ances, people go to places inside their own minds. They find safety and comfort there. Or they try.”
“What kind of circumstances are we talking about, General?”
The general replaced the cork in the bottle of mescal and squeezed it solidly inside the glass with his thumb. “I think you are either an arms vendor or a Texas Ranger. We need to determine the truth about this question. That thought saddens me.”
“Not as much as it does me.”
“In one hour, nothing you tell us will be believable. Why go through such an ordeal to achieve nothing?”
“You don’t believe what I say now. What difference does an hour make? I heard Villa at least gave his prisoners a running chance.”
“My friend General Villa did not lose a son.”
“My son is an officer with the Tenth Cavalry. His name is Ishmael Holland. I came down here to find him. I don’t care about y’all’s revolution one way or another. You haven’t seen him, have you? He’s big, like me. He’s got a big grin.”
“Why does a father have to look for his son? Your son does not tell you where he is?”
“He gave up on his father a long time ago.”
“You are indeed a sad man.”
“What are you fixing to do, General?”
“Maybe you will feel better if you tell others of your sins.”
Hackberry gazed out the window at the sunlight lengthening on the canyon walls. “I put John Wesley Hardin in jail. Only two lawmen ever did that. I was one of them.”
“That is not a subject of interest to us. Why do you raise the subject of a Texas gunman?”
“I’d like a redeeming word or two on my marker.”
“In Mexico only the rich have markers on their graves. See this wound in my leg? I have no medicine for it. In your country, the medicine that could save my leg would cost pennies. I’ve heard the Negroes rub garlic on their bullets. Is true?”
“Villa raided across the border, General. You’re blaming the wrong people for your problem.”
“Texas Rangers fired blindly into the cars on the train. My son was sixteen. Your temper is your undoing, señor.”
“Then we’d better get to it.”
Hackberry saw one of the prostitutes lift her face to his, her eyes moist and full of sorrow, a tremble working in her cheek.
It cain’t be that bad. It’s never as bad as you think, he told himself.
They took him outside, close by the trees where the bodies of the black soldiers were suspended, close enough to the house for him to see the faces of the Mexican enlisted men who watched his visit to the Garden of Gethsemane with the impassivity of statues.
PAIN WAS A slice of brassy light dancing off a mirror, a spray of blood flung across the tops of the grass, a smell like animal hair dissolving in an incinerator. Someone poured water into his face in order to revive him, then wrapped his head with a towel and flooded his throat and nostrils. When he passed out, he went to a place deep inside himself that he never wanted to leave, as though confirming the general’s prediction about Hackberry’s impending need for safe haven. It was a cool place that smelled of clover and sunshine on warm stone and rain blowing in the trees and flowers blooming in his mother’s window boxes; it smelled of spring and childhood innocence and was lit by a rainbow that arched into a green meadow. He thought he saw his mother smiling at him from the kitchen doorway.
He felt himself picked up roughly by men who cared nothing for his person or his life or the dreams that took him back to his childhood. His newly acquired friends carried him inside, knocking him against a doorjamb, dropping him on a dirty mattress. Someone tied his wrists behind him with a rope, then looped the rope around his throat and ankles and snugged it tight and left the room. As the sun climbed in the sky, the room became an airless wood box that smelled of old wallpaper and mold and the activity that had taken place on the mattress. When he tried to straighten his legs, the rope cut off the flow of blood to his brain. He slipped back into a state of half-consciousness, one in which small brown men were stuffing divots of grass in his mouth and holding burning sticks to his armpits.
Then the rope binding his wrists to his neck and ankles went slack, and he found himself staring into the face of the woman in the brocade dress. She held a short dull-colored knife in one hand. “It’s true Captain Holland is your son?”
At first his eyes could not focus. His throat felt filled with rust, his words coated with phlegm. “Say that again.”
“Ishmael is your son?”
“Why would I lie?”
“Because I think you’re a worthless man who lies with regularity.”