Robert Butler - The Hot Country

I said, “This man tried to kill me with a sword when I had nothing but a typewriter to defend myself.”

I could tell from the flicker in Villa that this was not entirely a new thing to him but he had heard quite a different version.

I said, “Let him fight me again.”

Villa smiled. He looked me square in the face and he was smiling the way he smiled when he heard what I did to some colorados on his behalf.

Good. I felt my instinct was right about this.

He looked back to Mensinger. I looked at the German too. When I saw Mensinger smiling broadly, I felt I needed to reconsider my instinct.

“A duel?” Mensinger said to Villa. “Of course. It is a point of honor. I choose sabers.”

I knew Villa was not going for the “point of honor” crap. But a duel meant somebody dies.

So I was still trying to understand this new role of U.S. government secret agent I was playing. I had figured out where I was in this scene and the role had seemed to suggest a course of action and I took it. Right. But I didn’t quite have my instincts fully refined. I was correct in my reading of Villa’s attitudes. My mistake was not anticipating the next move: fight with what? I might even have had something like a fistfight in mind.

I was professionally stupid like this when I first became a reporter as well.

In deep. Get in deeper. Was I nuts?

I said, “Not a duel. A fight.”

“A fight,” Villa said, emphatically. I supposed it was too much to think that my semantic distinction might reopen the subject of an appropriate weapon, because Villa immediately said, “Sabers.”

“I will kill him,” Mensinger said.

No one contradicted this. In all honesty, neither could I.

Maybe a fight with sabers was better for me than a duel with sabers. But only marginally so. I thought I’d declared for something less formal. But in fact I’d invited Mensinger to try to kill me again. With his weapon of choice. And it was the saber part that I was seriously concerned about. Not that I hadn’t wielded a sword plenty in my life. As I traveled with a famous actress mother through my teens and a little beyond, the many supernumerary stage roles I played often put a sword in my hand. And I was trained in this by a couple of men who were quite adept at it. But the training involved thrusting and parrying to give the impression of a killing intent while assiduously avoiding one. I was trained to miss. I would have to make a fundamental adjustment in medias res .

But I showed no hesitation. I turned crisply on my heel. I found Tallahassee Slim standing just inside the door, and he gave me a furrow-browed look that was hard to read. I suspected it was half “You got balls” and half “You are dead.” But he also gave me a quick nod and I returned it.

I passed through the door and out onto the platform and I started to go down the steps and I stopped. A crowd had gathered. Two or three hundred. Mostly Villista fighters. But some of the women too, and some of the children. All keeping their distance and still only loosely cohering as a crowd, but all of them facing these steps I was standing on. The word had gotten out to them about the German and the American. The man of the aeroplane and the man of the scarred face. Mortal adversaries. I figured I better stop writing the damn story of this in my head if I expected to have a chance to stay alive.

There were footfalls behind me. I stepped down and moved away from the car. The crowd receded a bit but started to pull together. I turned. Mensinger was standing near the back of the caboose, severely upright. He unknotted his tie, pulled it off, threw it casually aside. He started to unbutton his shirt.

Villa was striding this way, running the show, calling for two sabers. All around me bets began. The cockfighters calling out “ Gringo! ” or “ Alemán! ” and showing their bets with hand signals and looking for others making the same bet, pairing up. Mensinger was stripping off his shirt. I figured I’d better keep the sun to our side; it would blind me reflecting off his whiteness. I was just standing here. A little apart from all this. Watching. Which could be the death of me. I was a reporter no longer. That was a German agent standing over there, preparing to kill me. I was an American agent. Standing here. In the middle of the action. Creating the action.

I straightened. I started unbuttoning my shirt. Fine. I’d show my fresh scar to remind Villa who I’d fought and killed for lately. Not that it would do any good if I was run through with a saber. I took off my shirt and tossed it aside. Villa was standing near me. He had a saber in each hand, both of them the older British-style, slightly curved, cut-and-thrust swords. He gave me one. Villa and I looked each other in the eyes as I took it. I said, “Who are you betting on, Jefe? ”

“The German,” he said, showing his bad teeth in a big smile.

I said, “In the spirit of my country’s friendship with Mexico, I will cover your inevitable losses.”

Villa laughed.

I was glad I didn’t choke on the words. At the moment I was not confident.

Villa moved off toward Mensinger, bearing the other saber.

I whipped my sword in the air half a dozen times, getting the feel of it, the heft of it. It was heavier — strikingly heavier — than the stage swords. I looked toward Mensinger, who now had his saber. His heels were pressed tightly together and he was mincing his feet outward till they were at right angles to each other. He’d spent his life learning to fight with a sword on the even, stone floors of a university fencing club. He had a necessary routine. Its full effectiveness was based on his opponent fighting from the same routine.

Villa was heading back toward me, intending, I assumed, to step between Mensinger and me and give some sort of starting signal. And looking at General Pancho Villa, the bandit rebel and would-be savior of Mexico, I thought of his tactics. His men were never driven around in regimented step but encouraged to fight personally and of their free will, in contrast to the Federales, who fought stiffly, by the book. His army was relentless and fast-moving and full of tricks. He was always adapting to fit the terrain, fit his men’s skills.

I took one sidestep to the right, placing the approaching Villa directly between me and Mensinger. Villa stopped at this. He looked me in the eyes, his face pinching in thought. What was I up to? You should know, Pancho . I put my sword hand in front of me, chest high, and I rotated the saber to point to the sky. An improvised present-arms. I said, “I have learned from you, Jefe .”

And I took off in a sprint, veering right, doing an end run around Villa and then curving back toward Mensinger at a sharp angle of approach, from off to his left, and he was slow even turning his face to me and I was almost upon him and I pulled up, raising my right arm, and I was swinging the sword as he lurched toward me off balance and he lifted his sword to parry and his saber and mine clanged between us and he stumbled away.

He was quick with his hands.

I was glad I was not fighting by his rules.

My arm was doing an independent thing — since my head was simply crying for it to attack and attack and attack — my arm was swinging back to slash again, and Mensinger had caught his stumble and was straightening and my arm stopped its backward swing and I should have been thrusting now, not slashing, I was giving him a chance to recover and he was upright and trying to set his feet, still trying to establish the only rules he knew to fight by but I was slashing and my arm whipped around and he threw his own sword arm partly across his body, awkward still but he caught my sword and my arm flinched back from his blow, and I saw him doing what I should have done, setting up to thrust, recovering his arm from the stroke and making it glide right and it glided and as I tried to refocus my own arm his gliding stopped and I knew he would thrust and my legs were still at immediate call and I pushed back hard on my feet, I leap-stepped back and away and his sword rushed forward but I was propelling backward and his sword stretched for my chest but I was just out of his reach.