He found a group of Mictlano men under the elm tree, drinking Bud Lite. Two of them were still dressed in their work clothes — tar-stained jeans, sweaty T-shirts, cement-smeared work boots. The other three had changed into clean cotones, which was the term Talon had taught him for the loose white clothing Mexican peasants favored. One of the men dressed in white was the man he’d seen the day before; again he sat wielding his machete against a block of wood, which had taken the wide, lobed shape of a pelvic bone.
Ortiz shook hands all around. Their faces were impassive and their handshakes surprisingly limp for men who work with their hands. They glanced mistrustfully at his name tag. The man from the day before was a full head shorter than Ortiz, but stocky. His face was broad and his eyes small and very red. A dirty cord bound the machete to his wrist. According to Professor Talon, it was customary among men in remote parts of southern Mexico to tie their machete handles to their wrists so they wouldn’t misplace them. These folks were the real thing, no doubt about it. Ortiz’s research into their ways and how these ways were affected — or not — by their living and working in Las Vegas was going to make a great, great study. Soon enough he himself was going to be tying his satchel to his wrist so as not to lose the invaluable information he gathered.
“Usted es el investigador,” the man with the machete said.
“Sí,” Ortiz replied. He didn’t like the continued looks of apprehension on the men’s faces. It was time to be straightforward about what kind of “investigator” he was. That was the only way to get them to be forthcoming about their lives. He certainly didn’t want them to think he was with Immigration or something.
“Soy estudiante,” Ortiz said. And in a gesture meant to put them further at ease, he unpinned his ACA name tag and tossed it into the clutter of empty beer cans.
“Ah,” said the stocky man. “Estudiante.”
Ortiz didn’t care for the man’s slightly mocking tone. Still, everyone seemed to relax at the revelation that he was just a lowly student, and that was good.
Ortiz then made a gesture they found very funny. He drew his thumb and forefinger along his mouth and made a twisting motion, as if locking his lips. Whether they took this to mean that the secret of their existence was safe with him or that he was asking them to be discreet about his visits, he would never know; he himself didn’t know what he meant, exactly. Both these things, he supposed. In any case, they guffawed, and popped him a beer.
The men’s Spanish was a good deal better than the young woman’s — perhaps they weren’t indigenes, like she, but mixed-blood mestizos. Still, he understood only a fraction of what they said, and none of the jokes, though he laughed when they laughed. He made a mental note to bring a tape recorder next time he visited so he could go over everything as many times as it took to decipher it all.
The beer and the talk relaxed him, and every now and then he cast a glance at the hut where he’d found the young woman that morning. He wished she would open the battered door, or at least peel away the tinfoil on the window and peek out, so he could know she knew he was there.
The stocky man, who’d introduced himself as Vicente, continued hewing his wood; now he was working a longer piece, a femur perhaps, striking long slivers from it. He uttered something in a guttural language that was definitely not Spanish. He kicked the wood aside and stalked to the hut, smacking, with the side of his machete, the dog lying in front of it. The dog yelped and scurried away, tail tucked. The man entered the shack and slammed the door.
The other men shifted their feet and sipped their beers quietly. Ortiz could feel their discomfort. He’d blown it somehow. Had Vicente caught him glancing at the shack where the woman — apparently Vicente’s woman — lived? In any case, it was time to leave. Darkness was descending, that impenetrable Mictlano darkness that was like a repudiation of the rest of Vegas’ gaudy brightness.
He shook hands with the men. When he got to the last one, a tall, gaunt man with deep-set eyes and thin lips, the guy seized his upper arm and said, “Hay baile el sábado.”
A dance next Saturday? Aquí?
“Sí, aquí.” The man moved his hand down and squeezed Ortiz’s forearm firmly with his long fingers. Clearly this was an invitation. An invitation to one of their festivities!
“Cuándo?” asked Ortiz.
The man raised his bony finger to the growing darkness. “En la noche.”
Ortiz skipped the rest of the ACA conference and returned that same night to L.A. He was eager to tell people, especially Dr. Talon, about his discovery, but knew he had to refrain; for now, they had to remain his secret.
Still, he could not keep himself from visiting the professor the day before he was to return to Las Vegas and attend the Mictlano fiesta. That the professor kept his office hours on Friday afternoons was a signal that he didn’t really want students dropping in on him, since this was the time of the week when they were least likely to do so. Nevertheless, Ortiz crept down the empty hall to the professor’s office and knocked on the door.
“Open!” Talon boomed.
The only decorations on the professor’s walls were a spear-thrower and three arrows. He sat entombed in his piles of papers and journals, fixed Ortiz with his glittery blue gaze, and waited for him to state his business.
“I was thinking about writing my thesis on the Mictlanos,” Ortiz said.
“Mictlanos, ey? What do you know about the Mictlanos?”
“Not much. That’s why—”
“What aspect? What in particular do you want to write about?”
Ortiz hadn’t really thought it through. But he’d been thinking about the slaps he’d heard that night in Las Vegas, the woman’s cries, the bruise she’d shown him, Vicente’s piggish face, and so he said, “Gender relations?”
“Well, that would be fashionable,” Talon said. “Easy, too. Gender relations among the Mictlanos basically revolve around the cinchazo. Do you know what the cinchazo is?”
Ortiz allowed that he did not.
“The cinchazo is the blow a man gives to his woman with the flat side of his machete. It pretty much settles everything, at least from the man’s point of view. It’s very difficult to get the women to talk about it, even to other women. If you intend to do fieldwork on that, you’d best be very, very careful.”
Talon drew from one of his piles of papers an article he’d written about the Mictlanos and gave it to Ortiz. Apparently it was a detailed account of the ritual fight between the two Mictlano males that Ortiz had already heard about in Talon’s lectures. Ortiz tucked the article in his satchel, thanked the professor, and took his leave.
The next day, Ortiz took off for Las Vegas feeling elated. So the famous Professor Talon had a hard time getting Mictlana women to open up to him. Well, as far as Ortiz was concerned, the young Mictlana woman had already opened up to him by revealing her bruise. She wanted to talk about it. Perhaps that was because he himself was Native, or looked it. Or because he simply inspired trust. Talon was, let’s face it, a loud, aggressive European. It was surprising any Native peoples at all had ever confided in him.
Pleased with the thought of someday surpassing Talon as an ethnographer, Ortiz hadn’t yet bothered to read the article the professor gave him, but as he drove he plucked it from his satchel and began his reading-on-the road game. As always in this game, the meaning of the text wasn’t going to sink in immediately; the fun would come later when the words, carved in his mind by the danger, came back to him verbatim, as if out of nowhere, triggered by some stress.