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“Get in the truck. In the front.”
I remember that there was blood all over the inside of the truck cab, and some bloody white stuff stuck to the windshield that had to be brain tissue.
I remember that I had to press against the door so that I wouldn’t be sitting in the pool of blood on the seat.
And I remember that the Húsare with the broken arm screamed with pain when they loaded him in the truck.
And that Dieter’s face was white, that he was unconscious, and I thought maybe he was dead—until he groaned.
And I remember starting down the road . . . but that’s all I remember until just now when this nun, or whatever she is—Mother Superior? The head nun?—walked out here.
—
“Thank you, Mother,” Clete said.
“This is how God wants me to spend my life, Cletus. No thanks is required. Now get out of here.”
She went back into the interior of the hospital.
“The question now becomes, Jimmy,” Frade said, “how do we go home? We d
on’t have any wheels.”
“While you were taking a leak, a gendarmerie sergeant came in here. He said whenever we’re ready, he’ll take us to Casa Montagna.”
When they went outside, three gendarmerie pickup trucks—loaded with gendarmes—and General Nervo’s 1942 Buick Roadmaster were waiting for them.
“Sergeant, we can ride in one of the trucks,” Clete said to Nervo’s driver. “Send General Nervo’s car back to him with my respects.”
“With respect, Don Cletus,” the sergeant replied, “General Nervo said that if you give me any trouble about using his car, I am to cut off your fingers with this.”
He held up a massive bolt cutter.
Clete and Jimmy got in the backseat of the Buick.
When they passed Kilometer Marker 29, there was no sign of the shot-up and wrecked station wagons nor any other sign that anything extraordinary had happened there.
[FIVE]
Estancia Don Guillermo
Km 40.4, Provincial Route 60
Mendoza Province, Argentina
1805 21 October 1945
A large delegation of people was waiting for them when the Buick pulled up to Casa Montagna.
“The Family”—Doña Dorotea, holding Master Jorge Howell Frade by the hand; Martha Howell, holding Cletus Howell Frade Jr. in her arms; Beth and Marjorie Howell; and patriarch Cletus Marcus Howell—stood in front. Perhaps twenty Germans, Argentines, and Americans stood in a half circle behind them.
Clete climbed out of the backseat of the Buick, then Jimmy followed.
“Good evening,” Clete said.
“Is that all you have to say, my darling?” Doña Dorotea asked, somewhat coldly.
“Well, Jimmy and I were sort of expecting a brass band. You know, playing”—he sang—“‘the eyes of Texas are upon you . . .’”
