Maldito & the Tourists

After the old bus groaned to a shuddering halt on the main street of Agua Rocosa, Francisco Silva leaned over in the driver’s seat. He worked the lever to open the folding door and announced, “The bus will leave in one half of one hour.” He wagged his left hand in the air. “Give or take.”

He had stopped the bus at a corner a few blocks past the cantina. Across the street, the church loomed large.

Several passengers disembarked and were immediately surrounded by a flurry of miniature vendors in scruffy shorts and bare feet. Little whirlwinds of dust played around their ankles. Peering hopefully with large, dark eyes set in dust-covered faces at the tourists, they offered everything from chewing gum to seashell combs to leather keychain fobs.

Many of the newcomers purchased small packs of Chiclets, hoping the gum would create moisture in their parched mouths. A few bought other items as they and their dust cloud of entrepreneurs shuffled steadily toward the few nearby tourist shops.

Across the street, a young boy sat with his back to the short wall that ran alongside the steps leading up to the main door of the church. He balanced a sketchpad on his dusty, bare knees.

He glanced at the tourists as they disembarked the bus and sketched a few lines. Then he glanced up again, taking in the children with their wares surrounding the weary passengers. He sketched a bit more. By the time the shuffling gang had neared the shops, his drawing was almost finished.

Beyond the windows of those shops, with their tattered, partial words lettered in tired, faded paint, hung genuine leather belts with silver buckles and bandannas to filter the ever-present dust from the air.  

Inside, ancient, worn tables were stacked high with everything from leather boots to sombreros, jeans and shirts to billfolds and checkbook covers and western hats. There were also stacks of blankets, serapes, rugs and various sizes of sculpted clay pots and bowls.

On the walls of one shop hung guitars and mandolins.

In the glass cases in another were turquoise and silver necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

As the visitors entered the shops, the street vendors disappeared as if the sun had vaporized them.

The young boy across the street, Maldito, finished the sketches he had begun when the tourists were visible. He would begin and complete others as they moved from one shop to the next. Then, perhaps, he would offer them to the tourists as a souvenir of their stop in Agua Rocosa.

Nearly all of the visitors bought cool soft drinks or pulpy lemonade from the shop owners. A few bought larger items, but most averted their gaze from the shopkeepers’ seemingly sorrowful eyes and mumbled some version of “I can’t carry so much with me right now, but I’ll be back on my way north in a few days.” Like most bargain hunters, what they meant but did not say aloud was Perhaps I can find the same item for a lower price farther south.

Soon the travelers exited the shops and gathered in front of the corner shop, milling about and sipping their refrescos as they waited to board the bus. They were surprised but relieved that the crowd of youngsters had not rematerialized.

Maldito had almost made up his mind not to bother them at all when a beautiful woman—perhaps the most beautiful woman he had seen in all of his six years—separated from the crowd and walked toward the bus at the corner.

He quickly completed a rough sketch, then flipped the page and audibly took a deep breath. He looked at the woman again.

Such beauty deserves much more precision.

He started again.

Moments later, not wanting to seem overly anxious, he strolled across the street with his sketchpad. He approached the young woman, whom he could now see was perhaps only ten or twelve years older than he, and tugged lightly on her sleeve. Very quietly, he said, “Señorita, perdón, por favor.”

When she glanced down at him, he held up a sketch he had finished only moments before. “Sería mi placer... Uh, it would be my pleasure to make a gift to you of this poor drawing.”

The young woman looked at him and smiled. “Gracias, señorito. Y quanto? How much?”

He shook his head rapidly and waved his free hand back and forth. “No no. It is for you.” 

She looked at the drawing and saw a replica of herself, right down to the stray lock of hair that had worked loose and was tickling her left ear. It was almost as if the boy had somehow captured a bit of her spirit and blended it with the carbon in his pencil.

She bent to shake his hand, and she planted a gentle kiss on his cheek. “Gracias again, señorito. You are a gentleman.”

Heat rose to Maldito’s face. He was certain he would not wash that cheek for a very long time. “De nada, señorita. De nada. Ustedes muy bonito. You are very pretty.” He turned away hastily, meaning to run.

But in one step he ran headlong into a pair of khaki trousers with a slim brown leather belt and a white shirt above them. The man had been standing behind him, looking over his shoulder at the drawing of the woman.

“Whoa!” The man caught Maldito’s shoulders and knelt, concern on his fact. “Are you all right?”

Maldito looked at the ground, taking in the man’s brown leather loafers. “Sí señor. Lo siento mucho. I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s all right.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Charlie. What’s your name?”

“Maldito, señor.”

“Well Maldito, your drawing of the young lady is amazing. Do you have others?”

“Sí señor, but the others are for sale.”

The man smiled. “May I see them?”

As Maldito handed him the sketchpad, the young woman smiled down at them and moved away unnoticed. Her flowing skirts swirled about her boots.

Charlie began to leaf through the sketchpad: There was another, rougher sketch of the woman.

Maldito already had decided he would keep that one for himself.

There were a few sketches of couples or small groups for which Maldito captured the basic strokes as they had moved from one shop to another. There were also various drawings he had made in past days of the church and the cantina and various shops. He also had created various visions of clouds and the sun and the sea.

For an artist, even a young one, capturing what can be seen is as much a function of patience and determination as skill. But some are blessed with the ability to see what others cannot. In some of the drawings he created as he wandered outside the village, he had managed to capture the essence of the wind itself.

He did not attempt to see what was not visible, but looked instead more closely at what was, and there he found the tracks left by the wind in its passing. In those drawings, the piñon pine needles clung to their branches at precise angles. The leaves in the deciduous brush were etched in such a way that even a casual glance would detect movement. And the tall grass, burnished to an exact hue, pointed unerringly in the direction the wind had taken through the boulder-strewn foothills leading up to the mountains.

In Maldito’s drawings, even the most indifferent observers could see and hear the wind weaving among the rocks. They would even feel it leaving the page.

Charlie saw and heard and felt the wind in those drawings, and plainly.

As he thumbed through the pictures, his eyebrows arched. Remarkable! And there’s something special too about his visions of the sun and the sea and all his other subjects.

As he flipped back through others, having become more attuned to Maldito’s talent than he had been earlier, the sun in one drawing warmed his face a degree or two more than it was. The humidity from the heavy clouds in another assailed his nostrils. In still another, the salty breeze coming in from the sea complemented the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore.

In every case, the drawings seemed to bridge the gap between reality and imagination. The young artist and his subject seemed connected somehow, perhaps on some ethereal spiritual plane. But the man was not enough of a philosopher to debate the existence of such a plane.

He looked at Maldito. In the depths of the boy’s eyes there was no treachery, no fear, and no hidden agenda. Only a frank, indifferent honesty that harbored no expectations.

He looked again at the drawing labeled La Canción del Viento, the song of the wind, then showed it to Maldito. “How much for this one?” 

Without hesitation Maldito said, “One dollar, señor.”

The man flipped back to a sketch of two ladies and a gentleman coming out of a shop. “And for this one?”

Maldito shrugged. “It is not as good. Not as finished. Perhaps un peso. One American dime, perhaps.”

The man knelt alongside Maldito and spoke quietly. “Son, these are excellent. From now on, when a tourist asks about your finished drawings, you will say they cost five American dollars or sixty pesos. The finished sketches are two or three American dollars or twenty-five to forty pesos. And the others, the quick sketches, should be one American dollar or twelve pesos. Understand?”

Maldito nodded, and a smile crept into his eyes although his lips remained still.

“If you want to sell to the other villagers, you can charge less if you want to.” He shrugged. “Perhaps depending on their need and how much it would mean to them to own one of your excellent drawings. But do not charge tourists any less.”

He winked, then stood and addressed his fellow travelers. “Ladies and gentlemen, this excellent, well-mannered young artist is offering for sale the sketches and drawings in this sketchpad. They are easy to carry, and he and his talent might well have moved on to another town before you come this way again. If you’re interested, please feel free to browse through them. The finished drawings in the back are only five dollars each, and the others range in price from a dollar to three dollars.”

With that Charles C. Task handed Maldito a ten dollar bill for four pictures: La Canción del Viento, a finished sketch of himself, the brown-haired beauty Maldito had sketched separately, and another woman coming out of a shop. He rolled them up and stashed them in his light bag before stepping away.

The crowd gathered around Maldito, admiring his work.

Francisco Silva, the driver, had just returned and was about to announce boarding. But when he noticed the commotion around the young boy, he grinned and leaned against the fender of the bus to await his passengers’ leisure.

Charlie, having felt the village tugging at him, approached. “Perdón, señor. Can you tell me, will this bus come through the village again soon?”

  The driver grinned. “Sí señor. I drive the bus north through Agua Rocosa each week on Thursday and then back to the south on Saturday at about the same time.” He waggled his hand in the air. “And then my brother, Fernando, he drives the bus north on Monday and back to the south on Wednesday. We always come through Agua Rocosa at about the same time—1:30 or maybe 2. And we always stop near this corner.” He leaned forward, still grinning. “Of course, we take Sunday off, alabe a Dios.” He crossed himself.

Task smiled. “Gracias, señor. I’ll stay here for a few days. I’ll catch the bus with your brother or you again going south.”

Francisco waved as he followed the last few passengers aboard the bus. “I will see you then.”

But Task followed him into the bus. “Perdón, señor. One more thing—is there a good place here to wash the dust from my throat?”

Francisco grinned again, even more broadly. “Oh sí señor. Look behind the bus a few streets toward the edge of town. Juan-Carlos Salazár runs the best cantina in all of Agua Rocosa.” He laughed. “It is also the only cantina in all of Agua Rocosa.”

As Charlie waved and stepped down, Francisco started the engine, shut the door and put the bus in gear. He pulled away, the bus belching exhaust, and as it passed the south end of the village, Charlie glanced around.

Maldito, who had been left with only a few drawings, had disappeared. He had earned more money in a half-hour than many in the town would earn in a week. All of Charlie’s traveling companions were gone as well, from what he could see. He had seldom been so hot or his throat so parched.

He looked toward the north end of town. Faded blue letters on the side of a very old whitewashed adobe building caught his attention: CANTINA. He started toward the building. A horse was tied to a hitching post on what would be the shaded side of the cantina in another hour or so. Charlie grinned.

Inside, he waited for a moment until his eyes adjusted, then walked up to the bar and asked for a Negra Modelo con lima. He was standing only a short distance away from a young gentleman dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved light-blue cotton shirt and western boots complete with spurs. A sombrero hung on his back by a chin strap around his throat.

Well, that explains the horse. Man, this guy’s gotta have some great stories.

But before he could find a pretext on which to strike up a conversation, the bartender illustrated that no pretext was required.

He stopped across the bar from the two men and launched into a story about a drainage hole in his storeroom. Seems it had been maliciously enlarged at the behest of an older gentleman so young boys could squeeze through and steal tequila for their evil mentor.

Charlie took his cue from the vaquero beside him, whom he assumed certainly knew local customs and Juan-Carlos better than he did. Accordingly, he smiled politely and paid attention as closely as he could,

Daniel Redmon had come into town on the same bus from which Charlie Task and several others had disembarked a few hours earlier, but he had decided early to stay a few days.

Instead of looking the part of a tourist, though, he’d decided to take advantage of the shops and dress the part of a local. Never mind that his jeans and boots and belt and shirt were brand new and looked brand new. As did the black felt hat. Which he supposed was precisely the style worn by the banditos who must have frequented this very same cantina in the old days.

He hadn’t bothered with going to the bar when he had first entered the cantina. He preferred to establish mystery and fear early.

He had entered, then stopped and carefully eyeballed his surroundings, taking in the two men and the bartender straight ahead. They seemed engrossed in conversation. Three other men were farther along the bar to the right. A fairly elderly couple were seated at a table to his left. And a somber, middle-aged man sat alone at a table, also on the left, but in the darkest corner of the cantina.

Having satisfied himself that there were no imminent threats, Daniel settled at a table on the right side of the cantina. He sat with his back against the wall. The elderly man and his lady friend were directly in front of him, albeit a good forty feet away. The main door was to his left front and the entire bar was to his right front. The only person he couldn’t see was the old guy in the back corner, and surely he was no threat.

He relaxed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his new boots at the ankle on the seat of the chair in front of him.

Soon after he got settled, the bartender noticed him and called over his shoulder for his wife.

In a moment, a short, slightly plump woman came out of a room behind the bar. She glanced around until she spotted the newcomer, then approached his table. One hand on her hip, she sized him up and, in broken English, asked, “What can I get for you, Cowboy? A footrest maybe?”

He looked at her for a moment, then quickly jerked his feet out of the chair and sat up straight. When he noticed the twinkle in her eyes, he resumed his character, slouched slightly again and held up two fingers. With Clint Eastwood cool, he said, “Dos Negra Modelos, por favor.”

She cleared her throat and stifled a smile. “I mean, is that all?”

He nodded. “For now.” He could only imagine how cold and serious his eyes must look beneath that intimidating black brim.

She brought the two bottles of Negra Modelo to his table, then disappeared back into the room behind the bar.

Having momentarily forgotten his fantasy role as a bandito in deference to his reality as a tourist who spent most of his days in trousers and a shirt and a tie and a cubicle, he allowed his mouth to fairly hang open in awe as he took in the interior of the cantina. The low-slung logs that stretched from wall to wall and apparently were embedded in the ceiling. No doubt they strained to keep tons of dried mud from crashing to the floor and onto the customers below. The walls themselves seemed variously to bulge or bow in the middle in what he hoped was an optical illusion. And the unpolished, stained, rough-hewn bar.

Behind which there was an unpolished, stained, and rough-hewn proprietor-bartender.

He smiled at his own wit and eavesdropped as the bartender continued to regale his more naïve customers with odd tales. The stories seemed to have been constructed for children.

He took a quick swig of his Negra Modelo and continued his inspection of the cantina.

There were two open windows a little over a foot square in his wall, two more in the wall on the opposite end of the floor, and two more, one on each side of the front door, on the front wall, which faced east. That door was of solid pine planks a good three inches thick, and it still bore the shooting-cross cutout, at about the height of a man’s shoulders, that hinted at former glory.

He took a hefty pull on his beer.

What battles must have occurred here! What bravery and valor! What must it have been like to stand at the gritty, stained wooden bar or sit with friends at one of the dozen or so tables scattered across the floor? One moment they were enjoying an afternoon libation, and the next they were startled into action at the menacing sound of the hooves of Commanche war horses?

The men would twist frantically away from the bar or leap from their chairs. Which of course would fall over behind them. No doubt even at this very table! I can just see it!

They would grasp clumsily for a rifle or a carbine, and they would race to be the first to man that cutout that was shaped like a cross! Few of those men would recognize or appreciate the irony that such a portal, through which they would deal death without mercy, had been carved in the shape of a cross.

He took another long swig of his Negra Modelo.

Fueled by the heavy cerveza, his fantasy continued.

He was certain some of the men caught in the cantina at that particularly bad moment—

Probably the biggest braggarts of all, the ones with the loudest mouths—would dive behind the bar itself or dump over a table and barricade themselves behind it. They would thereby prove their true worth to the community. The other men in the cantina would make a mental note to deal with them later.

He finished his first Negra Modelo, took a long pull on his second and smiled grimly.

The currency with which they would deal with those men, no doubt, would be a rope.

He frowned.

Wait. I didn’t see any large trees during the bus ride in.

The fantasy began to dissipate like the steadily fading wisps of a dream.

He frowned again, scratched his head, and cast about for something to cling to. Then he caught sight of the ceiling beams again and took another long pull on his beer.

Those beams would support the weight of a properly hanged man, wouldn’t they? Sure they would!

Conveniently, for it was his fantasy, he ignored the fact that the ceiling was barely seven feet from the floor. Very few men would be willing to facilitate their hanging by pulling their legs up to their waist.

In fact, a man with a rope around his neck probably would be willing to hop around for a very long time in order to continue breathing. But the fantasy continued.

And if the drop didn’t culminate in a snapped neck, well then, the poor bastard would just have to choke to death. His jury, judges and executioners would be lined up at the bar behind him, toasting him along on his journey and laughing at the bartender’s foolish stories.

As fate would have it, just at that moment the men at the bar erupted into laughter, interrupting his strained attempt to continue his fantasy.

But inexplicably, their laughter, combined with him downing the rest of his second Negra Modelo as if for a long toast, also made him feel considerably more welcome than most tourists who stopped for a quick repast while slipping through Agua Rocosa on a bus.

As the laughter at the bar died down, the proprietor-bartender came by and replaced the two empties with two more full Negra Modelos.

The dying laughter and the sound of the full bottles firmly pinning gravity to the table top somehow fit smoothly into his earlier illusion and served to fold him back into it.

He smiled grimly up at the bartender from beneath the brim of his hat and nodded just as he imagined a bandito might, then took a drink of his third beer, which lubricated his slide back into his dream.

With the imagined experience of having taken part in successfully defending the bar from an attacking band of Commanches—for surely he would not have been one to cower behind the bar or an overturned table—and having taken an active role in hanging the imaginary cowards, the casual-visitor-turned-bandito began to think of himself as more of a regular customer in this place. Certainly at least on a man-to-man basis.

He glanced toward the bar. Even if those men are not my countrymen, we obviously were poured of the same tempered steel, and I salute them!

He raised his third bottle of Negra Modelo to his lips and drained it in salute to those new friends who did not know he existed. Then he worked up a serious scowl beneath his black felt hat and reached for the fourth bottle as he turned to look again at that magnificent door and the cross that had been bored and chipped and gouged through it. “I would not hide behind a table or the bar,” he mumbled. “I would fight! I would race to the door!” Well, I would race to the cross.

For in another fantasy, he was a priest in a small Mexican village, and a very pious priest indeed. He would roam the town in dusty robes, the bottom of the robes caked with the stuff, and minister to any in need.

Of course, even the casual visitor to the cantina who has become lost in his cerveza and a hastily constructed fantasy knows one thing: Of the brave ones who race to the slim cross in the door, only one would arrive first.

And even a pretend bandito who wasn’t too far drowned in spirits would realize there would never be an argument over who gets to man that window. For gaining that honor would effectively position a large, succinct crosshair on his face.

Daniel Redmon grinned. He tipped his beer to an imaginary scenario and mumbled, “Dude, the rush to man the cross on the door would be like the slowest race ever.”

A giggle escaped before he could help himself.

But remembering the black felt hat on his head, he worked a scowl across his face and thought about those who lost the race to the door. What would they do? Certainly they were not cowering behind the bar or trembling behind overturned tables. But they had moved just slowly enough to ensure that the honor of firing through the cross would fall to someone else.

Then, with a pull on his beer, it dawned on him: They would each opt, alone or with a partner, to man one of the other, more traditionally shaped windows. Which he was certain really were just the result of a rough cube having been sliced, tugged and dropped from the wall and the gap having been shored up with a wooden frame, hastily nailed together and shoved into place.

He took another long drink of his fourth beer. At least that’s how it looks.

As any casual-visitor-turned-bandito might well imagine while putting away his fourth cold cerveza—which in his mind is actually tepid and was dipped by ladle into a stained ceramic mug from a large cask—having all that area through which to look, a man could easily glance and duck.

In fact. The fact is. manning a window. now that’s something I could do. I could do that, and having that much space to shoot through, well, that would be better. Much better than having to nail your face to the center of that stupid cross.

I mean damn, you could move up or down or only a little bit side to side to get a good view of what was going on outside. But the whole time you’d have that damn crosshair on your face, and the whole time you’d risk being crucified nose to ears and hairline to chin.

Shit no. I’d man one’a them windows maybe. That man on the cross wouldn’t stand much of a chance, really, would he? Not if there were Commanches around. ‘Specially if they had carbines.

He took a final swig of his fourth Negra Modelo and decided to step out of his fantasy. Unfortunately he had realized three things. The first was that he didn’t have the cojones to give voice to the other two: one, had a ruckus started in the old days. He would have been hiding behind the bar or the table. And later the laughter of the men at the bar would have been filtered through the sound of his own blood throbbing in his ears as he slowly choked to death at the end of a rough sisal rope slung over a low rafter.

And two, that he really does belong in trousers and a shirt and a tie and a cubicle and that’s just fine with him. Even the priest’s robes would probably be heavy and scratchy and hot.

Unsteadily, he rose to his feet, removed the black felt hat and placed it on the table. He wiped a few sweat beads from his brow and staggered out the door.

He intentionally avoided peering through the cross.

* * * * * * *

About the Persona

Gervasio Arrancado was born in a small shack in Mexico and raised in the orphanage at Agua Idelfonso, several kilometers, give or take a few, from the fictional fishing village of Agua Rocosa.

He is fortunate to have made the acquaintance of Augustus McCrae, Hub and Garth McCann, El Mariachi, Forest Gump, The Bride (Black Mamba), Agents J and K, and several other notables. To this day he lives at that place on the horizon where reality just folds into imagination.

About the Author

Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.

Harvey is an award-winning writer who follows Heinlein’s Rules avidly. He has written and published over 75 novels, 9 novellas, and over 230 short stories. He has also written 16 nonfiction books on writing. and he’s compiled and published 30 collections of short fiction and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.

To see his other works, please visit HarveyStanbrough.com.

For his best advice on writing, see his Daily Journal at HEStanbrough.com.