The Dog of the South by Charles Portis Page B

odd-sized tires on the car this one was the smallest, and when I got it off I saw molded in the rubber these words: “Property of U-Haul Co. Not to be sold.” A trailer tire!
    Dr. Symes waited in the shade of some bushes. My blistered fingers hurt and I was angry at myself and I was hot and dirty and thirsty. I asked him to bring me the water jug. He didn’t answer and I spoke to him again, sharply. He just stared at me with his mouth open. His face was gray and he was breathing hard. One eye was closed, the red one. The old man was sick! No laughing fits here!
    I took the grip and the water jug to him. He drank some chalky-looking medicine and almost gagged on it. He said he was dizzy. He didn’t want to move for a few minutes. I drank the last of the tepid water in the jug and lay back in the shade. The sand was coarse and warm. I said I would take him to a doctor in Chetumal. He said, “No, it’s just a spell. It’ll pass. I’ll be all right in a minute. It’s not far to Mama’s place, is it?”
    â€œNo, it’s not far now.”
    He took off his long belt and this seemed to give him some relief. Then he took off his bow tie. He unchained the giant wallet from his clothes and handed it to me, along with his flashlight, and told me to see that his mother got these things, a Mrs. Nell Symes. I didn’t like the sound of that. We sat there for a long time and said nothing.
    The booted tire thumped all the way in to Chetumal, and then to the border crossing, which was a river just outside of town. The officer there on the Mexican end of the bridge paid no attention to my faulty papers but he didn’t like the doctor, didn’t want to touch him or brush up against him, this holloweyed old gringo with his mouth open, and he was determined not to let him leave Mexico without his bus. Dr. Symes’s tourist card was clearly stamped “ Entro con Automóvil ,” as was mine, and if one enters Mexico with an automóvil then one must also leave with it.
    I explained that the doctor’s bus had broken down through no fault of his own and that he intended to return for it after a brief visit with his ailing mother in Belize. The officer said that anyone might tell such a story, which was true enough. The law was the law. Produce the bus. Dr. Symes offered the man a hundred pesos and the man studied the brown note for an instant and then shook his head; this was a serious matter and money could not settle it, certainly not a hundred pesos.
    I took the doctor aside and suggested that he give the man five hundred pesos. He said, “No, that’s too much.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do then?”
    â€œI don’t know, but I’m not giving that son of a bitch forty dollars.”
    I saw a red bus cross the bridge with only a brief inspection at each end. I told the doctor I would take him back to Chetumal. He could wait there until dark and catch a red bus to Belize. Then, very likely, there would be a different officer here at this post. The doctor would probably not be noticed and the bus ride would not be a long one. It was only another eighty miles or so to Belize.
    He was wobbly and vague. He had heat staggers. I couldn’t get any sense out of him. He had diarrhea too, and he was drinking paregoric from a little bottle. We drove back to Chetumal, the tire bumping.
    He said, “Are you going to dump me, Speed?”
    â€œYou won’t let me take you to a doctor.”
    â€œI never thought you would just throw me out.”
    â€œI’m not throwing you out. Listen to what I’m saying. You can take a bus across the border tonight. I’ll see that you get on it. I’ll follow the bus.”
    â€œI thought we had a deal.”
    â€œI don’t know what you expect me to do. I can’t force these people to let you out of the country.”
    â€œYou said you’d take me to Belize. I thought it was a straight