They drove down from the ridge and into the village along a dirt street broken by gray mica-flecked boulders and parked outside a cantina with the faded mural of an armored man on horseback upon its facade: Cantina Cortez. The door was open, and several men were standing at the bar, watching a portable TV. Short bandy-legged men with impassive pre-Columbian faces, wearing blankets and white cotton trousers and straw hats. When Debora and Mingolla entered, carrying rifles under their arms, the men acknowledged them with nods and turned back to the TV; an agitated voice was issuing from the speaker, and on the screen was a flickering image of ruins.
‘A bomb?’ said Debora. ‘In Panama City… a bomb?’
‘Yes,’ said the bartender, a man older than the rest, with gray streaks in his hair. ‘An atomic bomb. Terrible.’
‘It must have been very small,’ said another man. ‘Only one barrio was destroyed.’
‘But many are dying in the other barrios,’ said a third man. ‘Who could have done this?’
Mingolla was sick with the news, heavy with it. ‘I’m looking for someone,’ he said finally. ‘A big black man named…’
‘Señor Tully,’ said the bartender. ‘He arrived this morning. Take a left at the next corner, and you’ll find him in the third house on the right.’
Mingolla listened a minute longer to the voice detailing casualty figures, recounting the horror of Carlito’s punishment, the punishment of Tel Aviv, a little irony he’d probably never expected to employ. When he went back outside, he found Debora sitting on the hood of the car. ‘Tully’s here,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’ll know what happened.’
‘I know what happened,’ she said. ‘Izaguirre blew them up. Shit!’ She jumped down from the car and kicked at the red dirt. ‘I’ve been acting like a stupid girl. I never should have believed them!’ She walked off a few paces, whirled on Mingolla. ‘We have to kill the rest! Or else they’ll kill us. Your dreams, your hallucinations about the future… they must be accurate. I didn’t understand before, but it’s clear now.’
He was more stunned by her reaction than by the news of the bomb. She looked as if she were about to explode, swinging her rifle back and forth, unable to locate a suitable target.
‘Let’s get Tully,’ she said.
As they walked he watched her out of the corner of his eye, noticing how anger… no, not anger, but the restoration of commitment, how that had carved weakness and worry from her face, left her more beautiful than ever. And in her face, in its clean rigor, he saw the insanity of their relationship. How first one pushed, then the other pulled. How her desire for commitment would drag them so far, how his anger would carry them on until she had another chance for commitment. How they fed off this exchange and called it love. And maybe it was love, maybe the insanity incorporated love. Even realizing all this, he loved her, loved love. Loved it to the point that rejection became unthinkable. To reject it he would have to stop loving himself, and while that was something he would have had no qualms about under other circumstances, he couldn’t afford that kind of honesty now.
Tully was sitting in a chair outside one of the houses, a rifle across his knees, and as they came up, he waved: a languid, boneless wave. ‘Glad you made it, Davy,’ he said in a weak-sounding voice. His eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed energyless, depleted.
‘Where’s Corazon?’ Mingolla asked.
‘Inside,’ said Tully. ‘Pears she cotch a dose from de bomb. ’Pears I cotched one, too.’
‘Radiation?’ said Mingolla, guilt-stricken.
Tully nodded. ‘Look like you two got away clean.’
‘What went on back there?’ Debora asked.
‘Hell, I don’t know. Somethin’ happen at de palace, but I never sure of what. All de day dere’s not’in’ but riot. People ’cusin’ each ot’er of dis and dat. Fightin’ in de streets. Took me and Corazon most of de day to get clear. And we not get clear ’nough. Must be dat bomb were battlefield ordnance, or else we be shadows on de stone.’ He coughed, wiped his mouth, and checked his hand to see what had come up. ‘We took de coast road and make it dis far. Bet you got lost in de mist.’
‘Yeah,’ said Mingolla.
Tully let out a sigh that Mingolla thought might go on forever. ‘Mon,’ he said. ‘Here I been t’inkin’ better must come, and now dis.’ He cocked an eye at Mingolla. ‘Seem like you ’bout to choke on somethin’, Davy.’
‘Tully, I…’
‘Get on outta here, Davy. I don’t wanna hear no bullshit ’bout sadness and de back-time. Dis de way it have come, and dere’s not’in’ to do more. Be worse places dan dis to have a funeral.’ He laughed, and the laughter started him coughing. When he had recovered, he said, ‘De fools ’round here, dey wash a body wit’ lime juice and wrap it in white cloth and sing over you. Lime juice! Dey t’ink lime juice be fah everyt’ing. Cure de dysentery, cure de fever, and make you sweet fah Jesus.’ He gestured with his rifle. ‘Go on, now. Dat stream what’s marked on de map, you find it at de end of dis street. You can spy de trail from de bank. Just cross dem two big hills east, and you be square on one of dem villages I told you ’bout.’
Mingolla fought the urge to do something stupid like insist upon staying. This was the way Tully wanted it, fast and low-key, and the least he could do was to go along. He allowed himself to say, ‘I’ll miss ya, Tully,’ and then wheeled about, leaving Debora in his wake, not wanting to hear Tully’s response, not wanting any more knowledge or guilt. But as he passed by the window of the house, he heard the click of a safety being disengaged. He went into a shoulder roll, heard the popping of a rifle, felt bullets pass close, and as he brought his rifle to bear on the window, in the instant before he fired he saw Corazon, her face empty of emotion, her rosy eye looking full of blood. His bullets knocked her back from the window, pumped a hoarse grunt from her chest.
He got to his feet, unsteady. Debora was covering Tully with her rifle, and he was trying to stand, having a hard time of it. Mingolla went to the window, peered into the darkened room. Corazon had been blown back onto the bed and was spreadeagled on a white coverlet made into a severe abstract by angles of shadow and the scatter of her blood. Her rifle lay on the floor. Tully stumbled into the room, stopped dead.
‘What you do, mon?’ he cried. ‘What you do?’
‘She tried to shoot me,’ said Mingolla. ‘I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t even have time to think.’
‘She wasn’t tryin’ to shoot nobody!’ Tully dropped to his knees beside the bed, his hands hovering over the body; blood was still leaking from Corazon’s mouth and breast, and it looked as if Tully was unsure where to put his hands, what hole to plug.
Voices behind Mingolla. He turned, saw Debora explaining things to a group of men who had come to investigate. When he turned back to the window, he found that Tully had picked up Corazon’s rifle and was training it at his chest.
‘Goddamn you, Davy!’ he said. ‘You ever was low on de spirit.’
‘Listen,’ said Mingolla. ‘She tried to shoot me. What else could I do?’
‘Why she shoot you, mon?’ Tully was trembling, his finger poised on the trigger. ‘She got no cause to shoot you.’
‘I don’t know, man. Maybe somebody put something in her head that made her want to do it… or maybe she was just crazy, too sick to think straight. I don’t know.’
‘You tellin’ me she like dem ot’ers, dem empty shells dat de Sotomayors pump fulla dere shit? Don’t be tellin’ me dat! I know her, mon. Dere were more dan dat in her!’