Chapter 7
Del was so bored he had to use mind games to keep himself from going crazy.
He had figured out by the third day that a man could not count the time by the light through the small high window because the light told him morning and evening and nothing in between, and he could not count by the meals because Pacheco brought the meals whenever Pacheco felt like it.
He also found out he could not count by the changing of the guard because the guards changed irregularly and sometimes not at all.
So he counted by breathing. Fourteen breaths a minute.
Eight hundred and forty breaths an hour.
Twenty thousand one hundred and sixty breaths a day.
He counted the first morning and found it was the kind of work a man did not need to do to keep his mind active.
He kept his mind occupied in other ways after that.
Then he did the cattle. He named the cows by the scars and the markings.
He named the bull. He named the three steers he was going to sell in the fall.
He counted the calves that had been dropped in March.
He did the math on what the herd would bring in Kansas City if prices held and what it would bring if prices went the other way.
He did Carlos. He tried to remember every morning he had ever had with the boy.
Carlos at two, learning to put his boots on.
Carlos at three, asking why the chickens had no teeth.
Carlos at four, crying over a dead rabbit he had found at the edge of the yard and refusing supper because of it.
Carlos at five, riding in front of Del on the gray for the first time, the small body leaning forward against the horn, the small hands on the reins above Del's hands.
Carlos at six, holding the door of the hacienda open for his mother the day they had arrived, because Elena had taught him that and he had remembered.
He remembered Elena, but he did it carefully.
He did not go to the places with Elena that would make a man start to come apart, because a man in a jail cell could not afford to do that.
He saw her at the table pouring coffee. He saw her at the church door fixing his collar.
He saw her teaching Carlos the name of a bird.
He saw her laughing once, in the kitchen, about something Lupita had said in a letter.
He did the safe places and he kept his mind on the safe places and he kept the other places closed.
That was what the first two weeks were.
Fuentes came on Mondays.
Fuentes was a heavy man with a mustache that he oiled and clothes he kept cleaner than was reasonable for the country.
He came into the guardroom and stood outside Del's cell with a cup of coffee from Pacheco's pot and he spoke in Spanish in a conversational tone as though he and Del were acquaintances who had run into each other at the market.
"Se?or Cole. Buenos días."
"Capitán."
"Your wife is well. Your son is well. I have this on reliable information."
"Thank you for that good news, Capitán."
"They are at the residence of Don Rodrigo Vega. He is a generous host. His hospitality is well known in this region."
"Good to know, Capitán."
"You will be held here while the charges are processed. The charges are serious. It may take some time."
"Thanks for telling me that."
"I hope you will cooperate with the court when the time comes."
"I will answer the questions that are asked of me."
"Truthfully."
"Of course."
Fuentes smiled, took a sip of his coffee and said, "You seem like a good man, but...," he shook his head. "You're caught in a vise. Whatever you say, Don Rodrigo will have a witness to counter."
"I know that," Del said, "and a vise is a good way to put it."
"As long as you understand," Fuentes said.
Fuentes took another sip of coffee, and Del watched him go and learned a little more about him each time.
Fuentes was a man who wanted to be feared and couldn't quite carry it off.
Fuentes was a man who talked to the prisoner because there was no one else in the building worth talking to.
Fuentes was a man who did not actually want Del dead.
If Fuentes had wanted Del dead, Del would have been dead in the first week.
Fuentes wanted Del available, which meant Vega wanted Del alive, which meant Vega wanted something he had not yet gotten.
That was the first thing Del figured out, and he figured it out in the first Monday visit, and he held on to it for six weeks.
There was a man in the next cell named Felipe who had been there four months.
Felipe had knifed another man over a woman and the other man had not died but had been crippled and Felipe had been held without trial.
He was thirty and thin and missing three teeth on the bottom, and he did not speak much, but he spoke to Del in the dark some nights when Del asked questions.
"Felipe."
"Se?or."
"How long until the court sits?"
"When the judge comes down from Chihuahua City. He comes when he comes."
"When did he last come?"
"November."
"That was five months ago."
"Yes, Se?or."
"And before November?"
"March."
Del understood that the charges would not be processed.
The charges were a frame around an empty picture.
Vega had Del where he wanted him and would keep him there as long as it suited him, and if it stopped suiting him a man in a uniform would come in one night and Del would not be there in the morning and Felipe would not ask about it because Felipe had been in this jail long enough to know what questions a man did not ask.
Del wondered what Vega wanted. He worked on it for two weeks and he worked on it the way a man worked on a difficult piece of wood, patient, turning it, not forcing it.
Vega did not want Elena's body. A man who wanted a woman's body took it in the first week or the first day and Del felt sure Vega had not taken hers.
Del thought this because Elena had been alive and well at two weeks, and if Vega had taken her she would not have been alive, not in the way Fuentes had used the word.
Vega did not want Del dead.
Vega did not want money. It was said that he had 60,000 head of cattle on his ranch and 70,000 sheep. Such a man had no need for more wealth.
Del finally concluded that Vega wanted Elena to willingly accept him, to walk down the hall of that hacienda on her own feet and knock on his door and say I am yours.
Because that was what she had refused to do eighteen years before, and a man like Vega did not stop wanting what he had been refused, and he would not be satisfied with anything less than a reversal.
Del chuckled to himself. He knew Elena. She was his wife, but also the hardest hard head he'd ever known. She wouldn't break in a hundred years. She'd die first.
But he also knew Vega would wait. A man didn't dream about something for eighteen years unless he had patience.
If Del held on, Vega had a lever. If Del died, Vega had nothing. If Del broke, Vega had less than he'd started with, because a broken husband was not currency a woman spent for. So Del did what he could. He held on.
He held on past the Monday visits. He held on past the nights when Pacheco was drunk and singing in the guardroom.
He held on past the week in the middle when the fever came through the jail and Felipe was sick for four days and Del gave him half his water.
He held on past the night they took a man out of the cell at the far end and brought him back at dawn with his nose broken and his left hand swollen to twice its size.
He held on because if he held on, Elena held on. Because Elena was holding on for him too, and across the miles between the jail and the hacienda they were holding a thing up between them.
The day he heard the rumor was a Tuesday of the sixth week.
Pacheco was talking to a new guard in the guardroom.
Del was sitting against the wall of his cell and he could hear through the door when the door was open and the door was often open in warm weather because the guardroom had no proper ventilation.
"Two Americans at San Vicente," the new guard said.
"When?"
"Sunday. The padre gave them a room. One is negro."
"Who are they?"
"Turistas, it is said, but I think they may be cattle buyers."
Pacheco laughed. Del heard the laugh and he sat up straighter against the wall and he put his hand flat on his own chest, over where his heart was, because he had to do something with his hand to hold himself still.
"Two Americans at San Vicente, one negro. Will and Isum, he knew it."
He'd been sure they'd come, and now they were here. He sat against the wall in his cell, and he looked at the floor and he breathed the fourteen breaths a minute and he counted them, not because he needed to count but because he had to endure knowing Will and Isum were only eighteen miles away.
Maybe less now.
He held on in the stinking jail, damp and unhealthy for his lungs, and he knew it.