Ask for Me Tomorrow

The padre looked shocked. “I thought Tula was — I didn’t know he had another wife.”

“Two other wives. Only one of them wants him found.”

“Then Pablo is illegitimate?”

“Yes.”

“All the more he is a child of God,” the padre said, but he sounded shaken. “Of course, we will not tell any of the villagers about this. It would serve no purpose and the little boy might suffer unnecessarily. It is not easy being a child of God.”

“How long did Lockwood stay here in the village?”

“Some four years or so. He was a nice man, kind to all the little ones and very fond of his son. He pretended the boy was normal, perhaps even to himself he pretended, I’m not sure.”

“No, he knew the facts. The second Mrs. Lockwood had a letter from him referring to the boy.”

“Then all the more he was a nice man, don’t you think?”

“I think he must have been. Everyone I’ve talked to seems to have liked him.” With the exception of Smedler, who didn’t count because he never liked anybody. “Was he happy here, living under what for him were certainly primitive conditions?”

“But he was going to change the conditions. He had great plans for the village, great dreams. The mission would be restored, haciendas built, and a town square and a new pier to attract tourists in big boats. Also streets would be put in, real streets with beautiful names carved on stone pillars. The streets were laid out and some of the pillars already carved when the authorities arrived. Then suddenly it was all over.”

“What happened?”

“He was arrested along with his partner, Jenkins, who was the real villain. But the authorities didn’t bother to apportion blame on a percentage basis, eighty percent Jenkins, twenty percent Lockwood. No, they arrested them both equally.”

“What was the charge?”

“It seems a lot of people were cheated. They sent money to buy lots on which haciendas were to be built, Jenlock Haciendas.”

“A real estate swindle.”

“I couldn’t believe Mr. Lockwood deliberately swindled anyone. But what I believed was unimportant... The whole village came here to church to say farewell prayers for him. He was all dressed up for the occasion in his best suit and tie with a diamond tiepin in it, his fancy wristwatch and gold wedding ring and the ruby ring he wore on his little finger. He looked very splendid, like the day he arrived in the chariot. No one would have imagined he was being arrested, perhaps he could not really imagine it himself. Is this possible?”

“Yes.”

“They took him away in a dirty old vehicle something like a bus with bars across the windows, a far cry from a chariot. When the bus left, he and Jenkins sat quietly, but Tula kept waving at us from the window precisely the way she’d waved on the day she and Lockwood arrived.”

“Why did Tula go along?”

“I think to get away from the village, which bored her, and the child she was ashamed of, not so much to be with Lockwood.”

“She couldn’t be with him anyway, could she, if he was being sent to jail?”

“Oh yes, if she really wanted to. The jail in Rio Seco is very different from American jails I have seen in the cinema in Ensenada. Sometimes whole families live together, inside the walls. Or a prisoner, if he can afford it, may have his meals brought to him from outside or be visited by night ladies. The latter I don’t approve. But the other thing — what harm is done? It is a more humane way to conduct a prison than the American way, don’t you agree?”

“I agree that it’s more humane for the prisoner, not necessarily for his family.”

“Bear in mind that many of the men in prison have committed no crime, they are simply waiting for their cases to be heard. For most offenses no bail is allowed because under Mexican law there is no presumption of innocence such as in your country. Quite the contrary. A man is presumed guilty and is not entitled to a jury trial. His guilt or innocence, and his sentence, is decided by a magistrate. He can be kept in jail for a whole year before his case is even heard. This is very sad for the poor, who can’t afford to pay bribes, but everyone expected when Mr. Lockwood was taken away that he would be back any week. We thought he still had some money, or that he could at least borrow some from his American friends in order to pay the magistrate for a favorable verdict. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he was released from prison and simply chose not to return here. We never heard from him again.”

“Or from the girl?”

“No. A funny thing happened, though. Last fall, about a year ago, a sports fishing boat came down from the north coast and anchored in the bay. A man rowed ashore in a dinghy and left some boxes for the children containing clothes and toys and chewing gum and vitamin pills.”

“Could they have been sent by Lockwood?”

“Possibly, though I would think he’d have included some more useful things. The children broke the toys in a week and fed the vitamin pills to the goats.”

“Didn’t you ask the man in the dinghy who sent him?”