The Scared Stiff (9 page)

Maria and I exchanged good mornings, and then Carlos said, "You won't talk when we go out, so we talk now."

"Okay."

"While you're here, you can help me sometimes, a little bit."

"Sure," I said. "I'd like to be useful."

"Good." He nodded once, sealing the bargain, then said, "There's gonna be a guy at mass this morning. I think he's there. If he's there, I'll touch your elbow."

I thought, What's all this? "Okay," I said.

"If he's there," Carlos said, "after mass, you and me, we take a walk with him."

"Okay."

"So you're just along to be another guy, like there's no problem."

"
Is
there a problem?"

"No, no, I just gotta talk with him," Carlos said. "He screwed up a little, that's all, messed up a deal I had over in Colombia, so we gotta talk about it."

"Okay," I said. "Whatever you say."

"Good," he said, and took Maria's arm, and she smiled at me and we left the house.

The church was about four blocks away, and as we walked Carlos and Maria shared greetings with several other people. A few times Carlos introduced me, and I stood there smiling like a dummy. Twice, men extended their hands, which I shook, still smiling to beat the band.

The church itself, when we got to it, was small and neat and very white. Wide stone steps led up to the entrance, and as we started up them Carlos touched my elbow. I looked at him, and he nodded and waved his hand to a snotty-looking guy who stood with two other guys over to one side, watching the people arrive. The snotty-looking guy gave a kind of self-satisfied smirk as he waved a languid hand in Carlos's direction. He was tall and very thin, with a black pencil mustache and slicked-back hair, like a silent-movie Romeo. He wore pointy white shoes and white pants with a sharp crease and an off-white shirt with brown piping. Draped over his shoulders was a gray linen jacket, as though he thought he was an Italian movie director.

Inside, the church was whitewashed stucco walls, crude bright renditions of the Stations of the Cross, rough tile floor, and heavy pews of rich-patina'd wood. The place was about half full, and Carlos led us to a pew near the back. We sat, and a minute later the snotty guy went by, saying amusing things to his two friends. They found a place near the front.

The mass was interesting, and then less so, and then it was over and we shuffled out to the bright sunlight, where Maria said, "I'll see you at the house," with a fond smile at Carlos. She walked on, nodding hello to the people as she went, and Carlos and I stood to the side of the entrance, and at last here came the snotty guy and his two friends.

He saw Carlos, and his smile faltered, then came back stronger than ever, with something challenging in it. Carlos gestured, and the guy came over, trailed by his friends, and the conversation began, as usual a little too fast for me to get it all. Carlos didn't bother to introduce me but told the guy, Let's take a walk, and the guy said, No, thanks, some other time. So Carlos put a little growl in the voice and said
this time,
and the guy made a face —
how tiresome
— and shrugged an acceptance inside his draped linen jacket.

We started to walk, and the two friends came with us, until Carlos stopped and said I'm talking to you, not these jerks. Another
how tiresome
look but the guy nodded, so then the three of us walked, and the other two stayed put.

We walked, and Carlos talked. The guy was in the middle, and Carlos talked low and hard, so I didn't get it all, only that the guy was impatient at first, making it clear he didn't see why he had to be bothered with this crap. But Carlos went on, the growl coming and going in his voice, and the guy began to accede a bit. He gave some explanations of his own, which Carlos didn't buy.

From the church we walked first down the dirt street beside it, then right along another dirt street lined with small rickety houses. When we made the turn I looked back, and the other two were trailing, not quite a block back, looking uncertain.

More talk, more walk. The guy was no longer supercilious but now understood Carlos's position completely. He was prepared to do what he could to make things right, but Carlos must realize his hands were tied; there was only so much he could do.

Another block, another turn, and the river was ahead of us, with shacks full of dogs and kids on the left, tin warehouses on the right. Then Carlos stopped. He said something brief and guttural. The guy became offended, gathered himself up to be haughty, and Carlos slapped him across the face.

We were both astonished, the guy and I. He stared at Carlos, then in that instant he switched from aristocratic panther to snarling mongrel, bent forward, hand slicing back toward his hip pocket.

Holy Christ! What should I do?

Nothing. Before the guy could bring anything out of that pocket, Carlos punched him
hard
in the stomach, putting all of his considerable weight behind it. The guy said,
"Hhhh-
uh!" and bent way over.

Carlos stepped back, took aim, and kicked him on the knee. Not with the toe of his shoe but the side, a sharp angled kick, snapping against the kneecap. I heard a
crack.
The guy shrieked and hit the dirt.

The other two! I looked back, and they were standing there, tense, openmouthed. They didn't come forward, and I understood I was the reason for that.

In some of the houses along here, little kids stared out at us. Nobody else reacted at all. Bright sunlight, a shrieking man on the ground, and nobody notices.

Carlos walked in slow circles around him, here and there giving him another hard kick, methodical and relentless. The guy jumped and shrieked at every kick, but Carlos remained calm, the technician at work.

It went on for a while, until I was beginning to think I should suggest that enough was maybe enough, but then all at once it stopped. Carlos stepped back from the quivering mess on the ground, said one short hard sentence, and turned away, gesturing to me to come on.

We walked back the way we'd come. The guy's two comrades rushed past us, goggle-eyed.

Carlos said one thing, as we walked: "Now I got an appetite."

Monday. I was to be buried today.

I put on my chauffeur's suit — charcoal-gray pants and jacket and hat, all of which more or less fit — and joined Carlos and Maria in the living room. He was in his Sunday suit again while she was striking in a short black dress with a gold chain around the waist and very dark stockings and black stiletto heels.

They looked me over in my chauffeur rig and Maria said, "Perfect. With that mustache, you even look as though you don't like your employers."

"But I do," I said. "And I'm not just saying that in hopes of a raise."

Maria laughed, and Carlos growled, "Time to go."

We left the house, and Carlos led the way across the dusty street to a windowless two-story wooden shack, one of a row of similar structures along this side of the street. He undid a padlock, and opened two wide wooden-slat doors, to left and right. In the dimness inside hulked a very recent Buick Riviera, black and gleaming, with black leather upholstery. The Batmobile could not have looked more incongruous in that shed.

Carlos extended a set of car keys toward me, saying, "You know this kind of car?"

I took the keys. "I've driven most cars," I assured him. I had noticed the license plate on the front of the Buick, in the Guerreran colors of gold numbers on a red background, though these weren't numbers: C M. Simple and clear-cut.

I stepped inside the garage to get behind the wheel, adjust the seat backward, start the engine, and drive out into the sunlight. With the windows closed, and the AC on, I could barely hear the many motors of Rancio singing their song.

When I'd cleared the building, Carlos opened the rear door behind me to let in Maria and a blast of heat and noise; then he shut the door while she settled herself comfortably and smiled at me in the rearview mirror. Still outside, Carlos shut and locked the doors of his garage and came around to the other side to let in himself and another blast of noise and heat.

Once they were settled together back there, I looked in the rearview mirror again and said, "You'll have to give me directions, at least until we get out of town."

"Turn right," he said, and I did, and from then on, through Rancio, I followed his directions to steer this nice car through the scruffy town, avoiding many collisions with motorcycles. Out of town, there was only the one road.

It's 130 miles from Rancio to Sabanon through San Cristobal. The funeral would be at one, so we'd left shortly before ten, to give ourselves plenty of time to deal with all the slow traffic one invariably meets on Guerreran roads. During the first hour, Maria made up her face, though I hadn't realized she needed to. She'd brought along two little bags of cosmetics, and every time I glanced in the mirror she was hard at work on herself back there.

After a while, she put the bags away, and then she and Carlos got into quiet conversation together, just chatting, the way Lola and I would. At one point, I even saw Carlos laugh, showing his teeth. An astounding sight.

I enjoyed the car and the day, even though the traffic was as lame and halt as expected. But mostly, I had to admit I was getting a kick out of thinking,
I am going to my own funeral!

In the backseat, Carlos dozed for a while with his mouth open. Maria took a memo pad from her black leather shoulder bag and made lists. And I made pretty good time.

We arrived in Sabanon at twenty to one, and the Plaza Iglesia was full of vehicles and people. It looked as though all the many cousins who'd come to our wedding were also showing up for my funeral, and I was touched by that.

Both of Lola's parents come from large families, well scattered around Guerrera and the neighboring nations and also well scattered through the economic classes. Some of her cousins were schoolteachers and administrators, and some were day laborers and milpa farmers, poor as squirrels. Carlos was a cousin with money and influence, but there were other cousins, illiterate and unpropertied, who barely existed in the modern world. We don't get that kind of diversity in the States because our society is more settled, so the ranges of class within a family are usually not very broad.

Señor Ortiz's people, in black suits and gold armbands, were maintaining order, holding back the unwashed, ushering the cars through. I stopped in front of the church, an Ortiz employee opened the right rear door, a blast of heat and crowd noise came in, and Carlos and Maria stepped out onto the cobblestones. As they went on to the church, the Ortiz man opened the right front door, letting in more heat and noise, and leaned partway into the car to shout something at me and point off to my left.

What did he mean? Cars were being parked straight ahead, along that side of the plaza. But when I looked to my left, where he'd pointed, I saw three important-looking cars with chauffeurs standing next to them, parked over near Club Rick, the local hot spot for dancing. Lola and I love to dance and we go there once or twice every trip, though not this time. So I nodded, and he backed out of the car again and slammed the door.

Three other chauffeur-driven cars: a black Cadillac, a dark green BMW, and a white Jaguar sedan, all new and gleaming. I hadn't known I'd get such a grand send-off.

The three chauffeurs stood around in the sunshine, hats tilted to the backs of their heads, sunglasses on, adorned in mustaches like mine, leaning against the side of the Caddy and jawing together. They looked at me curiously when I didn't join them. There were maps in the door pocket beside me; I pulled one out at random and studied it, hoping none of them would come over to offer to help.

Shit, one was moving this way. I looked at him, smiled, made a big negative hand wave, and went back to the map. He took offense, as I'd hoped he would, and went back to his pals, shrugging. I could imagine what they were saying about me: "Thinks he's better than us."

Those other damn drivers just couldn't forget about me. Every time I took a surreptitious glance in their direction, one or another of them was looking my way. So I just kept on studying the map, which was of Colombia and therefore nothing I understood.

Finally, one time when I looked up, the chauffeurs were moving away. Yes, and the plaza was clearing, as the mourners had finished entering the church and the sightseers had started to drift off. The chauffeurs, I saw, were taking this opportunity to spend a little time in Club Rick.

I wished I could join them, in fact, but obviously could not; being unable to speak Guerreran Spanish could be awkward. But I could open the windows and shut off the engine, so I did. And I also put away this map to places I wasn't going.

But the wait was boring. I looked around and found the Buick's owner's manual, which was in Spanish and English, and I read that for a while until I realized I didn't actually want to know this stuff, so I put that away too and just sat there, watching nothing happen in the plaza.

Then two things happened at once. Across the way, the hearse and the flower car and the limo for immediate family were all pulling up in front of the church. And ahead of me, the chauffeurs were coming out of Rick's, putting on their caps and wiping their mouths with their sleeves. The funeral was over.

I started the engine and shut the windows. The AC came on, the chauffeurs all gave me dirty looks as they got into their cars ahead of me, and across the way my casket came out into the sunlight, gleaming like old money, borne on the shoulders of eight cousins. Arturo was at the front right. I believe he was weeping.

What a beautiful widow Lola made, there on the broad stone steps in front of the gleaming-white church, as slinky and sexy in her long black dress as the vamp in a movie from the twenties. I could see the outline of her pelvic bones from across the plaza. Mamá and Papá supported her on both sides, and she moved with sinuous exhaustion, a golden hanky to her cheek.