The smaller man scrambled up the side of the ridge as if going up a flight of stairs. Stallings followed slowly, wary of the loose shale and rocks. He watched Espiritu duck and disappear into the black hole. Stallings made sure the M-16’s safety was off, switched the weapon to automatic fire, and followed Espiritu into the cave.
It was almost as he remembered it, the cave that had been blasted out of solid metamorphic rock by Japanese combat engineers and used to store food. The roof was an irregular dome. The floor slanted up toward the rear. Its dimensions were approximately 15 feet wide by 10 feet high by 35 feet deep. The entrance hole provided perpetual twilight.
As he entered the cave, Stallings saw Espiritu squatting by a large cardboard box. He lifted out two plastic bottles. “Water,” Espiritu said, reached back into the box and came up with a revolver. He smiled at Stallings. “Now we both have something to shoot with,” he said, sticking the revolver down into the waistband of his pants and covering it with his shirt.
Stallings noticed it was at least 15 degrees cooler in the cave. Handing the shopping bag of food to Espiritu, he said, “You can fix lunch,” and sat down, leaning against the cave wall. The M-16 in his lap was pointed in Espiritu’s general direction.
From the shopping bag Espiritu took packets of newspaper-wrapped food. Some of them were grease-stained. “How many did we kill in here, Booth?” he asked, unwrapping a mound of cold rice. “Six? Seven?”
“Seven.”
“With one grenade. Marvelous.” He looked at Stallings. “And then you ate their crab meat.” Espiritu chuckled. “There were cases and cases of it, remember? And you ate seven or eight cans.”
“Poppy brand,” Stallings said.
“What?”
“The cans had an orange poppy on them.”
“I was wrong. Your memory’s perfect.”
“Selective,” Stallings said. “I remember the irrelevant best. My seventh-grade junior high school locker number, for instance. Two-twelve. The combination of its lock. Ten right, twenty-five left, ten right.”
“Remarkable,” Espiritu murmured, unwrapping the last of the packets. He indicated the food with a small gesture.
“So. The perfect lunch. Rice, fish and fruit.” He smiled. “Haven’t forgotten how to eat with your fingers, have you?”
“No,” said Stallings as he leaned forward and took a handful of cold rice. “After I ate all that crab meat, I got sick. Remember?”
“Indeed.”
“Well, I never touched crab again. Never. What I’m saying is that a trick memory like mine can’t keep me from making a mistake.” He smiled coldly at Espiritu. “But it sure as hell can keep me from making it twice.”
Thirty minutes later they heard the low whistle from outside the cave.
“They’re here,” Espiritu said.
“Who?”
Instead of answering, Espiritu imitated the whistle. Stallings could hear feet slipping and sliding on the shale and rocks. He shifted so that he could cover both Espiritu and the cave entrance with the M-16. “Who the fuck’s out there, Al?”
“Friends.”
The first friend through the cave entrance was Otherguy Overby, hot, sweaty and exasperated. Just behind him came Carmen Espiritu with her woven fiber reticule. She looked cool, fresh and exceedingly stern.
Overby glanced around, taking in the cave. As always, he remarked the obvious. “Christ, it’s cool in here.”
Booth Stallings aimed the M-16 at Overby and said, “What d’you say, Otherguy?”
“Not a hell of a lot.” He nodded at Espiritu. “How’re you, Al?”
“Very well, thank you, Mr. Overby,” Espiritu said with a wry smile and turned to his wife. “Any difficulty?”
“Not yet.”
“You sound as if you’re expecting some.”
“You have to make the choice.”
Espiritu nodded slowly, looking first at Overby, then at Stallings. “Mr. Stallings has an automatic weapon with its safety off that he keeps aimed more or less in my direction. Mr. Overby does not. The choice seems obvious.”
Carmen Espiritu’s right hand went down into the woven fiber reticule. Espiritu turned away, as if to spare himself some unpleasant sight.
“Sorry,” Carmen Espiritu said to Overby.
Otherguy Overby’s face turned still and remote as he nodded at some private conclusion and backed up two careful steps.
Booth Stallings kept his gaze on Espiritu. He watched him turn away and then spin back, aiming the revolver he had taken from the cardboard box at his young wife.
Stallings opened his mouth to yell, but Carmen Espiritu had already seen the pistol. If rage hadn’t driven her to curse her husband, she might have had time enough to tug her own weapon from the reticule. But it snagged on something and Alejandro Espiritu shot her twice — first in the chest and again, lower down, in the midsection. The two rounds drove her back against the cave wall, which provided enough support to keep her standing for a moment or two, looking far more surprised than hurt. She then pitched forward onto her face.
Carmen Espiritu twitched two or three times after she fell and then lay still. Overby was pressing both hands against his ears as if they hurt. Espiritu had clapped his left hand to his left ear, but his right hand still held the revolver. Because Booth Stallings had opened his mouth to yell just as Espiritu fired, his ears didn’t bother him. Both his M-16 and his eyes were still trained on Espiritu.
Seconds passed before anyone spoke or took their hands down from their ears. The first to speak was Espiritu whose voice sounded even more Kansas and toneless than usual, as if he couldn’t quite hear what he was saying.
He used the flat voice to deliver a kind of eulogy about his dead wife. “Carmen had many fine qualities and one glaring fault,” he said. “She thought everyone was a damned fool. Except her.”
Another silence followed. Overby cleared his throat, but said nothing and kept his expression cold, remote and wary. When Booth Stallings spoke, it was in a tone he might have used if speaking to the slightly deaf. “I’ll take that now, Al.”
Alejandro Espiritu looked down at the revolver in his right hand, as though faintly surprised it was still there. He smiled and pointed it at Booth Stallings. “No, Booth,” he said, as if addressing a child. “I don’t think so.”
There was another silence as Stallings and Espiritu stared at each other. Without looking at Otherguy Overby, Espiritu gave him instructions. “Take his rifle, please, Mr. Overby.”
Overby, his face a study in neutrality, shook his head. “It’s not my play.”
“Well,” Espiritu said. “We seem to have a — what do they call it — a Spanish standoff.”
“Mexican,” said Overby.
“Yes, Mexican,” Espiritu said and stuck his revolver back into the waistband of his pants. He looked up quickly at Stallings. “Tell me, Booth. Am I the mistake you don’t intend to repeat?”
“You’re it, Al,” Booth Stallings said.
Chapter Thirty-six
They came out of the cave, Overby first, Espiritu second and then Booth Stallings who kept his M-16 pointed at the Filipino. They left the dead Carmen Espiritu where she lay, next to the empty cardboard box.
After walking nearly a kilometer along a steep rutted track that was not quite a road, they reached Overby’s rented Jeep. “You could’ve driven closer, Mr. Overby,” Espiritu said.
“If I had, I couldn’t’ve turned around,” Overby said as he slipped behind the wheel and watched curiously to see how Booth Stallings would climb into the Jeep’s small rear seat without exposing his back to Espiritu.
Stallings managed by backing through the Jeep’s flimsy homemade door and into the rear seat. Espiritu, half-smiling, climbed into the seat next to Overby.