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The
valley he was crossing was lonelier now, and darker. He saw himself striding
along the roadside. He shivered. Then he remembered the urn holding his
mother's ashes and the neighbor's cup that he hadn't returned, the coffee
infinitely cold now, and his mother's videotapes that no one would ever watch
again. He thought about stopping the car and waiting until the sun came up. He
knew without being told that for a black man to sleep in a rental car parked on
the shoulder wasn't the best idea in
Arizona
.
He changed stations. A voice in Spanish began to tell the story of a singer
from
Gomez Palacio
who had returned to his city
in the state of
Durango
just to commit suicide. Then he heard a woman's voice singing
rancheras.
For
a while, as he drove through the valley, he listened. Then he tried to go back
to the jazz station in
Phoenix
and couldn't find it.

On the American side of the border stood a town called
Adobe. It had once been an adobe factory, but now it was a collection of houses
and appliance stores, almost all strung along a long main street. At the end of
the street you came out into a brightly lit empty lot and immediately after
that was the American border post.

The
customs officer asked for his passport and Fate handed it to him. With the
passport was his press ID. The customs officer asked if he was coming to write
about the killings.

"No,"
said Fate, "I'm going to cover the fight on Saturday."

"What
fight?" asked the customs officer.

"Count Pickett,
the light heavyweight from
New York
."

"Never heard
of him," said the officer.

"He's going to
be world champ," said Fate.

"I hope you're
right," said the officer.

Then
Fate advanced three hundred feet to the Mexican border and he had to get out of
the car and open his suitcase, then show his car papers, his passport, and his
press ID. He was asked to fill out some forms. The faces of the Mexican
policemen were numb with exhaustion. From the window of the customshouse he saw
the long, high fence that divided the two countries. Four birds were perched on
the farthest stretch of the fence, their heads buried in their feathers. It's
cold, said Fate. Very cold, said the Mexican official, who was studying the
form Fate had just filled out.

"The birds.
They're cold."

The official looked
in the direction Fate was pointing.

"They're turkey buzzards, they're always cold at this time of
night," he said.

Fate got a room at a motel called Las Brisas, in the
northern part of Santa Teresa. Every so often, trucks passed along the highway,
headed to
Arizona
.
Sometimes they stopped on the other side of the highway, next to the gas pumps,
and then they set off again or their drivers got out and had something to eat
at the service station, which was painted sky blue. In the morning there were
hardly any big trucks, just cars and pickups. Fate was so tired that he didn't
even notice what time it was when he fell asleep.

When he woke up he went out to talk to the motel clerk and asked
him for a map of the city. The clerk was a guy in his midtwenties and he told
Fate that they'd never had maps at Las Brisas, at least not since he'd been
working there. He asked where Fate wanted to go. Fate said he was a reporter
and he was there to cover the Count Pickett fight. Count Pickett versus El
Merolino Fernandez, said the clerk.

"Lino
Fernandez," said Fate.

"Here
we call him El Merolino," said the clerk with a smile. "So who do you
think will win?"

"Pickett,"
said Fate.

"We'll see,
but I bet you're wrong."

Then
the clerk ripped out a piece of paper and drew him a map with precise
directions to the Arena del Norte boxing stadium, where the fight would be
held. The map was much better than Fate expected. The Arena del Norte looked
like an old theater from 1900, with a boxing ring set in the middle of it. At
one of the offices there, Fate picked up his credentials and asked where
Pickett was staying. They told him the American fighter hadn't come to town
yet. Among the reporters he met were a couple of men who spoke English and who
planned to interview Fernandez. Fate asked whether he could go along with them
and the reporters shrugged their shoulders and said it was fine with them.

When
they got to the hotel where Fernandez was giving the press conference, the
fighter was talking to a group of Mexican reporters. The Americans asked him in
English whether he thought he could beat Pickett. Fernandez understood the
question and said yes. The Americans asked him whether he had ever seen Pickett
fight. Fernandez didn't understand the question and one of the Mexican
reporters translated.

"The
important thing is to trust your own strength," said Fernandez, and the
American reporters wrote his answer in their notebooks.

"Do you know
Pickett's record?" they asked him.

Fernandez waited for the question to be translated, then he said
that kind of thing didn't interest him. The American reporters snickered, then
asked him for his own record. Thirty fights, said Fernandez. Twenty-five wins.
Eighteen of them knockouts. Three losses. Two draws. Not bad, said one of the
reporters, and he went on asking questions.

Most of the reporters were staying at the Hotel Sonora
Resort, in the center of Santa Teresa. When Fate told them he was staying at a
motel on the edge of town, they said he should check out and try to get a room
at the Sonora Resort. Fate stopped by the hotel, where he got the sense that
he'd stepped into a convention of Mexican sportswriters. Most of the Mexican
reporters spoke English and they were much friendlier than the American
reporters he'd met, or so it seemed at first. At the bar, some were placing
bets on the fight and as a group they seemed generally cheerful and laid-back,
but in the end Fate decided to stay at his motel.

From
a phone at the Sonora Resort, he made a collect call to the magazine and asked
to speak to the sports editor. The woman he talked to said no one was there.

"The offices
are empty," she said.

She
had a hoarse, nasal voice and she didn't talk like a
New York
secretary but like a country person
who has just come from the cemetery. This woman has firsthand knowledge of the
planet of the dead, thought Fate, and she doesn't know what she's saying
anymore.

"I'll call
back later," he said before he hung up.

Fate's
car was following the car of the Mexican reporters who wanted to interview
Merolino Fernandez. The Mexican fighter had set up camp at a ranch on the edge
of Santa Teresa, and without the help of the reporters Fate could never have
found it. They drove through a neighborhood on the edge of town along a web of
unpaved, unlit streets. At moments, after passing fields and vacant lots where
the garbage of the poor piled up, it seemed as if they were about to come out
into the open countryside, but then another neighborhood would appear, this
time older, with adobe houses surrounded by shacks built of cardboard, of
corrugated tin, of old packing crates, shacks that provided shelter from the
sun and the occasional showers, that seemed petrified by the passage of time.
Here not only the weeds were different but even the flies seemed to belong to a
different species. Then a dirt track came into sight, camouflaged by the
darkening horizon. It ran parallel to a ditch and was bordered by dusty trees.
The first fences appeared. The road grew narrower. This used to be a cart
track, thought Fate. In fact, he could see the wheel ruts, but maybe they were
just the tracks of old cattle trucks.

The
ranch where Merolino Fernandez was staying was a cluster of three low, long
buildings around a courtyard of earth as dry and hard as cement, where someone
had set up a flimsy-looking ring. When they got to the ring it was empty and
the only person in the courtyard was a man sleeping on a wicker chaise who woke
at the sound of the engines. The man was big and heavy and his face was covered
in scars. The Mexican reporters knew him and they began to talk to him. His
name was Victor Garcia and he had a tattoo on his right shoulder that Fate
thought was interesting. A naked man, seen from behind, was kneeling in the
vestibule of a church. Around him at least ten angels in female form came
flying out of the darkness, like butterflies summoned by his prayers.
Everything else was darkness and vague shapes. The tattoo, although it was
technically accomplished, looked as if it had been done in prison by a tattoo
artist who for all his skill lacked tools and inks, but the scene it depicted
was unsettling. When Fate asked the reporters who the man was, they answered
that he was one of Merolino's sparring partners. Then, as if someone had been
observing them from the window, a woman came out into the courtyard with a tray
of soft drinks and cold beers.

After a while, the
trainer of the Mexican fighter showed up in a white shirt and white sweater and
asked whether they'd rather interview Merolino before or after the training
session. Whatever you want, Lopez, said one of the reporters. Have they brought
you anything to eat? asked the trainer as he sat down within reach of the soft
drinks and beer. The reporters shook their heads, and the trainer, without
getting up from his seat, sent Garcia to the kitchen to bring some snacks.
Before Garcia returned they saw Merolino appear along one of the paths that
vanished into the desert, followed by a black guy dressed in sweatpants who
tried to speak Spanish but could only curse. They didn't greet anyone as they
walked into the courtyard, and they headed to a cement watering trough where
they used a bucket to wash their faces and torsos. Only then did they come to
say hello, not bothering to dry themselves or put on the tops of their sweat
suits.

The black guy was from
Oceanside
,
California
, or at least he had been born there and had
later grown up in
Los Angeles
,
and his name was Omar Abdul. He worked as Merolino's sparring partner and he
told Fate he was thinking of staying in
Mexico
to live for a while.

"What'll you
do after the fight?" asked Fate.

"Get along as
best I can," said Omar, "like we do, right?"

"Where will
you get the money?"

"Anywhere,"
said Omar, "this country is cheap."

Every
few minutes, for no reason, Omar would smile. He had a nice smile, set off with
a goatee and a fancy little mustache. But every few minutes he would scowl,
too, and then the goatee and the little mustache took on a menacing look, a
look of supreme and ominous indifference. When Fate asked whether he was a
professional or had been in any matches, he answered that he'd
"fought," without deigning to explain further. When Fate asked him
about Merolino Fernandez's chances of winning, he said you never knew until the
bell.

As
the fighters dressed, Fate took a stroll around the courtyard and surveyed his
surroundings.

"What you
looking at?" Omar Abdul said to him.

"The
landscape," he said, "it's one sad landscape."

Next to him, the
fighter scanned the horizon and then he said:

"That's
just how it is here. It's always sad at this time of day. It's a goddamn
landscape for women."

"It's getting
dark," said Fate.

"There's still
light enough to spar," said Omar Abdul.

"What do you do at night, when you're done training?"

"All
of us?" asked Omar Abdul.

"Yeah,
the whole team or whatever you call it."

"We
eat, we watch TV, then Mr. Lopez, goes to bed and Merolino goes to bed and the
rest of us can go to bed too or watch more TV or head over into town, if you
know what I'm saying," he said with a smile that might have meant
anything.

"How
old are you?" Fate asked suddenly.

"Twenty-two,"
said Omar Abdul.

When Merolino climbed into the ring the sun was sinking in
the west and the trainer turned on the lights, which were fed by an independent
generator that supplied the house with electricity. In a corner, Garcia stood
motionless with his head bowed. He had changed and put on knee-length black
boxing shorts. He seemed to be asleep. Only when the lights came on did he
raise his head and look at Lopez for a few seconds, as if waiting for a signal.
One of the reporters, who never stopped smiling, rang a bell, and Garcia
assumed a defensive stance and moved into the center of the ring. Merolino was
wearing a safety helmet and he circled Garcia, who threw a couple of left jabs,
no more, trying to land a hit or two. Fate asked one of the reporters whether
sparring partners usually wore safety helmets.

"Usually,"
said the reporter.

"So
why isn't he wearing one?" asked Fate.

"Because
no matter how much anybody hits him they won't do any damage," said the
reporter. "Do you see what I mean? He doesn't feel anything, he's out of
it."