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He had taken the watch off that day and never worn it since.
‘Noon,’ he said.
Noon.
The border lay ahead. They saw it and both cried out at once. They pulled up, smiling, not knowing they smiled….
John Webb leaned out of the window, started gesturing to the guard at the border station, caught himself, and got out of his car. He walked ahead to the station where three young men, very short, in lumpy uniforms, stood talking. They did not look up at Webb, who stopped before them. They continued conversing in Spanish, ignoring him.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said John Webb at last. ‘Can we pass over the border into Juatala?’
One of the men turned for a moment. ‘Sorry, señor.’
The three men talked again.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Webb, touching the first man’s elbow. ‘We’ve got to get through.’
The man shook his head. ‘Passports are no longer good. Why should you want to leave our country, anyway?’
‘It was announced on the radio. All Americans to leave the country, immediately.’
‘Ah, sí sí,’ all three soldiers nodded and leered at each other with shining eyes.
‘Or be fined or imprisoned, or both,’ said Webb.
‘We could let you over the border, but Juatala would give you twenty-four hours to leave also. If you don’t believe
me, listen!’ The guard turned and called across the border, ‘Aye, there! Aye!’
In the hot sun, forty yards distant, a pacing man turned, his rifle in his arms.
‘Aye there, Paco, you want these two people?’
‘No, gracias – gracias, no,’ replied the man, smiling.
‘You see?’ said the guard, turning to John Webb.
All of the soldiers laughed together.
‘I have money,’ said Webb.
The men stopped laughing.
The first guard stepped up to John Webb and his face was now not relaxed or easy; it was like brown stone.
"Yes,’ he said. ‘They always have money. I know. They come here and they think money will do everything. But what is money? It is only a promise, señor. This I know from books. And when somebody no longer likes your promise, what then?’
‘I will give you anything you ask.’
‘Will you?’ The guard turned to his friends. ‘He will give me anything I ask.’ To Webb: ‘It was a joke. We were always a joke to you, weren’t we?’
‘No.’
‘Mañana, you laughed at us; mañana, you laughed at our siestas and our mañanas, didn’t you?’
‘Not me. Someone else.’
‘Yes, you.’
