“You’ll know when we get there, chica,” Jaime said.
“Call me that again and see what happens,” she said.
“We are sorry. We do not mean to offend,” Eladio said. “Can we look in your canvas bag and your pack? It would be good if we can look at your cell phones, too.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Pam said.
“Among friends, there is no need of GPS locators,” Eladio said. “It is good to have things of that nature out of our discussions about the liberation of your friend. That is the only reason I raise this question.”
“Look all you want,” Hackberry said.
“Thank you,” Eladio said. “What fine guns you have in your bag. What is in this metal box?”
“Cookies and fruitcake,” Hackberry said.
“You carry such items with you when you go on a serious mission?” Eladio said.
“I have a sugar deficiency. I also thought you might like some. Take them if you like,” Hackberry said.
“That is very kind of you,” Eladio said. “I have children who will love these.”
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“When do we see Preacher?” Hackberry asked.
“Very soon. He looks forward to seeing you with great anticipation,” Eladio said.
“You come all the way down here ‘cause of la china?” Jaime said.
“You could say that,” Hackberry replied.
“She must be some broad, hombre,” Jaime said. “It’s true what they say about Chinese women?”
“Do not speak further,” Eladio said, raising his finger to his cousin’s lips.
“It’s just a question. I do not need to be censored,” Jaime said. “These are gringos in our country. We do not suppress ourselves to please gringos in our own country.”
“It’s time for us to see Mr. Collins,” Hackberry said.
He and Pam rode in the cab while Eladio drove and Jaime sat on the flatbed. They proceeded in a southerly direction down dirt roads through irrigated farmland for almost an hour. The colors and configuration and flora in the land were like none that Hack could remember. Wild grapefruit and hibiscus and pink camellias and palm trees with long, slender trunks grew in the turn rows. The soil was loamy and tinted a reddish-brown, as though it had been mixed with rust, but the hills were white and bare and gray-backed, like sea creatures that had died and fossilized. The topography made Hack think of imaginative paintings of ancient Egypt that depicted an era when the earth was still recovering from the Flood and deserts bloomed and gatherers filled date baskets with their hands. Why would a man like Josef Sholokoff locate himself in such a place? To re-create the introduction of the serpent into Eden?
No, nothing so grandiose, Hackberry thought. For Sholokoff, Mexico was probably nothing more than a good tax dodge.
The truck rolled down a long embanked road made of crushed stone, the rocks tinging steadily under the fenders, the wind stream warm and sultry, the sky lidded with clouds that emitted no sunlight. Ahead, at a crossroads, Hackberry could see a small, paintless wood-frame store with a single gas pump in front and a screened side porch. Behind the store, the terrain seemed to stretch away endlessly, glazed with salt, cracked and sunken in places, as though a lake had once covered the area but had drained through a hole in its center. Eladio parked the truck and cut the engine. “Señor Collins awaits you on the porch,” he said. “Do not take your guns inside. That would cause alarm for the owner of the store. Also, it is a very serious offense to bring guns into Mexico.”
“That’s like saying it’s a serious offense to bring insanity into a lunatic asylum,” Pam said.
“I am not educated and do not understand the comparisons you make, señorita,” Eladio said.
Hackberry looked through the back window of the cab. “Your cousin is eating the cookies you were going to give your children,” he said.
“Jaime, what are you doin’, man?” Eladio yelled out the window.
Jaime replaced the tin lid on the container and wiped the crumbs off his fingers. Pam and Hackberry got out of the cab and followed Eladio to the screen door on the store’s side porch. She glanced over her shoulder at Jaime, who had remained on the truck bed. “I don’t guess these guys are students of Homer,” she said.
“Shut up,” Hackberry said under his breath. He opened the screen door and stepped inside, removing his Stetson hat. Inside the gloom, against the back wall, he saw a man eating refried beans and strips of steak and sliced peppers from a tin plate with a fork. The man wore a blocked hat and a seersucker coat and a gray dress shirt with no buttons on the collar and trousers that were tucked into the tops of his boots. A guitar case was propped on its side against the wall behind him. For Hackberry, Jack Collins was like a figure out of a dream, not quite flesh and blood, vaporous in its dimensions, waiting like an incubus to attach itself to the fear in its victim, in the way a leech attaches itself to living tissue in order to survive.
“Have a good flight?” Collins said.