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"This is what hell must look like," she said.
"I grew up here. I tell you something, we don't got guys like Arana here. He's from Jalisco. I tell you something else, they don't even got guys like Arana there. Guys like him got to go to the United States to get like that, you understand what I'm saying?"
"No," she answered, looking at the back of his neck.
"My English ain't too good. It's a big problem I got," he said.
We pulled into a village that was wedged like a toothache in a steep-sided, narrow canyon strewn with the tailings from a deserted open-pit mine on the mountain above. Some of the houses had no outbuildings, only a piece of concrete sewer pipe inserted vertically into the dirt yard for a community toilet. Next to the cantina was the police station, a squat, white-washed building with green shutters that were latched shut on the windows. A jeep carrying three rurales and a civilian with a bloody ear and hair like a lion's mane came up the road in a flume of dust from the direction of the mine and parked in front. The three rurales wore dirty brown uniforms and caps with lacquered brims and World War I thumb-buster U.S. Army .45 revolvers. The civilian's clothes were in rags and his hands were roped behind him. The rurales took him inside the building and closed the door.
"Are these the guys who popped Arana?" I asked.
"Yeah, man, but you don't want to be asking them no questions about it, know what I'm saying?" Heriberto said.
"No, I don't."
He scratched his nose, then told me a story.
The village had been visited by a carnival that featured a pedal-operated Ferris wheel, a donkey with a fifth leg that grew like a soft carrot out of its side, a concessionaire who sold hand-corked bottles of mescal that swam with thread worms, and Arana, the Spider, a magical man who swallowed flame and blew it like a red handkerchief into the air, whose scarlet, webbed tattoos, Indian-length hair, blackened mouth, and chemical green eyes could charm mountain women from their marital beds. His sexual energies were legendary.
"Arana was in the sack with the wrong man's wife?" I said.
"They gonna tell you that. You go away with that, take that story back home, everything's gonna be fine. You don't, you keep asking questions, maybe we got a problem. You see that guy they just took in? You don't want to go in there today."
"What'd he do?" Helen asked.
"Two children went in those empty buildings up at the mines and didn't come back. See, where all those pieces of tin are flapping in the wind. He lives in there by himself, he don't ever take a bath, comes down at night and steals food from people."
"Why'd they shoot Arana?" I said.
"Look, man, how I'm gonna tell you? This ain't no marijuanista we're talking about. This guy takes high-powered stuff into the States sometimes. These local guys know that. It's called la mordita, you got to pay the bite, man, or maybe you have a shitload of trouble. Like the guy behind those green shutters now. He don't want to see nobody light a cigar."
The infirmary had been built by an American mining company in the oblong shape of a barracks on a bench above the main street of the village. The lumber had warped the nails out of the joists, and the windows were covered with ragged plastic sheets that popped in the wind. In back, a gasoline-powered generator throbbed next to a water well that had been dug in the middle of a chicken yard.
Inside, the beds were in rows, squared away, either a slop jar or spittoon under each one, the steel gray blankets taut with a military tuck. The woodstove was unlighted, the open door congealed with dead ash. The bare walls and floors seemed enameled with cold.
But the man named Arana needed no heat source other than his own.
He lay on top of the sheet, naked except for a towel across his loins, the scarlet tattoos on his skin emblazoned with sweat. His chest was peppered with wounds that had been dressed with squares of gauze and tape and a yellow salve that smelled like an engine lubricant. But that was not where the offensive odor came from. His right thigh was twice the size it should have been, the shiny reddish black color of an eggplant.
The priest who had called the sheriff brought us chairs to sit by the bed. He was a thin, pale man, dressed in a windbreaker, flannel shirt, khaki pants and work boots that were too big for his ankles, his black hair probably scissor-cropped at home. He put his hand on my arm and turned me aside before I sat down. His breath was like a feather that had been dipped in brandy.
"Arana has absolution but no rest. He believes he served evil people who are going to hurt you," he said. "But I'm not sure of anything he says now."
"What's he told you?"
"Many things. Few of them good."
"Father, I'm not asking you to violate the seal of the confessional."
"He's made himself insane with injections. He talks of his fears for young people. It's very confusing."
I waited. There was a pained glimmer in the priest's eyes. "Sir?" I said.
"The man some think killed children up at the mines is his relative," the priest said. "Or maybe he was talking about what he calls the bugarron. I don't know."
Helen and I sat down next to the bed. Helen took a tape recorder out of her purse and clicked it on. The man who was named Arana let his eyes wander onto my face.
"You know me, partner?" I said.
