After a hotel lunch, a few miles out of the city on the Mitla road we came upon El Tule, and Meyer said that he wanted to be a tourist for a few minutes, and look at the biggest tree in the world.
It was not far from the highway, a hundred yards perhaps. It dwarfed the old church nearby. I was astonished to see how rich and vital and green it was. Seemed to be of the banyan family. Elephant-gray bark. Glossy dark leaves. There was a low iron fence all the way around it. The trunk was maybe a hundred and fifty feet in circumference. It made better than an acre of shade.
Meyer stood absolutely still, staring up into the cool green shadowy places beyond the giant lower limbs. When he turned smiling toward me, I knew that the tree had restored his nerves and composure.
“At the time of Christ,” he said, “nobody was giving this tree a second look. It was just an ordinary little tree.”
“It looks as if it has decided to stay around awhile.”
“And I am going to come back here,” he said, “and I am going to paint myself blue, and I am going to live up there in the top of that tree forever.”
“Come on, Meyer. Ya vamonos.”
The knowledge of the huge black beard on Jerome Nesta simplified the search.
“El americano con una barba negra y grande. Un escultor.”
Ah, yes. I have seen him. Yes, he goes often to the ruins. Also to the Museo de Arte Zapoteca, near the plaza and central market. No, I do not know where he lives.
We found an American student at the small museum. He was an archeology major from the University of New Mexico, an exchange student working on the continuing excavation and restoration program at the Mitla ruins. His name was Burt Koontz, and he was out in the rear courtyard, carefully washing and brushing the fragile shards of an old broken vase. He was burned to the rough red shade of roof tiles. He wore a white T-shirt, khaki shorts, and G.I. boots.
“I know Jerry. I mean as much as I guess you can get to know him. They let him come in and make sketches. He’s been sketching some of the old stone heads. I haven’t seen him around the last few days though. Maybe even a week. I couldn’t say for sure.”
He told us, as he worked, that he had been curious about Nesta. He was big and he moved carefully, as if he were convalescing from a serious illness. A Mexican girl always came with him. Young, but not pretty. One of those broad stocky ones with the same kind of Indio face you see in the old carvings. She would sit with infinite patience under one of the trees and wait for him, then get up when he came out, and follow him, a few steps behind, usually carrying one of those baskets they take to the market.
He had the impression that Nesta was living over toward the south side of town, up one of those steep dirt streets to the left of the main road as you come in.
So Meyer and I trudged up and down a lot of steep little streets, and met with varying degrees of suspicion, indifference, and secret amusement. But with the help of pesos and persistence, we finally found the place, on Calle Alivera, halfway up the hill. There was a pink house that seemed to be crumbling away. There was a walled courtyard with a broken gate. In the courtyard were mounds of litter, a couple of dozen small noisy children, and some women squatting around a pump, several of them nursing the future members of the gang.
We had a twelve-year-old businessman who led us across to a room in a far corner with a door that opened onto the roofed gallery that extended along the side of the courtyard. It was a dark little room. There was a cement and plaster fireplace-stove built into one corner. There was a raised platform along the opposite wall, where pallets could be placed for sleeping. The little room was entirely empty. I could not get it through the boy’s head that I wanted him to speak slowly and clearly. So I had to make him repeat everything over and over until I thought I had the general idea.
The wife of the Americano was Luz. They had lived here many weeks. Then they had gone away. Three days ago. Four. Maybe they were married, maybe not. It was the same. They were poor. For marriage the priests and the government charge too much money, so one waits. The Americano had little Spanish. Luz had been married to a baker and had three sons. The baker and the three sons had died of enormous pain in the belly. Luz had the pain but had not died. The Americano seemed often sick. The room was five pesos a week. Maybe the Americano had sold his … I could not understand what it was that Nesta was supposed to have sold. He said it so many times he was getting discouraged and angry before I caught on. It was a gigantic head made of wood, taller than a man. The señor worked on it each day. It was a very curious thing. It was very ugly.
As near as I could tell, the giant head had been carried away by the señor and another big Americano, with great difficulty. And the tools and the cooking pots and the clothing and the beds. They all went away in a heap-di-row. In a what? Heap-di-row. What? Heap-di-row! Again, please? Heap-di-row! Heap-di-row!
He was close to tears with frustration. So I brightened his face with pesos. Once again as we crossed the courtyard the children fell silent, stopped all movement, and stared at us. The women pulled the edges of serapes together to hide the sleepy suck of small mouths.
And then, twenty-four miles back to Oaxaca, feeling glazed and unreal. When you stack into one day the biggest oldest tree in the world, a gigantic ugly wooden head, a magical disappearance in a heap-di-row, and a page with the corner turned down in the Book of Becky, it is time to start searching the hedgerows for Alice and that well-known rabbit.
I had been counting on a therapeutic Sunday siesta, one which might have lasted right through to Monday breakfast. But when we got back to the hotel, there was a message to call Enelio Fuentes and a number where he could be reached. He was at a party at something that sounded less than interesting, called the Commercial Club. I tried to beg off but he insisted. It was atop a great big new farm equipment agency building set back off the Oaxaca-Puebla highway a mile or so beyond the city limits. He had said to drive around in back and go up the stairs in back. The cars were varied and impressive, parked back there.
When we walked out onto the gigantic roof, I saw why he had insisted. That part of it was called the Beach Club. There was a gigantic swimming pool with some kind of infernal device that created pretty good waves which broke on a realistic slope of sand beach. The high wall beyond the pool was painted to resemble a seascape. There were areas of lawn, small trees, fountains, cement sculpture, big bright beach umbrellas. There were several bars, and there were waiters in red coats, and there was a good trio working hard in the waning day. There were tennis courts and badminton courts, and the whole happy busy place was aswarm with jolly tanned Mexican businessmen with the same stamp of success as Enelio, but generally smaller and heavier, and the entire scene was bubbling and dancing with platoons of the vivid young girls that Enelio variously described as either cheeklets or crumpets. There seemed to be a difference, but I could not identify it.
“Just a simple, warm, primitive people,” Meyer muttered.
Enelio found us and took us to his table. He had been playing tennis. Pretty soon he would change. He recommended the tall sour rum drink he was having. He said, “An old friend, Ramón, he put up this dull building here, and one day we realize here is this hell of a big roof, and we can have the storage floor underneath too. So we made the initiation big, and big dues, because where else can they go, and we brought down a crazy man from Mexico City, told him to go ahead, make a place to have fun. Three million pesos! By God, you find out everybody uses the club to get back the fun for the money. Hey now, over here, you pollitas. These soaking wet crumpets, they are here on vacation from Guadalajara. This one, she is Lita, short for Carmelita, and has very little English so she is with me, okay? And these two here in pink, they are the sisters del Vega, the tall one Elena, the not so tall one Margarita. Darlings, this big ogly one is Señor Travis McGee, and this round hairy one is Meyer. They are my friends, so they are evil dangerous fellows, eh? Now we sit. Elena, you are to be with this McGee, and Margarita, here, dear, between me and Meyer. Now smile and greet my friends.”
Elena was spectacular. “Yam ver’ please to knowing you, Meester McGee,” she said with a five hundred watt smile.
“You will have one little drink with us now, and then you will run away and play in the pool, while we make man talk, and we will summon you when we want you back. Waiter! And you will not make friends with any sly fellows or never, never, never again will Enelio Fuentes fly his little airplane to Guadalajara and bring you here for such a nice vacation from that insurance company office.”
They had their drink, and they giggled, and then they went trotting off in their little sopping bikinis back to the artificial waves breaking on the artificial beach.
So we gave Enelio the full report of our activities. Meyer and I took turns filling him in on the details. He was particularly interested in the information about the truck being seen by Mrs. Knighton, heading south on a distant road at high speed.
“Yes, it fits the time,” he said. “It is taken from Bundy’s place before dawn on the fifth, that same day. Tuesday. I know those little roads. I used to hunt there. I used to kill small things in that burned country. One day I said, Who are you, Fuentes, killing things that breathe the same air, walk the same earth? What gives you the right? Who said you are more important, and other life is just for your sport? So I stopped. No matter. Those roads do not go to anyplace. Interesting. I think it would be nice, we go down there in my jeep. Not tomorrow. Some damn engineers are coming in to spoil my day. Tuesday, eh? Maybe in the morning. I will phone to you. Now I am wondering what things can be true and maybe not so true in the story Bundy tells you. I think you were great fools to do what you did, but it worked, eh? A man like that, it is easy for him to twist things a little, change things a little, the way a woman can do.”
I said, “It’s exactly the same story he told Lady Becky.”
He looked puzzled. “But, my friend, I do not understand. You talked with Becky before you got all the story from Bruce.”
“Well … I talked to her last night again.”
“You are some kind of man to go visiting Becky again.”
“Well … she visited me. By the time I got back from the hospital, she was at the cottage and Meyer was gone. Nice fellow when you get to know him, this Meyer.”
He shook his head slowly and then he began to grin. “Oh boy. And how did you feel when you meet Elena, eh? Strong, young, handsome girl, eh? Look, I am not the kind of man who hands you out a sure-thing cheeklet, man. Just only a nice girl who if she decides she likes you, and if you make the struggle to be nice to her, then there she is, without teasing. Oh boy. One time in California on television I saw a contest, many men at tables eating apple pies as fast as they could. An ogly scene, truly. The winner, I don’t know, eight or nine whole pies maybe. He walks careful. When he is getting the prize, the poor fellow looks sick. So here you are, McGee. You win the contest. So here I come with your prize, eh? Know what it is? Piece of apple pie. This is very, very fonny.”
“Look at McGee chortling,” Meyer said.
“Pretty girls are nice to be with,” I said. “You are a very considerate man, Enelio. We will have drinks and we will have dinner, and they will brighten the table and the hours. And I will make excuses and slip away and you two can work things out.”
“Just a minute!” Meyer said. “That girl is just a child!”
Enelio and I agreed she looked grown up. We reconfirmed the Tuesday date. Enelio went to shower and change, and when he came back the Guadalajara girls were with us, and Margarita was studying Meyer’s palm and telling his fortune, and Meyer, so help me, was blushing.
So off went the girls from Guadalajara and they came back in their vivid little shifts and high-heeled sandals and with their big handbags and fun-sparkle eyes, all golden sun-glowing in the blue dusk under the festive lights strung across the roofed dining areas and umbrellaed bar areas. The trio had become a quartet with the addition of a muted trumpet of great clarity and passion, and they played a lot of Augustin Larra’s romantic ballads. Meyer was the light-footed tireless dancing bear, and Enelio Fuentes was the good and amusing host. The world of Bundy, of Rockland, of Carl’s stringless guitar, of plane tickets to Oklahoma City that Meyer had arranged in the early morning—all were far from the elegant roof where they had stopped the wavemaking machine and the colors of the lights striped the still water of the giant pool.
I, too, had my fortune told. Elena studied for a long time, biting at her lip, and then looked at me, head cocked to the side, unexpectedly solemn.
“I do not know how to say. Bad things happening. You are smile but you are sad. It is a … a evil time for you in your lifetime, Trrrravis.”