Chapter 9
Music Hath Charms
Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. I own nothing except a student loan and a car that's currently in the shop getting repairs I can't afford. And oh yeah, Sands and El Mariachi are owned by Robert Rodriguez.
Rating: R for language
Note: The full quote for the chapter title is, "Music hath charms that soothe the savage breast/To soften rocks or bend a knotted oak." -- William Congreve, The Mourning Bride.
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Inside the ugly stone-and-glass house where Ajedrez had once lived, they had found what they were looking for. Information. They finally knew where they were going now. They had a goal. A destination.
Two days had passed since the confrontation at the drug house. They had spent the first night in the house itself, nursing their wounds, having decided that their need for rest outweighed the risk of remaining in a house full of dead men.
El had dreamed of Carolina that night, and his daughter, his beautiful girl who had never had a chance to live. He had woken up with tears in his eyes. Angry with himself for being so weak, he had promptly stalked into the room where Sands was sleeping and pushed the man off the bed.
"It's time to go," he had said.
From on the floor, Sands had told him quite succinctly what he could do with himself.
El had just turned around and walked out. Half an hour later they had left the drug house, heading southeast, and an hour after that, they had arrived once again in the state of Culiacan.
They had moved slowly, turning off the road often to make sure no one was following them. They slept at night out in the open. Sands complained the entire time, but El had been silent. It was not the first night he had spent under the stars, and it would not be the last.
It was getting dangerous to enter the towns, but this morning El had taken the chance. He had gone alone into the village where Lorenzo and Fideo made their living by singing to American touristas. He had enjoyed a reunion with them, but he had kept things brief. The whole time he was standing there talking to his old friends, he had been aware of Sands, back at their makeshift camp. He had gathered the guns and ammunition he had come for, promised to tell the two mariachis the story of his adventures later, and then he had left.
He had gone back to the camp. On a whim he had tried sneaking up, wondering how close he could get before Sands knew he was there.
He had not gotten far, and that had pleased him. Sands had shot at him, and the man's aim had been so close El had thrown himself to the ground, shouting that it was only him, don't shoot! But even through the fear, he had been laughing, because if he had ever doubted that he and Sands could take on an entire cartel by themselves, those doubts were completely erased at that moment.
Sands had sat there, still holding the gun, and El wondered if he would be shot anyway, then the CIA agent had put the gun away. "What did you get?"
"What we need," El had replied.
That had been this morning. They had driven all day, making their preparations and getting into position. By the time night had fallen, they were ready.
They were in the hills above the house where Escalante lived and ruled. El could see its lights through the trees. From this distance, they looked small and inviting. Looking at it, you would never know that a drug lord lived there.
He sat with his back against a large stone that still held vestiges of warmth from the day. A fire burned, but only a small one, so it would not reveal their location to anyone at the house who might happen to look out into the woods. There was enough of a breeze for him to feel comfortable, and it stirred his hair.
He strummed the guitar on his lap and sang a few rough words. The gunshot wound to his arm had barely begun to heal, and it hurt to play, but he refused to acknowledge the pain. Not that it mattered. Always before music had possessed the ability to calm him, but the magical power of the notes was not working tonight. The guitar in his hands was not alive with possibility. It felt like a dead thing, a mere object of wood and string and shiny bits of metal. For a terrible moment he thought about smashing it on the ground, and had to stop himself with difficulty.
"Que quieres en la vida?" he whispered. Played a few notes.
From the darkness, a hand reached out and plucked the guitar from his grip. He scrambled to his feet, one hand diving reflexively for the gun at his hip. Then he saw it was only Sands, and he relaxed somewhat. He had not even heard the man approach.
"Do you mind? Some of us are trying to sleep."
"How can you sleep?" El asked. He sat down again. "Tomorrow we face Escalante."
"Well," Sands drawled, "have you ever tried counting sheep?" He settled himself on the ground, El's guitar in his lap. "And by sheep I mean lovely blonde women in very white, very skimpy, bikinis."
El gestured to his guitar. "Do you know how to play that?"
Sands held out one hand. "Give me a bullet from your gun."
He frowned, but did as he was told. He tossed the bullet across the space separating them, and Sands caught it deftly. The CIA agent held it between the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, touched it to the strings of the guitar, and began to play.
El was shocked. He had never heard such sounds coming from his guitar. Sands slid his hand up and down the guitar neck, dragging the bullet down the strings, producing long notes that seemed to go on forever, trembling a little before they dissolved into the night air. The music spoke of longing, of nights under the stars, and El never wanted it to end.
And then Sands hit a wrong note, and the song fell apart. He pressed the palm of his right hand to the strings, mashing them flat. "Well," he said. "It's a little harder to play when I can't see the fucking frets." His left hand tightened on the neck of the guitar, as though he wanted to bring it down on the hard ground and smashing it into a thousand pieces.
El wondered why he did not.
The music was still there, the notes rising invisibly toward the stars. Tomorrow they would face Ramon Escalante, new leader of the cartel formerly under Barillo's command. Tomorrow there would be killing, and lots of it.
"Show me," he said, "how you do that."
Sands shook his head. "No."
El shrugged. He had expected Sands to refuse. The CIA agent took a perverse pleasure in not doing what was expected of him. "At the house, why didn't you tell those men where I was?"
The question had been bothering him ever since that night. He could not think why Sands had protected him, at the agent's own expense. Such a selfless act didn't fit with what he knew about Sands.
But it made him wonder. People could change – he was living proof of that. Maybe Sands could change too, and leave his madness and cynicism behind.
"I don't know." Sands shrugged. "I just knew I wasn't going to give those fuckers what they wanted."
"Oh," El said. So much for his theory about people changing.
"What, you thought maybe I was suddenly ready to defend you to the death or something?" Sands sounded genuinely amused by this.
El stammered to make a reply, and could come up with nothing.
"Listen." The humor had vanished from the CIA agent's voice. "If I stayed silent back there, it wasn't to save you. It was to save me. The instant I told them what they wanted to know, they would have killed me. So it made sense for me to keep my mouth shut."
"Always looking out for yourself," El said. He wanted his guitar back.
"No one else is going to do it!" Sands snapped.
El shook his head. "You will not trust me," he said.
"Well, let me think, El. Since I've known you, you've thrown me off a porch, handcuffed me to your car, broken my fingers, and never missed an opportunity to stomp me into the ground." Sands recited these things dryly, with his old carefree sarcasm. "Now, even you must realize that those things don't exactly inspire trust and loyalty in the one being shit upon."
It was all true, El thought with a dour frown. He had treated Sands like shit right from the beginning. "You gave me no choice," he said. "You tried to kill me."
He expected Sands to protest angrily. Instead, the agent just shrugged. "I know," he said.
El stared at him. "But now," he said. "You could trust me now."
That deceptive light-heartedness Sands put on, deceptive because it made him appear approachable and friendly, fell away. "Trust," he mocked. "I don't think so. Because you see, the last time I trusted someone, I lost my ability to see things clearly. So I'm afraid I've got quite the issue with trust, these days, El my dear friend."
El said nothing to this. He understood. A long time ago, so long ago it seemed like something that had happened to another man, he had been trusting. He had been soft. Then he had arrived in the wrong town and gotten involved with the wrong men, and since then everything in his life had turned to shit. Carolina had loved him, and she taught him to trust again, but it had been a difficult process. Trust was easy to lose, and all but impossible to relearn.
"Besides," Sands continued, "do you think I intend to stick around after tomorrow? Ten minutes after the dust clears, I'm going to be--"
"Why don't you go back home?" El interrupted. "Back to America?"
Sands stopped in mid-tirade. He strummed absently at the guitar on his lap. El had just recognized the song as the Star-Spangled Banner when Sands slammed his hand down on the strings, creating a discordant, jangling sound that filled the night uncomfortably.
Sands held the guitar out, and waited for El to take it before saying, "I can't go back." He hesitated. "There's nothing for me there. Besides, you heard the good Agent Ramirez. If I went back they'd slap me in a nuthouse so fast it would put Speedy Gonzalez to shame."
"Why do you think that?" El asked. He knew the answer, but he was curious to hear what Sands would say.
"Well, because I'm insane," Sands said, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. "At the moment, I am also an embarrassment and a liability to the CIA. And we can't have that now, can we?"
"So, you will just hide from them forever?" El settled the guitar on his lap, but he felt no urge to play it.
Sands smiled without humor. "It would appear so."
"You could be killed tomorrow," El suggested.
"Well, you know," Sands said, and lay down on his back, arms crossed behind his head, "that wouldn't be so bad, either."
"To go down fighting," El said. This he understood too.
"Got it in one," Sands said.
El laid the guitar aside. He leaned back against the rock. It was completely cool now.
"Que quieras en la vida?" Carolina had asked.
The answer was peace, El thought. To finally be able to stop fighting, to know peace. Peace was the answer.
It was the only answer.
****
Author's Note: The song Sands plays is called "Fade In/Out" and it is on the Oasis CD "Be Here Now." Those of you who are Johnny Depp fans will know that he plays the slide guitar on that song. It's got a nice bluesy feeling to it, and it seemed to belong in this type of story. From what I have read about slide guitars, any solid, straight surface will work, and different materials create different sounds. So it seems that a bullet would work just as well as anything else. My apologies to all guitarists out there who know otherwise.
Author's Note 2: I apologize profusely, but future updates will not happen as fast. I work two jobs and I have to be at one of them all day Saturday. Also, this story has finally caught up to me. Before this, I have been posting chapters that were already written, and only in need of editing. But now I've reached the point where I need to write fresh material, and so this will mean updates are slower.
However, I can tell you this. The next chapter is from Sands' POV. It's not a nice chapter, so be forewarned. Then there are two chapters covering the battle with the cartel, one from El's point of view that I have not written one word of yet, and one from Sands' point of view that is almost done. Then there is an epilogue. I intend to post the next chapter by itself, and then the last two chapters and the epilogue all at once, so hopefully that will make up for the delay in me getting it posted.
Thanks to everyone for sticking with me, and for reviewing. Your comments keep me going. Rebecca