Free Atticus by Ron Hansen Page A

pity.”
    â€œYou oughta be real proud.”
    â€œDon’t encourage me. We had a police chief here, the jefe; he’s retired now, but you know where he was from? Omaha! The town has gone to hell since he left. Omaha’s near Denver, isn’t it?”
    â€œEight hours by car if you speed.”
    â€œOh, facts,” he said. Stuart stared ahead. “The chamber of commerce here has fourteen members whose origins are Europe or Canada or the United States, compared to just thirty Mexicans. If you go to hospital, you’ll find no less than one-fourth of the doctors and nurses have their degrees from the U.S. And the current principal of the highschool is from Williams College, in Massachusetts. We are like the Romans in Palestine, the British in India. We are less than ten percent of the population but provide seventy-two percent of its tax base. And so we are catered to.” Stuart peered farther down the street and said, “Hup!” and braked, further rolling down his side window as he said, “My beggar.”
    A one-legged man on crutches swung along on his good leg to get to the car. His iron gray eyes looked in at Atticus and then at Stuart and then he hung his hand out on the rolled-down window glass. Stuart talked to him in Spanish, held out a half-dollar in peso notes, and then rolled up the window again. The one-legged man was crossing himself and speaking Spanish as Stuart drove away.
    â€œHector prays for me. Words very pretty to the ear, a poem about my charity being recorded in Heaven. All very stupid, of course, but in a poor country one is expected to pay a little to the street people, and I have chosen Hector.” Stuart rapped the horn and a boy scampered off the road. The boy watched them pass with a soccer ball on his hip. Stuart smiled. “You see how my Hector was looking for me? Already this morning he has probably stopped by my villa. Such fidelity! I hope to finally elope with Hector. We’ll float on bright rafts in the Bay of Campeche.”
    Stuart went down Cinco de Mayo street and then into a greenly shaded alley. He stopped the car in a dirt parking area behind a pink mortuary that was called Cipiano. Stuart paused as he opened his door. “Are you prepared for this, Atticus?”
    â€œHave to be.”
    Stuart got out but then angled under the station wagon’s ceiling. “You could wait in the car, perhaps. Or you could go over to the parroquia. Renata will be there soon.”
    Atticus got out of the Dodge and nudged the door closed. “You go ahead and I’ll be at your heels.”
    The pink mortuary’s interior was as cool and damp as a flower shop. A plump woman in a green shift that she’d hiked up high on her thighs was squirting a floor with hose water, and four shy brown men in straw cowboy hats and snap-buttoned polyester shirts were standing apart from a painted black coffin that looked more like a hope chest. Hewn into its soft pine wood were rising suns, pheasants, butterflies, and flowers. Tilted atop the coffin was a copper-framed picture of a fiery Sacred Heart of Jesus held within a green crown of thorns. A heavy man in a gray sharkskin suit and heavily pomaded, wavy hair slid a purple kneeler across the room, halted it at the head of the coffin, and held his hand on it as he hinted the father of the deceased forward.
    Atticus dipped off his cowboy hat and got down onto the kneeler with pain. His hand floated over wood that was still tacky with paint as he offered up the familiar prayers he’d been saying since he was a child. Without turning, he asked the Englishman, “Would they open it?” He heard Stuart’s fluent Spanish and faced him. The guy in the sharkskin suit was up on his toes, whispering into Stuart’s ear.
    â€œCipiano is saying you are not permitted inspection,” Stuart said. “Embalming isn’t done here, you see.” Hewaited for another sentence. “And