Hunter's Run(40)

"It's going to be a real sonofabitch getting that thing down," the man said.

"Yeah," Ramón agreed. "Better than trying to make another one, though. Not much cane this far south."

"Think we can do it? Move the fucking thing?"

In the distance, something howled. It was a fluting, lovely sound that reminded Ramón of coyotes and wind chimes. He sighed and spat into the fire.

"Between us, we'll do it," he said. "We're tough bastards."

"Probably couldn't do it, just one of us, though."

"I don't think so."

"Good thing I didn't kill you back there, eh?" the man said. His tone was joking, but Ramón knew it was a joke with teeth. Remember, the man meant, that I had you at knifepoint. You live because I let you. It was the sort of thing he'd have said himself, to remind the constable who owed what to whom. Only now, seeing it from outside, did he understand how alienating and stupid it was.

"Good thing, yeah," he said, and smiled.

                       
       
           



       Chapter 21

Morning found Ramón aching and tired. Through the boughs above him, the sky was gray. The breeze smelled heavy with rain. The other man had risen before him and was boiling a handful of honey grass. Ramón yawned mightily, then rubbed his eyes. His elbow itched, so he scratched, feeling the hard knot of scar where the machete had bitten. It was almost its familiar size and hardness. He plucked the sleeve of his robe down to cover it.

"Storm coming on," the other man said. "Gonna be pretty wet by tonight."

"Better get moving, then," Ramón said.

"I was thinking we could hole up. Find someplace dry to wait it out."

"Good idea. How 'bout Fiddler's Jump? Dry enough there."

"We got days before we can even think of seeing people."

"We've got more of them if we screw around like a couple of schoolgirls trying not to get our hair wet," Ramón said. The other man's gaze hardened.

"Fine," the man said. "That's the way you want it, we'll do that."

After they ate breakfast, the honey grass tasting rich and heavy as wheat after the boiling had burst the grains, Ramón and his twin mapped out the path that made the best sense. Unsurprisingly, they shared the same basic idea. The other man objected to a few of Ramón's suggestions, but that was more for the sake of the objection itself.

"We'll have to clear some of the brush. Maybe a sapling or two," Ramón said. "You want to give me the knife, we can share the shit work."

"I can do it," the man said.

"Your choice."

When they reached the raft again, Ramón used the vines with which they'd pulled it from the river to make a simple yoke. When pulled from the side, the floats acted more like runners, and dragging it was easier than lifting the full weight. The man walked ahead, clearing what he could, or went back to the raft itself to lift it over the rocks and bushes with which it became entangled. The sun sloped unseen toward the top of its arc. The Enye ships peeked through the rare break in the cloud cover. The work was backbreaking, but Ramón pushed through the pain. His spine was screaming, his feet felt on the verge of bleeding, his shoulders were rubbing raw where the yoke rested, but it wasn't like he was cauterizing the stump of his own lost finger. If he was capable of that-and, judging by the man, he was-pulling a raft through the woods shouldn't be worth thinking about.

And as the hours passed, he found the burden growing more bearable. The endless ache in his muscles became less a sensation and more an environment. The other man darted back and forth, clearing the path ahead, lifting the raft and pushing it past the tighter spots when he went behind. Ramón didn't speak much, just leaned into his task. He sensed that his twin was coming to respect him. He knew how much that would gall the man, and it put an extra strength in his back. He thought of Christ bearing his cross while the Romans beat him and the crowd jeered. The raft had to be lighter than that, and it wasn't his own death waiting when he reached the water, but instead his salvation. He had no room for complaint.

The third time he stumbled, he barked his shin on a rock. The gash didn't hurt, but blood slicked his skin. He cursed mildly and started to rise to his feet. A hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Take a break, ese," the man said. "You've been busting your hump all day. It's time for lunch."

"I can keep going," Ramón said. "No trouble."

"Yeah, okay, you're a badass. Got it. Put your fucking leg up and I'll go find us some food."

Ramón chuckled, then shrugged off the yoke and rolled onto his back. The sky was darker now, closer than a cathedral's ceiling. He heard what might have been distant thunder or only a heightened awareness of the blood in his own ears. The man shook his head and turned away. Ramón smiled.

It was strange, not knowing whether or not he liked the man who was himself. He'd never seen how he was from the outside. Smart, resourceful, tough as old leather, but wound tight around his fears and ready to blame everyone but himself. All that insecurity and rage fizzing inside him, ready to explode at the slightest provocation, strutting around like a bantam cock, staring down whoever was nearby. This was what he had always been. Only it took becoming an alien monstrosity to see it.

But there was a dignity to the man, in spite of his flaws. And a surprising strength of will. He'd engineered Maneck's death. He'd sealed the stump of his missing finger when most men would have tried to live with the open wound, and the fact that he wasn't dying of fever right now was a testament to his wisdom. He was even capable of a kind of weird compassion. Keeping Ramón from pushing on now. Lying about Lianna so he wouldn't sound weak. What was he really like? All the pieces of the man's personality seemed at odds with each other, and they also seemed to fit.

The only thing that didn't make sense to him, even now, was staying with Elena. He couldn't see why his twin would do that. He understood why he would have, but this other self could surely do better. Even if they were the same man.

He didn't remember dozing off, only waking when the man shook his arm. Ramón slapped a hand over the scar at his elbow almost before he opened his eyes. The man was squatting beside him, two fat jabali cubs in his hand. Ramón sat up, his body protesting.

"Where did you get those?" he asked.

"I got lucky," the man said. "Come on, I've got a fire started. You can talk with me while I clean these poor pendejos ."

Ramón levered himself up to sitting, and then stood.

"Tomorrow, I'll cook," he said. "You did breakfast and lunch both."

"Go ahead," the man said. "You want to make some food, I'm not going to stop you."

Ramón sat close to the fire, watching the man gut and skin the little animals. The wood hissed and popped, the flame fluttered with a sound like wings when a gust of air blew through it. It would take them another couple of hours to reach the lower riverbank. He wondered if it would be raining by then, and which of them would spend the night in the lean-to. Pushing himself as hard as he had would win the man's respect, but probably not so much as that.

"You from Mexico?" the man asked.

"What?"

"Mexico. On Earth. That where you from?"

"Yeah," Ramón said. "Oaxaca. Why?"

"Just thinking. You look like a mejicano. You've got that kind of face."

Ramón stared at the fire, willing the man to talk about anything but how he looked. Either the man picked up on it, or he hadn't been that concerned with the subject to start.

"What's it like, being a cop?" he asked instead. "You like it?"

"Yeah," Ramón said. "I like it. It's a good job, you know?"

"Looks shitty to me," the man said. "No offense. But all the time, you have to take guys who are just trying to get along, and bust their balls. And why? Because the governor tells you to? So what? I mean, who's the governor? You take away his power and his money, and you think he's going to act any different than the folks he's coming down on?"

"Yeah, well," Ramón said, trying to think how a cop would answer. "The governor's a snooty Portugee prick. That's true. But it's not all like that. Yeah, part of it's colonial bullshit. Checking licenses and permits and shit. But it's not just about that."

"No?"

"No," Ramón said. "There's also the real bad pendejos. The guys who sneak into church, piss all over the altar. The ones who mess with children. I deal with those assholes too."

"Guys who stab ambassadors, you mean?" the man said, his voice cool.

"Fuck that. I mean bad ones. The kind that need killing. You know what I mean."

The man looked up. There was blood on his hands, red and darkening. Ramón saw something in the man's face-something unexpected. Pain. Embarrassment. Regret. Pride. Something.

"There's all kinds of crazy bastards out there," Ramón said, still pretending to be a policeman. "Most of the time, we don't care about people just getting on with their lives. But there's rapists. There's the guys who just want to kill people for no reason. And there's nothing worse than someone who hurts kii ."