Gringa (31 page)

Tonio's face filled with amazement and rage. Without a sound he turned to Sapo and, with his left hand, reached toward the pistol on Sapo's belt. Sapo withdrew the automatic, chambered a round, and passed the pistol to Tonio. Tonio fixed the pistol in his good hand and stepped back to the cat. At his movement, the cat pulled back against its chain and crouched facing Tonio, its ears flattened against its skull. Tonio stopped two feet short of the cat, and without a pause, extended the pistol and fired, all in one continuous motion. The cat sprang upward slightly, and then fell limply on its side, its feet churning in slow convulsive spasms. The bullet had entered between its eyes, slightly above center. Tonio turned back toward Sapo and held the pistol out to him, careful to keep his injured hand from dripping blood onto his trousers. Still not speaking, he turned and walked back toward the house.

She spent only a few moments in her room, and then she slipped out of the house. She waited near the ferry for a long time. The truck with the men went across. A taxi came and got the new girl from the packing plant who had taken Sofia's place. The sun was setting.

When the foreman's truck stopped at the river, she sprang up and waited by it for the ferry. On the other side, she got in.

The foreman didn't like it, but he didn't say anything. “Just to San Marta,” Abilene told him. “By the cafe.”

At that the foreman grinned a little. The cafe was nothing more than a taco stand, with beer stacked in cases and seldom cooled.

She walked around the dirty little square and then went and bought a bus ticket to Mexico. The bus pulled in a little after eight, but she watched a few people load and when it pulled out again she was still standing. There would be another bus at midnight anyway.

She decided to spend the hours of waiting by walking the length of the village and around its side paths. She walked past houses of patched-together palm, and others of sheet metal and scraps. There were real houses, though, like houses in a cheap development in Texas, better than the houses Abilene had grown up in. Abilene knew the people in those houses owed their good fortune to the packing plant, to their union, and to Tonio.

It was a little after nine when she found herself standing across the road from the packing plant. Three trucks were lined up, their motors running.

She ran up to the first truck and shouted to the driver. “Señor Velez said I could ride with you to Mexico.” The driver waved his arms. “No!” he said, but she had already managed to open the door, and she climbed up inside.

The driver motioned to the space behind the seat, where she could stow her things. Later, if she wanted, there was room there for her to sleep.

The driver pulled out onto the highway with Abilene sitting high above the road on the seat beside him. They had not gone very far, and had not spoken again, when the night suddenly turned black and cold. They climbed into the mountains and left the village far below.

“Tomorrow you could take a plane,” the driver said. He was used to driving alone, and not to making conversation.

“Tomorrow I will already be there,” Abilene said. The driver nodded, because she was right.

They rode for another hour or so, Abilene dozing and waking fitfully, neither of them speaking. Once she fell soundly asleep and was wakened suddenly when the driver's hand slid along her leg.

She pinched his skin very hard across the knuckles. “I am Señor Velez' novia, you fool!” she said.

The truck driver laughed, showing his gold teeth. “And I am the cousin of El Cordobes!” he said back to her. She was lucky. The driver was a genuinely friendly man, and he had come that same afternoon from his wife and their bed. He had heard things about gringas, but he didn't think they were true of this one. He took his pleasure from the rhythm of the road, and the clear air.

“You might as well sleep,” he said to Abilene pleasantly, and she crawled behind the seats into the little bunk there. He sang Abilene to sleep, just before they reached the crest of the Sierras and started down the other side, toward the city and the rest of the world.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“Tangier,” from NOT DANCING by Stephen Dunn, Carnegie-Mellon, 1984.

“What Are We Playing At,” by Andrée Chedid, from A BOOK OF WOMEN POETS FROM ANTIQUITY TO NOW, Aliki Barnstone and Willis Barnstone, eds. Schocken Books, 1980.

Portions of this book appeared with the title, “The Parachutist,” in THE MISSOURI REVIEW, VIII, 3, 1985; and as “Accelerado” in TOUCHSTONE, Vol X, 2, 1985.

Copyright © 1989 by Sandra Scofield

ISBN 978-1-4976-3357-5

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