Robert Butler - The Hot Country

kein Einmarsch.

No invasion. Well, that was certainly in the minds of all us news boys down here. We invaded Mexico but it wasn’t an “invasion” and likely not to become one. As obvious as this was to all of us Americans, it may have been literally notable to a German musing on the back of an envelope. His assumption would have been the Germanic one. The logical one, in this case. Once you marched your army into a country and routed your opponent’s army locally, you did what comes naturally to armies. You continued the invasion. What seemed frustrating to those of us who understood a man — an American type — like Woodrow Wilson would have seemed baffling to our German aristocrat.

But this brief notation. Was it a “musing”? I needed to consider the purpose of the list. “Musing” had to be wrong. If he had to write to think, he’d write in a journal or some such and he’d be writing it out in full, detailing his line of thought. No. These items on the envelope were more likely a listing of things he’d already thought out. He was about to go off to estado Coahuila, almost certainly to meet up with Pancho Villa one way or another. He’d had an impulse to start organizing his thoughts; he made a list of the things he wanted to say. Talking points.

It had to be about Villa. Friedrich von Mensinger didn’t sneak into Mexico on the Ypiranga to confer with Huerta. That would have been done with an open approach. If this was a secret diplomatic mission, it had to be with a rebel. And the Germans are precise. Scrupulously so. He must have known the tactical situation, known who it was now in charge of that part of Coahuila. I assumed, for the moment, that he wanted to stress to Villa that there would be no American invasion. But wasn’t that an odd thing for a German to emphasize to a man who might someday rule Mexico? Mensinger was not here as a neutral mediator to ease the Mexican rebels’ minds about U.S. intentions. Of course not. Mensinger had the same scorn for Wilson’s timidity that the rest of us down here did. And as Gerhard pointed out, Villa had an aggressive, straightforward combat style. However outraged he might have been about the U.S. seizing a Mexican port, he’d have been temperamentally scornful about our not straightforwardly einmarsching on along to Mexico City. Mensinger expected to have a nice little bonding moment with Villa as they snorted at the American president.

Nicht nach T.

Not T. Linked to “no invasion.” If this were Nicht nach MC —or however the Germans would initialize “Mexico City”—I’d have understood. But no. After saying there’d be no invasion, singling out the capital would have been redundant. If the “T” was something specific not being invaded, there would have to be an implied “not even.” And I had that little newsman’s rush of fitting things together. Tampico. Of course. The U.S. wasn’t going ahead with the invasion. We weren’t even going to march three hundred miles up the coast to the town that had actually set the invasion in motion in the first place, the town with all the oil fields. A town presently in the hands of the Federales but that any of the competing rebels would love to control.

“Toads,” Bunky said.

I turned to him. He was still on his back, his eyes closed, still unconscious. His mouth, though, was working. Soundlessly, now that I was looking at him.

“Toads, Bunk?” I said.

“Toad shit,” he said, though there wasn’t a clue that he was aware of me other than that his words followed mine. He’d said this rather emphatically, in spite of the present impediments to his voice. And again: “Toad shit.” This time almost sadly.

I waited. Whatever he was dreaming went on, his mouth still trying to put it into words.

I said to him, just as sadly, because I wanted to be having this exchange with him sober, at our table in the portales: “So, Bunky, would that be a larger or a smaller lie than the bull variety?”

His mouth stopped working.

I patted him on the shoulder.

I turned away from him.

ENP ~ Dr.

Doctor on one side. The abbreviation was the same in German as in English. That much I got. Similar to “ENP.” I tried to run through all the figures of the Mexican revolution and then the prominent men in Germany, and I could think of no one with those initials. If these letters referred to something other than a man, with no context I didn’t even know how to start my brain to figure out what it might be. Obviously he or it was not clearly associated with doctors or Mensinger wouldn’t have to be making a note of it. So that was no help.

C u. W keine Eier.

C and W. No balls. I had a context for one of these initials. No invasion. No balls. W is Wilson. Any little zip I might have gotten from figuring this out was instantly squelched by a surge of anger. Who the hell was Herr Friedrich von Mensinger to say the President of the United States of America had no balls? It was okay for me to say something critical of Wilson. I got to vote. But to hear this Hun sneer at him made Wilson my well-meaning but pathetic Uncle Woody. The family thinks he’s off base much of the time but he’s ours. He’s family. Mensinger abruptly had another strike against him.

And who else was he talking about? I ran William Jennings Bryan through my head for obvious reasons. No C there. Secretary of War Lindley Garrison. L. G.

There was a rustling beside me. I wasn’t ready to give up on this one yet.

More rustling and I turned to Bunky.

He was trying to sit up.

“Whoa,” I said. “Take it easy.”

His head was down and I didn’t see his eyes. He braced himself with one hand as he tried to put his legs on the floor. I grabbed him by the shoulder on his unbraced side and helped him get upright. He lifted his face to me. His eyes were open but I couldn’t tell if he was seeing me or if he was seeing a dream he was in the middle of.

He had his feet on the floor now and he looked down, as if to check that out. I let go of him.

“Take it easy, Pops,” I said.

“Don’t call me that,” he said. He looked at me again and he was clearly seeing me.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Just checking to see if you’re really here.” And now I found myself pissed at Bunky. Not Pops. Okay. My savvy but pathetically self-destructing Uncle Bunk.

“I’m here,” he said.

“I’m surprised.”

“What about?”

“You were talking about toad shit just a few minutes ago.”

“Toad shit?”

“Yep.”

“Not surprising at all.”

“You remember what that was about?”

“Hell no,” Bunky said. “But that’s how my benders go. I’m way out of it, and then after a while…What time is it?”

“About one.”

“In the afternoon?”

“That’s sunlight you’re seeing at the window.”

He turned his face in that direction. “So it is. Anyway, I’m out and then abruptly I’m not.”

I found myself impatient with him. B. F. M. keine Eier. But I had no reason to feel superior. I could hit the mezcal myself sometimes, once a month or so, to the point of a heavy, oblivious sleep. But I kept writing. Bunky needed to keep writing. That took balls. What a damn waste.

I needed to go back to Gerhard. Show him Mensinger’s notes.

“You okay on your own now?” I asked.

“Always am.”

“Now that’s toad shit,” I said.

Bunky shrugged. I cuffed him on the shoulder to make it right.

I headed straight for my rooms, and my clean clothes were laid out on the bed in my own shape: shirt, pants, socks, as if I were lying there on my back. I still didn’t know her name,