Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Horse Latitudes

First edition published in the United States in 2013 by

MP Publishing

6 Petaluma Blvd. North, Suite B6, Petaluma, CA 94952

and

12 Strathallan Crescent, Douglas, Isle of Man IM2 4NR

mppublishingusa.com

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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Collins

CIP Data available for print ISBN: 978-1-84982-297-8

eBook ISBN 978-1-84982-236-7

Jacket designed by Iain Morris

Printed and bound in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication

For my parents, Diane and Stephen.

“I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end…”

-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Without history and without destiny, the men throw themselves into a stillborn present that by dawn will become oblivion.”

-Cristina Pacheco, “La Ciudad Del Placer”

Ethan caught the fever in Mexico, rode it out for a few days at Yolanda’s house, and let it break. But it flared again when he slept, woke him in his seat on the bus out of Nuevo Laredo and stayed with him. He felt it during the border crossing into Guatemala and he felt it now in the bar near the station. It came in waves, heat washing into sudden cold, the usual aches and pains, the short, bad dreams and free-fall dread.

He ordered a beer at the bar and took a table by the window. In this makeshift border outpost, most buildings were huts of palmwood and woven grass, or farther up the road, in the mountains, the way the bus had come, cardboard and plastic shacks with scrap-metal roofs. So the bar, with its concrete foundation and whitewashed stucco, seemed incongruous and blocky. A transplant from the cities. The one permanent thing built, he thought, for people like him, waiting for buses across the border. This was the fever throwing up errant symmetries. There were no people like him. The bus station consisted of a bench, a sign, a few street hawkers. These days no one crossed into Copal.