Jim Harrison - Legends of the Fall

At the Camino Real Cochran was told there was nothing available except a suite which he signed up for with an affected Texas accent to accompany his clothing. He wanted to get out of this lobby suddenly, remembering the feast after the tennis match win with Tibey. He ordered up dinner and a bottle of wine, feeling bone-tired and jittery. He had a quick shower, taking the cigar box with the money paid for the stud horse packed inside. Over dinner he would count the money for no reason he could think of, and someday trace the Texan's heirs in Van Horn, perhaps pay the horse breeder though he doubted it. He called the brother of his friend, the Aeromexico pilot. The man welcomed him cordially to Mexico City, told him that it was not good to speak on the phone, not to leave the room, and that he would be there at midmorning to offer any help he could. Cochran slept well with the Texan's cold blue .44 under his pillow.

At dawn he ordered up coffee and sat on his balcony looking down at the gardens in a reverie until the first human, a gardener, arrived, at which point he went back into the suite to meditate on his plans for both vengeance and survival, two instincts which are rarely married with any security.

When the man arrived Cochran at first didn't like the suavity contained in the pale-gray pin-striped suit, the outward shell painted so deftly on the surface of the politician. Then the man became nervous, ordered a drink on the room service, and asked Cochran to speak in Castilian as well as he could. Satisfied, the man said he could do nothing to help Cochran with Tibey other than offer him an identity and the aid of the only man he could trust, a lifelong friend of honor who lived in Durango. The man explained that they made many movies in Durango, usually American and Mexican westerns and Cochran would be able to move freely under an identity as a textile mill owner from Barcelona who was interested both in real estate and the movie business. He opened his briefcase and gave Cochran some convincing letters of introduction, and money which Cochran refused saying he had plenty. And a .38 Police Special that his brother passed along. Cochran laughed and said he was already overarmed. The man turned grave and handed him a folder on Tibey which he refused saying that he knew enough.

"You understand that Señor Mendez is what you call laundered; I mean he is powerful politically and his money is clean now. You will surely die and my brother whom I love cares for you. But even in this absurd suit I know it's probably better to die than to live with it. My friend in Durango has found no trace of the woman but is working hard on the search."

Now Cochran liked the man and tried to reassure him but the man swallowed his drink in a single gulp and looked away. He said he had received a message from a Mauro at the mission, the man who had taken Cochran to Hermosillo, and soon after they had left that dawn a huge man and two henchmen had come looking with murder in their eyes.

"I gutted that fucker like a big fat pig," Cochran said with a wry smile.

The man nodded, acting reassured. Before he left he asked Cochran to destroy his phone numbers after memorizing them. He had a brother, but he also had a wife and children and hopefully a future.

He spent the afternoon getting himself tailored to look like a wealthy businessman from Barcelona. He took out a few thousand dollars and packed the cigar box inside the television set. He bought several suits and accoutrements, and had his hair styled and his beard trimmed, had a manicure and made his reservations for Durango for the next morning on an early plane. He practiced the sort of good foreigner's English where a stray indefinite article is left out. He posted a long ruminating letter to his daughter saying that he hoped to be home soon, and that he had been a little sad lately because his bird dog Doll had been hit by a car. Early in the evening he packed in a new, expensive piece of luggage. He ate lightly and lay naked in the dark on his bed listening to a Bach concerto on the radio.

He lay there sleeplessly remembering a minor quarrel he had one evening with Miryea in the apartment. It was over some silly literary matter about who killed whom in Pascual Duarte, that murderous book, and a certain coolness entered into the evening as he blathered on. He knew he was arguing on hormones, stirring his brain with his dick, as it were. He was a beautiful talker but she pursued his wrongheadedness without mercy, reminding him that language was a convenience of the heart, not something to bludgeon people with. He slapped a pillow over his face in embarrassment and yelled for Christ's sake forgive my big mouth. He heard her laugh and under the darkness of the pillow he felt her mouth caressing him. He slid the pillow back above his eyes and saw her knee and had an awakening of sorts, a prolonged and lucid sense that he had never looked at a woman's knee. His eyes moved upward until he saw all of Miryea and for a moment it seemed he was looking at her incomprehensibly and for the first time. He repeated this newness of vision, sweeping his eyes from her curled toes to her falling black shiny hair over his belly. His love for her became at the same time complete, fearsome and unbearable. Afterward he spoke to her about it and she seemed to understand perfectly. There was a lightness to the mood as if for the first time he comprehended the reality of life on earth outside himself; it calmed him in a strange way so that he slept easily because he no longer cared if he slept. He gave up quickly trying to attune the experience to a language construct, as if life were an especially filthy mirror and speechless love cleansed this mirror and made life not only bearable but something lived with eagerness, energy, an expectancy whose pleasure didn't depend on fatality.

In the morning he slept calmly through his departure time, but just as calmly chartered a Beechcraft, ate breakfast and took a taxi to the airport. It was a clear sunny morning and a brief rain in the night plus a wind from the north had swept the normally filthy air of Mexico City clean and clear. Standing on the tarmac he looked to the mountains in the south out of which a religion lost to the present had been born. The pilot was deferential and they flew into a brisk headwind and low to look at the country.

They flew over Celaya, Aguascalientes, over the Quemada ruins and Fresnillo, over the Zacatecas border and into the province of Durango and its capital of the same name. They beat the airline which had a layover in Guadalajara by a few minutes. A man named Amador was waiting for him.

The appearance of Amador confused Cochran momentarily. He wished to be a great deal more anonymous than is possible in Mexico. They exchanged pleasantries in Spanish, then turned in alarm to watch a woman who was screaming. Cochran recognized her as an American actress-model.

"Dónde esta my fucking gato vivo," she screamed over and over while the baggage man flipped through the suitcases in alarm. "Oh, you fuckers probably eat cats." Others at the baggage counter stepped back shocked, then began smiling. Cochran approached and attempted to calm her down, but she was inconsolable. Then another baggage wagon arrived and the cat was found. She opened the small cage sobbing, "Oh my dear Pooky, my lover, I won't let them eat you." She looked up at Cochran and smiled but Amador drew him away gripping his arm tightly.

In the car Amador admonished him, speaking English in a southern drawl, explaining he had once been on the Dallas police force. It was unthinkable of Cochran to speak in public the way he had when his cover had been so carefully prepared. "In this town it isn't a game."

Cochran felt a little depressed and apologized and Amador laughed. "My friend, I don't want us to get our asses shot off." Then he fell silent and Cochran looked at him sensing the badness of the news and not wanting to ask. On the floor by the seat was an ugly looking sawed-off shotgun with a scarred and worn stock. The statue of Saint Christopher on the dashboard seemed to stare down at the gun with a pastel stare, the silly pink lips open in benediction. Amador was of only medium height but thickset, with a massive neck and arms. He slowed down for a cow ambling across the road.