I could see branches that were broken farther down the path. The air was sweet from the spray on the rocks in the stream, the rain pattering on huge tropical plants that had heart-shaped leaves. I cleaned the child and pulled the shirt off a dead man and wrapped the child’s thighs and genitals and bottom inside it, and tied the first-aid kit on my belt and started walking. My passenger was a little boy. I had never married and had always wanted to have a little boy, or a little girl, it didn’t matter, and it felt funny walking with him curled inside my arms, like I was back in the infantry, except this time I wasn’t humping a BAR.
I walked until high noon, when I saw the edge of the jungle thin into full sunlight. Farther down the dirt road I could see a stucco farmhouse, with a deuce-and-a-half army truck parked in front and a canvas tarp on poles where people were lying on blankets in the shade. I looked down at my little passenger. His eyes were closed, the redness gone from his face, his nostrils so tiny I wanted to touch them to make sure he was all right.
“¿Qué quieres?” a soldier said.
“What does it look like?” I said.
“No entiendo. ¿Qué haces aquí?”
He wore a dirty khaki uniform and a Sam Browne belt and a stiff cap with a lacquered bill, a bandolier full of M1 clips strapped around his waist. His armpits were looped with sweat, his shirt unbuttoned, his chest shiny. He kept swiping at a fly, his eyes never leaving my face. There were other soldiers standing around, as though their role was just to be there. The Indians lying on the ground in the shade of the tarp looked frightened, afraid to speak. A nun in a soiled white habit was giving water to a woman out of a canteen.
“I’ve got to get the child to a hospital,” I said. “Where’s the hospital?”
“Está aquí, hombre.” He pointed to the child in my arms. “Put down.”
“No.”
“Yes, you put down.”
I stepped back from him.
“You don’t hear, gringo?” he said.
“Stay away from me.”
He gestured to one of his men. The nun stepped between them and me and took the child from my arms.
“See, everything gonna be okay, man,” the soldier in the cap said.
“No, it isn’t. A plane bombed the village.”
“You ain’t got to say nothing, man. Go back to where you come from. All is taken care of.”
“You’re not going to do anything about it?”
“Go back with your people, gringo.”
“Where’s the jefe?”
“I’m the jefe. You want to be my friend? Tell me now. If you ain’t our friend, I got to take you back to town, give you a place to stay for a while, let you get to know some guys you ain’t gonna like.”
The wind was hot, the tarp popping in the silence, the sky filled with an eye-watering brilliance.
“You don’t look too good,” he said. “Sit down and have some pulque. I’m gonna give you some food. See, it’s cool here in the shade.”
“What are you going to do with the child?”
“What you think? Está muerto. You been in the jungle too long, man.”
Now back to the present. When I got off the hitch, I headed straight for the Hungry Gator and went to work on an ice-cold bottle of Jax and four fingers of Jack Daniel’s. I heard somebody drop a nickel in the jukebox and play Kitty Wells’s “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Somehow I knew who was playing that song. I also knew the kind of trouble I might get into drinking B-52s. She sat down next to me, wearing a white skirt and blouse and thin black belt and earrings with red stones in them. She smelled like a garden full of flowers.
“I thought I might have scared you off,” she said.
“You’re not the kind that scares people, Miss Loreen,” I said.
“Still want to buy me a drink?”
Warning bells were clanging and red lights flashing. An oscillating fan fluttered the pages of a wall calendar in a white blur. “Anytime,” I replied.
She ordered a small Schlitz. The bartender put the bottle and a glass in front of her. She poured it into the glass and put salt in it and watched the foam rise. “I’m trying to take it easy today.”
“You have a taste for it?”
“You could call it that.” She took a sip. “I was going to ask your bandleader if he could use a piano player.”
“He’s not around today. He plays weekends.”
“Oh,” she said, her disappointment obvious.
“You okay?”
“Sure.” She kept her face turned to one side, away from the sunlight blazing on the shell parking lot.
“Look at me, Miss Loreen.”
“What for?”
“Somebody hurt you?”
“He was drunk.”
“Your husband?”
“Who else?”
“A man who hits a woman is a coward.”
“He takes the fall for other people and resents himself. You never do that?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Lucky you.” She ordered a whiskey sour.
“Miss Loreen, they say if you think you’ve got a problem with it, you probably do.”
“Too late, sailor.”
She watched the bartender make her drink in the blender and pour it into a glass. She drank it half empty, her eyes closed, her face at peace. “Did you know that song was banned from the Grand Ole Opry?”
“No.”
“It’s the female answer to ‘The Wild Side of Life,’” she said.
“You know a lot about country music.”
“I got news for you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know shit about anything.”
“You shouldn’t talk rough like that.”
“Yeah?”
“I think you put on an act. You’re a nice lady.”
She stared into the gloom, her eyes sleepy. The wall calendar had a glossy picture on it; a cowboy on a horse was looking into the distance at purple mountains, snow on the peaks.
“I went to a powwow once in Montana,” I said. “Hundreds of Indian children were dancing in jingle shirts, all of them bouncing up and down. You should have heard the noise.”
“Why are you talking about Indians?”
“Whenever I’m down about something, I think about those Indian kids dancing, the drums pounding away.”
“You’re not a regular guy, I mean, not like you meet in this place.”
Her bag lay open on the bar. I could see the steel frame and checkered grips of a revolver inside. I touched the bag with one finger. “What you’ve got in there can get a person in trouble.”
She turned her face so I could see her bruise more clearly. “Like I’m not already?”
“Why do somebody else’s time?”
“It beats the graveyard.” She licked the rim of her glass. “You know where this is going to end.”
“What’s going to end?”
“You got a place?”
When I didn’t reply, she lowered her hand until it was under the bar and put it in mine. “Did you hear me?”
Don’t answer. Say goodbye. Walk into the sunlight and get in the truck. It’s never too late. “The Teche Motel in New Iberia,” I said. “It’s on the bayou. When the sun sets behind the oaks, you’d think it was the last day on earth.”
She squeezed my hand, hard.
When I woke up the next morning, she was sitting at the table by the window shade in her panties and bra, writing on a piece of stationery, an empty bottle of Cold Duck on the floor.
“You were talking about the Indian dancers in your sleep,” she said.