Richard Ford - The Ultimate Good Luck

“Just so long. I gotta get the fuck out of here, you understand that. You don’t hide in here.”

“We got the document,” he said quickly. “It’s in the alcaide’s office. A day now, all right? The money’s here. Everything’s here. You just have to stay still, you understand me?” The look of betrayal measured a state of shock, and that was all right if it didn’t get worse. Sonny could suck it in if he wanted to. He just had to want to. “Kiss your brother,” he said to Rae.

She looked surprised. “What?” she said.

“Kiss him, God damn it, let’s go,” he said, standing.

Rae put out her arms and tried to bury her face in Sonny’s shoulder, leaning over the table awkwardly to do it. One of her tinted lenses fell out on the table, and Sonny let his arms hang. He hadn’t said hello to Rae. It seemed like he wasn’t sure what was happening.

“I’m sorry,” Rae said. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

“So fucking do something,” Sonny said. He looked at Quinn and smiled strangely, as though somebody had said something complimentary to him. “You’re not in here, fucker,” he said, and the smile disappeared. “I am. You know? I’m the one that’s fucking in here.”

“Just be cool,” Quinn said. He touched Rae’s arm. “Go now.”

“We’ll get you out of here, hon,” Rae said.

Sonny gazed at her vaguely.

Quinn pushed across the two copies of the Sporting News . “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said, and led Rae down the row of tables.

The sky outside was pale, as if a dead ocean lay hidden behind the mountains. Bernhardt stood beside the Mercedes in the gravel lot wearing a white cotton shirt in the breezy sunlight. “No troubles, correct,” he said. He opened the car door to get in.

“Somebody stabbed him,” Quinn said, when he got close.

Bernhardt stood up, squinting in the bright light. He looked as if he hadn’t heard just right. “Who did?” he said.

“Deats,” Quinn said. He looked at Rae, then came closer to Bernhardt. “This is getting real dicey, Carlos. You were supposed to see about this asshole, you know?” He didn’t like having Rae hear this, but she was in it now, and there was nothing he could do.

“Is he all right?” Bernhardt said.

“He won’t be very fucking all right long.” Quinn lowered his voice. Some women vendors began to drift toward the car from around the prison gate. They had huaraches and pottery beads and stopped at a polite distance to hold up what they had. “I don’t like the outlook,” Quinn said. He looked at the vendors quickly. Rae was staring at them as if they had called her name. “I can get somebody else, but it’s too late for that. You see that, don’t you, Carlos?”

“Other people are involved now,” Bernhardt said apologetically. “It has gotten complicated.”

“Are you bailing out? Is that how complicated it is?”

“No,” Bernhardt said gravely. His eyes snapped at the vendors, who were trying to strike up a conversation with Rae. They all said “trinkets” over and over and rattled their merchandise. “It will be settled tonight.”

“That’s what you said last night,” Quinn said.

“You need patience,” Bernhardt said and tried to smile.

“The man doesn’t have time for patience,” he said emphatically and pointed at the prison fence. “Somebody’s cutting on him, see?”

Bernhardt’s eyes flickered toward the prison. “At three today arrangements will be made.”

“Not now?” Quinn said.

“It is not certain. But it will be.”

“He didn’t do it, you know that. He didn’t skim anybody’s shit.” That seemed important to say. He wasn’t sure why that mattered, but it seemed to.

“It’s possible,” Bernhardt said. He moved toward the car now.

“No. It’s not possible.” He took Bernhardt’s bare arm. “He didn’t do it, and I don’t want him sliced like that kid you trotted out last night.”

“I understand,” Bernhardt said softly. “It will be done right.”

“I need that, Carlos. I really fucking need that now.”

Bernhardt looked away, out beyond Animas Trujano, where a circle of light illuminated the scorched valley floor as if somewhere someone was holding a magnifying glass to the sun. The light was almost pure white. He seemed embarrassed at being touched.

The vendors were smiling and holding out their Japanese crap as if they couldn’t stand to have it near them another minute. “Let’s just get out of here,” Rae said. “They give me the bads.”

“I’m not sure he understands it,” Quinn said.

“He understands,” Rae said. “You made it real clear.”

Bernhardt began getting back in the car.

BERNHARDT TURNED WEST toward the airport instead of entering the Centro off the American Highway, and followed the periférico toward the east edge of the city where he had taken Quinn the night before. “I will show you a thing,” he said self-assuredly.

The boulevard began to crowd with motorbikes and Zapotecs on foot as it approached the immediate plain of the Atoyac. There was a displeasing feel of rapid activity without a center to make it knowable, like a disaster area being evacuated. Where the periférico drifted north, returning to the American Highway, the foot traffic thickened and he saw out on the dry flats a wide unspecified expanse of earthworks like a garbage plain, only larger. There was a teeming of bodies in the empty expanse. Smokes were strung out vaguely against the noon light. The Indians on the boulevard were crossing and making out onto the flats with bundles of cardboard and car remnants held over their heads. People were digging and others were simply standing half-dressed among the heaps of dirt and cardboard, staring at the city as if it was something they wanted and were deciding how to get.

“Are those the people who eat garbage?” Rae said, staring interested into the sea of boxes and rubble.

“Marginales,” Bernhardt said officiously, emphasizing the g in a way meant to impress. “Marginal people.”

Bernhardt made a U-turn on the boulevard and stopped at the opposite curb. The camp had a wide public quality that made it seem knowable and unmemorable, like the faces in the buses waiting out on the highway. Humanity without secrets. An army jeep was moving slowly among the earthworks and cardboard hovels, its long antenna with a red pennant wagging listlessly in the sunshine. “They come one time, maybe for Cinco de Mayo, and then don’t leave,” Bernhardt said as if the sight was an understatement of a much more illuminating truth. He sniffed significantly. “I have clients here,” he said. “They climb poles, take electricity, become a nuisance. Some are electrocuted. Sometimes the army comes with clubs and beats them at night. They have no rights, only needs, and so suddenly they are guerrillas.”

“Am I supposed to sympathize?” Quinn said.

Bernhardt pulled the Mercedes down into gear and eased back into traffic. “It is possible to work here without sympathizing. Maybe I don’t like your existence. But.…”

“What’s that designed to do for me?” Quinn said.

“Your business is complicated,” Bernhardt answered. “But it is not the only business. Everyone is marginal.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“The boy you see last night was a boy who lived there”—he motioned at the sea of hovels—“maybe a year ago, maybe less than a year.”

“Maybe not at all,” Quinn said. “Are you running for office, or working for me?”

Bernhardt wheeled the car back up into the narrow streets that led to the Centro. “You see in a tunnel. Outside what you see, things are not one way, but other ways at once. You need to be tolerant.”