Free A Covenant with Death by Stephen Becker Page A

been the most cheerful of Prohibition towns: half in the land of the free, dry, and half in sodden Mexico. From Nogales we aimed straight at the Rio Conceptión and then followed the river to Ignacio’s, bouncing along a track that put me in mind of Central Asian trade routes. A caravan, camels and yurts and pointed turbans, would not have surprised me there. By the time we reached Ignacio’s we were encased in dust, half blind, and stiff in the joints. Two hours later we were clean and refreshed, pumping a powerful red wine into ourselves and chatting in barbarous Spanish, all but Ignacio, who was phatic: he communicated in elemental bursts of sound reinforced by the jiggling, bobbing, or oscillation of hands, shoulders, feet, hips, and head. He was just too lazy to bother with consonants.
    The Montemayors were far more important to me than I knew; and when I think back I can remember almost nothing of what was said. I remember the land, the vine-covered slopes and the field of maize, the groves along the river, the higher slopes where Ignacio and my father had hunted desert rams, the gardens near the house and the formal fishpond, and the homes of Ignacio’s tenants, or fellow farmers, or dependents—the relationship was never clear. I remember a town some fifteen miles down the river, with an alcalde and a guard post, and neither the mayor nor the soldiers really sure to whom they owed allegiance; and a priest who was quite sure, which outraged Ignacio, who hated priests. It was an adobe town with a beautiful stone church that lacked a bell. The bell had been carried off for smelting years before in a local Jacquerie. I remember the cantina there, beaded curtains, dark inside, many flies, but cool, and tequila slowly invading the eyes and brain so that the walls and bottles and bartender shifted from dark green to purple and preposterously to dark yellow and the day outside the door was bright red through the hanging beads and even the voices took on tints, murmured browns and grays and a clanging orange and the dirty pink of a shrill laugh.
    I remember Rafaela only dimly in those early days. She was eight years younger than I and slightly wall-eyed; wide-set eyes, almost black and diverging slightly. Rafaela loved all living things and sulked when the men hunted. We paid little attention to her, a girl; but now and then her grave composure was disquieting even to adults. I condescended to her for many years because she made me feel like a child. Her voice was dignified, its tone level; she spoke slowly and firmly, and she never lied.
    All that too was my life; how much of it, Bryan Talbot may have taught me.
    Juano Menéndez owned—flaunted—a Stanley Steamer, and at twenty minutes of two he barged into the courthouse square on his burnished throne. The automobile itself was almost silent, emitting a gentle ffft-ffft-ffft, but was usually followed by a pack of yelping hounds; apparently the Steamer gave off a hiss, or a whistle, beyond the range of the human ear but irresistible to dogs. This day Juano came to a stop almost surrounded by small children, and with cheerful resignation he dismounted, plucked a large sack from the seat, and poured an inch of chestnuts onto the boiler. The children, all shapes and colors, watched in silence and greedy awe. The automobile hissed delicately, an outsize samovar. I stood beside Juano and contemplated the pagan, hungry eyes of tomorrow’s leaders, the white teeth, the torn shirts and the varied pigments, the bare feet, the scabby knees, the grimy wrists and elbows, the loving effulgence of sunlight on young hair. The day was bright, hot; the square lay in a peaceful bath of tropical balm, Juano was stocky, black hair turning white, his skin dark and leathery; he was health itself, and well-muscled health, and even in lazy repose he emanated strength. “This looks bad,” he said. “What a bad thing.”
    â€œIf it’s all true,”