? But I forget. You are here on a sad and serious kind of business, eh? My God, that blood on that dusty ground is enough to wake me up. What I am saying, if they are a burden, arrangements can be made.”
“No burden, amigo. They are a good contrast.”
“You are certain? Good!” He grinned and winked. “I tell you, those sisters they are ver‘ pozzled by you two. I am old and good friends with Lita a long time. They tell her the pozzlement and she whispers it to me. These girl on vacations, McGee, they are having a beautiful time. But what soch pretty ones want on a vacation is the chance to say yes or say no. They do not know what it will be. Much depends on the asking, eh? But they look back on a vacation, they can say, well, I am sorry or I am glad I said yes, or I am sorry or I am glad I said no. Margarita thinks Meyer is one of the great men of our time, and Elena is beginning to think maybe she is ogly, or she is using the wrong toothpowder. I tell you one thing, with these girl, if you do not know the new Mexican working girl, maybe you are afraid they are wanting a permanent thing, hunting for keeps. Forget it. This is a vacation. They take care of themself pretty good, and they were upset with me I should find dates with Americans before they met you, because the Americans they meet, they are too much interested in one thing only. Do as you please. I just say they are pozzled. But if you ask, if they say yes, I tell you it will be one hell of a distraction from this serious matter you are doing here. No, I do not want answers or conversation, please. See you later on, my friend.”
And he went swinging out, putting the fear of the hereafter into a bevy of bicycles and motor scooters. I claimed a table for four on the hotel porch. Though it was nearing the busiest time of day, it was not as crowded as usual. There were far fewer of the college young. It was time to head home, sort the gear, and head back to school. I could overhear the tourist conversations, and quite a few of them were exchanging very lurid and distorted versions of sudden death on the Coyotepec Road. One beflowered matron was explaining loudly to her friends as she walked by that some hippie had shoved a knife into five fellow drug addicts and had been killed resisting arrest.
Suddenly Wally McLeen scurried up and plopped into one of the empty chairs. “Remember me, Travis? Wally McLeen? God, wasn’t that a terrible thing that happened! Did you hear about it? Two wonderful kids were killed this morning…”
“Mike Barrington and Della Davis. And a Mexican girl.”
“Their skulls were crushed. Absolutely crushed. I knew those two kids. Not well, of course, because they didn’t come into town often. They knew my Minda, just casually. They were very nice to me, actually, because they knew I was tying sincerely and honestly to keep from making any emotional judgments about a white boy and a black girl living together. I mean it is rough enough for any young couple to make it, even when they have the same heritage, isn’t it? But you have to respect genuine emotion wherever you find it, I say. No one could be with them without seeing that they were in love and were so terribly anxious to make it work. Now the difference in race doesn’t seem important at all, does it? Dying is the same for everyone. I understand that they think a boy named Jerry Nesta did it while deranged by narcotics. Do you remember when either you or Meyer asked me about Jerry Nesta and Carl Sessions? I since found out that they were in the same little group that came down together, that my Minda was in! Did you know the Sessions boy died?”
“We heard about it.”
“From drugs, I understand. Well, if they were using drugs, I’m certain that’s the reason Minda left the group the first good chance she had. Even if we couldn’t communicate, I know she Tespected her body too much to abuse it with narcotics, but I will have to accept the very real possibility that she uses marijuana and probably LSD. I’ve been trying them from time to time, without really very much effect. But I have had some periods of a new kind of selfawareness, a sort of spiritual feeling of kinship with all living things and all of history. Knowing the effects gives me a better chance to relate to Minda when she comes back here, I think. I thought that Jerry Nesta might have known when she was coming back or where to get in touch with her, so I’d been looking everywhere for him. Do you know, I rode my Honda right past that place twice this morning, where it happened, once on my way to the airport- and once on the way back!” His eyes looked goggly behind the thick lenses.
“Wally, Wally. A Honda yet.”
“I got one, a rental, as soon as I got here. It was pretty hairy for a while, those trucks and buses, but now I’m getting quite confident with it.”
“And those beads, Wally?”
“Well… they’re from the market. They’re made of the vertebrae from the backbones of little fish, stained with vegetable coloring.”
“And that is, or will be, a goatee?”
He laughed unhappily and felt his chin. “Guilty. I don’t know what the boys would say back home. But it’s like… a protective coloration, Trav These kids, if they peg you as a square, they are absolutely cruel and merciless. That’s the part I don’t understand yet, the cruelty. The very first evening I was here a boy made an absolute ass of me, just for sport, I guess. I’d been up and down this veranda all day and all over the zocalo and the market, asking every kid I saw if they knew Minda McLeen. I had just flown down from Mexico City that morning, a Thursday morning. And this young man asked me if I was the one looking for Minda, and he took me back into that bar lounge there, to one of those circular booths. The place was absolutely empty. He was very mysterious about it and very cautious. He said he might know Minda and he might know where she was, and she might be in some kind of a jam, and so what was it worth to me to have him see what he could do to get her out of the mess she was in and turn her over to me. I must say I was suspicious. We finally made a deal that if he’d bring me some proof, like a note from her, I would give him five thousand dollars, and then give him five thousand more when he brought Minda to me. But he just never showed up again. It was a game, a story to tell about how he blew my mind. It’s hard to forgive him, but I think I can.”