Ask for Me Tomorrow

Seven

Only a few letters of the name still faintly visible on one side identified the ravaged hulk as Gilly’s Dreamboat. The wheels had disappeared into the ground and most of the windows were broken. The paint had been scratched by chollas and creosote bushes, rusted by fog and salt air, blasted off by wind-driven sand.

On the roof was an old sun-bleached, urine-stained mattress. A lone chicken sat in the middle of it, casually pecking out the stuffing. It was the only living thing in sight. Yet Aragon was positive that there were people inside watching his approach with quiet hostility as if they’d already found out the purpose of his visit. It seemed impossible, though he knew it wasn’t. In places where more sophisticated forms of communication were lacking, the grapevine was quick and efficient, and the fact that he’d seen no one outside the mission while he was talking to the padre meant nothing.

“Hello? Hello, in there! Can you hear me?”

He didn’t expect an answer and none came. But he kept trying.

“Listen to me. I came from the United States looking for Mr. Lockwood, Byron James Lockwood. Can anyone give me some information about him or about Tula?”

If they could, they didn’t intend to. The silence seemed even more profound: Tula’s fall from grace had evidently been far and final.

“The padre will tell you that I mean no harm. And I’m offering money in return for information. Doesn’t anyone want money?”

No one did. Money was of little value to people without a place to spend it or a desire to change their lot.

He waited another five minutes. The chicken pecking at the mattress stuffing remained the only sign of life.

The padre was waiting for him. He had opened another bottle of beer and his color was high and his eyes slightly out of focus.

“You’re back very soon, Tomas.”

“Yes.”

“Our people are normally very friendly to strangers. If you were the exception, I apologize.”

“I was, and thanks.”

“You remind them of bad things and they’re afraid. I am perhaps a little afraid myself. You’re searching for the American, Lockwood?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Lockwood’s wife wants him found.” Lockwood’s wife wasn’t too accurate a description of Gilly but it served its purpose.

The padre looked shocked. “I thought Tula was — I didn’t know he had another wife.”

“Two other wives. Only one of them wants him found.”

“Then Pablo is illegitimate?”

“Yes.”

“All the more he is a child of God,” the padre said, but he sounded shaken. “Of course, we will not tell any of the villagers about this. It would serve no purpose and the little boy might suffer unnecessarily. It is not easy being a child of God.”

“How long did Lockwood stay here in the village?”

“Some four years or so. He was a nice man, kind to all the little ones and very fond of his son. He pretended the boy was normal, perhaps even to himself he pretended, I’m not sure.”

“No, he knew the facts. The second Mrs. Lockwood had a letter from him referring to the boy.”

“Then all the more he was a nice man, don’t you think?”

“I think he must have been. Everyone I’ve talked to seems to have liked him.” With the exception of Smedler, who didn’t count because he never liked anybody. “Was he happy here, living under what for him were certainly primitive conditions?”

“But he was going to change the conditions. He had great plans for the village, great dreams. The mission would be restored, haciendas built, and a town square and a new pier to attract tourists in big boats. Also streets would be put in, real streets with beautiful names carved on stone pillars. The streets were laid out and some of the pillars already carved when the authorities arrived. Then suddenly it was all over.”

“What happened?”

“He was arrested along with his partner, Jenkins, who was the real villain. But the authorities didn’t bother to apportion blame on a percentage basis, eighty percent Jenkins, twenty percent Lockwood. No, they arrested them both equally.”

“What was the charge?”

“It seems a lot of people were cheated. They sent money to buy lots on which haciendas were to be built, Jenlock Haciendas.”

“A real estate swindle.”

“I couldn’t believe Mr. Lockwood deliberately swindled anyone. But what I believed was unimportant... The whole village came here to church to say farewell prayers for him. He was all dressed up for the occasion in his best suit and tie with a diamond tiepin in it, his fancy wristwatch and gold wedding ring and the ruby ring he wore on his little finger. He looked very splendid, like the day he arrived in the chariot. No one would have imagined he was being arrested, perhaps he could not really imagine it himself. Is this possible?”

“Yes.”

“They took him away in a dirty old vehicle something like a bus with bars across the windows, a far cry from a chariot. When the bus left, he and Jenkins sat quietly, but Tula kept waving at us from the window precisely the way she’d waved on the day she and Lockwood arrived.”

“Why did Tula go along?”

“I think to get away from the village, which bored her, and the child she was ashamed of, not so much to be with Lockwood.”

“She couldn’t be with him anyway, could she, if he was being sent to jail?”

“Oh yes, if she really wanted to. The jail in Rio Seco is very different from American jails I have seen in the cinema in Ensenada. Sometimes whole families live together, inside the walls. Or a prisoner, if he can afford it, may have his meals brought to him from outside or be visited by night ladies. The latter I don’t approve. But the other thing — what harm is done? It is a more humane way to conduct a prison than the American way, don’t you agree?”

“I agree that it’s more humane for the prisoner, not necessarily for his family.”

“Bear in mind that many of the men in prison have committed no crime, they are simply waiting for their cases to be heard. For most offenses no bail is allowed because under Mexican law there is no presumption of innocence such as in your country. Quite the contrary. A man is presumed guilty and is not entitled to a jury trial. His guilt or innocence, and his sentence, is decided by a magistrate. He can be kept in jail for a whole year before his case is even heard. This is very sad for the poor, who can’t afford to pay bribes, but everyone expected when Mr. Lockwood was taken away that he would be back any week. We thought he still had some money, or that he could at least borrow some from his American friends in order to pay the magistrate for a favorable verdict. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was released from prison and simply chose not to return here. We never heard from him again.”

“Or from the girl?”

“No. A funny thing happened, though. Last fall, about a year ago, a sports fishing boat came down from the north coast and anchored in the bay. A man rowed ashore in a dinghy and left some boxes for the children containing clothes and toys and chewing gum and vitamin pills.”

“Could they have been sent by Lockwood?”

“Possibly, though I would think he’d have included some more useful things. The children broke the toys in a week and fed the vitamin pills to the goats.”

“Didn’t you ask the man in the dinghy who sent him?”

“He couldn’t speak Spanish and my English is very bad. We have been the recipients of charity before — remember the truck which carried Tula to America? — so perhaps it was merely a coincidence that the boxes came to us.”

“Coincidences happen, of course,” Aragon said. “But in my profession they’re usually viewed with suspicion.”

“In my profession, also.” The padre’s smile was merely a further deepening of the grooves around his mouth. “So we view with suspicion, you and I. I wish it were not so.”

“What happened to Jenkins?”

“No one knows or is in any hurry to find out. He had a bad effect on Mr. Lockwood. He would drive down to the village in a jeep, bringing rum and tequila and a briefcase full of drawings and blueprints and newspapers. Then after a few days he’d disappear again with more of Mr. Lockwood’s money. Anyone but Mr. Lockwood would have perceived Jenkins’ true character. He cared nothing about the villagers. He couldn’t conceal how much he despised the people who couldn’t read or write and didn’t care. And to me, who could read and write on a higher level than his own, he made unkind remarks about being kicked out of the Church. I was never kicked out. I left. I left voluntarily because I committed a carnal sin.”

The padre covered his face with his sleeve and Aragon wasn’t sure whether he was wiping away tears or sweat, or whether he was attempting to hide his shame.

“Now I have told you everything, Tomas, more than you asked. I’m a silly old man full of beer and gossip.”

“You’ve been a great help.”

“I hope so. I’d like very much to see Mr. Lockwood again. We had many pleasant conversations and we used to listen to his radio until the batteries wore out. Will you give him a message for me? Tell him he is missed. Tell him— No, that will be enough. He is missed. I wouldn’t really want him to know how much, it might make him feel bad if circumstances won’t permit him to come back.”

“You mean if he’s still in jail?”

“Oh, I’m sure he won’t be, a man of his worth, both moral and financial.”

“I’m in no position to judge his moral worth,” Aragon said. “However, I know that five years ago he needed money very badly. ‘Desperately’ was the word he used.”

“But he had friends, did he not — rich American friends?”

“Rich American friends are hard to come by, especially when you’re in trouble.”

“You said he had a wife. She is also American?”

“Yes.”

“And rich?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps he—”

“No. He didn’t. She refused to send him any.”

“That is a shame.” The padre sighed, and wiped at his face again. “So you will go first to the Rio Seco jail to look for him. And if he’s not there?”

“They must keep records.”

“Oh, Tomas, you’re a dreamer. Records of what? Of who paid how much to which magistrate?”

“The girl is the only lead I have.”

“So off you go. When?”

“I should get back to Rio Seco late tonight. Right now I’d like to look around the village.”

“I would accompany you, Tomas, but I’m a little unsteady on my feet and this is siesta time. The sun is very hot. Do you have a hat to wear?”

“No.”

“Here, you can have mine.”

“No,” Aragon said. “No thank you.” It would be unfair to the gentle little man to be reminded of him by a case of head lice.

“Have a safe journey, Tomas. Our visit has been so enjoyable I hate to see it end. Will you ever come back?”

“Not likely.”

“I’ve reached the age where anyone who lets me talk seems like an old friend. By listening to my memories, you have become part of them. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I like the idea very much.”

“Goodbye, friend.”

“Good health and God’s blessing, padre.”

The two men shook hands. Then Aragon started walking down toward the pier and the row of shacks beside the abandoned fish cannery.

The severity of the sun had closed the village down as completely as if a bad storm had struck or an epidemic of plague. There was no sign of activity anywhere, even on the sloop riding at anchor in the bay. Only the sound of a crying child from inside one of the shacks indicated that they were occupied.

Beyond the shacks, on a knoll overlooking the bay, he found what he was looking for, the beginning — and the ending — of Jenlock Haciendas. “Streets would be put in,” the padre had said, “real streets with beautiful names carved on stone pillars.” The streets, if they had ever existed, were buried under sand, but the identifying pillars remained unchanged. The same wind that blasted the paint off Dreamboat had merely kept the pillars wiped as clean as tombstones in a carefully tended cemetery. Each way was a dead end, avenues east and west, streets north and south: Calle Jardin Encanto, Calle Paloma de Paz, Avenida Cielito Verde, Avenida Corona de Oro, Avenida Gilda.

“Avenida Gilda.” He repeated the name aloud as if the sound of it might make it more believable. The stone was perfectly symmetrical and the carving done with great care and skill in Gothic letters.

He went back to his car. Through the open door of the mission he could hear the padre snoring. He took the remaining bottles of beer inside and left them on the table. The Blessed Virgin gave him one fierce final stare.

He reached Rio Seco about one o’clock in the morning and checked into a hotel. It was too late to phone Gilly. Besides, he had very little to tell her and nothing she’d like to hear: B. J. and his partner, Jenkins, had been taken to jail; the boy, Pablo, was not only crippled but retarded; and in the middle of a couple of billion cubic feet of sand was a tombstone with her name carved on it.

He went to bed.