I was slow and careful driving back and the tires held up all the way. The sun was directly overhead when I emerged from the scrub trail and pulled up to the compound gate. LQ and Brando were sitting in ladderback chairs in the shade of the gate archway, staring at me. I turned off the motor and got out of the car.
LQ’s left arm had been splinted and freshly bandaged and it was cradled in a clean white sling. He held the tommy gun under his good arm. Brando had the BAR slung on his shoulder and wore no visible bandage but he grimaced and pressed a hand to his side as he stood up.
“Thought you might be dead,” he said.
“Thought you might be,” I said.
LQ gestured at my bloody shirt. “You bad?”
“No. Who fixed you guys up?”
“Bunch of peons,” Brando said. “Took me over to a hut and bandaged me pretty good. Then we come out here and found this peckerwood still alive and they patched him too.”
“Where’re they now?”
“Went home, I guess.” He gestured toward the peon housing on the other side of the compound. “They talked a whole bunch but I never got a word of it.”
“From what I could make out, it was mostly bitching about Calveras,” LQ said. “What a son of a bitch he was and how they hoped he never come back and so on.”
“Well, he aint coming back,” I said.
“Glad to hear it,” LQ said. “Where’s—”
“She aint coming back either.”
They stared at me for a second. “Shit,” Brando said. “I’m sorry, Jimmy.”
“He do her?” LQ said. His eyes gave away what he was really asking. I figured he’d been thinking things over, his mind replaying the exchange of gunfire with the guy in the car.
“Yeah. He did.”
He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and let out a long breath.
Brando put his hand on my good shoulder. “Listen, Jimmy. What say we quit this goddamn country and go home?”
“Let’s do it,” LQ said.
“Let’s,” I said.
Late that night we were back in Villa Acuña. Sanchez’s filling station was closed, and we left the Hudson parked in the rear of it. The car looked a lot less snappy than it had two days ago. LQ wanted to take the Thompson with us, but I said we’d never be able to smuggle it past the border guards, and we left it in the car trunk with the BAR.
A norther had kicked up and steadily strengthened. It gusted hard and cold. We turned up our collars and hugged our coats to us and squinted against the blowing sand. We held tight to our hats as we crossed the bridge. LQ yelled, “So long, Mexico!” and spat over the railing—but just then the wind turned and slung the spit on his hat. He cussed a blue streak and Brando laughed.
They slept as the train rocked through the night. I sipped coffee and stared out at the moonlit landscape, catching sight of a lone coyote now and then, a solitary tumbleweed bounding alongside the tracks. The country regained grass and hills and trees. Brando had cleaned out my wound with tequila and bandaged it with a clean cloth he got from somewhere, but the shoulder had stiffened through the day and the ache of it ran deep under the muscle, down to the bone.
We went through San Antonio, chugged through Seguin, Luling, Columbus, and still I couldn’t sleep.
The day broke gray and very cold and the trees were shaking in the wind. In Houston we changed trains. And then we were over Galveston Bay and at last I fell asleep for the few minutes it took to arrive at the station.
We stepped down from the coach and here came Big Sam through the crowd, smiling his movie star smile—then making a face of sympathy at the sight of LQ’s armsling. He shook our hands and said he was happy to see us all back.
Rose was waiting at the station’s front doors.
“Welcome home, Kid.”
I nodded.
He smiled—and then led the way out, checking his watch as he went, because there were things to tend to, as always. Deals to close, payments to pick up, promises to collect on, warnings to deliver, accounts to settle…
About the Author
Under the Skin is JAMES CARLOS BLAKE ’s seventh novel and eighth book of fiction. Among his literary honors are the Quarterly West Novella Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Chautauqua South Book Award, and the Southwest Book Award. He resides in Arizona.
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Praise for Under the Skin and James Carlos Blake
“Skin knocks the wind out of you from the get-go…. Alluring, seductive, and spontaneous…. A provocative novel…. A window into the soul of man.”
—USA Today
“Blake explores dark borderlands of the human spirit. He has rightfully been hailed as one of the most original writers in America today and is certainly one of the bravest.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Under the Skin is brutal and beautiful…. [There] are passages of pure poetry and haunting beauty.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Under the Skin [has] the seductive fascination of a beautiful song scrawled in blood.”
—Denver Post
“Blake has elevated bloodshed to a high art…. Under the Skin is a borderland noir about love and crime. The real borders it crosses, however, are not just geographic.”
—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
“A tough and tender story of lawlessness and retribution, exposing the human frailties of the hardest criminals. Blake is a great storyteller.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“[A] gripping premise…. The historical detail is deftly deployed, and the portrait of 1930s Galveston alone makes the book worthwhile…. A worthy addition to [Blake’s] growing canon.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Blake is a poet of violence…. This is a fine book [depicting] a powerful sense of place, a quest, and the incompleteness of victory.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Blake knows how to tell an action-packed story…. His characters live on the edge, seeking freedom and adventure, moving through a Darwinian landscape in which life is nasty, brutish, and short…. The fast-paced action keeps the pages turning.”
—Dallas Morning News
“Blake has an uncanny knack for bringing our country’s violent past to life, and for chronicling the arc of a character’s life…against the changing backdrop of society.”
—Poisoned Pen
“Blake’s structural ploy is downright brilliant…. Few crime novels succeed in melding sheer brutality with literary finesse.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“All Jim Harrison, James Crumley, and Jim Thompson fans—all Peckinpah and Tarantino fans, too—this book is for you. Blake [is] a master of style and story…an acrobat with language, able to merge styles, change moods, and evoke a rich variety of tones. This novel is full of stories within stories, passionate and heavy with the fragility, cruelty, heart, and yearning of humanity.”
—Square Books