Against the Day (124 page)

Günther snorted. “Not my business. I
am here at my father’s demand. I do my duty to the family firm.”

   
“Been
down that road,” said Ewball. “Plantation life not what you expected?”

Young Von Quassel allowed himself a
chilly smile. “It is exactly what I expected.”

Ewball had a
fatality
for running
across old acquaintances from
el otro lado
and an earlier day, in the
years between grown older and meaner, and sometimes into a notoriety neither
could have imagined back in those times of sensation and carelessness. There
was for instance “Steve,” nowadays suggesting folks address him as “Ramón,” a
fugitive from some bucketshop catastrophe up north, keeping ever on the move,
still not able to stop flimming as loud and fast as he could, who showed up one
day downtown in the middle of a brief sandstorm, in the same little courtyard
where Ewball, Frank, and Günther and a couple dozen blackbirds happened to be
sheltering. The
norte
howled as if at some invisible moon. Sand whistled
and rang through the fancy wroughtironwork, and “Ramón” entertained them with
tales of cascading debt. “Tell you, I’m sure getting desperate. If you hear
about anything you think’s too crazy or dangerous for you, why, pass it along.
There’s this stockmargin situation up north. Right now I’d fuck an alligator at
high noon in the Plaza de Toros if there was a peso to be had out of it.”
Before slouching away into the yellow opacity, he invited them all up to a
wingding at his villa that evening.

   
“Come
have a look at it while it’s still ours, meet the new wife. Little
reunión,
hundred
folks maybe, go on all week if we wanted it to.”

   
“Sounds
good,” Ewball said.

Günther, off to do some business with
the extensive German colony here in Tampico, shook hands with Frank and Ewball.
“You will go to this fiesta tonight?”

“We’re staying at the Imperial,”
Frank said, “down in the basement, way in back. Drop by, we’ll go up there
together.”

Away to the west and the Sierra, in
grand residences faintly visible through the mists that rose from the malarial
lowlands, the gringo population cringed on top of their breezy riverbluffs,
waiting for the native uprising they all believed imminent, as they lay supine
in their bedrooms night after night, beset, in the few hours of sleep they did
find, by nearly identical nightmares of desert night, pitiless skies, faces in
which not only the irises but the entire surfaces of eyes were black,
glistening in the sockets, implacable, reflecting columns of flame as wells
blazed and exploded, nothing ahead but exile, loss, disgrace, no future
anyplace north of the Rio Bravo, voices invisible out in the oilreek, from out
of the diseased canals, accusing, arraigning, promising retribution for
offenses unremembered
. . . .

Frank and Ewball
moseyed into Steve/Ramón’s party to
find a ballroom murmurous with tiled fountains, where uncaged parrots glided
from one ornamental palm to another. A dance band played. Couples danced
tropical versions of the bolero and the fandango. Guests were drinking Ramos
gin fizzes and chewing coca fresh from the jungles of Tehuantepec. Laughter was
more or less constant in the room, but somewhat louder and more anxious than
in, say, the average Saturdaynight cantina. Out in the front hall, concealed by
giant pots full of orchids, was an array of steamer trunks, packed and ready to
roll. The same could be seen in most of the villas rented by gringos in Ramon’s
set, each a reminder of the pit waiting in the shadows of near futurity, for
how could this last, this unnatural boom, this overextended violation of
reality?

   
“It’s
Baku with skeeters,” old oilpatch hands assured Frank.

“Time to get out of the country,”
revelers were heard to say more than once, “for we’re all just hostages here
down below the border line, up north they’re borrowing like it’s the end of the
world, half of it with stocks for collateral, anything goes wrong up there with
the trusts and it won’t matter how

much oil’s in the ground, it’ll be adios
chingamadre,
so
to speak.”

   
Günther
had shown up with a tall blonde beauty named Gretchen, who spoke no English or
Spanish and only a few words in her native German,

such as
“
cocktail
”
and
“
zigarette.
”
As
it turned out, she showed a propensity, strange in such an eyecatching young
lady, for disappearing, and Frank noticed Günther had a worried expression.

“I’m supposed to be looking after her
for an associate,” he said. “She has a history of impulsiveness. If it were not
for—” he hesitated, as if about to ask for Frank’s intercession.

   
“If I
can help . . .”

“Your name actually came up today, in
a context I have myself lately only begun to investigate.”

“I’ve had some dealings with the
German colony. In Tampico it’s hard not to.”

“This had to do with a certain
delivery in Tampico for transshipment to Chiapas.”
   

   
“Coffeepicking
machinery,” Frank suggested.

“Quite so.” Gretchen reappeared
drifting by the French windows along a colonnade, a glazed look in her eyes
even at this distance. “When you have a moment. . . as soon as I. . .”
Distracted, he sped off after the restless Valkyrie.

The shipment at issue proved to be a
quantity of Mondragón semiautomatics from Germany, intended for the Mexican
Army.

“Nice little unit,” Frank said.
“Started off as a Mexican design twenty years ago, Germans have been refining
it since. The bolt gets blown back, ejects the old case, chambers a new round,
you don’t have to touch a thing. Weighs about as much as a Springfield, all’s
you got to do’s keep squeezin ’em off till the magazine’s empty, that’s ten
rounds, unless you can find some of those thirtyround Schnecken rigs they make
for the German airplanes ’ese days.”

   
“I’ll
ask,” said Günther.

The crates of rifles could be
remanifested as “silvermining machinery”— one of the principal cargoes railroads
here and up north had been built to carry in the first place—thus finding
safepassage tuned to the duplicities of an economic order they might someday
destroy. There would be no problem on this end getting help from the
stevedores’ union, who were by nature antiPorfiristas.

“You might also want to have a word
with Eusebio Gómez, who’s acting as a subagent,” Günther said.

Frank
found him down at the docks on the Pánuco, the rough iron flank of a steamer
ascending behind him. “I’m taking my commission in merchandise instead of
cash,” Eusebio explained, “on the theory that Mondragóns

will get you through times of no
money better than the other way around, as anyone who’s tried to shoot anything
with a hidalgo can tell you.”

“Got to say you speak some mighty
fine English, there, Eusebio,” nodded Frank.

“In Tampico everybody speaks
northamerican, it’s why we call it ‘Gringolandia’ here.”

   
“I
bet you see a lot of Irish around too, huh? those
irlandeses?
”

   
“Señor?”

“Oh they’re easy to
spot—rednose drunk all the time, jabbering, dirtignorant, idiot
politics—”

“And what the bloody fuckall would
you know about it—
este. . . perdón,
señor, what I meant to say, of
course—”

   
“Ah
ah
. . .
?”
Frank grinning and waving his finger.

Eusebio’s fists and eyebrows begin to
unclench. “Well, you got me, sure. Wolfe Tone O’Rooney, sir, and here’s hoping
you don’t work for the bloody Brits, or I’d be obliged to deal with that
somehow.”

   
“Frank
Traverse.”

“Not Reef Traverse’s brother.” Which
was the first word Frank had had of Reef since Telluride.

They found a little cantina and got a
couple of bottles of beer. “He wanted to finish the obligation himself,” Wolfe
Tone said. “He felt it was wrong to shift the burden over to you.”

   
Frank
told him about the Flor de Coahuila and the end of Sloat Fresno.

   
“So
it’s over?”

   
“Far’s
I’m concerned it is.”

   
“But
the other one.”

   
“Deuce
Kindred.”

   
“He’s
still out there?”

“Maybe. I ain’t the only one lookin
for him. Somebody’ll get him if they haven’t already. If that bitch is still in
the picture, could even be her, wouldn’t surprise me much.”

   
“Your
. . .
sister.”

Causing Frank to squint inquiringly
through the smoke of his cigarette. “She’s got the best position on the pool
table right now.”

   
“Doesn’t
mean she’d do it?”

“Sure would be a funny one though,
wouldn’t it? If all this time she was just playin the long game, you know,
gettin married to him, pretendin that whole li’l wifey business, waitin for the
right moment, and then, well, kapow.”

   
“A
man might almost think you miss her a little.”

   
“Hell.
Only way I’d miss her’s if my sights was off.”

Wolfe
Tone O’Rooney was after weapons for the Irish cause, primarily, but found
himself drawn more and more, the longer he stayed in Mexico, into the gathering
revolution here. He and Ewball hit it off right away, and soon the three of
them had become regular passengers on the trolley out to Doña Cecilia,
eventually blending in with dockworkers, roughnecks, and families on the way to
the beach.

Their preferred place of business in
Doña Cecilia was a cantina and gambling den known as La Fotinga Huasteca. The
house band consisted of gigantic guitars, fiddles, trumpets, and accordion,
with rhythms provided by a
batería
including timbales, guiros, and
congas. Everybody here knew the words to everything, so the whole place sang
along.

Into this tropical paradise one day
who should come strolling but their old jailmate Dwayne Provecho, acting like
he owned the place. Ewball’s ears went back, and he set about repositioning his
feet, but Frank felt only dull vexation, something like chronic dyspepsia, at
this latest addition to an already worrisome list.

“Well, lookit this,” Ewball snarled
in greeting, “figured you’d be in Hell by now, bedbuddyin ’th that dirty li’l
backshootin Bob Ford.”

“Still packin ’em old
resentimientos
,”
Dwayne shaking his head,
“gonn’ affect your range and accuracy someday, podner.”

   
“Careful
who you call that.”

“Have
a warm beer,” Frank suggested without bothering to keep the weariness out of
his voice.

   
“Why
Kid, how Christian of you,” pulling over a chair and sitting down.

Frank’s
eyebrows descended briefly from the shadow of his hatbrim. “You stayed on my
good side there maybe eight seconds, Dwayne, ever think of ridin the rodeo?
Say, Mañuela, this prosperouslookin gent would like to buy us cervezas Bohemias
all around, with maybe some Cuervo Extra to go with that, doubles if you
wouldn’t mind.”

“Sounds good,” Dwayne bringing out a
flashroll of American you could’ve wallpapered the place with, and peeling off
a sawbuck. “Business is just bountiful. How’s it with you fellas?”

   
“Thought
they paid you off in rat cheese,” muttered Ewball.

“About to put you fellows in the way
of a whole new career, this is the thanks I get?”

   
“You’re
just our guardian angel,” Frank reaching for his tequila glass.

“With what’s rollin down the rails
here,” Dwayne said, “it ain’t just money, it’s history. And the next stop could
be up north, ’cause anybody needs a revolution, it’s sure us gringos.”

   
“Then
why ain’t you up there?” Frank pretended to ask.

“He’d rather be down here soldiering
on the cheap,” Ewball explained, “ain’t that it, Dwayne, all these greasers
whose lives don’t mean all that much to you?”

“Why, I feel like that these are my
people,” replied Dwayne with an air of dismissive sanctity. What he did not
seem to be taking in was how much Ewball had changed since last they’d met.
Maybe still figuring he was dealing with the same boomtown remittance man.

“There he goes, insultin the whole
country. Fact of the matter,” Ewball growing gleeful with aggravation, “these
folks down here at least still have a chance—one that the
norteamericanos
lost long ago. For youall, it’s way too late anymore. You’ve delivered
yourselves into the hands of capitalists and Christers, and anybody wants to
change any of that steps across ’at
frontera,
they’re drygulched on the
spot—though I’m sure you’d know how to avoid that, Dwayne.”