Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2. Ray Bradbury
before them. They continued conversing in Spanish, ignoring him.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said John Webb at last. ‘Can we pass over the border into Juatala?’
One of the men turned for a moment. ‘Sorry, señor.’
The three men talked again.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Webb, touching the first man’s elbow. ‘We’ve got to get through.’
The man shook his head. ‘Passports are no longer good. Why should you want to leave our country, anyway?’
‘It was announced on the radio. All Americans to leave the country, immediately.’
‘Ah, sí, sí.’ All three soldiers nodded and leered at each other with shining eyes.
‘Or be fined or imprisoned, or both,’ said Webb.
‘We could let you over the border, but Juatala would give you twenty-four hours to leave, also. If you don’t believe me, listen!’ The guard turned and called across the border, ‘Aye, there! Aye!’
In the hot sun, forty yards distant, a pacing man turned, his rifle in his arms.
‘Aye there, Paco, you want these two people?’
‘No, gracias – gracias, no,’ replied the man, smiling.
‘You see?’ said the guard, turning to John Webb.
All of the soldiers laughed together.
‘I have money,’ said Webb.
The men stopped laughing.
The first guard stepped up to John Webb and his face was now not relaxed or easy; it was like brown stone.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They always have money. I know. They come here and they think money will do everything. But what is money? It is only a promise, señor. This I know from books. And when somebody no longer likes your promise, what then?’
‘I will give you anything you ask.’
‘Will you?’ The guard turned to his friends. ‘He will give me anything I ask.’ To Webb: ‘It was a joke. We were always a joke to you, weren’t we?’
‘No.’
‘Mañana, you laughed at us; mañana, you laughed at our siestas and our mañanas, didn’t you?’
‘Not me. Someone else.’
‘Yes, you.’
‘I’ve never been to this particular station before.’
‘I know you, anyway. Run here, do this, do that. Oh, here’s a peso, buy yourself a house. Run over there, do this, do that.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘He looked like you, anyway.’
They stood in the sun with their shadows dark under them, and the perspiration coloring their armpits. The soldier moved closer to John Webb. ‘I don’t have to do anything for you anymore.’
‘You never had to before. I never asked it.’
‘You’re trembling, señor.’
‘I’m all right. It’s the sun.’
‘How much money have you got?’ asked the guard.
‘A thousand pesos to let us through, and a thousand for the other man over there.’
The guard turned again. ‘Will a thousand pesos be enough?’
‘No,’ said the other guard. ‘Tell him to report us!’
‘Yes,’ said the guard, back to Webb again. ‘Report me. Get me fired. I was fired once, years ago, by you.’
‘It was someone else.’
‘Take my name. It is Carlos Rodriguez Ysotl. Go on now.’
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t see,’ said Carlos Rodriguez Ysotl. ‘Now give me two thousand pesos.’
John Webb took out his wallet and handed over the money. Carlos Rodriguez Ysotl licked his thumb and counted the money slowly under the blue glazed sky of his country as noon deepened and sweat arose from hidden sources and people breathed and panted above their shadows.
‘Two thousand pesos.’ He folded it and put it in his pocket quietly. ‘Now turn your car around and head for another border.’
‘Hold on now, damn it!’
The guard looked at him. ‘Turn your car.’
They stood a long time that way, with the sun blazing on the rifle in the guard’s hands, not speaking. And then John Webb turned and walked slowly, one hand to his face, back to the car and slid into the front seat.
‘What’re we going to do?’ said Leonora.
‘Rot. Or try to reach Porto Bello.’
‘But we need gas and our spare fixed. And going back over those highways … This time they might drop logs, and—’
‘I know, I know.’ He rubbed his eyes and sat for a moment with his head in his hands. ‘We’re alone, my God, we’re alone. Remember how safe we used to feel? How safe? We registered in all the big towns with the American Consuls. Remember how the joke went? “Everywhere you go you can hear the rustle of the eagle’s wings!” Or was it the sound of paper money? I forget. Jesus, Jesus, the world got empty awfully quick. Who do I call on now?’
She waited a moment and then said, ‘I guess just me. That’s not much.’
He put his arm around her. ‘You’ve been swell. No hysterics, nothing.’
‘Tonight maybe I’ll be screaming, when we’re in bed, if we ever find a bed again. It’s been a million miles since breakfast.’
He kissed her, twice, on her dry mouth. Then he sat slowly back. ‘First thing is to try to find gas. If we can get that, we’re ready to head for Porto Bello.’
The three soldiers were talking and joking as they drove away.
After they had been driving a minute, he began to laugh quietly.
‘What were you thinking?’ asked his wife.
‘I remember an old spiritual. It goes like this:
‘“I went to the Rock to hide my face And the Rock cried out, ‘No Hiding Place, There’s no Hiding Place down here.’” ’
‘I remember that,’ she said.
‘It’s an appropriate song right now,’ he said. ‘I’d sing the whole thing for you if I could remember it all. And if I felt like singing.’
He put his foot harder to the accelerator.
They stopped at a gas station and after a minute, when the attendant did not appear, John Webb honked the horn. Then, appalled, he snapped his hand away from the horn-ring, looking at it as if it were the hand of a leper.
‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
The attendant appeared in the shadowy doorway of the gas station. Two other men appeared behind him.
The three men came out and walked around the car, looking at it, touching it, feeling it.
Their faces were like burned copper in the daylight. They touched the resilient tires, they sniffed the rich new smell of the metal and upholstery.
‘Señor,’ said the gas attendant at last.
‘We’d like to buy some gas, please.’
‘We are all out of gas, señor.’
‘But