The Hot Country

26

Diego’s mother rose when I rose to go and she held my offered hand with both of hers. I put my other hand on top and squeezed very gently. Though I expected him to get pissed at me for doing it, I said again to her, “You have a good boy. He will make you proud.”

I was happy to see not a single flicker of surprise in her face.

“Thank you,” she said.

Diego walked with me away from his house, and we stopped and faced each other. We both knew that tomorrow I would slip onto the train to follow Mensinger far up-country, and it was unclear where I would end up and when I might see Diego again. I put my hand inside my shirt, opened a flap of the money belt and I found a certain sort of coin by shape and heft. I pulled it out and bent down so I was eye-to-eye with Diego. I held up the coin between us.

His eyes went wide and I was feeling bad — more than bad, very uneasy — about maybe not seeing him again. I was glad to be doing this for him and for his brothers and sisters and for his singing mother, and I was very glad to see his eyes widen over a good thing on this day, for I wouldn’t soon forget the wideness of his eyes after he was nearly killed and after I ripped Krüger’s arm out of its socket. In my hand was an Indian Head Gold Eagle coin. I was looking at the Indian himself, in profile with war bonnet. I wanted Diego to see the Indian. I turned the coin, and the standing eagle on the other side, also in profile, made me think of the thing I told Gerhard and he told me. We are Americans. Together. But go far enough back and Americans have all come from somewhere else. And this kid before me had the heart of an American. The coin was 90 percent gold, worth ten bucks. Which would go a long way in Vera Cruz, Mexico.

“This is to stay away from the Germans while I’m gone,” I said.

He nodded, without ever letting his eyes shift from mine.

I offered him the coin.

He struggled a little with his face now, trying to keep his eyes dry and his mouth firm, but I had to look very closely to see it. He was a good kid. He put his two fingers on the top of the coin and we both held it for a very brief moment. Then he gently extracted the coin from my hand. “Thanks, boss,” he said.

And he turned and he was gone.

I knew what he meant. Just as briskly, and with just as much control of my feelings, I stood and I turned and I walked away.

It was mid-afternoon and there was much to do.

Bunky first and it was not till I was up the steps of his casa de huéspedes and heading for his door that I realized how I’d been trusting him till this moment. I did glance as I trotted past the Diligencias and I noticed he wasn’t there, but the alternative didn’t really register on me. Only now did I wonder if he was drunk again and I’d be in Dutch on the train tomorrow, trying to travel as myself or with no documentation. I knocked.

Bunky answered at once. “Enter.”

I went in. The room was heavy with the smell of sulphur and bromine. Bunky sat at his table. The tan, wooden Kodak developer box with the roller handles had been pushed away from him and he was hunched over the open passport, smoothing a page with his thumbs. He was coming through for me. He knew what was at stake now and he could do this.

“Just in time,” he said.

“Bunk, would you do me a favor?”

He looked up at me.

I said, “Keep a chair wedged under your doorknob when you’re in here.”

He straightened up, sat back.

“Are they after us too?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

He nodded.

“And keep an eye on the kid,” I said. “Give him some things to do but keep him away from the Huns.”

“I’ll do the best I can.”

We looked at each other for a long moment. He knew and I knew, but I needed to say it. “You need to keep off the juice,” I said. “At least while I’m gone.”

The nod of assent he gave me was so minute I could barely see it from across the room. But it was more believable because of that.

He looked back down to the passport and took a cloth from beside him on the table, put his forefinger in it and began to wipe. I crossed the room and stood beside him. He was tracing the pasted outer edge of a photo of my face. Gerhard had vanished beneath me. I’d taken his place. I put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Thanks, Bunk.”

He nodded. “And what about you? Do you have a plan?”

“Follow him.”

“And?”

I shrugged. He waited. “Get the story,” I finally said.

“At least I know to put a chair against the door.”

“At least you know there is a door.”

He nodded. We both understood. Even covering a real war, everything is always new. But you know to find the high ground or the top of a building or a place beside the artillery unit or along the lines or with a certain officer at general headquarters. You have people to walk up to and ask how it is and what’s next. You can simply go out and dodge bullets and say how that felt. It’s a drama and each set is a little different, but you know the theater. You know your way around. Everything before me now was improvisation. And this had better be the last I thought about that. I had to anticipate some things, but only my next move or two. There were too many unknowns, and as for any good reporter on any story, you keep your mind wide open for surprises.

Bunky handed me Gerhard’s passport. My passport. “Take care of yourself,” he said.

“You too,” I said. “And the boy.”

We shook on that.

And I found a clothes store around the corner from the Diligencias. The fawning shop owner made suits to order but he also had racks of rentals for occasions and he was only too happy to sell me a used one. I passed over a linen suit that looked too much like Mensinger and I ended up with a light gray mohair that more or less fit me. I added a gray felt fedora and I was ready to be Gerhard Vogel. I paid, and as I put the brown-paper parcel under my arm, I thought of packing and I thought of my rooms and I thought of Gerhard dead in his and of my warning to Bunky.

Krüger might have somehow made it back to the consulate by now, though given the shape he was in, maybe not yet. He was going to need some help. But it was quite possible they would come to find me. I needed to pack my things and vacate my rooms and I needed to stay public for a while, act normal, and then lie low till the train left in the morning.

I beat it back to my room and found the lock secure and the room untouched. I followed my own advice and pulled the wooden chair from the small desk and wedged it under the knob of the outer door. I packed my valise. And as I did, I heard a woman’s voice, reedy and light, singing in the courtyard. I went to my courtyard door and opened it quietly.

She was unaware of me, my laundry girl. She stood beside a low, rickety wooden table with a man’s shirt spread out on it. She was bending to a tin of hot coals beside her, pulling the iron from the handle, straining hard to lift it. Her arms were bare. Her throat was bare. She turned to the table and began to press the iron onto the shirt.

I crossed the courtyard and she didn’t hear me till I was very near. The song was familiar. Very popular, but still odd on this day: from Diego’s mother’s voice to this señorita’s. She sang from a later verse: De tu casa a la mía, Cielito lindo, no hay más que un paso. From your house to mine, darling one, there is no more than a step.

The señorita sensed me and stopped singing and she turned her face to me. Her forehead and the bridge of her nose and her upper lip were beaded with sweat. I was close to her now and she smelled of musk and starch and I passed the palm of my hand over her forehead, my hand going moist and cool and I grabbed her by the ear and I pulled her and she dropped the iron in the coals and I dragged her by her ear, though not hurting her, quite, and she yielded enough, as I knew she would, and she moaned a little at the pressure on her ear, but it was a familiar moan, something like the moan we both now sought, and by the time we were in my room we were fierce — she as much as me this time — and it was over, and we disentangled and we lay beside each other for one moment, and another, and I had to leave this place, and I said to her, “I am going away now.”

She said nothing.

“I’m not sure when I will return,” I said.

Still not a sound from her.

“I will leave you a little something in the desk drawer,” I said. “Not for this. For my clothes, how nicely you did them.”

She touched my hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “For not asking sooner. What’s your name?”

She took her hand off mine and she rose and she drew her underthings up upon her and she smoothed down her skirt, and she was another one, on this day, who was not going to show feelings. She moved past me toward the courtyard door. I even thought she had somehow not heard my question. But as she put her hand on the doorknob, she paused, and she said, in a barely audible voice, “It is not important,” and she was gone.