Free The Cotton-Pickers by B. Traven Page B

imitation.
     

10
     “No,” said Antonio, calmer now, “I certainly didn’t mean to kill Gonzalo. It might just as well have been me. Believe me, amigo mio! I’m not to blame for his death.”
    “I know, Antonio. It might just as well have been you. It’s the bush that grabs us all by the scruff of the neck and has us at its mercy.”
    “Yes! You’re right, Gales, it’s the bush. Here in town we’d never have hit on such a crazy idea. But the bush talks to you the whole night through: a jungle pheasant giving his death cry as he’s attacked, a cougar howling as he goes to the kill; nothing but blood and strife. In the bush it’s teeth; with us it was knives. But, honestly, it was only a game! We did it for fun ― really, only fun, nothing more.
    “We used knives, but it might just as well have been dice, or cards, or a roulette wheel. The point was that after seven weeks’ work we didn’t have enough money left to get away from that godforsaken place to look for something better. We had just about the same amount. Gonzalo had a little over twenty pesos. I had twenty-five.
     “It was Sunday night. We wanted to be on our way on Monday morning. Charley had left a few days before; Abraham had gone too. That left the three of us, Gonzalo, Sam, and me.
    “We counted out our money on the floor. Each of us had some gold pieces, and the small change in silver. And as the money lay there before us, hardly visible in the light of the fire, Gonzalo let fly.
    ” ‘What can I do with these few lousy coppers?’ he asked. `Here we’ve been, slaving away like mad for seven long weeks, seven days a week, from dawn to sundown, all through the blazing heat. We limped home so done in we could hardly move our fingers to cook our miserable grub that we were too tired to swallow. We slept on the floor. No Sunday, no pleasure, no music, no dancing, no girls, no drinking ― only some stinking tobacco rolled in corn husks. And now look ― what’s the use of these lousy coppers?’
    “He shoved the money away with his foot.
    ” ‘My shirt is in rags,’ he grumbled on. ‘My pants are rags. My sandals ― take a look at them, Antonio ― no soles, no nothing. In the end, after sweating like a work horse, there’s nothing left. If only it were forty pesos!’
    “Saying this, his face lit up.
    ” ‘With forty pesos I could manage. I could go to Mexico City, buy myself some decent clothes so that if I wanted to say buenas tardes to a girl she’d see me as a human being. And I’d still have a few pesos to tide me over for a few days.’
    ” `You’re right, Gonzalo,’ I said, `forty pesos is just the sum I need to buy the absolute necessities.’
    ” ‘Do you know what I’m thinking?’ Gonzalo went on. `Let’s play for the money. Neither of us can get anywhere with the few sickly coppers we’ve got. If you get my money or I get yours, then at least one of us can do something. As it is, we’re both bums. I’d drink away these few coppers at one sitting, just out of rage at having worked for nothing.’
    “Gonzalo’s idea wasn’t bad,” Antonio went on with his tale. “I too would have drunk up the little I had left. Once you get started on that goddamned tequila, you don’t stop until the last centavo’s gone. You go on drinking, drunk or sober; and what you don’t get down your gullet, your fellow boozers will swig for you. The café and flophouse keepers will cheat a drunk, and the miserable coins that are left are pinched from your pocket. You know all about it, Gales.”
    Didn’t I, though. I knew cheap tequila. You shudder after each copita and have to gulp down something for a chaser. The barkeeper, or cantinero, is always wise enough to keep a supply of pickled botanas on sticks, but they burn your throat. So you keep on guzzling tequila, drenching your gizzard with the stuff as if bewitched or as if the damned throat-stripper were some magic elixir which, for some mysterious reason, had to be