Free Puerto Vallarta Squeeze by Robert James Waller Page B

streets, Danny shook his head, glad he wasn’t
     living there in heat and dust. No matter where he was headed, it would never come to that.
    “I grew up in a village just like that one, lived in a house just like those, went to a little adobe school like the one we
     just went by.” Luz was kneeling between them, looking out the windshield. “Danny, it’s unkind to say and think such things.
     These are poor people; life is very hard for them.”
    She’d heard it before—gringo superiority, tourists open-mouthed and aghast at how the po’ folks live and why doesn’t somebody
     do something about it, and what happens to all that foreign aid we send? That sort of bullshit clucking.
    Danny turned to her. “You’re right. Sorry.”
    The shooter was thinking along the same lines. “Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, you know. Americans born into luxury’s
     cradle, then escaping it by running down here looking for meaning because all the crap we buy somehow doesn’t cut it for us.
     And while we’re looking, we’re bitching about the sanitation setup of a destitute Mexican village. Ever strike you we’re nuttier
     than hell, Danny Pastor?”
    “Yeah, I know what you mean. Along with that, I remember the writer Carlos Fuentes saying all gringos look alike to Mexicans
     and our language sounds like Chinese to them.”
    The talk about place had given Danny an opening. “Where you from, originally?” He pretended to concentrate on driving, giving
     the impression he wasn’t all that interested.
    “Brooklyn, Seventh Avenue. Area called Park Slope.”
    “You grow up there?” Danny had a deep-down sense the quiet man was in a mood to talk.
    “Partly. My father pulled out when I was ten.” The shooter looked over at him, a kind of dark rain moving across his face.
    He was calling up old images, bad things that happened. His voice took on that color and sounded distant, maybe lonely, maybe
     all of that and something more. For a moment Danny thought the conversation was over, but the shooter went on. “Don’t know
     why he left. Never did understand it. Just left. My mother couldn’t take care of both of us, so she sent me off to live with
     her mother and father in northern Minnesota. The ol’ man drank a lot. My grandmother was pretty nice, but they were in their
     seventies by that time. Not ready to take up being parents again.”
    Danny was surprised at what the shooter was saying, talking personal stuff, perfect background information and context for
     the events of two nights ago. “Minnesota sounds pretty good. I went through there once. Lots of water, clean.”
    “It’s all right. When the ol’ man was off the bottle he taught me to hunt and fish. Did a lot of that. All of ’em are dead
     now, my mother included.”
    Danny bored in. “Ever see your father again… after he left?”
    “Once. He and my mother got back together again and came down to Parris Island when I finished boot camp. Didn’t have much
     to say to them… .”
    The shooter let it go, his voice circling down. He lit a cigarette and watched the dry, flat countryside rolling by, the Sierra
     Madre tracking along parallel to them forty miles east. A-little farther on Luz said something Danny couldn’t make out over
     the wind blasting through the Bronco and the roar of a low-geared engine.
    The shooter heard her. “She wants to visit the cemetery where her parents are buried. Says it’s down toward someplace called
     Teacapán.”
    “Ceylaya.” Luz was nearly shouting, trying to make Danny hear. “My parents are buried there. I have not visited their graves
     in four years.”
    “Luz, this isn’t any goddamned tour. It’s a long way to the border. Maybe we’ll stop on the way back if it works out and you
     can visit all the cemeteries you want.” Danny was saying those things, knowing he wouldn’t do it, knowing he’d make up another
     excuse on the way back. Sometimes you say those things