A Good Story

The big snake moved in its cage, getting hungry. Flat eyes watched Leon walk through and out of the barn; Leon pretended not to notice. There'd been nothing in the mail today, so he was free. He walked past the cages and cotes, past the sawdust-smelling shed where the crates were hammered together, past the long, low main house, with its mutter of air conditioning, and on down the dry dirt road into town, where he bought a beer in the cantina next to the church and stepped outside to enjoy the day.

The sun in the plaza was bright, the air clean and hot, and when he tilted the bottle and put his head back, the lukewarm beer foamed in his mouth. Stripped to the waist, T-shirt dangling from the back pocket of his cutoff jeans, moccasins padding on the baked brown earth, Leon strolled around the plaza, smiling up at the distant crown of the Andes.

Slowly he sipped his beer, enjoying the sensations. This town was so high above sea level, the air so thin, that perspiration dried on him as soon as it appeared. Eight months ago, when he'd first come to Ixialta, Leon had found that creepy and disconcerting, but now he liked the dry crackle and tingle on his flesh, the accretion of salt that he could later brush off like talcum powder.

Eight months; no time at all. The work he did was easy and the money terrific, and the temptation to just drift along with it was very strong--that's what Jaime-Ortiz counted on, he knew that much--but he'd promised himself to give it no more than a year. Tops; one year. Go home rich and clean and 24, with the world before him. Leon grinned, a tall, sloping boy with wiry arms and the hard-muscled legs of a jogger, and was still grinning when the car appeared.

Except for Jaime-Ortiz' six vehicles, cars were a rarity in Ixialta. The dirt road winding up the jungled mountainside was a mere spur from the trans-Andean highway, dead-ending in this public square, surrounded by low stucco buildings.

In the past eight months, how many strangers had been here? A government tax man had come to talk with Jaime-Ortiz, had stopped for lunch and a bribe and had departed. A couple of closemouthed Americans had brought up the new satellite dish, hooked it up and showed Jaime-Ortiz how it worked.

And who else? A pair of British girls working for the UN on some hunger survey; two sets of dopers searching for peyote, going away disappointed; a couple of American big-game hunters who'd stayed three days, shot one alpaca and contracted dysentery; and one or two more. Maybe seven interventions from the outside world in all this time.

And now here was number eight, a dusty maroon rental Honda with a pair of Americans aboard. The 30ish woman who got out on the passenger side was an absolute drop-dead ice blonde. In khaki slacks, thonged sandals, pale-blue blouse and leather shoulder bag, she was some expensive designer's idea of a girl foreign correspondent. The big dark sunglasses, though, were an error; only Jackie O., in Leon's opinion, could wear Jackie O. sunglasses without loss of status. Still, this was a dream walking.

The man was something else. Wide rumped in stiff new jeans, he wore office-style brown oxfords and a long-sleeved buttondown shirt. He was an office worker, a professor of ancient languages, a bank teller, and he didn't belong on this mountain. Nor with that woman.

Leon approached, smiling, planning his opening remark, but the woman spoke first, frowning (continued on page 188)A Good Story(continued from page 122) as though he were the doorman: "What place is this?"

"Ixialta," he told her.

"The high Ixi," she said, unexpectedly. There was a faint roughness in her voice, not at all unpleasant. "What's an Ixi?"

"Maybe a god." Leon had never asked that question.

The man had draped himself with cameras. Blinking through clip-on sunglasses over his spectacles, he said, "Look at those cornices! Look at that door!"

"Yes, Frank," she said, uninterested, and pointed at Leon's beer. "That looks good."

"I'll get you one."

"And shade," she said, looking around.

"Table beside the cantina." He pointed. "In the shade, in the air, you can watch the world go by."

"Good." Setting off across the plaza, Leon beside her, the woman said, "Much of the world go by here?"

"You're it, so far."

Two small round white-metal tables leaned on the cobblestones beside the cantina, furnished with teetery ice-cream-parlor chairs and shaded by the bulk of San Sebastian next door. The woman chose the table without a sleeping dog under it, while Leon went inside. The few customers in the dark and ill-smelling place stopped muttering when he walked in, as they always did, and sat looking at their thick hands or bare feet. Leon finished his beer and bought two more. Putting his T-shirt on, he paid and carried the bottles outside.

Across the way, Frank was taking photos of cornices and doors. The woman had pushed her big sunglasses up on top of her head and was studying her face in a round compact mirror. She had good, level gray eyes, with something cool in them. Sitting across from her, he placed both bottles on the table and said, "I'm Leon."

"Ruth." She put the compact away and looked out at the empty plaza. "Lively spot."

"Come back on Sunday," Leon invited.

"What happens Sunday?"

"Paseo." Leon waved his arm in a great circle. "The boys walk around that way, the girls come the other way, give each other the eye. They come from all around the mountain here."

"The mating ritual," she said, picking up the bottle.

Leon shrugged. "It's the way they do it. All the Indian boys and girls." Across the way, Frank sat in the sunny dust, taking a picture of a stone step.

Ruth drank, head tipped back, throat sweet and vulnerable; Leon wanted to nibble on it. The thought must have showed on his face, because, when she lowered the bottle, the smile she gave him was knowing but distanced. "You're no Indian," she said.

"I'm an Indian's secretary," he said and laughed at the joke.

"How does that work?"

"There's a rich man up here. Owns a lot of land, has everything he wants."

"And he lives here?" The skepticism was light, faintly mocking.

"This is where his money comes from."

"He's a farmer, then."

"He sells animals."

"Cattle?" Confusion was making her irritable, on the verge of boredom.

"No, no," Leon said, "wild animals. Jaime-Ortiz sells them to zoos, circuses, animal trainers all around the world. That's why he needs a secretary, somebody to write the letters in English, handle the business details."

She looked faintly repelled. "What kind of animals?"

"All sorts. This whole range around here--Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay--it's one of the last great wildlife areas. We've got puma, jaguar, all kinds of monkeys, llamas, snakes----"

"Ugh," she said. "What kind of snakes?"

"Rattlers. Anaconda. Boa constrictor. We got a huge boa up in the barn now, all ready to go."

She drank beer and shivered. "Some way to make a living."

"Jaime-Ortiz does OK," Leon assured her and grinned at what he was leaving unsaid.

She seemed to sense there was more to the story. Watching herself move the bottle around on the scarred metal top, she said, "And you do OK, too, I guess."

"Do I look like I'm complaining?"

She glanced at him sidelong. "No," she said, slow and thoughtful. "You look quite pleased with yourself."

Was she making fun? A bit defensive through the lightness, he said, "It's an interesting job here. More than you know."

"How'd you get it? Answer a want ad?"

Leon grinned, on surer ground. "Jaime-Ortiz doesn't put any want ads. He doesn't want some stranger poking around in his business."

"You already knew him, then."

"Family connection. Somebody in the business at the other end."

"An uncle," she said and smiled, showing all her teeth, as though he were a kid she didn't have to compose her face for.

"OK, an uncle," he said, getting really annoyed now. "That doesn't make me just a nephew."

Looking contrite but still smiling, she reached out to touch the tips of two red fingernails to the back of his hand, the nails slightly indenting the flesh. "Don't be mad, Leon," she said. "Take a joke."

Frank and his cameras were still across the plaza. Leon turned his hand, closed it with gentle pressure on her fingers. "I like to joke," he said.

"The wild-animal trainer." She withdrew her hand. "I'd get bored, playing zoo."

"There's better stuff." Suddenly nervous, he gulped beer, and when he lowered the bottle, she was looking at him.

Some instinct of caution made him hesitate. But the English girls had been very impressed. And what difference did it make if he talked? The strangers came and went, forgetting the very name of Ixialta. Looking away toward the mountains, he said, "This is also where the coca bush grows. All around here."

"Cocaine," she said, getting it, but then frowned: "What about the law?"

"Around here? You're kidding."

"No, the States, when you smuggle it in."

"That's the beauty," he told her, grinning. "You take your white powder, you see? You put it in your glassine envelopes. You feed your envelopes to your monkey."

"Monkey? But he'll digest it; he'll----"

"No," Leon said. "Because then you feed your monkey to your boa constrictor."

"Oh," she said.

"There isn't a Customs man in the world gonna look to see what's inside a monkey inside a boa constrictor."

"I wouldn't."

"The monkey has to go into the snake alive," Leon said, glad to see her eyes widen. "It takes the snake seven days to digest the monkey but only two days to be flown to Wilkinson, the wild-animal dealer in Florida." It was such a good story that he laughed all over again every time he told it. "As the fella says, it's all in the packaging."

"Yes," she said, her expression suddenly enigmatic. She stood, turning away, calling, "Frank! Frank!"

Leon said, "Look, uh...."

"Just a minute." She was brisk and businesslike, utterly different.

Baffled, Leon got to his feet as Frank came trotting across the plaza, holding his cameras down with both hands. "Yeah?"

Nodding at Leon, Ruth said, "He's the one."

Frank looked surprised. "You sure?"

"He just told it to me."

"Well, that was quick," Frank said. His manner was suddenly also changed, less fussy, more self-assured. He walked toward Leon, making a fist. Leon was so bewildered he didn't even duck.

•

Someone pulled his hair. Leon jerked, trying to stand, but was held down, rough ropes holding him to a chair. He opened his eyes, and Jaime-Ortiz stood in front of him, along with Paco and a couple of the other workers. They were all in the big barn, where the air was always cool, rich with animal stink, the hard-packed-earth floor crosshatched with broom lines.

Against the far wall, under the dim bulbs, stood the cages, only a few occupied. A red-furred howler monkey, big-shouldered and half the size of a man, sat with its back to everybody, the hairless tip of its long tail curled negligently around a lower bar, while next door a golden guanaco pranced nervously, its delicate ears back and eyes rolling. Farther from the light, the big, skinny boa, pale brown with darker crossbars, its scaly head rearing up nearly three feet in the air, showed yellow underbelly as it stared through the bars and wire at everything that moved.

"Jaime?" Leon tugged at the hairy ropes, tasting old blood in his mouth, feeling the sharp stings around his puffy lips. "Jaime? What----"

"I got to be disappointed in you, Leon," Jaime-Ortiz said. He was a big, heavy man with a broad, round face and liquid-brown eyes that could look as soulful as that guanaco's--or as cold as stones. "You," he said, pointing a thick, stubby finger at Leon. "You got to be one real disappointment to me." He shook his head, a fatalistic man.

"But what did I----What's----"

"Little stories going around," Jaime-Ortiz said. He waggled the fingers of both hands up above his head, like a man trying to describe birds in flight. "Somebody talking about our business, Leon. Yours and mine. Making trouble for you and me."

"Jaime, please----"

"All of a sudden," Jaime-Ortiz said, "these drug agents, they come to our friend Wilkinson, they got a paper from a judge."

"Oh, my God." Leon closed his eyes, licking his sore lips. The rope was tied very hard and tight; he could barely feel his hands and feet.

"Who would make trouble for you and me and Wilkinson? Leon? Who?"

Eyes shut, Leon shook his head back and forth. "I'm sorry, Jaime. I'm sorry."

"Friends in New York ask me this," Jaime-Ortiz said. "I say it's not me, it's not Leon, it's not Paco. We all got too much to lose. They say they send somebody down, walk around, see who likes to tell stories."

"Jaime, I'll never, never----"

"Oh, I know that," Jaime-Ortiz said. "You can't be around here no more, Leon. I got to send you back to the States."

Hope stirred in Leon. He stared up at Jaime-Ortiz. "Jaime, I promise, I won't say a word, I'll never----"

"That's right," Jaime-Ortiz said. "You will never say a word. Not the way you're going back to the States."

Leon didn't get it until he saw Paco come toward him with the glassine envelope in his hand. "Open wide," Paco said.