I should tell you we are not alone. There are others with the same idea. They are not very nice people. I’ve met some of them. Briefly.” The off-center smile returned.
“Because of these people, we should move fast, and even faster on the way back. We leave two days from today.” I looked at Jeb. He shrugged, his usual response. Lucy explained our route, crossing at Laredo/Nuevo Laredo, then south and east to Veracruz. At least we would avoid Matamoros although not by as much as I would like. Nuevo Laredo is still in Tamaulipas.
Maybe it was the beer, we were on our fifth by now (only two for Lucy), More likely it was Lucy herself. I am normally a rather suspicious person, not to say paranoid, but Lucy has what you might call a Presence that seemed to override a lot of that. Also she has a look to her that makes a man feel silly all over.
She gave us some names. Mutual acquaintances, she said. Check me out, she said. We have been, I thought. I looked over the list. As far as I knew them, these were good guys, stand up guys. Hell, one was my uncle in Brownsville, the one who was still speaking to me.
“We’ll need some basic jungle gear, but we’re traveling light, so don’t go overboard. We’ll get most of what we need when we get to Campeche,” she said. Car? Guns? I asked. Even though I hate guns, don’t even like to touch them, sometimes they’re your best buddies.
“No guns for now,” she said, “the fun won’t start for a while. I’ve got the car. You’ll love it.” She pushed a shopping list across the table and handed a wad of cash under the table. You don’t wave cash around in a seedy Houston bar. Any Houston bar. “We’ll meet here at noon the day after tomorrow.” Lucy left. Jeb and I thought about shopping. About going south. About getting rich. About getting dead.
LUCY
I told them I had a job for them, and that it was good money. They were a little reluctant at first, but I thought they would come around
They didn’t know me, of course, and would want to do a little research. I gave them some names I knew they knew, including Carlos’ uncle in Brownsville. I remember the uncle from years ago in Chetumal when he was buying and selling cattle with my father. A large man, I recalled, with a big laugh.
We ordered beers, and I gave them the condensed version of the job. It was too unlikely and too complicated to lay the whole thing on them at once. I didn’t get much into the stories and legends surrounding the ‘Item’, or, as it is often called, the Lobil—the Badness. It brought bad luck, or good luck. Usually bad, often very bad. I was hoping for the good. It wasn’t that this was secret, or even confidential. It was just too weird and they wouldn’t have believed any of it. Ancient Maya folklore, they would have said. Superstition. Nonsense. They would have written me off as crazy and that would have been the end of it.
“We’ll meet here the day after tomorrow,” I said. “At noon.” I left them to their beer. I had things to do and time was short.
CARLOS
I called a couple of the guys on Lucy’s list. They were out. I called my uncle in Brownsville, asked him about María Lucinda Montalvo y Carranza. He shouted (exuberant guy, my uncle), “Lucy? You should be so lucky! I knew her Dad. I knew her Mom, Consuelo. Most beautiful woman I ever met. Only bad thing was she was married to Lucy’s Dad. Whatever it is, go for it, Chucho, she’s the best. That whole family is.” He always called me Chucho, I never knew why, no one else ever did. He also told me the Matamoros people and their Brownsville friends were thinking Houston in terms of their affection for Jeb and me. I told him we’d already noticed that. He suggested a vacation. Maybe in China. Inner Mongolia was beautiful this time of year, he said. Especially right now.
That pretty much decided it. Lucy’s plan was starting to look a lot better. We were on our way.
LUCY
First of all, I had to get the truck away from Archie. That wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t really his, of course. It belonged to the Company, but it was his hobby. He’d been tinkering with it for years: souped up the motor, put heavy duty suspension and tires on it, special things I don’t even know about, the whole enchilada. That’s why I wanted it. But the truck was his baby and he didn’t want to part with it. Not to anyone, much less to me with my track record on vehicles. This was going to take a lot of sweet talk.
Then I was going to have to replace a lot of stuff. We had lost most of our equipment on the last venture, when Gonzalo and Martin and Larry were killed. Whenever I think of them, I try not to cry. I get furious instead. This wasn’t over yet and there was going to be payback. Someday.
So I had a long list of things to get, places to go, people to see, and I’d better get started.
THE BORDER / LA FRONTERA
LUCY
I knew the guys wanted to stay away from Brownsville and Matamoros, and it didn’t make any difference to me, so we crossed into México at Laredo and drove south with a jog to avoid the traffic around Monterrey.
We were enjoying the ride when it happened!
Jeb and Carlos were telling me about the old days growing up in Brownsville, on the border, and popping in and out of México.
“My childhood was nothing like that,” I told them. “Our border was totally different. There was no big city on the other side. There was no city at all. Just grass and trees. We never went there, what’s the point? We had our own grass and trees. There wasn’t even another country over there then—it was still British Honduras, an English colony.”
“We mostly just stayed home on the rancho. I had my pony, Linda, when I was tiny and, later, my horse Estrella. They were all I needed.”
Then I got into telling them some old bedtime stories my grandfather used to tell us. I probably have forgotten some of the details, it was a long time ago. Someday when I’m in Chetumal, I’ll have to ask some old Taatich about them, and see if I can refresh my memory.
Jeb didn’t think much of my stories, didn’t think they made sense. Now that I think about it maybe they don’t. I’d better study up.
I was just about to start another story when everything exploded!
CARLOS
We crossed at Nuevo Laredo, a little too close to Matamoros for my peace of mind, but we were decked out with our new budding beards and, courtesy of Lucy, a complete new set of IDs, and a new pickup truck. Well, not quite new, it was twelve years old, but new to us and to the folks in Matamoros and very inconspicuous. The truck didn’t look like much, but it was a 4-wheel drive with reinforced suspension and a powerful motor, and was great fun to drive.
“This truck is Archie’s Pride and Joy,” Lucy said. “It’s not really his. It belongs to the Company we work for, but he’s spent lots of time tinkering with it. It was like pulling teeth to get it away from him for this trip. I had to make all kinds of unreasonable promises, like not driving over 80, not getting any scratches, checking the oil and stuff like that.”
I didn’t know who Archie was, but if I ever met him, I’d compliment him on the truck.
We headed south, breezed through the checkpoints with our brand new tourist
