Chapter Forty-Three
She’d been dozing, practically bare-assed on the open ground, and didn’t hear the movements until Doc rolled on top of her and pinned her head. Before she could react he was on her holding the nape of the neck, pressing her mouth tightly to his and pointing his derringer towards the sounds in the jungle. It was effective; she couldn’t yell, if she struggled he could choke her unconscious in seconds, and he had his right hand free for the derringer. And it had been done silently–if he’d gone into the brush there’d have been noise. She rolled her eyes upward but couldn’t see anything, so she started deep French kissing and undulating her hips against Doc’s.
The sounds got nearer, uncertain steps on bare ground, brushing the undergrowth. Then Doc suddenly blew into her mouth, causing snot to bubble in her nose. He was laughing quietly. When he eased off her and let her look where he was pointing the mini-pistol, she could see two or three very scroungy longhorned cattle.
“They’ve got nothing better to do at night than watch people sodomize each other?” she snickered.
“I guess this clearing is their path.”
“So we’ve been doing it in the road, huh?”
“Til the cows come home.”
“Well make them take a number or something, they look pretty horny.”
“I think they’re steers, actually.”
“Poor things. No wonder they aren’t very bullish. Well, can we sort of steer them out of here?”
“Sorry fellahs, this is a ticket holder’s line,” Doc said, standing up and waving his shirt at the cattle. They stamped and snorted, then turned and plunged into the brush.
Doc looked down at Dancy luxuriating in the dirt and started shaking his head. She slithered over to his legs and started climbing them like a boa constrictor, groping for handholds. Doc bent and grabbed her forearms, then pulled her up face-to-face. Which was a sight that led him to more kissing and nuzzling, but he tore himself away. “I can see that getting some rest isn’t going to work with you around,” he said, “The breathers are more strenuous than tramping through the damn jungle.”
“You’re getting delirious,” she murmured in his ear, “Better lay down and loosen your clothing.”
“Let’s get some distance in while we’ve still got moonlight,” Doc said. “We’ll get back to being kinky if we get out of this alive.”
“But what if we don’t?” Dancy pouted.
“Then you won’t know what you’re missing.”
An hour later they ran across a footpath that led down, but off to the East, away from Lios Leyva’s road. Doc reasoned that the valley had widened and they could sideslip a little, get away from the road. And they could move much faster. He pointed Dancy down the trail, gave her butt a slap that turned into a caress as she passed him. She stopped suddenly, sticking her hips back as he bumped into her, grinding quickly, then scampering ahead. Doc trotted behind her thinking, You need somebody to watch your ass, lady, I’m your boy.
Doc suddenly came to a halt, grabbing Dancy close to him and pointing ahead. A glint of light was barely visible through the trees and vines, a weak, steady beacon about waist high. Doc thought it looked like a child in a hooded cape holding a lantern, but as he slipped towards it he realized it was a cairn with a domed grotto on top of it. Somebody had painstakingly gathered the stones and built it in this isolated clearing. Inside the niche were two votive prints, framed in sooty glass. In front of them the last half inch of a candle was burning. The cairn was splattered with wax from hundreds of past candles.
Dancy approached the shrine tentatively, looking inside as if she half-expected an ambush. What she saw was a grimy print of the Virgin of Guadalupe reigning over the guttering light. She wasn’t all that happy about it. “What the hell is this doing out here?”
“Hard to say,” Doc said, coming up behind her. “Probably built where a loved one died, like all the ones along the highways. Maybe an angel showed up and told somebody to build it here.”
Dancy leaned toward the smoky glass covering the fading picture of the Lady of Guadalupe and pursed her lips. “I could never figure out what was so blessed about being a virgin.”
“I always wondered, did she ever get any? Or did she have to stay a virgin forever in case some Cardinal needed corroboration?”
“Getting pregnant and having to go through labor without even getting any nooky out of it. Gross. Maybe she really is a saint. Gets my vote.”
“I’d have to go with Saint Jude right now. Isn’t she the Lost Causes desk?”
“Yeah, but I think you have to take an ad in the newspaper.”
“I have a hard enough time just making meetings.”
“Oh, you one of those, huh? Fits the boyscout profile, all right.”
“I’m not angling for heaven–I just have to keep a few rules or I’m just one more animal at the trough, just a windup kill doll.”
“Well, paint a rose on your ass, honey. What’s one of those great moral rules you live by?”
“For one thing, I never fuck another man’s wife.”
Dancy giggled, “Boy, I’m glad to know my virtue is safe around you. You’da had me plenty worried back there.”
“You could help me out with some excuses. Like you were leaving him anyway, or something.”
“Well, it’s looking like he conspired with Armando to hijack me and then to get your ass shot off. Which could mean he’s already written me off and filing against the will. But that doesn’t let you off the hook, does it?”
“No, but it’s worth keeping in mind. There’s no excuses, this is a real wrong thing. I’m ashamed. I hope I never do anything like this again. And I’m scared.”
“Of what? You’re bigger than me.”
“Of starting to slip. Like a drunk taking that first drink. What’s to keep me from just wiping anybody weaker than me and taking what I want? I don’t like moral freefall, I like to have an edge.”
“I suppose that means the rest of the trip will be boring.”
“If your boyfriend catches up to us, it’ll liven things up for you a little. But no, I’m not backing out. I’m in it with you. It’s scary and it sucks, but I’m in.”
“Wow, you’re a real sweet-talker, Gunner. Make me feel all girlish and giddy, like some sort of water hazard on the way to your sexual non-pollution merit badge.”
“I’m just saying I’m aware of what’s happening to us here, that I’m in it up to my eyebrows and I respect it.”
“Oh, at long last, respect the morning after. Look, choirboy, I’ve always lived in a moral free fire zone. If there’s any rules out there, I’m not aware of them. It’s all between me and consenting adults. I get damned sick of people looking down on me because they’ve got some crutch to hang on to. I was on board once, but the ship sank. You can float on the wreckage if you want–I’m taking my chances on swimming to shore.
“Yeah, I can see us as kind of an existential Gilligan’s Island.”
“There’s no ‘us’, Doc. Just you and me. But that’s more than you had yesterday, huh?”
Doc looked at the shrine’s other object, a lurid heart bleeding from being pierced by a crown of thorns. I don’t know what the Catholics mean by it, he thought, but I can definitely relate. “You’re the Catholic, Dancy. What does it mean?”
She took a last look at the icons, then peered down the path. “Probably that we’re getting close to civilization.”
Almost as she spoke they both heard two-stroke motorcycles toiling down the path behind them. Doc said, “Or civilization is getting close to us.” He fished out the flashlight, handed it to Dancy and pushed her lightly ahead of him, herding her into a light run. They loped down the trail in the shreds of moonlight, the sounds of engines snarling like terriers on their trail.