El Camino Del Rio by Jim Sanderson

Author:Jim Sanderson [Sanderson, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brash Books, LLC
Published: 1998-03-10T07:00:00+00:00

AÑO NUEVO

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From Ariel’s long window that rose the entire height of the condo, I could see that the party was over, but I knew that at least Pepper, usually unable to sleep, would not leave until everyone else had left. I shut the front door behind me and walked past the Western town, then headed down the slope toward Tommy’s parking lot. The band members were packing their instruments, and a few Mexicans drunkenly argued. The wind had grown colder and blew some trash across the parking lot. An Alpine newspaper page caught against my leg, and I kicked into the wind to get it loose, then watched it as it blew toward the river.

I stepped on rocks and gravel and made my way around the Lajitas Trading Post to Tommy’s house, then went to his back porch with its view of the Rio Grande. The house protected us from the chilly wind, but the air had some of the coolness from the river in it. Tommy had one of those big Western dusters on and sat on his steps. Pepper had on a down vest and claimed the one folding chair, and Dede, with only a Levi’s jacket on, hugged herself and sat on the porch railing. Socorro sat on the wooden floor of the porch under Dede and seemed to be lost in his stare out toward the river.

“Yo,” Pepper screamed when he saw me coming. “Stud duck.” He leaned his chair back on two legs and stuck his hand straight above himself. Tommy scooted to one side of the steps, and I stepped by Tommy and gave Pepper a medium-high high five. “Stewed and screwed; where’s the tattoo?” Pepper asked.

“On the arch of her left foot,” I said. “This cute little black panther with a green eye.”

Dede perched uneasily on the porch rail, shifted her weight from one side of her butt to the other. Socorro pushed himself up, looked at me and at Dede, then creaked the slats of Tommy’s porch as he stepped across it to stagger back toward the trading post and walked into darkness, on his way to wherever it was he stayed.

“Where’s your date?” I asked Pepper.

“Piss, fuck, shit fire,” Pepper said, let his chair down to all four legs, leaned to the railing, and spit tobacco juice out toward the slope to the Rio Grande. “She passed out on me. I got her up in my motel room. Hoping she’ll sober up a little before I get back.”

“Hell, should of told me,” Tommy said. “I’ll sneak up there and service her for you.”

“Be like a dead cow.”

“Yeah, you should know from cows,” Tommy said.

“Anybody got a beer?” I asked.

Tommy reached down to a step below him and pulled a can out of the cardboard surrounding a six-pack and handed the can to me. “That’s a buck-fifty you owe me,” he said. I popped the top and looked for a place to light. Dede balanced her butt on the railing, leaned her

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