Chapter Fifty-Two
After three drinks, Con was eying the black marlin again. He spread his hands, commending it to Doc’s attention. Doc nodded, agreeing. Con set his glass down and considered Doc for awhile. Finally he just said, “Damn good job, Doc.”
Doc gave him an incredulous look. “You really think so? Let’s see. I knifed, fucked, and knocked out the rescuee. I beat up her husband, went on a mission with non-working guns, wrecked a bunch of public conveniences, got my assistant shot, killed a national idol, and grossed out a whorehouse. Somehow that just doesn’t sound like bonus performance to me. Or even worth putting on the resume.”
“But you brought her back. And wiped out a bunch of drug dealers in the process.”
“Oh, yay. You ever consider that maybe this whole drug war insanity was behind the whole thing from the start?”
“Two weeks ago, I’d have climbed all over you for that very thought. But here I am with my own family involved.” He drank deeply and meditated a while in the depths of the bubbly green glass. He looked up at Doc from under his thatch of white eyebrows, measuring him. He said, “You know a lot of papers and such would love to get hold of this, my own son-in-law tied up in drugs.”
“Hell, yeah. Good thing I got lots of pictures, huh?”
O’Donough didn’t react, just kept looking at him.
“Just kidding,” Doc said, ” But, seriously, doesn’t it give you any pause for thought? Like how it will always be that way on these witch hunts, corruption spreading out from trying to tell other people how to live their lives?”
“I’m going to have to give that some thought,” Con said, and Doc could see the effort behind it.
“Well, I’ve noticed that having businesses and systems and egos built up around something always makes it a lot harder to look at the basic right and wrong of it.”
“Have you that?” O’Donough snapped, “Well I’ve noticed that having no commitment whatsoever makes it easier to have a monopoly on morality.” But he mellowed immediately, looking back down into his glass. “No, I mean it. I’m going to have to examine this whole thing. A lot’s going to change in my personal life when I get back home; it might be a good time for some reassessment.”
“It just seems like whenever a man goes to war against sin he ends up fighting himself.”
O’Donough laughed out loud in a ringing baritone, “Hardesty, me bucko. You might be Irish after all.”
Sitting in the wheel chair and examining the aluminum crutches, Primo couldn’t decide which was worse. It wasn’t so bad that the leg cast hindered his walking; but it made bicycling impossible. The chair would be useless on Cabo’s rutted dirt streets, so he would be a cripple unable to do his work. He gave Doc a slight smile. “I guess it doesn’t matter that I can’t work, Vargas replaced me anyway. Some sort of nephew just graduated from UNAM.”
“How long are you laid up?” Doc asked. He didn’t like hospitals and convalescence, and even felt nervous in the forced cheerfulness of the IMSS waiting room. Con O’Donough was getting them some coffee, leaving Doc to commiserate with Primo.
“A month. Or more, he said. I think maybe less.”
“Well, I can’t have an ex-assistant hobbling around begging in the streets,” Doc said, “It looks tacky.” He held out a keychain that Primo instantly recognized, two brass keys and a small bronze sledgehammer. He looked at it, then at Doc, waiting further word.
“You’ll need some funny business with the papers. There’s this guy in Colonia Rosario…”
“I know the guy you mean,” Primo said, “I used to be a journalist.”
Con came back to their table in time for Doc to translate that remark. He sat down and gave Primo a long look, his eyebrows bunching under corded brow. He wanted to know about Primo’s future plans. Primo had a lot of hot new leads, but nothing very definite.
“I was wishing I could go to the mainland, so some writing over there. Looks like that’s a good possibility now. But what I’d really like to do, now that I know how to do it, would be to have my own newspaper. In a bigger city back on the mainland. Or maybe I could do more good back in Creel. But I’m realizing that it would require that I have…well, you know…”
“Capital?” Doc avoided a gloating tone so obviously that he needn’t have bothered.
Primo spread his hands, acknowledging the hit. “Ay, Dios Mio! What does it mean when I anticipate the arguments of capitalists?”
“That you’re learning. Everyone alive is a capitalist. Some people just don’t realize it.”
O’Donough, after translation, was quick to put that problem away. “I hope you’re not overlooking something pretty obvious, son. I’m a very rich man and I owe you a very great debt.”
“Wouldn’t that be one of those debts one can never repay?”
O’Donough laughed when Doc relayed that one, then put on a face of great seriousness and weight. “It’s one of those that the only repayment is to help you in return. If you need help with something, you only have to let me know.”
Doc translated, then watched Primo closely, to see how a twenty year old idealist who had known nothing but poverty would deal with it. Primo took his time, his face motionless but his mind almost visible churning. Finally he told Doc, “Ask him if it be all right if I first size up myself and the world a little?”
O’Donough loved it. He said, “When you’re ready, amigo, I’ll be ready. Meanwhile, what are you going to do while you’re healing up?”
“Well,” Primo said, “How would you like to take a ride in a really cool car?”
“Why not?” O’Donough said, “I’ve been here two weeks, I might as well see the sights.”
“Excellent idea,” Doc said.
“Any special recommendations?”
“Dramamine and a blindfold. American vehicles and Mexican adolescents are a notoriously unfortunate combination.”
O’Donough waved a dismissive hand. “At my age, what’s to be afraid of?”
“Okay, you were right,” O’Donough admitted, leaning over the Buick’s seat back. “He’s a truly shocking driver.”
Doc nodded agreement. “Just when you think you’re all jaded on sheer, stark terror.”
“Tell him he doesn’t need to use all those numbers on the speedometer. Certainly not for our sake.”
Primo was finding that careening the car through open desert was both relaxing and provocative of thought. “It’s occurring to me that Industrial Civilization is probably best appreciated on wheels,” he said. “In fact, wasn’t that what started it all? The wheel? Oh, and fire. What makes the wheels go around.”
“You people built pyramids,” O’Donough said, “We built highways. I still haven’t figured out what you used the damned pyramids for.”
“There is a theory that they were huge crystal radios, vibrating in harmony with the other pyramids around the world.”
“Outasite,” Doc said. Our civilization wasn’t really all that interesting until they came up with the radio, anyway. Cars weren’t either, for that matter.”
The big car tore on through the deepening desert night, blending into the hard gleaming darkness like a finned predator moving into deeper water. There were no headlight beams, the contrast between asphalt and sagebrush was vivid in the starlight. Without lights, and far from the glow of houses and cities, the stars came on everywhere, wrapping the darkness in light. Out here, Primo thought, you can look hard enough between any two stars and see another star. If you could just see far enough, there would be no darkness at all.
He pulled the car off the road and leaned his head out the window, the sudden lack of wind and movement plunging him into the still, blazing silence. He stared out at everything and felt everything looking back at him. Then he got into the Buick and started the motor and turned it around. When the moon rose over the mountain ridge he turned on the headlights and chased them down into the town.