Neto Ruiz was his pueblo’s “gringo expert.” He’d been born “on the other side” just before his parents returned to Mexico. That cinched his “expertness.” Gringos didn’t made him furious.
Neto told me of the day a gringo brought Pepe Rios, his wife’s brother, to Neto’s one-room house. Pepe was bleeding down his left leg. “You should have taken him to that curandero, Don Mario,” I told the American. The gringo’s red hair was long, his voice loud. “Pepe said to bring him to you. That you are his brother.”
“We’re cuñados. He’s my wife’s brother.” I was surprised at the long-haired, furious gringo’s good Spanish. Pepe was slumped against the neck of his horse. “Go to the curer, Pepe. Don Mario can fix you. This gringo can’t.”
The morning breeze was up. Pepe was falling out of his saddle. I steadied him. “Help me,” I told the gringo. “Put him here.” We eased Pepe against a zapote tree. The gods could see him there. Maybe get this gringo to work some American cure. “Somebody stabbed him,” the gringo said.
“The knife broke off when I stabbed him this morning,“ I said, bending over. “Go to the curer, Pepe. Get fixed.”
Pepe grimaced, “You tried to cut off my balls, you bastard.”
The gringo glared at me. “We need a car, a truck.” Pepe snorted at that.
“A wagon, then.” The foreigner had some gum, but we didn’t want any. His snapping jaws made his ear ring bounce.
“Look at that.” It was a brecha for burros, for cattle. “Bouncing around is making him bleed too much,” the gringo, Roberto, declared.
I squinted at the wound. “I don’t see more blood coming out.”
“Inside,” Roberto said. “He’s bleeding internally.”
“Are you?” I asked Pepe.
“How should I know?”
“How do you know this in-side bleeding thing?” I asked.
“I wanted to be a doctor once.” The gringo’s gum popped.
Pepe and I stared, not having seen such a loco foreigner before.
“Get me to Don Mario,” Pepe said, “His strong singing should fix me.”
“That will only hurt him,” Roberto said as I took out a gourd of tejuino.
“If you can’t get me a car,” Pepe grinned, “I need tejuino to get back on that caballo.”
The dried-up trail finally got green. Pepe said, “Put me down.” We kept moving. “At San Juan,” said the gringo,”there’s a doctor. He have money?”
I touched Pepe’s arm. “You saved any centavitos, hombre?”
“Two hundred pesos.” He didn’t open his eyes.
“Not enough,” said the gringo. “He have a big family?”
“He’s been married five years.”
“So?”
“So he’s got five kids.”
“You shouldn’t beat your wife,” he told Pepe.
My brother-in-law’s head bobbed like he was agreeing. But he wasn’t. He was dead.
“Why are we here?” Roberto said when we got to the curer’s house in Los Cuates.
“Don Mario will get him ready for burial.”
“They’ll put you in jail?”
“No.”
“Why not? You stabbed him.”
“It as an accident.”
“Listen, I told them you stabbed him,” he said. In the shade with Pepe, I fanned flies from his face.
“They’ll put you in jail.”
“No.”
“Yes they will. You know If I were a doctor, I could have saved him,” the American said.
“If I were a curandero, I could have cured his bad temper.”
We needed Don Mario’s fierce songs to give us a glimpse of Pepe in the other life. Over there, he would be tired of swearing and waving his knife. We all would be able to see how to do things without stirring bad luck and stabbing people. That seemed to be the reason we were finally like this now.