The Wild Girl (13 page)

One morning last week, the official expedition director of aviation, Spider King, came over to my table in the hotel dining room during breakfast. King is a trick flier who has flown in fairs and air shows all over the country and was brought in especially by the committee to lead the expedition “air force.” He’s a brash, flamboyant fellow who sports aviator goggles and a long flowing white scarf.

“I have orders to take you up today, Giles,” he said. “I was supposed to take Big Wade, but he begged off, said he was afraid he’d toss his cookies in my plane. Said I should take you instead. Just as well, because I think the big fella might put me over my weight limit. We’re flying down into old Mexico. Meet me at the airfield in an hour. And bring your camera. I have something to show you, and the newspaper is definitely going to want photographs of it.”

It was a clear, windless morning and we flew due south out of Douglas. It’s the first time I’ve ever been in an airplane, and I have to admit I was a little nervous. But King is one of those fellows whose natural self-confidence inspires trust in others. We flew across the plains of northern Sonora, gaining altitude as we approached the foothills of the Sierra Madre. The overlapping mountain ranges in the distance were hazy with a light morning fog and appeared to run to infinity, stretching south and west as far as the eye could see. Timbered in tall pine, the massive peaks, jagged hogbacks, and steep-tilted rock formations are cut by a labyrinth of canyons and river valleys, a magical land that seems from the air to be pristine, untouched, somehow prehistoric. Spider leaned over to me, grinning, and said, “Now you know how God must have felt when He looked around at what He had made.”

A bit later, King said, “Hang on,” and the airplane suddenly banked and fell away beneath me, leaving my stomach in the air. We dropped down into a canyon and flew a winding slalom course down the river, so close that you could see the shadows of the airplane cast upon the steep canyon walls; I felt that I could reach out and touch them.

“Look at that, Ned,” King said, pointing to a series of caves connected by elaborate man-made rock structures at different elevations in the canyon walls, almost like an apartment building. “Those are pre-Columbian cave dwellings, built by an ancient civilization that inhabited this country over a thousand years ago. This is where the expedition is headed. The Mexicans think that the Apaches use them as hideouts. Look carefully and you can see the remains of recent fires in some of them, and what looks like cooking utensils and blankets. I’ll make another pass and get us closer.” King crested the canyon wall, banked the plane sharply, and dropped back down into the canyon. As he did so, I was looking out my side of the plane when I thought I saw something move, a figure in the rocks, and then clearly, just for a flashing moment, I recognized that it was a human being. I felt goose bumps and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. But in the next instant the figure was gone, like an afterimage.

“Did you see that, Spider?” I said excitedly. “Did you see it?”

“See what?”

“I think I saw someone.”

“Where?”

“Right back there.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Spider banked the plane again and made another pass, but this time we saw nothing, and I began to doubt my own eyes. “Maybe I just imagined it,” I said, “but I could have sworn I saw someone.”

“You didn’t imagine it,” Spider said. “They’re here.”

King made a number of passes from different angles so that I could photograph the caves. Having never shot from an airplane before, I found the exposures and focusing tricky, but under the circumstances, some of the images turned out surprisingly well. They had a slightly grainy, mysterious quality, and in one of them, what might have been the figure of a human being crouched in the rocks was visible. The next day, the
Daily Dispatch
ran this image on the front page, under the headline
EXPEDITION LOCATES APACHE HIDEOUT.

Besides Spider, we have had a few other additions to the staff, including a young woman named Margaret Hawkins, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Arizona. Margaret is writing her dissertation on the bronco Apaches, and through the auspices of her department has managed to talk her way into a position as the unofficial expedition anthropologist. “Letting Margaret come along was a shrewd move on the part of the committee,” says Wade Jackson with his typical cynicism. “In case the rich guys actually get a chance to wipe out some Apaches, it allows them the illusion that they are doing so as part of an important scientific study.”

Margaret herself is a tall, long-limbed, graceful woman in her midtwenties. She has short blond hair, a fine athletic figure, a deep rich laugh, and one of those brilliant smiles that makes everyone upon whom it shines feel graced, as if they are the most special person on earth. A number of the men, both among the volunteers and the staff alike, have already fallen in love with her. I interviewed and photographed her for the newspaper when she first arrived and she and I became friends right off in that easy, uncomplicated way that sometimes happens.

As often as I am able, I cross the border and expose film in Mexico. What a vibrant country, full of life, energy, and color. The street urchin, Jesus, whom Tolley and I met on our first night in Agua Prieta, has become my unofficial guide, assistant, and translator. I’ve even begun to pick up a little Spanish. The first time I drove my Roadster into Agua Prieta, the boy looked at it wide-eyed, ran his hand reverently over the finish. “You must be very rich, Señor Ned,” he said.

I’m still staying in the spare room in Tolley’s suite at the Gadsden, and he refuses any payment for it, which is certainly a good deal for me. In the evenings, we frequently cross the border together to drink and dance in the cantinas in Agua Prieta. Tolley may be a sissy but he loves to dance with the whores. He teases them and adjusts their hair and dresses, and makes them laugh, and because he wants nothing more from them than that, they treat him just like “one of the girls,” as he himself puts it. Las Primorosas has become the unofficial expedition watering hole and gathering place for both staff members and volunteers. Although he’s probably richer than any of the others, Tolley’s a bit of a black sheep among the volunteers, and he seems more comfortable hanging around with the “help.” Often Margaret joins us in the bar, and for her part seems completely uninterested in the other men who vie for her favors. She prefers to sit with Tolley and me and turns down all other offers to dance. She seems to be a competent, confident woman, and yet I sense in her some kind of sadness.

“Tell me, darling,” Tolley asked her the other night, “are you a Sapphist?”

Margaret laughed. “God, no, Tolley, I’m not,” she said. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Because you seem so inured to the advances of all the men who are panting after you,” Tolley said.

“That’s because I’m working,” Margaret explained. “And it’s always a mistake to mix business with pleasure. The only thing more distracting than a love affair in the field is a love affair gone bad in the field.”

“You say that as if you speak from experience, Mag,” I said.

Margaret smiled wryly. “Let’s just say that I’ve learned to choose my friends carefully,” she said. “In this case, I think it’s safe to say that Tolbert and I are not going to become romantically involved.”

“Safe?” Tolley said. “Bookmakers are offering ten-million-to-one odds on that one, darling.”

“And as for you, little brother,” Margaret said, patting my hand, “I’m too old for you. Besides, you’re already in love. Don’t think we haven’t noticed how love-struck you are when you gaze at that little señorita.”

“God, I know, isn’t he a bore?” Tolley said. “Mooning over the first whore he meets in a Mexican cantina. It’s so pathetic!”

“I think it’s sweet,” Margaret said.

“Oh,
please,
” Tolley said, “the boy’s a walking cliché of adolescent romantic yearnings. And what’s worse, he’s not even getting laid.”

“That’s even sweeter,” Margaret said.

“I just don’t want to be one of her customers,” I said. “If I did that, I’d be just like all the others. She’s a nice girl and I want to get to know her first.”

“He wants to get to know her first!” Tolley said. “While half a dozen other men hump her every night. What a romantic! What a hopeless chump!”

“Shut up, Tolley,” I warned. “You know if you weren’t such a big sissy, I’d punch you right in the nose.”

“That’s what I like about you, old sport,” Tolley said. “Most of the men here want to punch me in the nose because I
am
such a big sissy.”

“Well, I think you’re perfectly darling, Neddy,” Margaret said. “The world could use a little more romance and chivalry.”

“Shall we dance, Mag?” I asked.

“I thought you’d never ask, sweetie.”

I’ve learned the steps to the Mexican dances, and if I do say so myself, I’ve become a favorite partner of the cantina girls. Everyone knows I’m sweet on Magdalena, but because the
patrón
frowns on the girls entering into personal relationships with customers, I can’t dance with her very often. So I dance with all of them.

“I think your girlfriend’s jealous,” Margaret said after we took to the floor. It was a slow evening and Magdalena was sitting at a table with two other girls. “She’s watching me with daggers in her eyes.”

“You think so?” I asked.

Just then Chief Gatlin walked out on the floor and tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m cutting in on you, son,” he said.

“You’ll have to ask the lady about that, Chief,” I said. Gatlin hasn’t liked me from the start, I guess because I hang around with Tolley. Guilt by association.

“I’ve noticed that you only dance with queers, Miss Hawkins,” Gatlin said now. “I thought you might want to try a real man on for size.”

Margaret laughed. “Thanks anyway, Chief,” she said, “but I
like
queers.”

“Hey,” I protested. “I’m not a queer.”

“All right, ma’am,” he said, ignoring me, tipping his hat to Margaret. “Whatever you say. But if you change your mind, all you have to do is ask.” Gatlin went over to the table where the girls were sitting and held his hand out to Magdalena. She looked at him nervously, finally stood reluctantly and walked out on the dance floor with him.

“Thanks a lot, Mag,” I said. I noticed that Margaret was watching the chief with a strange, pensive look on her face.

“What for, sweetie?” she asked. “For failing to defend you against the charges of being queer, or for driving the chief into your girlfriend’s arms?”

I considered this for a moment. “Both, I guess,” I said.

“You know, he’s not entirely unattractive,” Margaret said.

“Jesus, you don’t
like
him, do you, Mag?”

Margaret shrugged. “I think he reminds me of my father,” she said.

“Your father must have been a real dick.”

She laughed. “Yeah, he was.”

“Magdalena’s afraid of him,” I said.

Margaret was silent for a long time. “Yes,” she said finally. “She probably should be.”

24 APRIL, 1932

This morning I went out to photograph the Apache scouts for the newspaper. It was supposed to be Big Wade’s assignment, but he was hungover as usual and sent me instead. The Apaches are camped off by themselves in a grove of sycamore trees up a little canyon outside town. Evidently they walked all the way down here from the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico, at least three hundred miles, and one of them is a very old man.

I drove out to their camp and was just getting my camera gear out of the automobile when the younger of them approached me, his eyes flashing angrily.

“What do you want?” the man asked. He looked to be in his midtwenties, with a strong, broad face and dark skin. I don’t know what I expected . . . war paint and tomahawk, I suppose . . . but I have to admit that from a photographic point of view I was a bit disappointed to see that he was dressed in regular clothing—a work shirt, dungarees, and cowboy boots—and his dark hair was cut short like a white man’s.

“I’m with the
Douglas Daily Dispatch,
” I answered. “They sent me out here to take your photograph.”

“That’s the trouble with you White Eyes,” he said. “You have no manners. You come uninvited and you take without asking.”

“You don’t have to be unfriendly about it,” I said. “You haven’t even given me a chance to ask permission, yet.” But at the same time I was thinking about Big Wade’s instructions to me on the subject. “Never, ever, ask someone if you can take their picture, kid,” he told me. “That’s the first rule of photojournalism. If you’re going to be a pro, you have to take the position that it’s your God-given right to photograph anyone, anywhere, anytime.”

“All right, go ahead and ask, then,” the man said.

I stuck my hand out. “My name is Ned Giles,” I said. “I’m with the
Douglas Daily Dispatch.
I’d like to take your photograph.”

The man got up very close to me. “No,” he said. “And if you don’t leave here now, I will smash that camera.”

“If you were to try to do that,” I said, “I’d have to punch you in the nose.”