Free Death in Veracruz by Hector Camín

His voice was thin but resonant, his words clipped. “Cream fresh from the barn. Do you want to try some?” Once again the stern question. He sounded cordial though very much accustomed to giving orders.
    â€œGive him some fresh cream,” he commanded, still without looking at me.
    The crackling sound of hot oil and the smell of lit burners wafted from the kitchen where two women and a boy with bare feet were hard at work.
    â€œYou weren’t supposed to come until next week,”Pizarro said, poking at his cream.
    â€œThat’s right,” I said. “But I was on vacation in Tuxpan. It was nearby, so I decided to come sooner.”
    â€œOnce I went to a celebration of the saint’s day of a
paisano
named Manuel Talamás,” Pizarro said. He continued to work at his cream and had yet to look up from his plate. “He was a very dear friend, and we agreed that I would arrange a serenade to begin after midnight. But it was raining, so I decided to start early. I changed the time to Wednesday, June 10, 1971, at 10:30, and he didn’t hear us arrive. Manuel lived outside of town where there were no street lights and no sidewalks. We got there around 10:20. We began setting up, and people started to gather for the serenade. But that’s not what it sounded like to him. He thought a fight was brewing because he didn’t expect us until later, and he’d had problems in the neighborhood that day. Somebody was after him, or that’s what he thought. The point is he heard us and got confused. He started firing his carbine out the window to defend himself against the mob he thought was coming to lynch him.”
    â€œThe woman who keeps house for me is from Tuxpan,” I said. “She came to spend a few days with her family, and I came to see if we could do the interview ahead of time.”
    Pizarro’s aide brought a large bowl of heavy cream from the kitchen and put it next to me. “Serve yourself, sir.”
    Behind him the barefoot boy brought me white bread rolls—toasted and sliced in half—on one plate and my own sugar bowl, not the one already on the table for Pizarro, but a different one. I praised the fresh cream and served myself generously.
    â€œJuice and fruit.” Pizarro’s order sounded purposely frugal as if he disapproved of my portion of cream. “The climate of Poza Rica is ideal for work,” he said, starting in on his carefully doctored cream. “The gas flares and the naturalheat put people in a bad mood so they work harder.”
    â€œIn the heat you tire faster,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t need to worry about getting tired. Around here nobody’s working so they can live longer. They work because they have to. Being in need is humiliating, and humiliation turns to rage. When you’re angry, you have more energy and you work better. The heat helps sustain the anger. When did you get to Tuxpan?”
    â€œYesterday”
    â€œYou got tired of Tuxpan in a hurry.”
    His people brought in an enormous dish of fresh tropical fruit, mangos, pomegranates, melons, bananas, small sapotes, guanábanas, and a plate with cubes of papaya, watermelon disks, sliced lemons. And a glass of orange juice. It was all laid out to my left well away from where my right arm brushed the space occupied by the sugar bowl, the plate, the flower, and Pizarro’s conversation.
    â€œDid you stay at a hotel in Tuxpan?” Pizarro said in the stern voice that made questions sound like statements.
    â€œThe Robert Prince, yes.”
    â€œThat’s in Poza Rica,” Pizarro said.
    â€œThe Hotel del Parque. Excuse me.”
    â€œIt’s on the river,” Pizarro remarked as if testing me and requiring an answer.
    â€œOverlooking the shipyard.”
    I took some papaya cubes. Before I could finish, the boy in the kitchen was back with a plate of small Veracruzan meat pies oozing with lard, sauce and cheese