Death of a Citizen

CHAPTER 15

THEY build roads in New Mexico the normal way, except for one small aberration. After they've got the surface on, while it's still nice and soft, they give the signal to a drunk with a big disc harrow, who sets off at top speed along the fresh pavement, weaving artistically from side to side..

Well, maybe it doesn't happen that way, but I can think of no better explanation for the long, parallel, crooked furrows that decorate our southwestern blacktop roads. They aren't conspicuous. You probably don't even notice them in your softly sprung, balloon-tired Cadillac or Imperial, but in a truck with 6.00 x 16 tires inflated to thirty-five pounds it's like driving along a set of insane streetcar tracks laid by a madman for the sole purpose of throwing your heap into the ditch.

Along about dawn, I got tired of fighting the steering wheel and turned off onto a dirt road leading west across somebody's ranch. I followed this fc~r a mile or two, until the growing light showed me a kind of hollow to the left where the desert cedars grew more thickly than elsewhere. I headed down there without benefit of road.

Parking in a little clearing among the low, twisted evergreens, I climbed out stiffly and eased the door closed without latching it, so as not to wake Tina, who was curled up asleep under her furs at the far end of the seat. Then I walked to the top of the nearest rise and stood looking at the brightening yellow-pink sky to the east. It was going to be another clear day. Most of them are, in our part of the country.

Little weak lights crawled across the dark plain under the beautiful sky, over where the highway was. I had that curious feeling of unreality you sometimes get after a sleepless night. It~didn't seem likely that, some hundred-odd miles to the north, there was an abandoned mine containing a pretty girl with a sheathed throwing knife at the back of her neck and a bullet in her head-laid out neatly at the side of the black tunnel with a -raincoat over her and her luggage beside her, and covered with as much protection in the way of rocks and earth as we'd been able to scrape together with the tools at our disposal. Tina had considered this a sentimental waste of time, and she'd been perfectly right, but I felt better for having done it. As she kept pointing out, I was soft, these days. I couldn't help thinking of things like rats and coyotes.

Nor did it seem very plausible that, only a few score yards from where I stood, there was sleeping a beautiful dark female in mink, who was not my wife..

I'm not a wood-fire enthusiast where cooking is concerned, preferring just about any kind of stove if I can get it, but I hadn't got around to filling the can of white gas for the Coleman, and there was an autumn chill in the air and several dead trees around. We've got some kind of a bug that's been killing off the nice old evergreens at a fearful rate the last few years. I got out the axe, and presently I had a pleasant blaze going under the coffee pot and frying pan. I heard the cab door open. When I looked up, Tina was standing there, pushing the hair back from her face with both hands, stretching and yawning like a waking cat. I couldn't help laughing. She cut her yawn off short.

"What is funny, Eric?"

I said, "Baby, you should see yourself."

She looked down at herself in the light of the newborn day, and made a gesture as if to smooth down her clothing, but let her hands fall helplessly to her sides; the situation had obviously passed ~far beyond such simple remedies. She'd never again make a grand entrance in that particular outfit. Her gloves and hat were missing, already mere debris scattered about the truck. The smart black cocktail dress, its hem torn and dangling, was smeared with mine dust and creased with sleeping. Her pumps were rock-cut and grimy, and she had runs in both stockings. Only the furs about her shoulders seemed unaffected by the night's adventures. Their glossy perfection made the rest of her costume seem even more forlorn by comparison.

Tina laughed, and shrugged cheerfully. "Ah, well," she said, pushing her hair back from her face, "c 'est Ia guerre. You will buy me some new clothes when we come to a town, nicht wahr?"

"Si, Si," I said, to prove I also knew some languages. "The dressing room is behind the third cedar to the west, and I hope you're a quick mover, because these eggs are almost done."

While she was gone, I spread an army blanket for us to sit on, dished up our breakfasts, and poured the coffee. When she came back, she'd combed her hair, pulled up her stockings, and put on some lipstick, but she still wasn't the most glamorous female in the world, even for five o'clock in the morning. The women's magazines to which Beth subscribes would have considered her case with pity and horror. She wasn't dainty, fresh, and sweet-smelling; it was clear that, in her present dilapidated condition, the poor girl had no chance whatever of attracting a man.

Sometimes I wonder where those mags get their data on male psychology. I ask you, gentlemen, is your beast generally aroused by a lovely lady looking like an angel and smelling like a rose? I'm not speaking of love and tenderness now; if you're looking for someone to protect and cherish, okay, and maybe that's what the female editors have in mind; but for purposes of passion, I think you want another stinking lowdown human being like yourself, not a shining and immaculate vision from above.

She sat down beside me. I handed her her plate, put her cup on a level spot beside her, cleared my throat, and said, "We left tracks all over those hills back there, but if anybody knows enough to look for them, and follow them to the mine, they know too much already. Do you want some whiskey in your coffee?"

She glanced at me. "Should I?"

I shrugged. "It's supposed to be good for warding off the chill, also for softening up members of the opposite sex for immoral purposes."

"Are your purposes immoral, chйrie?"

"Naturally," I said. "I'm bound to be unfaithful to my wife before I'm through with you. It was inevitable from the moment I saw you last night. Well, this is a nice quiet place. Let's get it over with, so I can relax and stop wrestling with my conscience."

She smiled. "Somehow, I do not think you're wrestling very hard, my dear."

I shrugged and spread my hands. "It's not much of a conscience."

She laughed. "Your approach is so crude and I am so hungry. Wait until I've finished my breakfast before you rape me. But I will take a little whiskey in my coffee, thank you." She watched me pour it into her cup and mine. After a little, she said, "Your wife is very pretty."

"And very nice," I said, "and I love her dearly, in another existence, and now let's shut up about my wife. That's the Pecos River down the valley. You can't see it, but it's there."

"Indeed?"

"It's a very historic stream," I said. "There was a time when 'West of the Pecos' meant something wild and wonderful. Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving were ambushed by Indians-Comanches, I think-not too far from here. They were taking a herd of Texas cattle north. Loving was wounded in the arm. Goodnight slipped away and came back with help, but Loving's arm got infected and he died from blood poisoning. The Comanches were great horsemen, some of the finest fighting men who ever drew a bow. I've never written much about them."

"Why not, Liebchen?"

"They were a great warrior nation. I can't dislike them enough to make them villains; and on the other hand, most books about noble redskins make me want to vomit, even my own. Now, the Apaches are much better suited to literary purposes. In their way, I suppose, they were kind of great, too-certainly they kept the U.S. Army running in circles for a hell of a long time-but they didn't have many admirable character traits that I can discover. As far as I can make out from the available records, the biggest thief and liar was the most highly respected Apache. Courage was for the birds, in their book. Oh, an Apache could die bravely enough if he absolutely had to, but it would always be a blot on his record: he should have been able to pull a sneak somehow. And their sense of humor was fairly gruesome. They liked nothing better than raiding a lonely ranch, eating the mules-they were very fond of mule meat-and leaving the inhabitants behind in what they considered a hilariously funny condition. I mean, take one prisoner, scalp well, chop off the ears and nose, gouge out the eyes and tongue, slice off the breasts if female and the private parts if male, and sever the heel tendons. Then, if they were Apaches of the old school-they're all civilized and respectable now, of course-they laughed themselves silly watching the bloody, croaldng thing flopping blindly around in the dirt. Then they rode off, leaving it still alive, so that the next white man who came along, if he was merciful enough to take the responsibility on his soul, had to shoot it. This wasn't a ritual, you understand, not a ceremonial test of courage like the tortures of some other tribes. It was just a bunch of the boys having themselves some good clean fun. Oh, the Apaches were a wonderful, uninhibited people in their day. They kept New Mexico and Arizona practically deserts for years. They make fine heavies. I don't know how I'd make a living without them." I reached for her plate as she set it aside. "More?"

She shook her head, smiling. "You do not encourage the appetite, Eric. And you have a strange way of setting the mood for love, with this talk of gouged-out eyes and sliced-off breasts."

"I was just talking," I said. "Just showing off my vast store of specialized knowledge. A man's got to talk about something while he waits for a woman to feed her face. I'd rather talk about Apaches than about my wife and kids, as you were starting to do."

"It was you who mentioned her first."

"Yes," I said, "to keep the record clear, but you weren't supposed to take the ball and run with it..

What the hell are you doing?"

She looked a little startled by the question. She was lying back against a duffel bag with her dress bunched carelessly and much leg showing; and she'd been idly picking at one of her stockings with a sharp fingernail, and watching the resulting run, encouraged, travel in a pale streak over her knee and down her shin and instep, to vanish inside her dusty shoe. Even though the nylons were already past saving, it seemed like an immoral thing to do.

She moved her shoulders. "I… like the way it tickles. What does it matter? It is already ruined. Eric?"

"Yes?"

"Have you always loved me?"

I said, "I haven't thought about you for ten years, darling."

She smiled. "That is not the question I asked. One does not have to think, to love."

Then, although the morning was chilly, she took off her glossy furs and laid them carefully away on a far corner of the blanket. She turned back to face me in her rumpled sleeveless dress. The bare arms made her look very vulnerable at that temperature; I wanted to take her just to keep her warm. Her lips were a little parted, and her violet eyes, half-closed, looked both sleepy and bright, if such a thing is possible. Her meaning was clear. She had put aside the only thing she'd brought here that she cared to preserve. The rest, already in disrepair, did not matter; I needn't concern myself about it. I didn't.