Chapter Thirty-Six
There didn’t seem to be any reason to wake Russell up before they left the next morning, so they didn’t. They picked up some tacos and Cokes on the way out of town. Doc scanned a road map of Eastern Nayarit, looking for the funky little town they were heading for. He asked Primo, “What is this Huajimixtli noise? If the Spaniards were so down on Indians, why did they keep all these nutso place names?”
Primo considered the question and said, “There’s a town in Michoacan called Parinquaricutirimicuaro.”
“No way.”
Primo nodded, rolled it out again, “Parinquaricutirimicuaro.”
“Jesus,” Doc said, “Bet you can’t say that three times real fast.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Hell, no.”
“It’s pretty famous.”
“That’s pretty inevitable.”
“Isn’t it? It’s like Dolly Parton. The American actress?”
“I know of her. She’s a singer.”
“That seems inevitable, too. But you can take one look at her and know she’s famous.”
“Yeah, like Schwartzenegger. Or Kareem or John Holmes.”
Primo nodded at the first two, then glanced over, “Who is Holmes? The boxer?”
“No, he’s the Partyheartycutiefigaro of porn films.”
Primo smiled, shook his head, and tumbled the name out like a cupful of dice, “Paringuaricutirimiquaro.”
Doc shook his head, too. “Whatever.”
He pulled away from the taco stand and pointed the throbbing Mustang up into the hills. If you consider Tepic a city, there is only one city in Nayarit. Most of the rest is wild, raging beauty and virtually impassible mountains and woods. A quick glance east on a road map reveals the fact that there are very few roads. And those, especially those into remote nowherevilles like Huajamixtli, are poorly constructed, rarely repaired, and beaten to pieces by overweight buses and sugar cane trucks. Doc eyed the slim blue line into the village from the sorry “main” highway they were already on and said, “Well, the last fifty miles should break our suspension’s heart. Before we even get to the damned cobblestones.”
“Oh, no,” Primo said, “It’s supposed to be one of the best in the Republic.”
“That’s so incredible that I believe you. So how does a hick from Creel know about road conditions in Nayarit? And don’t give me that journalist jazz.”
“Everyone knows about that stretch of pavement. It’s part of the Lios legend. He had the old road widened and repaved, made it into a luxury highway. With his own money. That’s what they say.”
“They say he could pay off the national debt, too. You believe that one?”
“People think he’s a patriot. Like Robin Hood.”
“But it’s bullshit. There’s a lot of difference between millions and billions, but they don’t know the difference.”
Primo smiled, “I’m not sure I do myself. Not in any practical way.”
“Trust me. The guy didn’t have billions.”
“Do the numbers really matter? He was a legend.”
“Then it’s a good thing he’s not around anymore. I don’t need to take on any legends.”
“You may still have to.”
Doc rolled his eyes up, “Better yet. Has he got a twin brother or something?”
“What he’s got is a bodyguard. Have you ever heard of El Martillo, the champion?”
“Seems like I’ve heard the name.”
“Let me tell you about another living legend.”
“Is it going to depress me?”
“It will if you’re wise.”
Doc looked out the window and muttered, “Okay, kid, wise me up.”
When Primo was through telling him about Martillo, Doc said, “Just once I’d like to get wiser without getting bummed out.”
“But it’s better than ignorance, isn’t it?”
Doc shrugged. “It depends on what you know is worth in the long haul, I guess. I spent the first half of my life learning how to fuck people up, then the last half trying to learn how not to.” He drove silently for several minutes, looking out at the papaya orchards and slick rush of green jungle. Then he said, “And know what? I learned better when I was younger.”
Primo turned to look at Doc a few miles, then said, “But you’re an educated man, a famous artist. That doesn’t happen by accident. Or maybe in America it does.”
“Damn near,” Doc chuckled. “I read a lot. Then there was the G.I. Bill.”
“Gee Eye Bill? One of those personages, like Uncle Sam?”
“Very close relations. They paid veterans to go to school. A set-up like life in general: if you survive you get smarter.”
Primo gave him a long, flat stare, then nodded slowly. “Some people might think it’s the other way around.”
Doc acknowledged the remark with a soft grunt. A few miles later he said, “I guess I did learn my current trade pretty much by accident. I met a photographer in Vietnam and she showed me how to take pictures of war. And how to sell them. After that I learned from people I met, stuff I read. It took me fifteen years before I learned to take a picture beautiful enough that people would pay as much as I got for those shots of ugliness and death. I’ve never figured that one out and I’ve been thinking about if a long time.”
Doc seemed to snap back into focus, turned to Primo, “But how about you, come to think of it? How’d you get from an Indio shitkicker eating cactus and iguanas to a journalist in paradise?”
Primo was a little abashed, but didn’t back off, “I saw a television program about a writer who was struggling to reform society.”
“Really. Any particular program?”
“Well, ‘El Precio de la Fama’, actually.”
That tickled Doc no end. “You were inspired to literacy and noble crusades by a soap opera character? I just love it. What the hell, our current crop of J-school twerps got turned on to it by ‘All the President’s Men’. Just another kind of melodrama than ‘The Price of Fame’. How’d the guy make out?”
“He was assassinated.”
“Now that’s inspirational. I suppose he was a communist, too.”
“No. I was first exposed to Marx by a young Jesuit who came to Creel to see the Copper Canyon. He told me how capitalism subverts a people’s rights not to serve the economy but to be served by it. And about the social dogma.”
“A Jesuit with a dogma, fancy that. What exactly was it?”
“People are more important than things. All people, of all countries and races, are our brothers and sisters in a global family. The needs of the poor have priority over all other things in society. All people have a right to a decent life.”
“Whoa. Hard to argue with that. The problem is making it work.”
“That does seem to be a problem.”
“So you bought Marxism from the Jesuits, but not Catholicism?”
“Further reading on my own influenced that choice.”
“More commie bullshit?”
“No, more Catholic bullshit.”
“That’d do it. But how’d you learn about real world stuff?”
“From the Padre, from books, from people like you who come along and tell me things. What did you think?”
“I thought you were just pretending to be educated to impress me. But see, you’ve got your trade, too. Your little trick to live on. And it didn’t cost you anything, either.”
“What it seems to be costing me is everything I ever was.”
“And you’d rather be who you were than who you’re turning into?”
“Apparently not.”
“Then join the Transformers Club, m’ijo. Time’s on our side.”
But the road was decidedly against them, every bit as dangerous and unkempt as expected. Then, when Doc turned onto the spur that would dead-end in Huajimixtli, the ride mellowed right out. Even the scenery improved. He glanced sideways at Primo, who was waiting to catch his look.
“So one of these legends is for real,” Doc said, “Just can’t wait to find out about the others.”
Huajimixtli was also everything he’d expected and less. A typical grubby, dusty, Mexican pueblito with no zocalo; a boring pocket of rural squalor. Doc cruised the main street, just checking it out; walls of cracked adobe, dissolving where the whitewash was cracked away, a hardpan basketball court with only one backboard and a bent hoop, subdued men hanging around the front of the Conasupo. Subsistence.
A knife sharpener caught Doc’s eye; a wiry old guy walking in the street with a hand-cranked grinding wheel attached to a foot high sawhorse. He shambled along, scanning for clients as he moved. Like a wolf or hawk, Doc thought, moving for food, needing food to keep moving. No guarantees, chow as it happens. Doc often thought about the fates of wolves and other predators. What happens when you get too weak from hunger to hunt? It had always chilled him a little. But not as much as working for wages. Primo glanced briefly at the grinder as he passed by their Mustang. Doc said, “Now there’s a man with a trade.”
A startlingly shiny Mercury Topaz was parked in front of a rundown cantina two blocks down. Doc was giving it the eye when Primo spotted it and said, “Another legend proves true.”
“Oh goody,” Doc responded. “Lay it on me.”
“Everybody says that Lios Leyva bought all the police departments in this area a Topaz or two so they’d look sharp and efficient.”
“A real supporter of law and order. He should have bought this place a few gallons of paint.”
“Well, the police are probably more like a professional courtesy.”
“Let’s not find out how courteous they are. I don’t suppose this burg has a hotel? Somewhere to put the car off the street, maybe?”
“Probably just some house where they take guests.”
“Probably near the bus station, right?”
“I think the whole town is near the bus station.”
“Damned convenient.”
Accommodations at Pension La Huichola were fairly rude, but all Doc wanted was a place to shower, sleep a night or two, and stash his car. He sat on the bed of a second floor room, scanning the street out front, looking for nothing in particular, just getting the vibe of the place. Primo was out in the town; circulating, chatting with people, the journeyman interviewer sifting information. People would talk freely with him, would be proud of the town’s association with Lios Leyva. Why he used to ride his horse right up the fountain on the plaza when he was a boy, give it a drink. No, he still lives around here, of course. A mansion, yes: a castle, actually, a palace. I have seen it myself. Secret? Well, maybe from the world, but here in Huajimixtli we are his neighbors and know where he lives, when he comes and goes. Why not?
Doc moved his attention from the street to the green hills visible above the flaking facades and tangled re-bar of greater Huajimixtli’s downtown. He continued an unfocused stare, feeling something inside him tighten down, batten hatches, clear decks, take stations. Put on the game face, he thought. And as he said it, eyeing the mountains, he knew for sure that he could still do it. He could drive up there and walk out into the jungle and become another person, the old Ranger, the Jungle Expert, a hunted predator slipping through trees. And out there he wouldn’t be aware that any other self existed. The Doc Hardesty who slept in clean beds and took pictures of beautiful young women and sat in nice restaurants and shied fish through coral canyons, would be a dream. He sat looking at the mountains for an hour, then turned away from the window and stretched out on the bed. There was no more need to stare into the jungle. He was already there.
When Primo came in later with a full report on the location and description of the Lios plantation, he studied Doc while telling him what he’d found out. There was something different about him, obvious the minute he’d walked in the door. He could see it, even knew what it was, but couldn’t define it in words. You look into a dog’s eyes, you look into a wolf’s eyes: do you see a difference? What would you call it?
Doc spoke to him softly, looked at him with an unblinking absorption, but not as though he really knew who he was. Primo realized that it was time to go. Doc told him what a good job he’d done, thanked him, and reminded him he had ten minutes to catch the night bus back to Tepic. Primo nodded, got up and picked up the woven blanket bag he carried over his shoulder on a string. Doc reached into the large duffle bag that held his few clothes and many guns and pulled out a thick packet wrapped in a Ziploc bag with rubber bands. He handed it to Primo and told him to put it in his bag.
“There’s about five million pesos in there. Your share of our advance. If you don’t hear from me in three days, forget Russell, just slip out and head back to Cabo. Find the old man and tell him I didn’t work out. Tell him everything we found out, he’s paid for it. Keep the money.”
“It’s a lot of money to give somebody like me.”
“I like the idea of a millionaire Marxist. Don’t forget about Carmen Chacon back in Vallarta. She was serious. She could tell you how to sell this story. Or if you shouldn’t even think about it.”
Primo paused at the door, looked back at Doc lying on the bed with his hands behind his head. He started to say something, but realized as he looked at him that there was nothing to say to a man like that. He nodded and slipped out the door. When Doc heard the highway bus fire up and start to move out of town, it was like a ship dropping its last mooring line. He was back in the wars. Again, dammit.