Enelio said that Chief Alberto Tielma of the Zimatlan jail would give me a nice official receipt for him. He asked me if we got anything out of Nesta, and I said we got a history of the little Mexican hayride those five took that would gag a weasel, but nothing that helped with the primary problem of how come the girl drove off the mountain.
“So,” he said, “when something pozzles me, I find out anything I can find out, and I still see no reason under God for anybody to drive a camper going like hell down into that lousy country down there, except somebody wants to get rid of a camper, which is a large object. If, God forbid, I wanted to get rid of a large object on wheels, I mean without selling it, which is always possible, no matter what kind of papers you have on it, maybe I would take it down that way.”
“So you’d consider going on another expedition with Meyer and McGee?”
“My trouble is I am impulsive. Also I never make the same mistake once. I think… Yes, if it’s okay with you, I pick you up maybe at the Marques tomorrow afternoon?”
It was agreed. We toted Nesta back to jail. He had the contrived indifference of the born loser. He had not a word to say all the way.
Fifteen
MEYER AND I had just finished a late Wednesday lunch on the veranda of the Marques del Valle when Enelio Fuentes arrived, by prearrangement, in the jeep. As we went out the Mitla road, Meyer and I, taking turns yelling against the wind, filled Enelio in on the little talk with Nesta, and the subsequent problem of talking him out of leaving.
I said that after due deliberation, and weighing of all factors, I had told the police chief, with gestures, about Nesta’s antisocial behavior. I had finked on him.
“Hey, how can an animal like that one,” Enelio roared, “carve that strong glorious wooden head? How is it possible?”
“All great artists lead placid, humble, gentle lives,” Meyer hollered. “They are all celibates and never drunk or violent. You know. Like your own Diego Rivera was.”
Grinning, Enelio took his right hand off the wheel and made that unique and expressive Mexican gesture of consternation, like trying to shake water from the fingertips.
The road he was looking for began about twenty miles beyond Mitla. It was a dirt road that, about four miles from the main road, went through a village, and then continued on, dropping perhaps a thousand feet before reaching dry stony flats. Sometimes he could get up to twenty miles an hour before braking, putting it in low, and lurching through rain gulleys and across a moonscape of potholes. Then the road became straighter and smoother, and he was able to make good time. A long high dust plume was kicked up behind us in the windless hot afternoon.
He slowed and stopped and we got out. He took binoculars out of a case and looked west. He said, “Yes, the smaller road out of Ocotlan runs down through those ridges. When I was small we hunted rabbits over there. But not over here. This is the burned land. Sand, rock, cactus. Only by the dry rivers are trees. See. Deep roots. They drink deep only after the rains. You know, it is maybe a little bit too much, those Texas schoolteachers just being there at the right time and looking way over here and just happening to see what she thinks was the camper, and he thinks was not.”
“But the dust would draw your attention,” Meyer said.
“And, this,” I explained, “is the kind of coincidence-if she did see it that is not a coincidence at all. Because the world is jammed with people, and if you talk to enough of them, you usually find that the unseen things were seen by someone. And if they are a little out of the ordinary, like the vehicle she saw going too fast, they stick to the edge of memory. Had it been going slower, she would never have examined it so carefully through the glasses, and she would have forgotten it by the next day. She claimed she saw blue, and saw glintings that could have been the aluminum camper body. But it is a hell of a way over there.”
“One hell of a way indeed. And the road goes nowhere,” said Enelio. “So what went down it had to come back or still be somewhat ahead. And the wind blows the sand and dust so there are no tracks.”
The road dwindled away to nothing in about six more miles. Enelio told us to hang on. He turned sharply right and soon I realized what he was going to do. He made a big circle around the rocky landscape. It had to be an irregular circle due to the contour. A couple of times he had to back and shorten the diameter of the circle.
When we were two thirds of the way around I tapped Enelio on the shoulder and pointed ahead and to our left, inside the arc of the circle. He drove over and stopped and we got out again. It was a clear and distinct tire track in the lee of an outcropping of red-brown rock. It had run through some kind of crumbled clay, and though some sand had blown into it, it was unmistakable.
Enelio sat on his heels and crumbled the claylike substance between his fingers. “Animalitos. Damn, we call them hormigas. Some are red. They bite. They make little hills.”
“Ants?”
“Yes! The tire went through the middle of this little one and along the edge of this big one. They brought up the dirt from underneath the sand; and it is moist almost.”
He stood up and shaded his eyes. “Back there is the last of the road. So draw a line from there to these tracks…” We turned and looked, and Meyer suggested we fan out a little and walk it, looking for any clue, not taking any route a vehicle could not take.
After a hundred yards my route ended in impossibility. I backtracked and cut over to the other side, beyond Meyer. Then I came to a place where the earth dropped away. It was a deep meandering crack, perhaps twenty feet across and fifty feet deep, with round boulders and brush at the bottom of it. Enelio shouted. We hurried along the brink to where he stood. He was at the edge of a semicircular bite looking down at where the landslide had choked the bottom of the dry wash. There was an uncommon amount of loose brush on top of the barrier.
Enelio widened his nostrils and sniffed the breeze. He crossed himself and said, “Death.” I caught it then, too-the sweet, rotten, sticky smell of decaying meat.
We stumbled and slid down the slant of sandy soil. We pulled the brush away, exposing the upper half of the rear of the camper. It was nose down into the stones, the landslide drifted high around it. The smell was sickeningly strong.
“The McLeen girl?” Meyer asked in church tones.
“Somebody our boy Rocko took a dislike to,” I said.
“You get the dirt off the door while I go get something I know about,” Enelio said. He went plunging up the loose slope and disappeared. I started digging the door out with my cupped palms, and with Meyer helping me. We heard the sound of the jeep overhead. It stopped. After a few minutes Enelio came sliding back down. He had a thin piece of rag tied around his head so that it came across his upper lip. He had another piece for each of us. The center position that came across the lip was damp with raw gasoline.
“One time when we had to go into the mountains after bodies from a plane crash, one of the medical people taught me this thing. Gasoline numbs the smelling. It overpowers everything. There was one trouble. For nearly a year afterward, each time I would smell gasoline, I would start gagging. Also it would a burn on the lip. But it is better than the only other choice, eh?”
The camper body was out of line and the door was jammed. But it was on such a steep angle I could stand on the aluminum beside the door and bend over and take hold of the handle. I yanked it open and let it fall back. There was enough reflected sunlight so that we could see quite clearly into the dark interior. Enelio grunted, spun, jumped down and trotted twenty feet along the bottom of the wash, then bent over and vomited explosively.
“You can move away too,” I told Meyer. “I want to make sure.”