“Not so good, Sheriff. Not so good. I did a stupid thing.”
“Really? I would have thought as old as we are, we’d have learned to stop doing stupid things.”
Reubén laughed a silent little shake of amusement. “You’d think that.” He leaned his forearms on the edge of the truck bed. “Can’t even light a cigarette. Maybe I should quit.” He reached up and touched his right wrist to his breast pocket, where the smokes were stashed. I didn’t offer, since I knew what would happen.
“So what did you do to yourself?”
“Ay,” he muttered. “I got lazy.” He looked up at me as I joined him at the leaning post. Half my size, dressed in khaki shirt and trousers, he wore the aroma of sweat and wine the way modern man wears aftershave. With the back of his hand, he touched me on the arm, a substitute for a handshake. “We’re working on the iglesia, down in Tres Santos.”
“That’s a tough job,” I said. The little mission was ancient, adobe, and had suffered from lackadaisical maintenance over the years. Massive as adobe is, gravity eventually always wins.
He nodded with a philosophical shrug.
“How’s Teresa?”
“She’s good. She’s good. She doesn’t teach any more. Did you know that?”
“I did.” I’d met Estelle Reyes’ stepmother a couple of times, always in Reubén’s company. I remember that she had long, iron-gray hair tied up in a bun, and snappy eyes with a mass of crinkles in the corners-a formidable boss of the tiny classroom.
“On that one wall, that’s where the trouble is,” he said, and I assumed he was referring to the church, not Estelle Reyes’ stepmother.
“After two hundred years, we all crumble a little bit.”
“Ay, that’s true. We built a buttress-on both sides. That little church looks more like a fortress now.” He chuckled.
“Who’s working with you on that?”
He puffed out his cheeks. “Two of the Fernandez boys. You know them.” I didn’t, but Reubén continued on. “And Benny Orasco. He’s got that big backhoe. He’s got a couple of boys who work with him, on and off.”
“So how did you hurt yourself?”
He sighed and regarded his gloved hands. “We’re doing the plastering.” His accent savored each syllable. He and Sheriff Eduardo Salcido probably enjoyed slow-talk contests now and then. “And the detail work around the windows on the east side. You know, make it just right.” It would be, too, with Reubén’s touch.
“They don’t make good gloves any more,” he added. “My hands got wet, and in that lime all day long…” He made a grimace. “There are places around the windows where only the hands can make the shapes. And now…ay, like fire.”
“The plaster burned your hands, you mean?”
He nodded. “I had some aloe verde, but then I ran out. They don’t make that like they used to.”
“I see the word aloe on enough labels,” I said. “Did you stop by the emergency room?”
“The hospital? No. Why would I do that? That’s the big money, that place.”
Reubén pushed himself away from the truck. “I found something at the store just now. Let me see if you think it’ll work.” He bent into the truck and I heard a groan unsuccessfully stifled. He backed out holding a bag between two fingers and extended it toward me. I pulled out the plastic bottle of hand cream and turned it so the headlights illuminated the label. Clinical strength, healing formula, bla, bla, bla. Whether it would sooth lime-burned skin was a stretch.
“Let me see,” I said. “Can you slip one of the gloves off?”
He flinched at the thought. “I think I’ll just take myself home,” he said. “I got some aspirin, and I got this. That’ll be okay.”
And I knew damn well that wasn’t all he had. “You’re working tomorrow?”
He took a long time answering. “I don’t think so. We’ll see.”
“So, now we get you home. You’re not driving so good, Reubén, and you have a lot of miles to go, on the worst roads.”
“I’ll take my time.”
“Nope. I don’t think so. Tell you what, my friend. Let me run you home.” I knew what Eduardo Salcido would say about a county taxi service, but what the hell. It was expedient. “We’ll move the truck a little farther off the shoulder, and I’ll have your grandniece come out in the morning to check on you and help you bring the truck home. How about that?”
“Estellita told me that she was going to work for you.”
“For the county, yes sir. Quite a young lady she’s turned out to be.”
“Yes. She doesn’t live with me any more.” It was as wistful as I’d ever heard Reuben.
“I know she doesn’t.”
“I was hoping she would stop by tonight, but she didn’t. Always in a hurry, that girl. She could live with me and still work anywhere in the county.”
“Well, maybe so. That’s between the two of you.” I couldn’t imagine it, but stranger things have happened. One of the major requirements of law enforcement is the long, hot shower, both to calm the nerves and to wash off the stink of nasty predicaments. Somehow, Estelle Reyes had managed to survive two years with her uncle-two years of high school with its peer pressures and other crap, while at the same time managing her personal life in her uncle’s rustic paradise. Using the showers in the high school’s girls’ locker room must have served the purpose, but after that, a college dorm would have seemed opulent. I couldn’t imagine her going back to the tiny cabin hidden among the piñons and junipers, sleeping on a sofa and looking forward to a nice hot sponge bath out of an enameled basin come morning.
“Let me give you a ride, Reubén. She’ll be out first thing in the morning. We’ll get those hands of yours fixed up.”
He didn’t argue. That told me how miserable he felt. I pulled his truck well off the highway. Now we had Jack Newton’s Cadillac on one side of the county and Reubén’s battered truck on the other. It seemed to me that things tend to go in series-a string of break-ins, a wash of domestic disputes, all the county’s speeders congregating on the same stretch of highway. This happened to be geriatric alcoholic week.
Half an hour later, with the inside of my car smelling like old man, I pulled to a stop at the foot of a small mesa a mile or so off County 14. My headlights illuminated the squat adobe, rock, and log cottage, the back of the dwelling backed tight against a rock outcropping. A canopy of runty, gnarled trees found enough moisture in the cracks and crannies. An electric line ran along the two-track, and looped into the side of the building. At least there was that.
In 1930, when Spartan living was a way of life in the rural west, the place would have seemed cozy, even hospitable. Now, more than half a century later, with lives flooded with cheap luxuries, Reubén’s home was an anachronism, damn near a tourist attraction.
Two dogs stood at silent alert, tails waiting, and when they saw-or smelled-my passenger, they did their dog-thing, becoming dervishes of greeting.
He hesitated, half in and half out of my car. “What am I going to do about my truck? My tools…”
“We’ll get ’em back to you,” I promised. That’s the trouble with starting the taxi service, I would admonish deputies. One thing leads to another, and pretty soon you have a snarl. Good deeds rarely go unpunished.
“I guess I can take the old Jeep down. But I hate to do that.” The ‘old jeep’ was just that, a topless old buggy with the seats showing springs in a dozen places. It was parked beside the house, its license clearly expired. I knew it was a ’47, worth something now to a collector who might restore it. A bullet crease on the flat of the left front fender drew my eye. I knew how it had gotten there, and if either of the Hidalgo brothers were still alive, they’d probably welcome the chance for another try.