Martin Smith - Stallion Gate

On the hood of the patrol car, Hilario's pockets were misshapen from the money he'd stuffed into them. He watched Joe thoughtfully. Looked at the kid. Ray rubbed Joe's back, massaged his arms.

"Drop the fucker."

The kid came out with another rush of punches, each punch a complaint from a small, withered soul. Joe answered with a fluid jab twice as fast as any other he'd thrown, but soft, just enough to tell the boy, I understand. Understanding was contagious. The kid circled instead of wading in. Good as he was, the kid had never fought more than three rounds before. This was the fourth. He still hit hard, but he leaned on the jab and wound up for the hook. Joe slipped the hook and countered to the heart, a probe, a gesture of rising interest in the boy's condition, also an announcement: we are at a new level. The kid jabbed for time, for an opportunity to rethink the changing context. His jabs were short. Joe snapped a jab off the kid's nose and for a moment the little eyes were glass.

The kid answered with a jab-and-cross, tearing the tape from Joe's cut. Joe's eye filled with blood that sprayed as he ducked. The kid came in to finish the cut. Left-handers when they punch tend to slide to the right. A matter of physics. One of Newton's Laws. The more they tire, the more they slide out of control. Moving low for a big man, Joe slipped a hook and rose, driving arm and fist of the bluntest curiosity into the boy's unguarded stomach and red cicatrix. The kid arched, half of him still following the parabola of his swing while the other half tried to bend away from Joe, who hit the coralroot scar again and continued to move in, staying low, pursuing the softening, collapsing midsection. In the air, the kid had no place to go. Joe hooked from the ground up, his own body rising.

Inevitability came in grunts and the sound, when Joe hit, of a stake being driven into sodden earth. When Joe stopped, the boy went from weightless to gravity-bound and sprawled in the headlights like a figure under water. The suddenness of the end brought a quiet to the tent. Joe pressed the back of his hand to the pulsing blood of his cut. Ray and the MPs started collecting money. Hilario was collecting, too.

Joe had left his clothes in the cafe" kitchen. He washed, taped and dressed himself by the sink while Ray cleared the table of cans of peaches, lard and beans and counted the money by denominations. The long kitchen table was covered with stacks of notes.

"Chief, you should've seen Shapiro and Gruber. They went through those cowboys like Gestapos, took everything but their watches. Done." Ray took a step back from the table like a man getting a better view of a big Rembrandt. "My God, I've never seen this much money before. $66,000 for you. That's as good as a title fight. You should open a bank."

"I had something else in mind." Joe tucked his tie into his shirt and gingerly touched the tape on his brow.

"Well, here's to Chief Joe Pena." Ray found two glasses in the sink and filled them with Black Label. "The greatest heavyweight in the Army. Your night, Chief."

Pollack slipped through the kitchen door. His hair was freshly straightened and looked combed with a razor. He wore a canary jacket and a diamond ring on each hand. Dressed like a man about to travel at his ease, he made a slow, respectful circuit of the table. Then he laid down three folded papers.

"Deed. Receipt. Liquor licence." Pollack touched a stack of green notes briefly, to establish the fact of them. "Congratulations, you own a nightclub. I wish I could stay to show you the ropes."

"You're leaving tonight?"

"I said I was going to be on the dock when Eddie Jr came in. That's a three-day drive. Kansas City, Pittsburgh, New York. If he can come back from Italy, I can be there on the dock." Pollack counted out $50,000 and stuffed the bills in a money belt while Joe checked the papers. They were already signed.

"I never thought I'd say goodbye to the Casa Mariana or New Mexico, Joe. Something else happening here tonight? Lots of Army trucks sort of hidden off the road."

"It's a bombing range, you know."

"Thought I recognized some soldiers from the Hill."

"Maybe." Joe tucked the papers into his shirt.

Pollack draped the money belt over his arm. He'd never put the belt on in front of anyone else, he had too much dignity for that. Just like he didn't go cross-country in a train because he never wanted to be mistaken for a porter.

"You're going to be okay, Joe. From now on, everyone's going to be okay."

"Thanks for everything." Joe shook hands gently because his fist hurt so much.

At the door, Pollack hesitated.

"That was the last fight for Big Chief Joe Pena?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I thought this time he cut it a little close."

"Son of a bitch," Ray said when Pollack was gone. "You own the Casa Manana? You son of a bitch, you pulled off a deal like that?"

"I've got to go." It was nine o'clock. Joe counted out $1,000 and pushed the rest of his money with Ray's. "Hold this for me for a couple of days. Forget about the garbage business. I'm going to turn you into a maitre d'. After the test you're driving people back to the Albuquerque Hilton? Go to the Casa and stick by the cash register until I show up."

"Serious?"

"If anyone here asks tonight, say I was off to hunt Apaches."

"You're serious about me?"

"People are going to be lining up to grease the palm of Raymond the maitre d'."

"In a tux?"

"You better be."

"That's better than garbage."

"Sometimes it happens that way, Ray. Some things actually work out."

"But it's a surprise," Ray insisted.

"Yeah."

The tent stood in an empty courtyard. The motel cabins were dark because their occupants were the MPs who were on the highway monitoring traffic, chasing the losers back to Texas, ushering fresh truckloads of GIs towards Trinity. The only vehicle left in the court was Joe's jeep, its top up to the rain.

Squalls were raiding parties of lightning and thunder that moved under a half-moon across the valley. There was no sign of any jalopy or pickup truck and it occurred to him that Ben and Roberto might not show. No. It was Joe Pena's night, he thought, and, as if in answer, the rain briefly let up. Joe Pena's Casa Mariana. He walked across the courtyard to the jeep and the drops seemed to part before him like a curtain, as if the world were opening up for him.

Joe got into the jeep. In the dark, on the seat next to him, was a muted yellow glitter with the shape of snakes. Two lightning wands.

"The boy didn't have a chance, Sergeant," Captain Augustino said from the rear seat. "You suckered him. That boy didn't know who he was fighting."

"You saw the fight, Captain?" they looked to Joe like Roberto's wands.

"I didn't need to."

"Lost some money?"

"No, I bet on you."

"You found the medicine men you were looking for?"

"They're very elusive. Found the wands where they were hiding. Magic." Augustino tapped a cigarette on a silver case. It looked like the same case the captain's wife had had and he tapped on it the same way his wife had. Couples did do things the same way, Joe thought. The match flame made the wands start from the seat; otherwise, the flame cast a soft, confidential glow within the jeep, an illusion of golden warmth against the water that laced the windshield. Augustino leaned forward, his sallow face lit by a smile of mutual understanding, his eyes full of something close to admiration. "I'm not going to put the Army in the position of saying that a medicine man can call fire down from the sky. Even if it is attempted sabotage, a medicine man doesn't know any better."

"I have to go look for Mescaleros. Groves' orders." A car with its lights out turned into the courtyard and stopped by the cafe on the other side of the tent. A Plymouth two-door.