Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith Page A

into empty space.
    “Thanks.” Joe reached. The things always tasted like dung, he thought. Roberto put one in his own mouth and Joe lit it, then his own. “That’s some smoke.” Joe coughed.
    “From Taos.”
    Roberto held on to the side of the jeep. He had a long Spanish nose. His hands looked surprisingly strong, the nails caked yellow. So that was how he got by: mixing adobe by hand, Joe figured. It was something a fanatical blind man could do. Roberto wouldn’t be able to make much adobe that way, but what he made would be fine stuff.
    “We know what you’re doing up on the Hill and we want you to stop it,” Ben said.
    Neither Joe nor Roberto paid attention to him.
    “I met your mother once,” Roberto said.
    “Yeah?”
    “I guess you were in New York. She was a clan mother, wasn’t she? Winter Clan?”
    “You’re a Winter Clan?”
    “Summer.”
    “She was Winter.” For Christ’s sake, everyone on this side of the pueblo was Winter Clan. Then he remembered that Roberto was blind. “This is mostly Winter Clan here.”
    “We want you and the Army to stop it,” Ben said.
    “Well, Ben,” Joe said, “I doubt very much you know what’s going on up on the Hill, but if you want to stop it, you tell a general, you don’t tell a sergeant.”
    “Your mother made great pots,” Roberto said. “She had that special clay.”
    “Yeah, the white clay.”
    “You were the only one besides her who knew where she got it, she said,” Roberto told Joe.
    “Her and Sophie.”
    “You’re making poison,” Ben said.
    “Ben,” Joe asked as softly as he could, “remember Pearl Harbor? Bataan?”
    “You play the piano, she said,” Roberto told Joe. “And I met your brother, Rudy.”
    “I am telling you now to stop it.”
    Joe was trying to control his temper. “You really ought to take your case to Roosevelt, Ben. Or maybe to the boys from Santiago who are out fighting right now. Or to their mothers.”
    Ben spat in front of the jeep. “Talking to you puts me in mind of the worm. The worm has no ears and no balls.”
    “Well, Ben, your contribution to the war effort, sitting and farting and sorting feathers, is known and appreciated by all.”
    “It’s been a good visit,” Roberto told Joe. With his walking stick, he hit Ben on the shin to locate him.
    “Anytime,” Joe said.
    Ben acted as if there was a whole lot of conversation yet to be had, but Roberto gripped the old man firmly by the arm and, blind or not, led him across the road to Ben’s yard.
    Crazy. First Harvey, now Ben Reyes.
    “I’ll give you a dollar for each one.” Mrs. Quist stood in the doorway and brushed dust off her white suit.
    She’d been coming from Southern California to Santiago as long as Joe could remember. Once she’d been a visible woman, a little tanner each year. Now she was wrapped up like an ambulatory burn case. Her voice was nasal, as if it, too, were burned. Joe slid out of the jeep and followed her into the house.
    Five pieces were lined up on the table. A polychrome pot with a plumed serpent chasing itself so closely that its jaws bit its own tail. A plate as black and shiny as coal but perfectly round and decorated with a ring of a hundred finely drawn feathers. A brown pot grooved like an acorn squash and as smooth as polished stone. A tall wedding pot with elegant twin necks. A little black seed bowl, round as a ball with a small hole.
    “This house is a mess. If Dolores saw it …” Mrs. Quist sighed from aggravation and waved away the dust.
    “A dollar each?”
    “I’ll lose money. If you take in the expense of my travel, the ration cards for gasoline, hotel, food, closing down the shop, there’s no way I’ll see a profit. What with gas coupons this is the first time I’ve been here for two years. Dolores and I had a deal, though.”
    “You did say a dollar.”
    Mrs. Quist carefully put the squash pot into a box padded with newspaper and excelsior. “I can’t sell them in Santa Fe. There