AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The soldiers trashed the house, fanned out into the yards and outbuildings, kicked chickens out of their way like exploding sacks of feathers, and for no apparent reason shot a pig running from a barn and threw it down the well.
"Can you put a stop to this bullshit?" I said to Minos.
"You see that fat slob with the Sam Browne belt on? He's a graduate of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. He also owns a whorehouse. He knocked the glass eye out of a girl for sassing him. No, thanks."
While his house was being torn apart, Clay Mason leaned against a cedar post on his front porch and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette, his pixie eyes fixed on me and Minos. His hair extended like white straw from under his domed Stetson hat.
"Karyn warned me you're a vindictive man," he said.
"I'm sorry about your place. It's not my doing," I said.
"Like hell it isn't." Then a yellow tooth glinted behind his lip and he added, "You little pisspot."
He flipped his cigarette away, walked to the corner of his house on his cane, and urinated in the yard, audibly passing gas with his back turned to us, shaking his penis, a small, hatted, booted man, in a narrow, ratty coat, whose power had touched thousands of young lives. Helen and I walked behind the ranch house, where the soldiers had forced five field hands to lean spread-eagled against the stone wall of the barn. The field hands were young and frightened and kept turning their heads to see if guns were being pointed at their backs. The soldiers shook them down but kept them leaning on their arms against the wall.
"I don't like being in on this one, Dave," Helen said.
"Don't watch it. We'll be out of here soon," I said.
We walked inside the barn. The loft was filled with hay, the horse stalls slatted with light, the dirt floor soft as foam rubber with dried manure. Through the doors at the far end I could see horses belly-deep in grass against a blue mountain.
Hanging from pegs on a wood post, like a set used by only one man, were a pair of leather chaps, a bridle, a yellow rain slicker, a sleeveless knitted riding vest, flared gloves made from deer hide, and two heavy Mexican spurs with rowels as big as half dollars. I rotated one of the rowels with my thumb. The points were sticky and coated with tiny pieces of brown hair.
Behind the post, a silver saddle was splayed atop a sawhorse. I ran my hand across the leather, the cool ridges of metal, the seared brand of a Texas cattle company on one flap. The cantle was incised with roses, and in the back of the cantle was a mother-of-pearl inlay of an opened camellia.
"What is it?" Helen said.
"Remember, the guy named Arana said the bugarron rode a silver saddle carved with flowers? I think Clay Mason's our man."
"What can you do about it?"
"Nothing."
"That's it?"
"Who knows?" I said.
We walked back into the sun's glare and the freshness of the day and the wind that smelled of water and grass and horses in the fields.
But the young field hands spread-eagled against the stone wall of the barn were not having a good day at all. The shade was cool in the lee of the barn, but they were sweating heavily, their arms trembling with tension and exertion. One boy had a dark inverted V running down his pants legs, and the soldiers were grinning at his shame.
"School of the Americas?" I said to the fat man in the Sam Browne belt. I tried to smile.
He wore tinted prescription glasses and stood taller than I. His eyes looked at me indolently, then moved to Helen, studying her figure.
"What you want?" he said.
"How about cutting these guys some slack? They're not traffickers, they're just camposinos, right?" I said.
"We decide what they are. You go on with the woman . . . Is guapa, huh? Is maybe lesbian but puta is puta." He held out his palms and cupped them, as though he were holding a pair of cantaloupes.
"What'd you say?" Helen asked.
"He didn't say anything," I said.
"Yeah he did. Say it again, you bucket of bean shit, and see what happens."
The officer turned away, a wry smile on his mouth, a light in the corner of his eye.
