One More for the Road (14 page)

“No, no. My newspapers stand ready. One a day. In ten years I will arrive in 1942. In sixteen years I will reach 1948, by then it cannot wound me. Friends bring these papers twice a year, I simply stack them on the bar, pour more tequila and read your Mr. Hoover.”

“Is he still alive?” Clayton smiled.

“Today he did something about foreign imports.”

“Shall I tell you what happened to him?”

“I will not listen!”

“I was joking.”

“Let us drink to that.”

They quietly drank their drinks.

“I suppose you wonder why I came?” said Clayton at last.

Gomez shrugged. “I slept well last night.”

“I like lonely places. They tell you more about life than cities. You can lift things and look under and no one watching so you feel self-conscious.”

“We have a saying,” said Gomez. “Where all is emptiness, there is room to move. Let us move.”

And before Clayton could speak, Gomez strode quietly with his long thick legs and his great body out to the Jeep, where he stared down at the great litter of bags and their labels.

His lips spelled out the words:

“Life.”
He glanced at Clayton. “Even I have heard of that. In town I do not look left or right or listen to those radios in shops or the bar I know before my trip back with supplies. But I have seen that name on the big magazine.
Life?
”

Clayton nodded sheepishly.

Gomez scowled as he stared hard down at many black shiny metal objects.

“Cameras?”

Clayton nodded.

“Just lying there, open. You did not drive with them so, surely?”

“I opened them outside town,” said Clayton. “To take pictures.”

“Of what?” said Gomez. “Why would a young man leave all things to come where there is nothing,
nada
, to take pictures of a graveyard? You're here to see more than this place,” said Gomez.

“Why do you say that?”

“The way you slap at flies that are not there. You cannot stand quietly. You watch the sky. Señor, the sun will go down without your help. Do you have an appointment? You have a camera but have not used it. Are you waiting for something better than my tequila?”

“I …” said Clayton

And then it happened.

Gomez froze. He listened and turned his head toward the hills. “What's that?”

Clayton said nothing.

“Do you hear? Something?” said Gomez, and leaped to the bottom of an outside staircase that rose to the top of a low building, where he scowled off at the hills, shielding his eyes.

“On the road, there, where no cars have been in years. What?”

Clayton's face colored. He hesitated.

Gomez yelled down at him. “Your friends?”

Clayton shook his head.

“Your enemies?” said Gomez.

Clayton nodded.

“With cameras?” Gomez exclaimed.

“Yes.”

“Speak up!”

“Yes!” Clayton said.

“Coming for the same reason you have come, yet have not told me why?” Gomez cried, staring at the hills and hearing the sound of motors that rose and fell in the wind.

“I got a head start on them,” said Clayton. “I—”

At which moment with a great razor of sound that cut the sky in half, a squadron of jets shrieked over Santo Domingo. From them, great clouds of white paper fell in blizzards. Gomez, with a maniac stare, swayed at the bottom of the steps.

“Wait!” he cried. “What the hell!”

Like a white dove, one of the pamphlets fell into his hands, which he dropped, repelled. Clayton stared at the litter at his feet.

“Read!” said Gomez.

Clayton hesitated. “It's in both languages,” he said.

“Read!” Gomez ordered.

Clayton retrieved one of the pamphlets. And the words were these:

SECOND NOTICE

THE TOWN OF SANTO DOMINGO WILL BE PHOTO-
ATTACKED SHORTLY AFTER NOON JULY 13TH. WE
HAVE GOVERNMENT ASSURANCE THAT THE TOWN IS
EVACUATED. THAT BEING SO, AT ONE FORTY-FIVE
PROMPTLY, THE FILMING OF
PANCHO!
BEGINS.

STERLING HUNT

DIRECTOR

 

“Attacked?” said Gomez, stunned. “
Pancho?
A director of films? California, a Hispanic state, dares bomb Santo Domingo? Gah!” Gomez ripped the pamphlet in half and then quarters. “There will be no attack! Manuel Ortiz Gonzales Gomez tells you this. Come back and see.”

Gomez shook long after the thunders left the sky. Then he struck a glare at Clayton and lurched into action. He lumbered across the plaza with Clayton in pursuit. Inside, in the sudden midnight darkness at noon, he floundered along to the top of the bar, feeling rather than seeing, the newspapers in neat piles riffling under his clutch. He reached the far end of the bar.

“This should be it? Yes, yes?”

Clayton looked down at the stack of newspapers and bent close.

“What, what?” said Gomez.

“A month ago,” said Clayton. “The first notice. If you had bothered to read the papers as they came, maybe—”

“Read, read!” cried Gomez.

“It says …” Clayton squinted, took the paper, held it up to the light. “July first, 1998. The government of Mexico has sold …”

“Sold? Sold what?”

“The town of Santo Domingo.” Clayton's eyes roved along the line. “Sold the town of Santo Domingo to—”

“To who, what?”

“To Crossroads Films, Hollywood, California.”

“Films!” Gomez shouted. “California?”

“Jesus.” Clayton held the paper higher. “For the sum …”

“Name the sum!”

“Christ!” Clayton shut his eyes. “One million two hundred thousand pesos.”

“One million two hundred thousand pesos? Food for chickens!”

“Chicken shit, yes.”

Gomez blinked at the newspapers “Once I bought glasses in Mexico City, but they were broken. I did not buy them again. What for? With only one paper a day to read. So I stayed in my empty place, my country, free to walk that way to this, across and back, meeting no one, making it mine. And now this, this.” He rattled the paper. “More words? What?”

Clayton translated. “A Hollywood film company, Crossroads, it says. They are remaking
Viva Villa,
the life of your rebel or whatever he was, this time titled just
Pancho!
Pamphlets have been dropped on Santo Domingo, making sure of what has been promised, that the town has been in the grave during the term of six American and two Mexican presidents. Rumor has it—”

“Rumor, what rumor?”

“Rumor has it,” Clayton continued, his eyes moving along the stories in each paper, each day, “that Santo Domingo, long ago abandoned, is the hiding place of thieves, murderers, and escaped criminals. Drug trafficking is suspected. The government of Mexico will send an official party to investigate.”

“Thieves, murderers, escaped criminals!” said Gomez, with a great laugh, raising his arms up and then out to embrace himself. “Do I look like one who steals, kills, escapes, traffics in drugs? Where? From this plaza to the port where we throw cocaine to the fish? Where are my fields of marijuana? Lies!” Gomez crumpled one paper in his fist. “Bury this! Within a week it will grow more lies! The next paper! Read!”

Clayton read:

“Notices have been delivered. Warnings were dropped on the town on May ninth from the air. There was no life to be seen. The film company indicates that when
Pancho!
is finished they will use Santo Domingo for another film,
Earthquake
, to appear in ruins.”

“I saw no papers in the air,” said Gomez. “If they were dropped they fell into the sea to be read by sharks. Mexican aviators, yes. That is it!”

Sweeping the newspapers off the bar in one grand sweep, Gomez lurched out into the hot sun. Along the way he seized a rifle off the wall, found a sling of bullets. He loaded the weapon and sighted it at the plaza.

“Your camera, gringo,” he said.
“¡Andale!”

Clayton, at his Jeep, brought forth the best Leica, snapping it once at Gomez, who looked at Clayton and the Leica, laughed, and held the rifle across his chest.

“How do I look?”

“Like the dictator of a village, no, a country!”

“And now?” Gomez stood at attention and stiffened his neck. “Yes?”

“Yes!” Clayton snapped the Leica, laughing.

“Now.” Gomez aimed at the sky. “Do you see the enemy arriving at, how do they say? Four o'clock?”

“Five.” said Clayton, and snap!

“Now lower! Now higher!” Gomez aimed the rifle. This time he fired. The shot knocked birds off the trees in bright explosions. A family of parrots protested. Gomez fired again, commenting, “This gives you many fine shots, liar with the camera? It is all lies, yes? Those California people, liars with cameras? They could not get war to stand still. Dead, they could photograph it. Here, now, let me aim this way.”

“Hold it, that's good!” said Clayton. “Don't make me laugh, I can't hold still.”

“The only way to kill a man is to laugh. Now you, señor.” He aimed the rifle at Clayton.

“Hey!” said Clayton.

Click. The rifle fell on emptiness. “No ammunition,” said Gomez. “Have you enough pictures for your magazine?
GENERAL GOMEZ IN ACTION. GOMEZ RETAKES SANTO DOMINGO. GOMEZ A MAN OF PEACE LOVES WAR!
”

Click went the camera with a dull sound.

“Out of ammunition, that is, film,” Clayton said.

They both reloaded, bullets and film, film and bullets, laughing.

“Why are you doing this?” said the young man.

“Soon those sons of whores will fly back so fast you will not be able to trap me, I will move as quickly. We take the fine pictures now so you can put the lies together later. Besides, I might die before they return. The heart at this moment is saying bad things, like lie down, be quiet. But I will neither sit, die, nor be quiet. Thank God the plaza is empty. It is easy to run and fire, fire and run with the jets. How much ahead of them do I fire to kill one?”

“It can't be done.”

Gomez swore and spat. “How much lead? Thirty feet? Forty out in front? Fifty?”

“Fifty, maybe,” said Clayton.

“Good. Watch! I will kill one.”

“If you do you will get two ears and a tail!” said Clayton.

“One thing must be certain,” said Gomez. “That I will never surrender and that I fought well and won the last battle even though I died. I should be buried in the middle of the ruins when the ruins come.”

“Agreed,” said Clayton.

“Now a final time, I will move more quickly, run, stop, aim, fire, run, stop, fire. Ready?”

“Ready.”

Gomez did all this and stopped, gasping.

“Bring the tequila,” he said, and Clayton brought it and they drank. “Well,” he said, “that was a good war, yes, plenty of lies, but no one will know and you, the best liar, will be sure I appear in at least three editions about the Santo Domingo War and Gomez, the great! Do you swear?”