James Burke: Cadillac Jukebox

"The old guy we gonna see this afternoon? He encourages these guys, gives them money for guns, gets them killed. The guy comes from your country, Gringita," Heriberto said.

"If I were you, I wouldn't say any more," I said.

He opened his fingers in the air, as though he were releasing an invisible bird from them, and drove out of the village toward the mountains and a place that could have been sawed out of the revolutionary year of 1910.

We drove on a high switchback rock road through dead trees and a boulder-strewn landscape and rain that covered the windows like running plastic, then crested a ridge that was blackened by a forest fire, dancing with lightning, and dropped down out of the storm into sunlight again and a long cultivated valley with green hills in the distance and a volcano that was beveled across the top as though it had been sheared by tin snips. The road followed a river with wide, red clay alluvial banks that were scissored with the tracks of livestock, then we were inside another village, this one with cobblestone streets, buff-colored colonnades, a stone watering trough in front of the cervecería, a. tiny open-air market where bees combs and uncured meat were sold off wood carts that were boxed with screens to keep out the blowflies.

The streets and walkways under the colonnades were filled with soldiers. They were all young and carried World War II M-l rifles and M-16's. Some of the M-16's had a knob welded onto the bolt, which meant they were early Vietnam-era issue, notorious among grunts for the bolt that often jammed and had to be driven into the chamber with the heel of the hand.

We stood in the street while Minos talked with a collection of Mexican drug agents gathered around the tailgate of an army six-by. The air was shining and cool after the rain, and you could see for miles. Heriberto stared off in the distance at a rambling white ranch house with a blue tile roof on the slope of a hill. His legs were spread slightly, his expression contemplative.

"Big day for the Tejano. We gonna fuck him up good, man," he said.

"That's where he lives? You think maybe he's seen us coming?" I asked.

"We cut his phone. He ain't going nowhere."

I took Minos aside.

"What are they expecting to find up there, the Russian Army?" I said.

"A lot of these guys speak English, Dave."

"They've blown the operation."

"Not in their mind. This is how they say 'get out of town' to people they normally can't touch. Mason should be flattered."

"You don't like him?"

"My sister was a flowerchild back in the sixties. She thought this guy was a great man. She got loaded on hash and acid and floated out on the sunset from a ten-story window."

We followed a caravan of six army trucks down a winding dirt road to the walled compound that surrounded Clay Mason's ranch. The walls were topped with broken glass and spirals of razor wire, and the wood gates at the entrance were chain-locked and barred with a crossbeam inside. The lead truck, which was fronted with a plow-shaped dozer blade, gained speed, roaring across the potholes, the soldiers in back rocking back and forth, then crashed through the gates and blew them off their hinges.

The soldiers trashed the house, fanned out into the yards and outbuildings, kicked chickens out of their way like exploding sacks of feathers, and for no apparent reason shot a pig running from a barn and threw it down the well.

"Can you put a stop to this bullshit?" I said to Minos.

"You see that fat slob with the Sam Browne belt on? He's a graduate of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning. He also owns a whorehouse. He knocked the glass eye out of a girl for sassing him. No, thanks."

While his house was being torn apart, Clay Mason leaned against a cedar post on his front porch and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette, his pixie eyes fixed on me and Minos. His hair extended like white straw from under his domed Stetson hat.

"Karyn warned me you're a vindictive man," he said.

"I'm sorry about your place. It's not my doing," I said.

"Like hell it isn't." Then a yellow tooth glinted behind his lip and he added, "You little pisspot."

He flipped his cigarette away, walked to the corner of his house on his cane, and urinated in the yard, audibly passing gas with his back turned to us, shaking his penis, a small, hatted, booted man, in a narrow, ratty coat, whose power had touched thousands of young lives. Helen and I walked behind the ranch house, where the soldiers had forced five field hands to lean spread-eagled against the stone wall of the barn. The field hands were young and frightened and kept turning their heads to see if guns were being pointed at their backs. The soldiers shook them down but kept them leaning on their arms against the wall.

"I don't like being in on this one, Dave," Helen said.

"Don't watch it. We'll be out of here soon," I said.

We walked inside the barn. The loft was filled with hay, the horse stalls slatted with light, the dirt floor soft as foam rubber with dried manure. Through the doors at the far end I could see horses belly-deep in grass against a blue mountain.

Hanging from pegs on a wood post, like a set used by only one man, were a pair of leather chaps, a bridle, a yellow rain slicker, a sleeveless knitted riding vest, flared gloves made from deer hide, and two heavy Mexican spurs with rowels as big as half dollars. I rotated one of the rowels with my thumb. The points were sticky and coated with tiny pieces of brown hair.

Behind the post, a silver saddle was splayed atop a sawhorse. I ran my hand across the leather, the cool ridges of metal, the seared brand of a Texas cattle company on one flap. The cantle was incised with roses, and in the back of the cantle was a mother-of-pearl inlay of an opened camellia.

"What is it?" Helen said.

"Remember, the guy named Arana said the bugarron rode a silver saddle carved with flowers? I think Clay Mason's our man."

"What can you do about it?"

"Nothing."

"That's it?"

"Who knows?" I said.

We walked back into the sun's glare and the freshness of the day and the wind that smelled of water and grass and horses in the fields.

But the young field hands spread-eagled against the stone wall of the barn were not having a good day at all. The shade was cool in the lee of the barn, but they were sweating heavily, their arms trembling with tension and exertion. One boy had a dark inverted V running down his pants legs, and the soldiers were grinning at his shame.

"School of the Americas?" I said to the fat man in the Sam Browne belt. I tried to smile.

He wore tinted prescription glasses and stood taller than I. His eyes looked at me indolently, then moved to Helen, studying her figure.

"What you want?" he said.

"How about cutting these guys some slack? They're not traffickers, they're just camposinos, right?" I said.

"We decide what they are. You go on with the woman… Is guapa, huh? Is maybe lesbian but puta is puta." He held out his palms and cupped them, as though he were holding a pair of cantaloupes.

"What'd you say?" Helen asked.

"He didn't say anything," I said.

"Yeah he did. Say it again, you bucket of bean shit, and see what happens."

The officer turned away, a wry smile on his mouth, a light in the corner of his eye.

She started to step toward him, but I moved in front of her, my eyes fastened on hers. The anger in her gaze shifted to me, like a person breaking glassware indiscriminately, then I saw it die in her face. I walked with her toward the ranch house, the backs of my fingers touching her hand. She widened the space between us.

"Next time don't interfere," she said.

"Those kids would have taken our weight."