An “I-wanna-be-a-freebooter” gringo stops in Matasánchez, Mr. Blast. In this Shears-Nepomuceno business he smells the opportunity he has been waiting for: to invade and annex more territory for Texas. “I know how this will go down, I saw it first-hand in Nicaragua with William Walker, the original freebooter.” He’s confident Nepomuceno can be the springboard for his plan, and he prepares to put it into action.
All of Bruneville experiences several hours of confusion, even the one person who doesn’t know what Shears has said, the adventurer who’s lying in the rickety old bed in the missionaries’ infirmary. His fever develops into a violent delirium, he shouts, hits, and kicks.
Eleonor considers asking for help from “that man,” whom fate has made her husband, Mr. Fear. But she immediately rejects the idea. It is a physical struggle but she manages to control her delirious patient; she gets him back into the rickety little bed and removes his shirt. She runs the palm of her hand across his damp chest. She is sweating too, from so much exertion.
She is the minister’s wife, trained as a teacher, devoted to the well-being of the community, serving the needs of others, and all of these facts would lead anyone observing the scene to be favorably inclined to her. But they’d have an altogether different impression if they could understand the feelings awakened by touching the sick man’s chest.
To clarify: she perceives in him the shadow of death and it seduces her, stirs her emotions, draws her in, and, to be completely frank, excites her.
She dips a cloth in a bucket of cold water. She rubs it across the patient’s chest. She dries him with a rag. Then she touches him. She has grown fond of the hairs on his manly chest; she twists them around her fingers.
She caresses him once more. His delirium has abated. He’s breathing normally.
Then he becomes agitated again, as if something in his dreams is disturbing his peace. He’s sweating buckets. Eleonor quickly wets the cloth again and rubs it across his chest.
The patient calms down. Eleonor puts her hand on his chest, runs it up to his chin and back. She winds the curly little hairs on his manly chest around her fingers again. His breathing is calm. But hers is not.
Let’s return to the confusion in Bruneville:
In the market, Sharp proclaims his opinion (he hates Nepomuceno because he stole one of his cows, which didn’t give much milk but would have given him a calf), and Alitas gives his opinion. Sharp and Alitas come to blows. The greengrocer jumps in. Then the Frenchie seed vendor joins the fight and thumps Sharp. Sid Cherem, the cloth merchant, begins to shout because he doesn’t want to take sides. A crazy man, “El Loco,” who sleeps beneath the eaves of the main entrance to the market — we haven’t met him yet because he’s usually out of sight — looks for something to set alight, he feels the urge to start a fire. Tadeo, the vaquero, can’t get an erection with Flamenca. Clara, the daughter of the trapper, Cruz, learns from her father’s seamstress that her boyfriend, Mateo, who is also a vaquero, was getting it on with Perla, her maid. Much to his regret and contrary to expectations, the womanizer Hector loses a card game to Jim Smiley, who doesn’t celebrate, because his jumping frog (the one he’s been training to win bets for him) is croaking in its box, “What’s wrong, my little pretty?” Leno, seeing he has lost — he needs the money much more than Hector — resorts to a humiliating tactic: he begins to cry and beg for loans. Tiburcio the widower, desperately lonely as always — it’s been eighteen years since he was widowed by the saintly woman who (he’s never dared confess this to anyone) died a virgin because she had asked him to be patient, and he was so patient that Saint Peter opened the doors of heaven to her before she opened her legs to him — sits frozen in his chair, confused. Sabas and Refugio, Judge Gold, the traitor Glevack, and Olga the washerwoman become embroiled in a stupid argument that really doesn’t have anything to do with them — a cart loaded with bundles of cotton knocks one of the flowerpots off Doña Julia’s balcony, Olga hears the noise and calls for help; Glevack, the brothers, and Judge Gold come running, under the impression it’s an emergency — the five of them circle around the pieces of broken flowerpot, not understanding why Olga raised the alarm, grinding the pieces of broken flowerpot into dust.
The maid who cleans rooms in the Hotel where the photographer La Plange is staying — she’s cousin to Sandy, aka Eagle Zero, the one with the revealing neckline (and who shares a room with her in the annex of Mrs. Big’s Hotel, much to her shame, since it’s also a brothel) — is horrified by the photographs she finds in the window: Snotty, the kid who follows La Plange around like a shadow, is naked in positions that make her feel sick.
Miss Lace remembers she’s left her baskets at the market; she doesn’t know Luis delivered them. She stops looking for Nat and walks to Judge Gold’s house.
The wealthy Negro, Tim Black, is in a quandary. Ten years ago, when he arrived in Indian Territory from New Orleans with a fur trader (via the Mississippi to the Arkansas River, and by land to Santa Fe), he was welcomed with open arms and made a fortune, allowing him to buy a white woman from Texas and her two-year-old daughter from the Waco Indians. In the middle of the crowd of people in the Market Square he has just seen a man who (“I swear on my mother’s name”) is identical to his wife and daughter. The spitting image. A more distinctive face you won’t find. It must be her brother, or worse, her husband, come to take her away — or so he thinks—This’ll be the end of me, the end, they’ll ruin me … He’s so consumed by his worries he doesn’t realize they’re completely unfounded.
Eleonor is still wetting the cloth in the bucket of water and rubbing it on her patient’s chest, devoted to her work — and fascinated, too — when they bring her the bloody carpenter (or sheriff) Shears. Four or five of them are carrying him. They have already stopped to see Mr. Chaste (the pharmacist and mayor), who cut Shears’ pant leg away from the wound to get a better look at it. Mr. Chaste said he wouldn’t touch it, because the bullet is lodged in Shears’ muscle. Eleonor had better steel herself because the poor devil won’t make it to Matasánchez bleeding like this—“It would kill him to try to make it to Matasánchez.”
She leaves the damp cloth spread across her patient’s chest.
She asks them to lay Shears on the table. She lifts her patient’s bucket of water from the floor and empties it onto Shears’ leg to get a better look. Immediately Eleonor inserts the infirmary’s tweezers into the wound — they’re meant for removing splinters and the like, but they might do the trick; they penetrate his muscle, “Ow, ow,” Eleonor can feel them scrape the bullet, “ow,” she shoves the tweezers deeper, “ow”—each “ow” weaker than the last — the tweezers pinch the bullet, “ow,” they slip off the metal, “ow,” she keeps digging, “ow, ow” (you can barely hear him any longer). “Be brave.” Eleonor keeps digging with the tweezers, “Ow.” “Be quiet.” They stumble upon the bullet again, and voila, who knows how, the bullet appears between the bloody, flat ends of the tweezers.
Eleonor’s face lights up, she is pleased. She leaves Shears, grabs the damp, warm cloth off her other patient’s chest, wrings it out, wraps it around Shears’ wounded thigh and ties it tight, knotting it with all her might, which is considerable.
“No one touches the sheriff, he stays right here.”
Shears is pale, mute.
The minister is on the patio, his stomach is upset at the sight of so much blood so near. He too is pale and mute.