Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

He had taken the watch off that day and never worn it since.

‘Noon,’ he said.

Noon.

The border lay ahead. They saw it and both cried out at once. They pulled up, smiling, not knowing they smiled.…

John Webb leaned out the window, started gesturing to the guard at the border station, caught himself, and got out of his car. He walked ahead to the station where three young men, very short, in lumpy uniforms, stood talking. They did not look up at Webb, who stopped before them. They continued conversing in Spanish, ignoring him.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said John Webb at last. ‘Can we pass over the border into Juatala?’

One of the men turned for a moment. ‘Sorry, señor.’

The three men talked again.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Webb, touching the first man’s elbow. ‘We’ve got to get through.’

The man shook his head. ‘Passports are no longer good. Why should you want to leave our country, anyway?’

‘It was announced on the radio. All Americans to leave the country, immediately.’

‘Ah, sí, sí.’ All three soldiers nodded and leered at each other with shining eyes.

‘Or be fined or imprisoned, or both,’ said Webb.

‘We could let you over the border, but Juatala would give you twenty-four hours to leave, also. If you don’t believe me, listen!’ The guard turned and called across the border, ‘Aye, there! Aye!’

In the hot sun, forty yards distant, a pacing man turned, his rifle in his arms.

‘Aye there, Paco, you want these two people?’

‘No, gracias – gracias, no,’ replied the man, smiling.

‘You see?’ said the guard, turning to John Webb.

All of the soldiers laughed together.

‘I have money,’ said Webb.

The men stopped laughing.

The first guard stepped up to John Webb and his face was now not relaxed or easy; it was like brown stone.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They always have money. I know. They come here and they think money will do everything. But what is money? It is only a promise, señor. This I know from books. And when somebody no longer likes your promise, what then?’

‘I will give you anything you ask.’

‘Will you?’ The guard turned to his friends. ‘He will give me anything I ask.’ To Webb: ‘It was a joke. We were always a joke to you, weren’t we?’

‘No.’

‘Mañana, you laughed at us; mañana, you laughed at our siestas and our mañanas, didn’t you?’

‘Not me. Someone else.’

‘Yes, you.’

‘I’ve never been to this particular station before.’

‘I know you, anyway. Run here, do this, do that. Oh, here’s a peso, buy yourself a house. Run over there, do this, do that.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘He looked like you, anyway.’

They stood in the sun with their shadows dark under them, and the perspiration coloring their armpits. The soldier moved closer to John Webb. ‘I don’t have to do anything for you anymore.’

‘You never had to before. I never asked it.’

‘You’re trembling, señor.’

‘I’m all right. It’s the sun.’

‘How much money have you got?’ asked the guard.

‘A thousand pesos to let us through, and a thousand for the other man over there.’

The guard turned again. ‘Will a thousand pesos be enough?’

‘No,’ said the other guard. ‘Tell him to report us!’

‘Yes,’ said the guard, back to Webb again. ‘Report me. Get me fired. I was fired once, years ago, by you.’

‘It was someone else.’

‘Take my name. It is Carlos Rodriguez Ysotl. Go on now.’

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t see,’ said Carlos Rodriguez Ysotl. ‘Now give me two thousand pesos.’

John Webb took out his wallet and handed over the money. Carlos Rodriguez Ysotl licked his thumb and counted the money slowly under the blue glazed sky of his country as noon deepened and sweat arose from hidden sources and people breathed and panted above their shadows.

‘Two thousand pesos.’ He folded it and put it in his pocket quietly. ‘Now turn your car around and head for another border.’

‘Hold on now, damn it!’

The guard looked at him. ‘Turn your car.’