The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

COYOTES

I was out past the dump, digging a grave for a coyote, when I spotted the van with the naked Mexican chained to the bumper heading my way.

Nothing unusual about that. The van belonged to the border patrol. It didn’t take a college degree to figure that the Mex had crossed the line and got himself noticed by the wrong folks. And in a town like Amigo, that meant trouble served up plain and hot and plenty of it.

That’s trouble, pure western style.

I mopped sweat from my brow with a dirty bandana and watched the van bumping over the rutted dirt road. The tires kicked up dry rust-colored dust. What didn’t stick to the Mexican clouded the crisp blue horizon, hiding Amigo from view.

There wasn’t much to hide, really. Like my daddy used to say before he up and vanished, “Amigo’s a one-horse town, scratch the horse.”

Most folks like it that way, I guess. Around here we keep to ourselves, and the rest of the world doesn’t bother us much. Amigo isn’t exactly a tourist magnet. Oh, once in awhile we get some magazine writer or amateur historian who wants to know about the time Billy the Kid rode through. And every now and then some university kid shows up and drives around the desert for a week or two hunting after Native American artifacts and such. But historians and archaeologists are pretty harmless, as long as they don’t go poking their noses into places they don’t belong. The sheriff and his deputies — with a little help from the border patrol boys — are pretty good at making sure that doesn’t happen.

Other strangers are a little more persistent. Like the flying saucer nuts who want to dredge up those stories from the fifties. Now, I don’t like to stereotype, but in the case of these so-called UFOlogists, it’s hard not to. In my experience they’re generally male and overweight. They’re as familiar with talk radio as they are unfamiliar with personal hygiene. Around here we don’t cater to them much. Mostly, we just shoo ’em on to Roswell. That town likes tourists.

But back to the van and the Mexican. I leaned on my shovel and watched both come my way. There was no sense trying to look busy. When you’ve got a job like mine, it doesn’t matter if you’re good at it or not. Putting on some eager beaver act isn’t likely to impress anyone, especially not the hardcases who pull down checks from the border patrol.

Animal control, that’s my line. All kinds of animals, all kinds of problems.

Jesus, here I go. Off the point one more time, but we’ll just have to let that naked Mexican keep for another minute or two. I promise I’ll keep it short.

If Rover’s got rabies, I get the call. Rattlers nest under a house, my phone rings. Sure, it’s a long way from a big fuckin’ deal. But that’s not to say the job doesn’t have possibilities. Say we had an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease hereabouts. Then my job would be a mucho grande fuckin’ deal. If I did something like quarantine some cattle, something where a few dollars were involved, the good people of Amigo would show me some respect.

But it never comes to that. Things go on around Amigo the same way they’ve been going on for years. As for my job, I know my place. I like it that way. I deal in roadkill mostly. Like the coyote, or anything else that gets caught between a set of headlights on the highway. I shovel what’s left off the blacktop and bury it out by the dump.

I’ve shoveled up Chihuahuas and Gila monsters. Rattlers and French poodles. One time I even shoveled up a dead alligator… at least that’s what I think it was. It was big and blackish green and scaly. If it was a gator, I sure as hell can’t figure out how it ended up in New Mexico.

Doesn’t matter to me. I figured out a long time ago that there’s no use trying to figure out anything at all. You ask me, the best thing to do is mind your own business and stick to your job.

I try to take my own advice. I answer my telephone when it rings. I drive around a lot. And when I come across something dead, I shovel it up and bury it out past the dump.

Dead is dead. As long as it doesn’t move, I’m not squeamish. And if it does move… well, I carry a gun.

See, I hate to see things suffer. There’s no cause for it, really. That’s what bothered me about the naked Mexican. There’s no need to be cruel. Just watching him made my stomach do a little flip-flop. The way he trotted along on bare, bloody feet behind the van, his shackled wrists clicking together, his arms outstretched, those pitiful screams tearing his sandpaper throat.

Christ, the poor bastard sounded like an animal or something. What’s that they say? Like a lamb going to the slaughter. It was a hell of a sound, especially with noon coming on. Not the kind of memory a man wants rattling around in his head when he’s just started thinking about lunch.

My guess is that the border patrol boys were of the same opinion, but I have my doubts. But whatever their reason, it seemed that they were tired of the naked Mexican, too.

The van picked up speed. The Mexican tripped. For a second he looked like a man diving into a swimming pool.

Only for a second, though.

The rest of it didn’t take long. The road, all sand and grit and gravel, skinned the Mexican raw in the time it took me to swallow around the lump in my throat.

I was quiet. The Mex kept on screaming, though. I could hear him above the smooth purr of the van’s engine. And then the driver cut to the left, tearing through a tangle of mesquite and golden brittlebrush as he picked up speed, and pretty soon the Mexican wasn’t screaming anymore.

The van didn’t head back to the dirt road, though.

It came in my direction.

I glanced down at the hole I’d dug. I did some quick calculations. The hole was big enough for a coyote, but something told me that it was going to have to be a whole lot bigger.

I picked up my shovel and got busy.

Rudy Duran unchained the Mexican’s corpse. Rudy’s dad was born in Mexico, but Rudy was born right here in Amigo. I’d known Rudy since we were kids. To me, he was hardly like a Mexican at all.

Rudy’s partner, Wes Baker, watched me work. At least I think he watched me. Those mirrored sunglasses make it hard to tell sometimes.

“You should have seen it, Roy.” Wes shook his head. “Me and Rudy are sittin’ in Carmelita’s, watchin’ the strippers and havin’ a couple beers — ”

“We’re off duty,” Rudy put in, as if it mattered. “We worked graveyard last night.”

“Yeah,” Wes said. “Anyway, I had barely blowed the foam off my first Bud when this scraggly-ass wetback comes stumblin’ in, nekkid as a jaybird.”

“Lookin’ all around but can’t see a damn thing,” Rudy said. “He’s desert blind.”

“The Mex bumped into Conchita Morales, who was doin’ a lap dance for Ted Miller. ’Chita barely got out of the way.”

“And Ted ended up with a couple hundred pounds of naked Mexican in his lap.”

“Yeah,” Wes said. “And you know how jumpy ol’ Ted is. Christ, he shoved the Mex this way. Then that way. But he couldn’t budge the wetback. And all the while Ted’s holdin’ onto one of those froo-froo drinks of his. Somethin’ all green and frothy with a swizzle stick in it. Ol’ Ted didn’t want to spill a drop. Those drinks cost money.”

“Five bucks a pop.” Rudy shook his head. “Unless it’s happy hour.”

“This sure as hell wasn’t happy hour.”

“Except for the Mex.” Rudy laughed. “Roy, you should have seen him. Hoppin’ around like a fat jumpin’ bean, yellin’ and screamin’ that same shit they all yell.”

“As if the whole damn world’s comin’ to an end.” Wes paused, like he was waiting for the story to settle in. He gave me just enough time to roll the Mex into the grave and cover him with a coyote blanket before asking, “Roy, you know why that Mex stuck to Ted’s lap?”

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, the boy might have been blind, but he could feel. And after gyratin’ on top of Ted’s tent pole for a minute or two, the Mex figured he deserved that twenty Ted had slipped Conchita for the lap dance.”

Wes stared at me. I think. Like I said, with the mirrored shades it’s hard to tell.

I figure he wanted to see if I’d laugh or not. I didn’t laugh, though. I just stared up at the blue sky and thought it over.

“Twenty bucks,” I said finally. “Damn. I’m in the wrong business.”

Rudy nearly split a gut. Wes joined in, hee-hawing like a damn burro. I kept quiet and shoveled dirt into the grave.

“Twenty bucks,” Rudy said when he’d calmed down. “Man. You should have seen the look on ol’ Ted’s face. I wonder if the faggot actually came. I’d give twenty and then some if I could see it all again.”

“Well, the world ain’t gonna end for a long, long time,” Wes said. “I bet you’ll see it again. Sooner or later.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And for free, too.”

By the time I finished working, I was good and dirty.

Wes wasn’t. He was all spit and polish, crisp uniform creases and not one stain on him.

Looking at us, you’d figure that Wes had been the high school quarterback or the star baseball pitcher. Some kind of jock, anyway. But the truth was that Wes wasn’t much on sports at all.

I was. Hell, I was a three letter man in high school. Baseball, football, and track.

I was the one who went to college, too. Not that it did me much good.

I went to college because I figured they’d teach me the things I needed to know. But they hardly taught me anything. All they did was ask questions, and pretty soon I got to thinking that no one at college knew anything. Not for sure, anyway.

Crazy questions. I couldn’t see the point to them then, and I can’t see the point to them now. Like this one professor I had for a philosophy class. He asked us all kinds of nutty questions. You know the kind of stuff I mean. Like: if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I mean, who gives a flying fuck?

But I stuck it out. I’m not a quitter. Four years. Then I went out in the real world, and pretty soon I forgot those questions, because there just didn’t seem much use for that stuff in everyday life.

I stayed away from Amigo for about ten years. I went through three jobs. Got married, got divorced. I can’t tell you why a lot of it happened. Sure, I could give you an explanation. I could tell you my side of the story. I could blame my bosses or my wife. I could blame caffeine or stress or the fact that my dad hit the road when I was ten years old.

Think about it. People look you straight in the face and tell you things all the time. Television newscasters, politicians, preachers and pundits. Even your best friends. But you never know if they’re telling the truth.

It’s no different with me. No one has to tell the truth. It’s real easy to lie. That’s one thing I learned all on my own. The truth is elusive. It’s slippery.

And the way people talk about it, like it’s the holy grail. Like they have an INALIENABLE RIGHT TO KNOW THE TRUTH.

Jesus. Some people want to know everything. But it’s probably best to forget the truth altogether. That’s what I think, anyway. Because the truth can be an anchor around your neck. Forget it, and keep moving the best way you know how, and you’ll be a whole lot happier.

But there are some things you never forget, no matter where you go, no matter how long you’ve been there. Like for instance I never quite forgot the things I learned growing up in Amigo. The farther away I got from it — in time, in distance — and the more I saw of the world removed from Amigo, the less I understood why I ever left at all.

Amigo is a simpler place, with simpler rules. Maybe that’s why I came back. I understand how things work here.

In Amigo, everything is black and white.

Except for the wetbacks. They’re brown.

They’re the color of the dirt that I heaped on that coyote’s grave.

Yeah. That’s right. I said “coyote’s grave.”

See, there wasn’t any naked Mexican. Not anymore. In fact there never had been a Mexican, now that he was tucked away under a dead coyote and dirt blanket.

Ask me. Ask Rudy. Ask Wes.

No Mexican at all, amigo.

Rudy chuckled one last time. “So what d’ya say, Wes? We take our buddy Roy to Carmelita’s? The three of us have a couple of beers and see what ’Chita and the other girls are up to?”

Wes stared at the grave. “No, Rudy. We don’t got time for that.”

The news didn’t break my heart. Carmelita’s is all right if you don’t mind your women with bite marks on their asses, but it’s not exactly my kind of place. The border patrol boys like it, though. But guys who drive around with Mexicans chained to their bumpers tend to develop some pretty⁷ strange quirks.

“Shit,” Rudy complained. “It ain’t like they’re payin’ us overtime.”

“You’re forgettin’ comp time,” Wes said.

“Fuck that. I got so many hours of that shit, I could retire now if they’d let me take it.”

“You should have thought of that before you killed the wetback.”

“I was tired of listening to him scream. Jesus. I just got mad, is all. I couldn’t help it.”

“Whatever,” Wes said, digging in his heels. “The simple fact is this: we come up short, and we have to do something about it.”

I stopped listening. The conversation didn’t have anything to do with me anymore. I tossed my shovel in the back of my truck and dug my keys out of my pocket.

Wes stepped in front of me. “Where you think you’re goin’, cowboy?”

“C’mon, Wes — ”

“Hold your horses. I got a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you see anybody else out here today?”

I nodded. “Some guy drove by, heading toward the buttes. Usual idiot. Looked like a saucer nut, if you ask me.”

“Sure he was a saucer nut?”

“I didn’t get a real good look at him, Wes. He didn’t even stop. But he looked like the type.”

“What was he driving?”

“He had a van.”

“What kind?”

“Dodge. Solid-panel — ”

“Solid-panel, huh?” Wes smiled. “That’s interesting.”

“Coyotes use solid-panel vans,” Rudy said. “Gringos who haul illegals. They pack ’em in like sardines. Haul ’em as far north as Chicago.”

“C’mon,” I said. “This guy was a saucer nut. Believe me, I know the type like the back of my hand.”

“Yeah,” Wes said. “I forgot. You went to college. You’re smarter than idiots like me and Rudy.”

I laughed it off. I had to. Most people who grow up in Amigo never leave, let alone come back. I’d done both. I was pretty sure that Wes didn’t trust me because of it. At least not the way he trusted Rudy, or other guys who’d stuck it out the way he had.

“I don’t think I’m all that smart,” I said. “Elsewise, I wouldn’t be going around with a shovel and a truckful of roadkill.”

“Yeah, well… ” Wes sighed. “Maybe you are smarter than us. Maybe the simple fact is that we need your help.”

“I haven’t had lunch, Wes.”

“Sorry, son. But I need me a bird dog.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not one bit.” Wes straightened. Sunlight glinted off his polished badge, and I was fairly blinded by the golden brilliance of authority.

Wes said, “This kind of work, you can’t just show up in a uniform. Folks tend to get nervous, change their plans all of a sudden.”

“What makes you think he’ll treat me any different?” I asked. “I wear a uniform. I carry a gun.”

Wes stared at my dirty khaki outfit. Gas station attendants looked more intimidating. As for my gun, there was no use showing off the .22 target pistol I kept in the glove compartment of my truck. The truck itself was bad enough — Wes stared at that dented hunk of Detroit steel with a smirk simmering on his face.

“It ain’t exactly the Batmobile,” he said. “And you ain’t the caped crusader, neither.”

I tried one more time. “C’mon, Wes — ”

He shook his head. “You know how it works around here, Roy.”

“Damn,” I said, because Wes was right. I did know.

Wes didn’t have to say anything else. Rudy handed me a walkie-talkie. “We’ll be close. You won’t see us, though.”

I tossed the walkie-talkie into my truck and opened the door. “And if I’m right?” I asked. “If the guy is just a saucer nut?”

Wes scratched his chin. “Got a tip for you, Roy.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t think positive. It’s a waste of time.”

The longer I talked to the guy in the solid-panel van, the easier it was for me to believe that Wes was right.

Not that he wasn’t different enough. For starters, he had a weird accent. The kind that made him sound smarter than he probably was. German, or Austrian — like Schwarzenegger in the movies — but with a hint of something else, too.

And on first glance the guy certainly looked the part. That was for sure. Like the hardware he was packing. He had a pair of expensive binoculars slung around his neck, and a video camera mounted on a tripod stood next to his van along with a couple of gizmos that might have been Geiger counters or electric juicers, for all I knew. Plus he had a pasty complexion and a nervous tic at one corner of his mouth, like he spent too much time indoors engaged in compulsive behavior. Covering all the electrical outlets in his house with aluminum foil to protect himself from alien transmissions. That kind of thing.

But after I’d spent a little time with him I began to think that the tic — just like his story and the video camera and all the rest of it — was some kind of elaborate put-on. Kind of like he’d read about UFOlogists in The Fortean Times and tried to duplicate the look.

See, the look isn’t everything. What the guy didn’t have was the curiosity that always piggy-backs the look. I mean, he didn’t ask me hardly any questions, and that’s not the way it works with saucer hounds. One of those nuts finds out you’ve lived in Amigo practically all your life, you can’t get rid of them with a crowbar.

First they want to know if you’ve ever seen a saucer. And if you’ve never seen a saucer, why then they want to know if you’ve ever seen an alien. And if you’ve never seen one of those, why maybe you’ve seen a black helicopter. Or one of those ubiquitous men in black.

And if you say you’ve never seen any of that stuff except for on television, why then they set about converting you. They want to convince you that you’d better open your eyes and start looking around, because you need to know the TRUTH.

Open your eyes, they say, and the desert will reveal its secrets. Sooner or later you’ll spot the caves and tunnels, the ones that lead to a vast underground complex where aliens dwell.

Martians, to be exact. Creatures exiled from their dead planet, a dying race living out their final days beneath ours.

The government knows all about the Martians, of course. Those black helicopters are government helicopters. Those men in black are government agents. They provide the Martians with things they need in exchange for Martian technology.

Think about it, the saucer nuts say. How’d we get from vacuum tubes to transistors so quickly, and then from transistors to microchips? We had to have some help. It’s easier to back-engineer from alien technology than to engineer from scratch. And if the price of a technological bounty is giving the Martians what they need, why then… what exactly is our future worth?

The Martians have appetites, sure. Appetites that humankind wouldn’t find acceptable if the story became common knowledge. The Martians have appetites, and the men from the government feed those appetites with an endless supply of…

Convicts…

Mental patients…

Ordinary people who KNOW THE TRUTH…

Once a saucer nut gets that deep into the whole little green men conspiracy thing, you can’t get a word in edgewise. All you can do is nod your head and say something like, “Guess I’ll have to start watching my backside a little more carefully.”

But that’s not the way it was with the guy from the solid- panel van. With him, the roles were all mixed up. He was the one watching his backside while I rattled on.

I told him the whole loopy story and when I finally finished up, I was the one who didn’t have anything left to say. But I had to say something. So I said, “All I’m trying to tell you is that it’s dangerous to be out here alone.”

His tone was matter-of-fact with just a hint of condescension. “I’m searching for empirical proof,” he said. “I find that’s the best way to treat any investigation, from the fantastic to the mundane. I must have proof before I can believe anything. And until I believe, I can think of no reason to be frightened.”

“All I’m saying is that you need to be careful.”

He nodded. “I have a cellular phone, and there’s a radio in the van.”

I didn’t know quite why he said that. Maybe it was an offhand comment. Or maybe he was giving me a warning. Telling me that all he had to do was finger a couple buttons or twist a dial, and he wouldn’t be alone anymore.

I eyed him hard, watching for his reaction to the questions I was about to ask. “It’s good to have a phone and a radio,” I said. “But how about a gun? Do you have one of those?”

He smiled. “If it’s Martians I’m dealing with, I don’t see what earthly good a gun would do me.”

It was no answer at all, but he laughed as if he’d told me a joke.

He actually laughed.

I can’t imagine what kind of fool he took me for.

“I guess you know what you’re doing,” I said.

He nodded. “I guess I do.”

I got in my truck and started it up.

“Adios,” I said as I flipped a U-turn.

“Adios,” he replied, dismissing me. And then with a wry smile he added: “Vaya con Dios.”

I drove until I was well out of sight. Then I pulled over and called Wes on the walkie-talkie.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “There’s something wrong with the guy. He looks the part, but when you talk to him he doesn’t give off the right vibes.”

Wes’ voice crackled over the radio. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ve hit the jackpot.”

I thumbed the transmitter. “What?”

“We got eight of ’em, Roy. Stupid wetbacks. Rudy spotted ’em heading down the arroyo. They didn’t have nowhere to go, really. So even if the guy in the van is a coyote, it doesn’t matter. He can sit out there in the heat ’til his brain boils up in his skull if he wants to, but we already got what we — ”

In the background, I heard a scream.

“I got to get back to work,” Wes said. “We need you to join up with us. Just follow the arroyo and you’ll find us. I think we could use a hand.”

“That’s a little out of my line, Wes.”

“Hell if it is.” Now Wes was yelling above the screams in the background. “You’re in animal control, ain’t you?”

“Yeah, but — ”

“No but’s about it. You get your ass out here.”

The walkie-talkie went dead. The whole thing made me a little nervous. So nervous that I took the .22 target pistol out of the glove compartment and gripped it like some kind of talisman.

Where I stood, it was real quiet.

I remembered that question, the one that used to drive me crazy in college.

If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one around to hear it…

I was in the middle of nowhere.

… does it make a sound?

Somewhere out there, someone was screaming.

But it didn’t matter how hard I listened.

I didn’t hear anything at all.

When I caught up with them, Wes and Rudy were already hard at work.

There were eight Mexicans. Three men — one of them old enough to have white hair — three women, one teenage girl, and one kid.

The younger men had been stripped and handcuffed. Wes held a gun on them, even so. The women and the kid and the old man huddled in a little patch of shade cast by the west wall of the arroyo.

The teenage girl was down on her hands and knees. Her faded blouse was torn and her jeans lay in a tired knot off to one side, along with a scuffed up pair of boots with holes in the soles. Rudy was behind her, his uniform pants halfway down, grunting away.

“Howdy, Roy.” Wes smiled. “Welcome to the party.”

My gut rolled. I couldn’t see the point of this. Like I said, there’s no reason to be cruel. But Wes and Rudy had obviously crossed that line a long time ago.

Wes didn’t trust me. That much was obvious. He forgot about the wetbacks and turned his attention to my face, just the way he had earlier, trying to gauge my reaction.

I know he didn’t expect the expression he got.

“Look out!” I yelled.

But the old man was already there. He’d come from behind when Wes turned to face me. He slashed at Wes with a switchblade. Wes whirled just in time to avoid the weapon, firing his pistol at the same time, and the old man tottered back as the bullets pitted his chest and he tripped over Rudy’s legs before Rudy knew what was going on.

Then it was like watching dominoes fall. The old man went down hard on top of Rudy, splashing the border guard with blood. Then Rudy went flat on top of the girl, who in turn collapsed face-first in the dirt.

For a second the three of them looked like some kind of Mexican sandwich smothered in bloody salsa. Then Rudy yelled, “Jesus Christ!” and slithered out from in between. The old man toppled over in the dirt and didn’t move as Rudy stumbled away, pulling up his pants with shaky hands.

The girl just lay there in the dirt. Wes didn’t look at her at all. He didn’t look at Rudy, either. What he did was stare down at the dead Mexican. “He wasn’t any good to us, anyway,” Wes said, the smoking pistol still fisted in his right hand. “He was too old and then some.”

“Drop it, gringo.”

The voice came from behind us, and above. I recognized the weird accent almost immediately. I turned and saw him standing there, the setting sun at his back, some kind of machine pistol in his hand.

The man from the solid-panel van.

Wes started talking, but it didn’t do any good. His voice trembled. All of it sounded like excuses, anyway.

“Shut up.” The guy aimed his weapon at Wes. “Like I said, drop it. I won’t ask you again.”

Wes tossed his gun in the dirt. Too fast for my taste. Even his mirrored sunglasses couldn’t hide his fear. Suddenly he looked fifty pounds lighter, as if someone had let the air out of him.

The stranger caught my eye and smiled. “I told you I had a radio, amigo. It’s a scanner, actually. The best money can buy. I picked up your conversation. Hope you don’t mind my dropping in.”

He was cool, all right. I’ll give him that.

Unfortunately, Rudy wasn’t cool. He stood close to the van, still holding onto his pants, still shaky from dancing the sex and death cha-cha. His eyes were focused on his gun belt, which lay on a rock a few feet away. The gun belt was on the other side of the border patrol van, cut off from the stranger’s view, and I could almost hear the wheels turning in Rudy’s head.

If he could get behind the van before the stranger opened fire, and if he could get his hands on his gun…

Rudy went for it. His pants didn’t.

Rudy belly-flopped in the dirt. The stranger opened up with the machine pistol. Bloody roses bloomed along Rudy’s spine as he pawed the ground. I watched him die in a couple seconds and didn’t move an inch.

I couldn’t. I was too scared.

Most of the Mexicans started running. Wes made a grab for his pistol. The raped girl was still flat on the ground, like she was living a couple minutes behind everyone else. Wes almost had his gun. Mexicans ran past me like I wasn’t there. A burst of gunfire chopped three fingers from Wes’ hand, and he screamed.

I blinked.

The raped girl was up now. She took off like a shot.

I sucked a breath between clenched teeth. I have to admit that I’ve never been so scared in all my life.

The girl ran my way. I clothes-lined her. As I took her down I pulled the target pistol from behind my back and jammed the barrel against her skull.

I knew that my gun hand was shaking. The girl whimpered and I put my other hand over her mouth, but that only made it worse because I could feel her frightened breaths washing my palm.

That’s when I really started to shake. Wes was screaming something awful. My grip tightened on the pistol. My index finger was coiled around the trigger, and I was afraid that I might pull it by accident.

I looked up at the stranger. “It’s up to you,” I said, and I was surprised to find that I didn’t sound nearly as nervous as I felt.

He dumped the machine pistol into the arroyo.

“Get down here,” I said.

Hands raised, the stranger started down. I moved away from the girl, keeping the pistol on him, moving slowly so I could grab his weapon before he made it to the bottom of the arroyo.

Wes was behind me now

So was the girl.

I heard her running, bare feet scrabbling over loose rock.

I didn’t do it to be cruel. You have to understand that.

But she didn’t give me any other choice.

She really didn’t.

The stranger had been a lot of trouble, so I made him strip and chained him to the bumper.

I wasn’t going to kill him. Wes and Rudy had already made that mistake once today. I planned to drive slow. We didn’t have far to go. Maybe three miles, tops.

I kicked some dirt over Wes’ severed fingers as I climbed into the van. Wes was riding shotgun. His uniform shirt was off, only now it wasn’t so crisp and clean because he had it wrapped around his shot-up hand.

I slipped off my belt and gave it to Wes, figuring he could use it as a tourniquet. “You sure you don’t want me to take you to town first?” I asked. “I could leave the Mex here while I dropped you at the doctor. It wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“I ain’t no pussy,” Wes hissed, as if I’d insulted him. “I can hold out and then some.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just figured you might want to get to a doctor.”

“No way. I want to see how tough this boy is before I start worrying about me.”

“I can understand that.” I buckled up and keyed the engine. “Wait’ll you hear the guy’s story. That’ll make you feel better.”

Wes groaned as he pulled the belt tight with his teeth. So much for the tough guy act.

“C’mon. You’ll be all right.” I started driving, nice and slow. “Anyway, the guy’s with a human rights group. Seems some Mexican politico got one too many complaints about illegals who cross the border near Amigo never making it to where they’re going. The politician is a man of the people. Claims to be, anyway. So he sent our friend with the machine pistol to check out the story.

“Here’s the real funny part about our pal. The guy’s actually a Mexican citizen. A white Mexican.”

I laughed out loud.

“He told me that his family is German. That’s where the weird accent comes from — it’s German with a splash of salsa. Guy’s grandfather was a brewmeister. Came to Mexico to make beer, along with a whole bunch of other Germans. Our boy is a third-generation German-Mexican, and damn proud of it.” Man, I couldn’t stop laughing. In spite of his pain, Wes laughed too. He couldn’t help himself.

“Jesus,” he said. “A German wetback.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s getting so you can’t trust anyone anymore.”

The white-skinned Mexican was pretty worn out by the time I chained him to a big eyebolt set in a concrete block. He sat down in the dirt and stared at the mouth of the cave.

We steer strangers away from this place. The ones that do stumble onto it have a way of disappearing. Forever.

Wes honked the horn. Now that the Mex was chained up, he was ready to go and then some.

I wasn’t. Not quite yet.

I squatted down next to the Mexican and got as comfortable as I could. “I’ve never seen a Martian myself,” I told him. “At least, I don’t think I have. I shoveled something off the highway one time that might have been a Martian, but I can’t say so for sure. It was big and blackish green and scaly, I can tell you that much. But for all I know it might have been an alligator, though I sure can’t explain what an alligator was doing on a highway in New Mexico.”

The white Mexican didn’t say anything. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he was too tired.

Or maybe he figured it would be smarter to listen.

So I kept on talking. “When the stories first started back in the fifties, no one took them seriously. I mean, a few lights in the sky… who knows what causes stuff like that? Could be some secret government aircraft. Could be an optical illusion. Hell, I guess it could be Martians, too.

“But lights in the sky don’t exactly make you sit up and take notice in a serious way. No. It takes more than that, even around a flyspeck town like Amigo.

“Once folks started disappearing… well, that was a different story.” I sighed. “That’s serious. My dad was one of the first. He went for a walk one night and never came back. Now, maybe he just left town. Maybe he was sick of me and my mom and Amigo. But he wasn’t the only one. Around the same time, a lot of other folks vanished without a trace. One man disappears, you can explain that away. But ten or twenty, and women and children, too…

“So the sheriff started sniffing around out in the desert. He was a real go-getter. He found the caves and the tunnels, even made a trip a couple of miles down one of the tunnels, if you believe the story. Not that he saw anything. He was smart enough to trust his gut instincts, and he turned tail when he got to feeling like he was in over his head.

“Not that he was yellow. He formed a posse — some town roughnecks, a couple ex-lawmen, a few border patrol guys -— and went back to one of the caves. That’s when he found these things.”

I pointed to the concrete block with the eyebolt that held the Mexican’s chain. “There were fifty of ’em scattered around a quarter-mile area. Each one had a chain, and at the end of each chain was a shackle with a key already in it. And chained to the ten slabs nearest the mouth of the cave were corpses, folks everyone recognized who had disappeared from town.

“The men who saw them — or claim they did — say that those corpses looked like they’d been through the meanest part of hell. However they looked, the sheriff got the message, all right. That’s when we started rounding up the wetbacks. And that’s when folks stopped disappearing from town.

“We hear stories. Sure. Every now and then, one of those wetbacks slips out of some hole in the desert and tries to make a run for it. Usually they end up in Amigo. I’ve heard that they talk about man-eating aliens and caves that stink like slaughterhouses and all kinds of crazy shit. Not that I could say so myself — I don’t speak Mexican and I sure as hell wouldn’t talk to anyone like that even if I did.

“What I think is that it’s better not to listen to any of it. You run across a wetback like that, I think it’s better to stuff a rag in his mouth and chain him up out here where he belongs, and turn your back and forget him, and try to get on with your life the best way you know how.

“I’ve never seen a black helicopter. I’ve never seen any men in black. I can’t tell you how we went from vacuum tubes to transistors to microchips so damn fast. I’m not one of those who thinks that salvation comes from knowing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I think that sometimes it’s better not to know.

“I don’t know what lives down in those caves. I don’t want to know. Martians or government agents or Nazis from the earth’s core, it doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that no one from Amigo is going to end up down there.”

Wes honked again. I knew it was time to go. I got up. Really, there was no reason to hang around. The whole thing was out of my hands now that the white Mexican was chained to the concrete block.

He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t say a word. He just stared at the mouth of the cave, and he kept his mouth shut.

That was fine with me.

“Folks from Amigo, we’re safe out here,” I said.

I turned my back on the Mexican.

“We have been for a long time.”

I opened the door to Wes’ van.

“We want to keep it that way.”

That was when I heard him move behind me. The chain played out, but he couldn’t get far.

He took a breath. “Don’t leave me here,” he said. “For the love of God… please… ”

His voice was very small. In a high wind, you’d hardly notice it.

I stood there for a minute, listening to him beg, but I wasn’t going to turn around. If I didn’t do that, it would be just like I was listening to nobody.

If I didn’t turn around, there was no white Mexican behind me.

No white Mexican at all.