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He tilted his chin so he could see me better, breathed hard through his nostrils. Then he spoke in a language I didn't recognize.
"It's an Indian dialect," the priest said. "No one speaks it here, except his relative, the crazy one who lives inside the mines."
"Who sent you to New Iberia, Arana?" I said.
But my best attempts at reaching inside his delirium seemed to be of no avail. I tried for a half hour, then felt my own attention start to wander. The priest left and came back. Helen yawned and straightened her back. "Sorry," she said. She took one cartridge out of the recorder and put in another.
Then, as though Arana had seen me for the first time, his hand cupped around my wrist and squeezed it like a vise.
"The bugarron ride a saddle with flowers cut in it. I seen him at the ranch. You messing everything up for them. They gonna kill you, man," he said.
"Who's this guy?"
"He ain't got no name. He got a red horse and a silver saddle. He like Indian boys."
Inadvertently, his hand drew mine against his gangre
nous thigh. I saw the pain jump in his face, then anger replace the recognition that had been in his eyes.
"What's this man look like?" I said.
But I had become someone else now, perhaps an old enemy who had come aborning with the carrion birds.
Helen and I walked outside with the priest. The sunlight was cold inside the canyon. Heriberto waited for us in the Cherokee.
"I have no authority here, Father. But I'm worried about the fate of the man from the mines, the one inside the police station," I said.
"Why?"
"Heriberto says the rurales are serious men."
"Heriberto is corrupt. He takes money from drug smugglers. The rurales are Indians. It's against their way to deliberately injure an insane person."
"I see. Thank you for your goodwill, Father."
That night Helen and I boarded a four-engine plane for the connection flight back to El Paso. She looked out the window as we taxied onto the runway. Heriberto was standing by a hangar, one hand lifted in farewell.
"How do you read all that?" she said, nodding toward the glass.
"What?"
"Everything that happened today."
"It's an outdoor mental asylum," I said.
Later, she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I watched the clouds blowing through the propellers, then the sky was clear again and far below I saw the lights of a city spread through a long valley and the Rio Grande River glowing under the moon.
CHAPTER 11
Monday morning Karyn LaRose walked through the department's waiting room and paused in front of the dispatcher's office. She didn't need to speak. Wally took one look at her and, without thinking, rose to his feet (and later could not explain to himself or anyone else why he did).
"Yes, ma'am?" he said.
She wore a snug, tailored white suit, white hose, and a wide-brim straw hat with a yellow band.
"Can Dave see me?" she asked.
"Sure, Ms. LaRose. You bet. I'll call him and tell him you're on your way."
