THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

BOOK SEVEN: CUAHTENOTL EPACT

CHAPTER TEN

By the time that José stepped out of El Gato Vasilante and into the mud of Cuahtenotl, it was past noon. The American, Smith, fancied himself something of an expert at whist... they'd played a few rounds for drinks, José winning some, losing others. Because there was little to eat in Cuahtenotl during its best days... and absolutely nothing during this damnable Epact... they switched to beer. Each of the foreigners had encountered the Jackal... unpleasantly, in the case of the American, Smith, who had nearly lost an ear for having been in the wild man's path during one of his drunken rages, but none knew any more of him than did the barman. Lunatics were a penny a dozen in Cuahtenotl; it was a consequence of having to pick through garbage for generations, before which they had worked in mines. The patron, whose hostility to strangers waned as José passed him paper and silver dollars, pesos, a couple of British shillings and, never, a scrap of the dinero muerto... he finally acknowledged his name to, indeed, be Limón, like the fruit, and he kept the Cat from dawn to dusk, when it passed over into the keep of his partner-in-commerce, Whelk. The very air that circulated thickly through the village was mostly poison, he averred, the ground was all poison, and nothing but weeds and stunted pines would grow, not even corn... which had even been found growing out of certain old stones of Yucatan and other Mexican locales.

"Is the weather always this bad?" José asked, coughing and thinking of the tuberculars of San Sebastien.

"Oh no, Señor Comercio," Limón replied, "...most often, it is worse."

And, so, José returned to his search from the sad Plaza Cuahtenotl, full of grainy cheer against the drizzle and full of gossip about the unsavory town. There was no priest tending the church, José learned, because Padre Luis slept in the hut of his mistress, a village orphan no more than fifteen, alleged the good Doktor… fourteen, countered Limón. The Jefe Policia, a former sergeant of the Federales during the easier years of the Porfirismo, of the name of Patricio, was likely in the same condition as poor Kanegis and, though good-natured to a fault, could become angry if disturbed.

"There is never so much alcoholism in Cuahtenotl as now," Doktor Krankenhauer made a pass at defending the wretched villagers, "it is the fault of their damnable calendar." And the Americanist, alleging to have lived among and studied the Mixtec, Zapotec... even some pueblos of surviving Toltecs... explained certain oddities of the Mexican calendars for his comrades, even José, who had already decided to keep his ears open for the duration, and his mouth closed, except to reply in generalities. The problem was that these indians here, and the halfbreeds, too, were a people of ghosts and contradictions... neither of Morelos, nor Puebla, not wholly Aztec, nor anything else. More susceptible to the worst Spanish superstitions... and some of the Celtic, also... they had arrived at the logical, if contrary, assumption that the five remaining days (after eighteen twenty-day months of the year had passed) should coincide with such days of the dead as were celebrated all over central Mexico with fasting and penitence, on the one hand, reverence and sardonic merrymaking on the other... often both. And... because of the undue influence of Europeans, and their Julian and Gregorian reckonings of time... "the day prior to the Epact becomes their leap-day in such years as end in multiples of four, as this," explained the Baseler. "And there is nothing to do on such days, doubly ill-fortuned, than to stay in one's home... no doubt under some occult protection against the evil spirits, which are certainly numerous, hereabouts... drink oneself into unconsciousness and pray that don del Muerte, for want of hearing or seeing you, shall pass as did the Hebrews' Angel of Death."

Of course Krankenhauer did not speak of don del Muerte in exactly those words, but as He walks the fashionable boulevards and Alpine roads of Switzerland as He does up and down Mexico, José knew exactly whom the Doktor was referring to.

Leaving behind El Gato Vasilante and its denizens, José made the determination that Kanegis had had time enough to recover from his leap-day debauchery. The Greek was still sprawled on the dirt beneath his hammock... José remembered the old Territorial admonition that, when one leaves a hammock untenanted, the Devil will take up residence, recline and wait, but presumed that the Evil One, like any sensible creature, had grown weary of the sleeping man in the red shirt with his snoring, his sudden, abject howls and flailing arms. Taking the Devil's prerogative, the Major kicked Kanegis sharply and again, eliciting only a muttered oath and some small curds of vomit. Gathering up two of the empty bottles, José stepped out into the street and pushed them across the mire, gaining a quantity of rainwater and several fingers of foul-smelling muck, besides. The first of these, emptied from above on a line from ear to ear had no effect, but the second, making a sign of the cross from the brow to the nose, to lips to the collar of the red shirt, caused Kanegis to sit up as sharply as a skeleton in its little wagon of San Sebastien, shake the water from his face and shoulders as a dog would, then turn and approach the Major on his hands and knees, grunting a babble of threats, apologies and promises to persons whom José had never known, nor wished to know of.

His hand dropped to the Webley just in case the deluded snitch was "playin' possum", as an American had suggested to him, but instead of firing even a warning shot, he kicked the drunkard again, in the elbow this time. Kanegis skidded forward, halfway out the door, and his face plopped into the mud; he rolled over, scurried away from the rainy street on his backside like some hydrophobic insect, and trembled in shame and outrage until the Major identified himself as, of course, Jorge Bustamente.

"What would Rico say, to see the likes of you... entrusted with a mission on which the very security of Mexico depends? With the influence he has, it's a marvel that he hasn't ordered you shot already! And I suppose that he advanced you money... oh! quite a bit of money, no matter how cheap this stuff is," José added, kicking the bottle he had employed to awaken Kanegis into the corner to clatter among its brothers. "Have you spent it all? Show me... empty your pockets, man!"

"No more!" Kanegis groaned, crossing his arms before his face. But José Macias was a man, not a demon... or if he was at least half a demon, he was not one such as to quail before an appeal to Jesucristo by a creature of such fabric as the man in the red shirt... and he advanced, with an intent to kick the man to death, if he must. Out of the rain, he felt his eagle approach for the first time since Veracruz, and the Major fairly smiled with anticipation.

"I know where to find the man you are searching for," Kanegis blurted out, and José halted in the act of drawing back his foot. "He is in choza up the mountain... a house of garbage, and with a woman, maybe the one whom you advised Rico of," the man in the red shirt added, slyly. José grasped the Webley in his right hand while he took the measure of this fellow... finally deciding that he was an insect who could be killed at any time, without risk, and there was no penalty for seeing what Kanegis had to show him.

"Get up!" José directed, but his informant had backed against the pile of empty bottles and he vomited again, over these, finally drawing himself back to his hands and knees with long, ropy strands of stinking drool dangling from his lips. Disgusted, the Major replaced the Webley in his belt and departed, waiting outside while the Greek wiped himself.

"My stomach is burning like an oven," Kanegis groaned, limping outside into the drizzle. "I will show you the house of the pendejo but... por favor, do you have anything to eat?"

Out of expedience, not mercy, José tossed him that last of the stale pastries of death that he had collected in San Sebastien.

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