‘You fool, Hellfrick. You goddamn fool!’

‘Help me,’ he said.

I raised the loose barbed wire to a width that would permit him and his burden to pass under. It was a calf, blood spurting from a gash between the ears. The calf’s eyes were wide open. I could see the moon reflected in them. It was coldblooded murder. I was sick and horrified. My stomach twisted when Hellfrick dumped the calf into the back seat. I heard the body thump, and then the head. I was sick, very sick. It was plain murder.

All the way home Hellfrick was exultant, but the steering wheel was sticky with blood, and once or twice I thought I heard the calf kicking in the back seat. I held my face in my hands and tried to forget the melancholy call of the calf’s mother, the sweet face of the dead calf. Hellfrick drove very fast. On Beverly we shot by a black car moving slowly. It was a police cruiser. I gritted my teeth and waited for the worst. But the police did not follow us. I was too sick to be relieved. One thing was certain: Hellfrick was a murderer, he and I were through. On Bunker Hill we turned down our alley and pulled up at the parking space adjacent the hotel wall. Hellfrick got out.

‘Now I’m going to give you a lesson in butchering.’

‘You are like hell,’ I said.

I acted as lookout for him as he wrapped the calf’s head in newspapers, slung it over his shoulder, and hurried down the dim hallway to his room. I spread newspapers over his dirty floor, and he lowered the calf upon them. He grinned at his bloody trousers and his bloody shirt, his bloody arms.

I looked down at the poor calf. Its hide was spotted black and white and it had the most delicate ankles. From the slightly open mouth there appeared a pink tongue. I closed my eyes and ran out Hellfrick’s room and threw myself on the floor in my room. I lay there and shuddered, thinking of the old cow alone in the field in the moonlight, old cow mooing for her calf. Murder! Hellfrick and I were through. He didn’t have to pay back the debt. It was blood money —not for me.

After that night I was very cold towards Hellfrick. I never visited his room again. A couple of times I recognized his knock, but I kept the door bolted so he couldn’t barge in. Meeting in the hall, we merely grunted. He owed me almost three dollars, but I never did collect it.

Chapter Fourteen

Good news from Hackmuth. Another magazine wanted The Long Lost Hills in digest form. A hundred dollars. I was rich again. A time for amends, for righting the past. I sent my mother five dollars. I cried when she sent me a letter of thanks. The tears rolled down my eyes as I quickly replied. And sent five more. I was pleased with myself. I had a few good qualities. I could see them, my biographers, talking to my mother, a very old lady in a wheel chair: he was a good son, my Arturo, a good provider.