The Dog of the South (11 page)

“No, it's not far now.”

He took off his long belt and this seemed to give him some relief. Then he took off his bow tie. He unchained the giant wallet from his clothes and handed it to me, along with his flashlight, and told me to see that his mother got these things, a Mrs. Nell Symes. I didn't like the sound of that. We sat there for a long time and said nothing.

The booted tire thumped all the way in to Chetumal, and then to the border crossing, which was a river just outside of town. The officer there on the Mexican end of the bridge paid no attention to my faulty papers but he didn't like the doctor, didn't want to touch him or brush up against him, this holloweyed old gringo with his mouth open, and he was determined not to let him leave Mexico without his bus. Dr. Symes's tourist card was clearly stamped “
Entro con Automóvil
,” as was mine, and if one enters Mexico with an
automóvil
then one must also leave with it.

I explained that the doctor's bus had broken down through no fault of his own and that he intended to return for it after a brief visit with his ailing mother in Belize. The officer said that anyone might tell such a story, which was true enough. The law was the law. Produce the bus. Dr. Symes offered the man a hundred pesos and the man studied the brown note for an instant and then shook his head; this was a serious matter and money could not settle it, certainly not a hundred pesos.

I took the doctor aside and suggested that he give the man five hundred pesos. He said, “No, that's too much.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“I don't know, but I'm not giving that son of a bitch forty dollars.”

I saw a red bus cross the bridge with only a brief inspection at each end. I told the doctor I would take him back to Chetumal. He could wait there until dark and catch a red bus to Belize. Then, very likely, there would be a different officer here at this post. The doctor would probably not be noticed and the bus ride would not be a long one. It was only another eighty miles or so to Belize.

He was wobbly and vague. He had heat staggers. I couldn't get any sense out of him. He had diarrhea too, and he was drinking paregoric from a little bottle. We drove back to Chetumal, the tire bumping.

He said, “Are you going to dump me, Speed?”

“You won't let me take you to a doctor.”

“I never thought you would just throw me out.”

“I'm not throwing you out. Listen to what I'm saying. You can take a bus across the border tonight. I'll see that you get on it. I'll follow the bus.”

“I thought we had a deal.”

“I don't know what you expect me to do. I can't force these people to let you out of the country.”

“You said you'd take me to Belize. I thought it was a straight deal.”

“I'm doing the best I can. You forget I have my own business to see to.”

“That's hard, Speed. That's strong. I don't know you but I know that's not worthy of you.”

“What you need is a doctor.”

“I'll be all right if I can just get something cool to drink.”

I parked on the waterfront in Chetumal and got him out of the car and walked him over to a dockside refreshment stand. We sat on folding metal chairs under a palm-thatched cabaña rig. He looked like a dead man. When the waitress came over, he rallied a little and tried to smile. He said, “Little lady, I want the biggest Co'-Cola you are permitted to serve.” She was a pretty Indian girl with sharp black eyes. He tried to wink, and said, “They're getting these little girls out of Hollywood now.” A man at the next table was eating a whole fresh pineapple with a knife. I ordered a pineapple for myself and a Coca
grande
for the doctor.

There was a rising wind. Small boats were chugging about in the bay. Vultures walked boldly along the dock like domestic turkeys. The doctor drank three Cokes and asked for his wallet back. I gave it to him.

“What happened to my flashlight?”

“It's in the car.”

He saw something shiny and leaned over and scratched at it, trying to pick it up.

I said, “That's a nailhead.”

“I knew it wasn't a dime. I just wanted to see what it was.”

“I've got to get the spare fixed and I need to see about the bus. I want you to wait right here and don't go wandering off.”

“I'm not riding any bus.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“I'm not going off a cliff in a Mexican bus.”

His old carcass was very dear to him.

We sat in silence for a while. I went to the car and got my Esso map of British Honduras. It was a beautiful blue map with hardly any roads to clutter it up. Just down the bay from here was a coastal village in British Honduras called Corozal. Why couldn't the border be bypassed by water? There were plenty of boats available. It wouldn't be much of a trip—a matter of a few miles.

I proposed this plan to the doctor and showed him how things lay on the map. To keep it from blowing away, I had to anchor the corners with bottles. Over and over again I explained the scheme to him but he couldn't take it in. “Do what, Speed?” he would say. He was fading again.

Most of the boats were now coming in. I walked along the dock and talked to the owners, trying to explain and sell the plan to them in my feeble Spanish. I got nowhere. They wanted no part of it. There was too much wind and the water was too rough and it would soon be dark. Maybe tomorrow, they said, or the next day. I put the map back in the car and returned to the table. Dr. Symes was drinking yet another Coke. The girl wanted her money and he was trying to match her for it, double or nothing. He had a ready line of patter for all cashiers, the idea being to confuse them so that they might make an error in his favor.

“It's no use,” I said. “The wind is too high. It's too dangerous. It was a bad plan anyway. You'll have to ride the red bus and that's all there is to it.”

“The wind?” he said.

Newspapers were being whipped against our legs and the tablecloth was snapping and donkeys were leaning against buildings and the heavy traffic light that hung over the intersection was standing about thirty degrees off vertical, and into the teeth of this gale he asked me that question.

“A bus. I'm going to put you on a bus. It's the only way.”

“Not a bus, no.”

“Do you want to see your mother or do you want to stay here?”

“Mama?”

“She's waiting for you just down the road. You can be there in no time. The bus is safe, I tell you. This is flat country. There are no mountains between here and Belize, not one. It's a coastal plain. I'll see that you get there. I'll drive right along behind the bus.”

“Send me over the mountains in a bus, is that it? That's your answer for everything. Did you make sure it has no brakes? I don't even know the name of this town. I wanted to go to Belize and you land us in this place instead. Why do we keep hanging around here anyway?”

“You can be in Belize in just a few hours if you'll listen to me and do what I say. Do you understand what I'm telling you?”

In my desperation I had fallen into the doctor's habits of speech. He must have spent half his life shouting that hopeless question. I thought of hiring an ambulance. Surely the border guards would not interfere with a mercy dash. But wouldn't it be very expensive?

Someone pinched me on the fleshy part of my upper arm and I jumped. An Indian boy about seventeen years old was standing behind me. “Corozal?” he said. He took me over to the slip where his wooden boat was tied up, a slender homemade craft with an old-fashioned four-cycle outboard engine on the stern. It was about a six-horse engine, with a high profile. I asked about life preservers.
No hay
, he said. I indicated that the water was rough and getting rougher all the time. He shrugged it off as inconsequential. We quickly reached an agreement.

The doctor was too weak and confused to resist. I took his wallet again for safekeeping and we loaded him into the boat. I gave the boy a ten-dollar bill and promised him a twenty—a balloon payment to encourage compliance—upon delivery of the old man in Corozal. The boy jerked the rope many times before the engine started. Then he pushed off and I, with great misgivings, watched them leave, the little boat battering sluggishly through the whitecaps. The sun was going down. The doctor had lied to me about his funds. That wallet was packed with twenties and fifties.

I drove back to the border crossing and had no trouble getting out of Mexico. At the other end of the bridge I had to deal with a British Honduras officer. He was a dapper Negro in shorts and high stockings and Sam Browne belt. I had shed my coat long ago but I was still wearing my tie. I was filthy and I needed a shave.

He asked my occupation. I said I was a businessman. He pointed out that my spare tire was flat. I thanked him. Was I a doctor? What was I doing with a doctor's bag? What was the silverware for? I had no very good answers for him. He poked into everything, even the ice chest. The ice had melted days ago and the cheese and baloney were spoiled. The water was brown from the rusting rims of the beer cans. At the bottom of this mess my Colt Cobra was washing about in the plastic bag. I had forgotten all about it. The old man had made me neglect my business! The officer wiped the pistol dry with a handkerchief and stuck it in his hip pocket. He shook his finger at me but said nothing. He was keeping it for himself.

He asked if I planned to sell the Buick and I said no. He wrote his name and address for me on the back of a card advertising the Fair Play Hotel in Belize and said he would be happy to handle the sale. I took the card and told him I would keep it in mind. He said I didn't look like much of a businessman to him. I described my Torino and asked about Norma and Dupree and the dog—and was I knocked for a loop when this bird said he remembered them. He remembered the car and the pretty girl and yes, the red dog, and the fellow with the glasses who was driving; he remembered him very well.

“Played that ‘Sweet Lorraine' on the mouth harp.”

“No, that wouldn't be him. That wouldn't be Dupree.”

“Yes, and ‘Twilight Time' too.”

I couldn't believe my ears. Was it possible that some identical people had passed through here with a chow dog in a blue Torino? An antimatter Dupree playing tunes on a mouth organ! A young Meigs! The doctor had told me that I could expect the same old stuff down here but this didn't sound like the same old stuff to me.

I asked about the road to Belize. Was it paved? Should I chance it with no spare tire? He said it was an excellent road, much better than anything I had seen in Mexico. And not only that, but I would now be able to get some good gasoline for a change. The Mexican petrol was inferior stuff, he said, and it smelled funny. Here it had the proper smell.

There was a T-head pier in Corozal and I stood at the end of it and waited anxiously in the dark. The wind had dropped off somewhat. Now it was cool. I supposed there was some colorful local name for it, for this particular kind of wind. I was just fifteen degrees or so above the equator and I was at sea level and yet I was chilly. A cool snap like this on the Louisiana island and the doctor would have a thousand coughing chimps on his hands. I could make out a few stars through the drifting clouds but not the Southern Cross.

I began to worry more and more about that little boat in open water at night. It wasn't the open sea but it was a big bay, big enough for trouble. Why had I suggested this? It would all be my fault, the sea disaster. Criminal folly! The boat would be swamped and the doctor, a nuisance to the end, would fail away in the water and take the Indian boy down with him.

A Spanish-looking man joined me at the edge of the pier. He was barefooted, his trouser legs rolled up, and he was pushing a bicycle. He parked the bike and looked out at the water, his hands in his pockets, a brooding figure. I didn't want to intrude on his thoughts but when the wind blew his bike over I thought it would then be all right to speak, the clatter having broken his reverie. I said, “
Mucho viento
.” He nodded and picked up his bike and left. Much wind. What a remark! No wonder everybody took foreigners for dopes.

I heard the engine popping and then I saw the boat low in the water. Choppy waves were breaking against it. The boy was angry because the doctor had vomited marshmallows and Coke in his boat. The old man was wet and only semiconscious. We laid him out on the pier and let him drain for a minute. It was like trying to lug a wet mattress. I gave the boy an extra ten dollars for his trouble. He helped me get the doctor into the car and then he fearlessly took to the dark water again.

Part of the road to Belize was broken pavement and the rest was washboard gravel. Great flat slabs of concrete had been wrenched out of place as though from an earthquake. What a road! Time after time the Buick's weak coil springs bottomed out, and I mean dead bottom. When we came bounding back up on the return phase, I feared that something would tear loose, some suspension component. I worried about the tires too. The gravel part was only a little better. I tried to find a speed at which we could skim along on the crests of the corrugations but with no luck. We skittered all over the roadbed. The doctor groaned in the back seat. I too was beginning to fade. My head throbbed and I took some more of the bitter orange pills.

I
T WAS LATE when we reached Belize and I didn't feel like asking directions and floundering around in a strange place. It wasn't a big town but the streets were narrow and dark and irregular. I found a taxicab at a Shell station and I asked the Negro driver if he knew a Mrs. Nell Symes, who had a church here. It took him a while to puzzle it out. Did I mean “Meemaw?” Well, I didn't know, but I hired him to go to Meemaw's anyway and I trailed along behind in the Buick.