Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series) (4 page)

The place where we were to meet General Corzo was situated at the far end of the village, a little beyond it, on a low bluff overlooking the sea. It had once been a public building, a place for women to gather and watch out for their husbands in stormy or clear weather as they fished at the edge of horizon. Used too, Joaquín had said, for drying fish in the sun on racks outside.

“But now it belongs to Corzo. You’ll see, he’s done some work on it. He won’t be there, you know. Not until we are.”

We walked at the edge of the muddy track of the main street. It was two o’clock and still siesta, but this was no longer a Mexican town and we saw lights in windows of those at work, passed a few huddled figures in a hurry
to get somewhere, leaning into the wind. The sky was almost completely black now and the light like that at dusk. Joaquín wore a heavy, oilcloth raincoat, his hand over his heart to keep the fabric from filling with air, and I’d put my flight cap back on, buckling it tight under my chin. Then we passed the last town building and I could see the house a few hundred yards up in the distance, what light there still was washing in its windows.

It was a square box, with a widow’s walk on top, but the general had torn away the central cupola, turning the walk into a sundeck. I saw lawn chairs and a metal table there, a closed umbrella sticking up from its center, its edges flapping in the wind. Below he’d set large windows into the old board walls to get the view, and the path leading up to the house was white stone lined with cactus, a trellis hanging with bougainvillea surrounding the entrance door.

Joaquín knocked and we waited, then heard the sound of feet on wood. Then the door opened and a man who looked very much like Joaquín himself, though younger, stood aside, raised up his arm and ushered us in. This will be Sosa, I thought, a man with a woman’s name. The translator. Joaquín had told me about him, something General Corzo insisted upon. He would speak no Spanish with Joaquín.

“Sosa might be my counterpart, a patriot. Lucky that we look alike, a way for the general to insult me without actually doing so. In his eyes I’m a turncoat, but then he needs me, you know, to make it all go smoothly.”

The house held only the one small room, but the large windows lining three of the walls brought the outside in, expanding it, and from where I sat I could see both into the Gulf and along the rocky shore for a good distance. Waves washed on the rocks now, spray obscuring them, then leaving them to glisten under the dark blanket of cloud cover as the surf receded, and out the front window the sea had risen up into whitecaps all the way to the fog bank, which had crept in a little, and the tankers had disappeared.

Joaquín sat in an easy chair beside me, and across the fine wicker and glass table from us sat Sosa. The table held a bottle of tequila, salt, and lemon each in its own stoneware bowl, and there were other chairs in the room and a worn couch draped with colorful vegetable-dyed rugs. And there were rugs too on the hardwood floor, and engravings by the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada on the walls between the windows. He was called Don Lupe, as was Chepa’s dog in his honor, and the prints all showed the
calaveras
, those skeleton figures he had introduced into art or at least had popularized. They were riding
skeleton horses and bicycles, giving speeches, dancing, playing instruments, dragging the dead away.

“Yes, and it
is
the Day of the Dead, these weeks,” said Sosa, seeing me looking.

He was dressed in fine leather pants and boots and a white shirt with bits of fringe along the pocket edges and seams. Someone had done his short hair, and his smooth dark skin was without blemish, recently cleansed, I guessed, with cream.

We were waiting. The bottle sat on the table between us invitingly but nothing had been offered. Sosa had crossed his legs and his foot was bobbing, but then he noticed it and stopped. Gusts of wind rocked the walls from time to time, and I could hear the lawn furniture tapping on the deck above. The room grew darker and Sosa rose and went to a table off in a corner and lit a kerosene lamp, the sweet smell of the smoke curling up for a moment before he adjusted the wick. We heard a crunching on the stone walk, and when the door opened a breeze rushed in and swirled around the room, then collapsed and fell to the floor as General Corzo, Calaca, and the other one I’d seen at the Lluvia del Oro entered and closed the door.

They were dressed in makeshift uniforms this time, the general in a brown shirt with epaulets, his chest adorned with his medals, the other two in sombreros, pistols in holsters at their hips. All three wore cowboy boots. Calaca wore chaps, and there were spurs jingling at his heels. He sat down in a wooden chair near the table where the lamp was, and I could see in the lamp’s flickering that turn and flattening in his nose where Chepa had rearranged it. He grinned at me with his yellow skull’s teeth, then took a dirty bandanna from his pocket and, still watching me, spat into it.

General Corzo took a chair across the table from us, Sosa beside him, and Dagoberto, the other one, stood against the wall at a window, his hand resting on the grip of his pistol, sombrero tilted back.

The general looked across at Joaquín, a slight smile on his lips below his drooping mustache, then nodded. Then he looked at me and began talking.

“I’m afraid the figures have changed now, what we agreed upon? There is nothing for it. The expenses are increasing, I have so many men to care for you know. The accounting.”

Sosa was translating, looking at Joaquín, though the general seemed to be talking to me. I saw his eyes glance up to my brow and realized I was still wearing my flight cap. His smile broadened and his mustache twitched, and
I felt my face flush. Then Joaquín was answering, and the general turned to him. I took the cap off and held it in my lap.

“But we are not prepared for this change. I have the papers, already with the entries, sealed and awaiting signature.”

Sosa translated, then the general spoke again. Calaca snorted and laughed and I saw Dagoberto’s sombrero rock a little on his head.

“But surely they are in pencil and available are gummed erasers.” The general turned his head and winked at me as Sosa spoke.

The negotiations continued. Joaquín stuck to the point, speaking briefly, often holding up the papers he had taken from his pocket. Green and gold ribbons fluttered between the pages, and red seals had been pressed in here and there. Unlike Joaquín, the general took his time, speaking extensively, then leaning back in his chair and watching Sosa translate those words that Joaquín already understood. He glanced over at me at times, nodding, and I welcomed his look taking me away from Calaca, whose eyes never left my face. Then the general saw me looking at Calaca, and he interrupted Sosa’s translation and gestured for him to say his new words. Sosa looked at me then, his face expressionless as he spoke.

“The general is saying about Chepa. How Calaca would like to know about her fucking. Because he would like some of that Indian for himself.”

“And maybe Calaca would like some of this American for himself too,” I said, the words coming out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Sosa blinked at me and then was silent. I felt Joaquín’s fingers on my arm, saw Calaca lean forward in his chair and then get up and move to the other side of the window from Dagoberto. His eyes were intent, watching me as he crossed. Beyond the glass the sea was rising and spits of foam hung on the pane.

General Corzo looked at Sosa, then back at me. Joaquín was rising, but the general raised his hand and stopped him. Then he looked at Sosa again.

“
Traducción
,“ he said.

And just after he’d said it, a spray of sea foam slapped against the Gulf side window like water tossed from a bucket, the following wave rocking the house and shaking the chairs we were sitting in. I saw the lemons bounce in their bowl. The tequila was dancing and tipping, and I rose and reached out for it, my nose hit by the general’s forehead as he grabbed for it too. I staggered, stars in my eyes, then came back to a watery focus as the window drained itself of wash and the Gulf beyond it was visible once again. Both Calaca and
Dagoberto had turned to look out, and their heads were invisible behind their sombreros at the window’s edge. Sosa and the general were heading for the door, and Joaquín stood beside me, gripping my arm.

We could see the ship through the window, no tanker but a large sailing vessel, its sails ripped from its split and tilted masts and fluttering like damp sheets in the wind. It had foundered on rocks at the edge of the fog bank a quarter mile out. The fog had been creeping toward shore and the black blanket of cloudy sky had come down so far the waves reached up almost to touch it.

The side of the ship’s hull was visible, its tilted deck, and people were falling into the sea, their arms flailing among wave-tossed crates, what looked like suitcases bobbing, a cart, the prow of a sinking rowboat, a turning wagon wheel. Broad colored ribbons danced above it all, twisting like flat snakes in the wind at the waves’ white tips, and we saw the heads of a few frantic animals, a horse and a goat, a donkey, and a dog, disappearing into the hellish sea.

Calaca turned at the window, his sombrero brushing the frame, and spoke and moved quickly across the room. There was wind in the house now, rushing through the open door out of which General Corzo and Sosa had gone, and it blew out the kerosene flame, and in shadow Calaca’s face was a real skull, his teeth protruding from his lipless mouth, and when he spoke it was only the one word coming like a whistle out of bone. “
¡Prisa!”

Joaquín and I were close on his heels, Dagoberto following, as we stepped out into the wind and driving rain.

The slope at the side of the house was already mud when we reached it, rivers of rain washing earth down over white rock at the shoreline. The lawn furniture had blown from the roof and Sosa was tangled in the metal table and a chair’s wicker arm, reaching out for General Corzo’s belt as they both slid down. He got it, and the general fell back into him. Then they were both rolling, arms, legs, and furniture in the air. I looked back for Joaquín, but he was gone. Then I saw him at the house’s side, struggling into his oiled raincoat, and turned my face into the wind again.

Calaca was on the slope now, stepping down sideways, boots and spurs digging in, Dagoberto behind him, and I could see out above them into the driving rain and over the surface of the turbulent Gulf, the ship tilting and fading as the fog came in. It was sinking. Its prow stood straight up in the rain, touching the black, low clouds. Its wheelhouse broke free and tumbled end
over end into the sea. Joaquín was beside me and I saw his stiff arm as he pointed. There were people among the objects in the waves, arms flailing, some stroking toward others, reaching out for a purchase on any jetsam. I saw a man snatch a broad red ribbon out of the air, its tips disappearing like snuffed flames in the incoming swell that covered him. It was as if the remnants of a sunken city had risen and were drifting, storm-tossed, toward shore. Then I saw Calaca hopping as he reached firm footing on the rocks below. His chaps had fallen to his knees, and he was dancing and kicking into the leather to free himself. His hand was in the air, waving us down.

The rocks were slick with rain, and up ahead I saw Sosa grabbing at the general’s clothing. He was slipping and falling constantly, and the general kept reaching back to slap his hands away. Calaca was nimble, toe stepping over crevices and moss, his arms waving in the rain delicately for balance, and Dagoberto had screwed his sombrero down on his head and tightened the string up under his chin like a tourniquet. His face had turned purple. He was above Calaca, where the rocks descended steeply, using both feet and hands, and I suddenly realized the two were no older than I was, no more than twenty, though possessed of a certain adulthood I had not reached.

I stepped on a medal, its colorful soaked ribbon, and I saw a spur. Joaquín was ahead of me now, his raincoat flapping at his calves, and I passed the documents, wet paper sucked to the rock’s surface like skin. Up ahead General Corzo was moving down carefully to the beach, Sosa bumping and touching him, and in moments, as Calaca descended, I saw the two facing each other on the sand. General Corzo was leaning forward into Sosa’s face, dressing him down, his words lost to me in the wind and rain but not, I supposed, to Sosa. Then we had all climbed down to the storm-narrowed beach, and standing in a line we looked out into the waves but could see nothing.

The waves were high and whitecapped and the rain beating against our faces came in almost on the horizontal. We had to guard our eyes with our hands, turn away and spit out sea foam that had choked us. It was the general who made the decision. He looked sharply at Sosa, then sent Calaca back up as lookout. We turned and followed his climb, the rain more bearable as it beat into our shoulders and calves, and when Calaca had turned and was standing high above on the rocks we watched his face and hands for any sign, and one came immediately.

He pointed out over our heads, his fingers waving frantically, and turning
back we saw the wooden crate above us on the incoming surf, the skeleton riding it, his bony fingers gathered in the straps. He was on his knees, leaning like a masthead before the wind on the wave’s crest, and his skull face held no expression whatsoever, until we could see his eyes.

The wave broke and the crate was lost in foam, only the bony torso hazily visible in spray. Then the foam melted and the horse’s head rose out of it, its insane eyes, and we looked back to the skeleton on the crate and saw that his eyes were the same, the pupils impossibly dilated, gazing into some other world. The crate hit the beach, sliding in surf and sand, the figure upon it still as a statue in the rain, and as its edge dug in it began to tilt and Dagoberto was rushing toward it, legs up to his thighs in surf, his boots filling, then leaning his shoulder into it, waving back for help. Then I was in the water too, pressing up beside Dagoberto to keep the crate right, as the horse came out of the wash behind it, fighting to stand, sunk in sand and surf up to its withers. It struggled free, nipped vacantly at my shoulder as it passed, then farted in the wind and whinnied weakly as it staggered down the beach and disappeared in mist.