Rawson shook his head from side to side in disagreement.
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"Let's not discuss that now, for God's sake," Ramirez said. "The sooner you reach Estancia Santo Catalina, the better. Call me when you learn any-thing."
[TWO]
Route Nacionale Two
Outside La Plata, Buenos Aires Province
1005 11 April 1943
"Piss call time, Enrico," Clete announced, glancing at Enrico, beside him in the front seat of the Buick.
When they left Buenos Aires it was too cold to put the Buick's top down, and for a while Clete even turned on the heater. Clete was happy with his im-pulsive decision at the last minute before leaving The Museum to wear his new Stetson. His head would have been cold without it.
And also, he admitted to himself, it was somehow comforting to have something of Uncle Jim's with him. James Fitzhugh Howell bought the white curled-brim Stetson with a rattlesnake band the morning of the day he died at the Midland Petroleum Club.
"Se¤or?" Enrico said, confused.
Clete pointed out the windshield to a truck stop.
"Coffee time," Clete said as he slowed to make the turnoff.
"Here, Se¤or Clete?" Enrico replied, making it clear he felt that stopping at a truck stop was beneath the dignity of a Frade.
"Time and the call of nature wait for no man," Clete intoned sonorously, mimicking the announcer on "The March of Time."
Because he was as unfamiliar with the movie-theater newsreel program as he was with the Marine Corps expression giving permission to void one's blad-der, Enrico looked at him curiously but said nothing.
Clete pulled the Buick into a parking spot beside a Ford stake-body truck and got out. The truck was grossly overloaded with bags of carrots, each as large as his wrists.
"Leave that in the car," he ordered, pointing to Enrico's double-barreled shotgun.
Enrico reluctantly stowed the shotgun under the seat and got out.
The large, noisy, simply furnished restaurant was crowded with people, most of them there because it was also the local bus depot. Clete found a table and ordered hot chocolate, which was his solution to Argentinian coffee strong enough to melt one's teeth. Enrico was made uncomfortable by this, too. The waiter, apparently agreeing with Enrico's conviction that men drank coffee, women and children hot chocolate, asked him to repeat the order.
Clete went in search of the bano. It was clean but not very sophisticated. A concrete wall served as the urinal; water trickled down it. Flat porcelain fixtures at floor level, with a hole and places to place one's feet, served those who had to move their bowels. The odor was not pleasant.
Don't be a snob. This is far more elegant than the slit trenches on Guadal-canal. And it's at least inside.
When he returned to the table, he saw that he and Enrico were the subject of great interest to their fellow patrons.
What did the waiter do? Tell everybody that the guy in the funny hat and boots ordered chocolate?
He smiled warmly at an enormous truck driver with bad teeth and three days' growth of beard. After a moment the man gave him a somewhat uneasy nod of the head.
When they left the restaurant, he put the convertible's top down but left the windows rolled up. Enrico was visibly relieved that they were leaving the truck stop.
He drove past Lake Chascom£s to the Pila turnoff, then down it to and through the town of Pila, a sleepy village lined with stone houses that looked as if they were built a century or more before.
A mile out of town, they reached a brick and wrought-iron sign at the side of the road, reading "San Pedro y San Pablo." A moment later they bounced over eight railroad rails laid closely together across the road as a cattle barrier. On both sides of the road, the grassy pampas rolled gently off to the horizon. It looked something like the Texas prairie, except the grass was greener and here and there were stands of trees. Except for water tanks and their windmill-powered water pumps, no buildings or other signs of human life were in sight. Cattle roamed, in small groups or alone, as far as the eye could see.
Ten minutes later-at sixty-five m.p.h., a bit less than ten miles past the sign-he had his first glimpse of the windbreak-a triple row of tall cedars- which surrounded the main buildings of the ranch. And a minute or so after that, he was able to pick out the sprawling, two-story, white-painted stone house, sit-ting with its outbuildings in a three-hectare manicured garden, and then, just outside the windbreak, the landing strip, with two Piper Cubs parked on it.
I really don't want to go looking for that goddamned replenishment vessel in one of those puddle-jumpers.