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 cards, happily distributing packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes too all and sundry. None of us smoked ourselves, but the cigs made great little happy presents for soldiers, cops and anyone else we might run across that needed a pack. We cut over on 30 to Highway 57 to avoid Monterrey and had a great time on the road drinking Fantas and beer and singing Mexican songs. Lucy had a great voice but Jeb was terrible. Like a frog. I’d like to think I was somewhere in between, but was probably closer to Jeb.
We spent the night in Saltillo, a pretty town and near Jeb’s old stomping grounds, where he spent time with his cousins, growing up. We didn’t take time to stop for a visit—we had our schedule.
The trip was fun. With Jeb and me it was usually fun—except when it was terrifying. But with Lucy along, it was really fun. Terrifying could wait. We would be sorry when this trip was over. At least that’s what we thought at the time.
Jeb and I told tales of our growing up in Brownsville, most of them with at least a grain of truth to them. The time we learned to swim, for instance.
We used to spend a lot of time sneaking back and forth across the Mexican border, just for fun. It was fairly easy and no one paid much attention to kids. Early training for smugglers.
One day we were on our way to Matamoros and were planning to wade through the Rio Grande. We could have crossed at the bridge, nobody was stopping us, but this was more fun. Besides the bridge cost a nickel. It had rained up river and the water was way deeper than usual. We would have had to take the bridge after all but there was activity at the riverbank so we had to check it out.
It was awful. A woman had drowned trying to cross the water and was still floating there, caught on a tree branch wedged into the bank. People were wading out to her with ropes to bring her in.
We knew, of course, that this happened all the time along the river, but knowing is one thing and actually seeing is another. We resolved, then and there, that we would learn to swim, and swim well.
We did, too. We went to pools, we went to the beach at Padre Island, we went into the river itself. Jeb turned out to be a better swimmer, but I can hold my own.
Lucy’s childhood was totally different, out there with the cows and chickens. We did have in common that we both lived on the Mexican border, but hers was México’s border with Belize,