Tours of the Black Clock

148

NOT LONG AFTER THAT we’re in Texas, or to be more precise, we’re just below what used to be the border of Texas. I … I’m not sure how this happens. It’s probably all that prevents my execution at the hands of the guerrillas; in the ambush that comes the day following our discovery of the massacred village, it’s a German bullet that saves me. The ambush is fast and overwhelming, at the bottom of a ditch. In the midst of the scant three minutes it takes place, I remember the short stocky second-in-command taking aim at me; I turn at the last moment to read it in his eyes. If anyone’s not getting out of this alive, his eyes say, it’s you. And then the eyes flinch with annoyance as though he’s just been stung by a mosquito, except it isn’t a mosquito; he just drops. A second later I’m dropped as well by a blow I never see. In the hours to come I’m only fleetingly conscious; I’m aware of the back of a truck, where I’m bound at my hands and feet and jostling with other prisoners. I assume the old man’s here too but I don’t see him. Lucia’s several bodies away from me, also bound; she may be alive or dead. When I come to again, I’m lying still bound on the open deck of a boat, bombs and gunfire in the distance; it’s nightfall and I crane my head above the edge of the boat to glimpse in the full moonlight the waters of what must be the gulf. I’m cognizant enough to think to myself that perhaps it isn’t the brightest thing to be sailing hostile waters in full moonlight. On the other hand, maybe that’s the idea. I don’t spot Z anywhere. Before slipping back to the deck, however, I do see those ancient birds of the blue city circling the dazzling lethal lights of the gulf as though they’re coming home; I wonder if the old man, who’s watched in his mind those birds night after night since we left, has sprung them loose by raising his eyes to the sky and opening them like cages. I rush to sleep before this boat is blown from the water. I’m surprised to wake at all, and a little more surprised to find myself sleeping next to a dying fire, the old man dozing right beside me, on a morning beach right outside of Brownsville.