Lupe’s heart leaped. That was the direction in which her Colonel had cut his new road.
“Who’s winning?” asked the mayor. “The Villistas or the Carrancistas?”
“Who knows?” shrugged one of the Indians. “But it’s terrible. Dead bodies lying everywhere. The creeks run red with blood.”
“Vultures circle by the thousands,” said the other Indian, waving his arms like a great bird.
Lupe covered her ears, not wanting to hear anymore. She picked up her basket and started back up the rocky path out of the plaza. Her sisters quickly followed, climbing up the steep hillside with their baskets on their heads, their necks straight and their heads held high, with the small of their backs arched and their chests upward so their hips could come under their torsos, riding directly over their legs.
Getting home, Lupe put her basket down and rushed to her mother. Oh, she just didn’t want to believe what her heart was telling her.
That night Socorro held her twins in deadly fear as they lit candles and said a rosary together. They prayed that their beloved Colonel was away from the battle and still at the border, delivering the gold.
The next morning, Lupe watched her brother take off early with Don Benito. The love-struck old man couldn’t wait anymore. He figured that this was a perfect time for him to take out the gold he needed, since everyone was preoccupied with the outcome of the battle.
Then on the third day, word came that the battle was over, but still no one knew who had won.
That night, Victoriano came to his mother, saying that Don Benito had decided to use dynamite to uncover their find.
“But why?” asked his mother.
“Because, well, when we covered the pocket up,” said Victoriano, “we felled a couple of good-sized trees, and a lot more rock got into the hole than we’d expected.”
“But wouldn’t the powder destroy the gold?” asked his mother anxiously.
Victoriano shook his head. “No, not if we use just a little.”
Quickly, Doña Guadalupe thought over the situation. She didn’t like it one bit, but she also realized that she couldn’t very well keep holding back the old man. He was crazy. Now he was even bragging about the shots that Don Manuel had taken at him, saying that it proved that his love for Lydia was true since he was willing to die.
“All right,” said Doña Guadalupe, “go ahead. But talk to Manos and Flaco about it first. I don’t want any accidents. My God, this gold is our chance of getting out of this canyon and going across the border to the United States until this awful war is over.”
“There won’t be any accidents,” said Victoriano. “We’ll be careful and by tomorrow we’ll be rich. You’ll never have to work again, Mama.”
The old woman saw her son’s joy and it gladdened her heart. She drew him close, hugging him.
Then that evening, Victoriano and Don Benito took Manos aside after dinner and the old man asked Manos if he could get them some powder.
Manos grinned. “So then you did hit a vein?” he said, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.
“Well, yes, a little one,” said Don Benito.
“A burro’s cock, you old fox!” said Manos, laughing happily. “No wonder you’re in love! You found a big one!”
In Mexico, a burro’s cock was much admired, being the biggest sex organ on any animal, pound for pound.
The old man smiled. “Well, maybe, but not quite as big as a burro’s cock,” he said.
Manos laughed all the more, slapping the old man on the back. “No wonder you’re after Lydia. With that much gold up your ass, you’re probably bigger than any burro’s!”
Victoriano turned as red as chili. Sex wasn’t a thing that was normally mentioned in front of young people like himself. But he also knew that the men were talking like this in front of him because they finally considered him to be one of them.
“All right,” said Manos. “I’ll get you the powder tomorrow afternoon.”
“No,” said Don Benito. “I need it first thing in the morning.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve got to get the gold out and then cover it back up before the victors of the battle arrive.”
“I see,” said Manos. “Well, I’ll see what I can do. I have some old powder laying around my home, I think.”
“Oh, thank you,” said the old man. “That’s all I need. Just a little, and then I’ll be able to . . . Oh, Dios mío! It’s been so many years!”
Manos saw the joy, the longing, in the old man’s eyes, and he took him in his arms, hugging him in a big abrazo, heart-to-heart between men. Then he reached out with his huge, thick hand and he brought in Victoriano, too. And Victoriano hugged into the two of them. It felt so good to be included.
The first light of the new day was just making the eastern sky pale when Lupe came around the lean-to from the goats’ pen. She saw Manos and Flaco coming down the pathway, carrying a sack. Her brother and Don Benito were waiting for them outside of the ramada. No other miners had arrived yet. Manos handed Don Benito the sack. The old man quickly took it around to the side of the ramada and hid it by the wild peach tree. Lupe decided to pretend as if she hadn’t seen the whole thing. After all, she was a woman and, like Lady Luck, she didn’t want to be blamed for anything that might go wrong.
Lupe and Carlota were serving Manos and Flaco, who were sitting with their brother and Don Benito, when the other miners arrived. This morning none of the young miners teased Don Benito. No, they seemed to smell something brewing in the air.
Then the right eye of God came over the jagged horizon of purple mountain peaks beyond the mouth of the box canyon. Lupe and her mother and sisters came out to give witness to God’s miracle. Victoriano joined them and they all knelt down to give thanks to the Almighty. The men under the ramada took off their hats and joined them, too, and they all gave greeting to God’s greatest miracle, the sun. Lupe closed her eyes and gave an extra little prayer for her truelove. The battle was over, but still, they hadn’t received word of who had won or if, indeed, her Colonel had even been in it.
Then the miners were gone. It was time for Don Benito and Victoriano to climb the barranca, up to where only the eagles flew.
“Go with God, mi hijito,” said Doña Guadalupe to her son.
“I will, thank you, Mama,” he said, hugging his mother with all his might. Victoriano was only ten, but already he was as tall as his mother. “After today, we’ll never be poor again,” he added.
“And I’ll get my red shoes!” said Carlota.
“Red?” said María. “Where have you ever seen red shoes?”
“I haven’t,” said Carlota. “But rich people are supposed to have what poor people have never seen before!”
They all laughed. Don Benito got the sack of dynamite.
“Vayan con Dios,” said Doña Guadalupe.
“Don’t worry,” said Don Benito. “Lady Luck is riding with us. And she’s a fine lady when she’s with you.”
Then Victoriano kissed Lupe and his sisters goodbye and went up the pathway, carrying an extra shovel.
Victoriano and Don Benito had hired a boy named Ramón to help them for the day. Ramón was fourteen years old. He was a big, strong boy, but he was mentally slow, so he couldn’t get work at the American mine along with his older brother, Esabel.
Lupe stood by her mother’s side as she watched her brother and the old man disappear into the trees above their home. She was very nervous. Oh, how she just wanted to pull her hair out of her head by the roots, she was so worried about her truelove.
The sun was five fists off the jagged horizon when Don Benito and the two boys got to the hole that they’d covered with trees, then dirt and rock. Victoriano and Ramón just couldn’t stop joking and laughing, they were so excited.
“All right, settle down,” said the old man. “We can’t afford to make any mistakes when we’re using powder!”
The two boys tried to settle down, but it was difficu
lt. Ever since Don Benito had proposed to the mayor’s daughter, the whole pueblo had been humming with excitement. It seemed as if what the old man had done was so outrageous that now everyone else wanted to be crazy, too, so they that might find riches and love.
Putting down their tools, the old man and the boys took a drink from the gourd they’d brought. Overhead came a flock of parrots, swooping into the treetops above them. The two boys had to strain their heads back to watch the birds. All around them the land went straight up into the wall of towering cliffs.
“All right, let’s go to work,” said Don Benito, “for today is the beginning of a whole new life!” Saying this, he spat into the palms of his hands, rubbing them with vigor. He picked up his shovel and quickly went to work. The two boys joined him, grabbing rock and pulling branches. When they’d felled the trees above the pocket, a whole chunk of earth had come down with the trees.
The sun grew hot and they began to sweat. Ramón outworked them both with ease. Not many people hired him, so he wanted to prove his worth to two new bosses.
It was almost noon when they’d cleaned away the first layer of debris so that they could now set the charge.
“Well,” said Don Benito, glancing things over, “why don’t we rest a little and eat lunch before we use the explosives. A tired man is a careless man.”
They went to the shade to eat, but they found that they’d forgotten their lunches.
“I’ll go get them,” said Ramón.
“No, you stay and finish that hole under those roots,” said Don Benito. “And you go get our lunches, Victoriano.”
“All right,” said Victoriano, fully realizing that Ramón was bigger and stronger and could cut through the upright roots with his machete faster than he could.
“Whatever you say, boss,” said Ramón, petting Don Benito’s dog and getting his machete.
Victoriano started down through the trees, running alongside the waterfall that had become much smaller in the last few weeks. In another three months, it would be nothing but a trickle of water.
Lupe was just coming home from school for lunch when Victoriano rushed into their ramada.
“Is something the matter?” asked their mother.
“No, nothing,” said Victoriano. “We just forgot our lunches, so I came down to get them.” He picked a tortilla off the stove, and rolled it. “We’re almost down to the gold!” he said. “Ramón was really a big help. My God, he’s strong.”
“Wonderful,” said Doña Guadalupe. “And the explosives, is Don Benito being careful with them?”
“Oh, yes,” said Victoriano. “At first I thought that he might try to get to the gold in one blast. But no, he’s going about it quite calmly. We’re going to do three separate charges.”
“Good,” said their mother. “Here, sit down and eat with your sister and let her tell us about her schooling, then you can go.”
They were sitting in the kitchen, talking, laughing, truly enjoying themselves when suddenly they heard an explosion.
At first they didn’t know where it had come from. But then they felt the ground shake under their feet and the lean-to jerk from side to side. The crucifix fell off the wall. Victoriano was out the door, running as fast as he could. Lupe and their mother were right behind him.
Instinctively, Victoriano repeated all the prayers he knew as he ran. He prayed to God that he was wrong and that the explosion had come from the American mine.
But then he heard a deep rumbling. He stopped and heard a second explosion and saw a huge piece of the mighty cliffs go up, hold in space ever so slightly and then come crashing down with a terrifying roar into the treetops.
Lupe came running up. She saw her brother standing in white-faced terror. Looking up toward the cliffs, she saw a cloud of dust boiling up out of the treetops.
“Oh, my God, no!” screamed Victoriano, and he was off like a shot.
Quickly, Lupe followed him.
When Doña Guadalupe got to the main road above the village, several neighbors and a dozen men from the mine were there.
“Who’s up there?” asked Manos.
“Ramón and Don Benito!” she screamed.
“Oh, my God!” said Esabel, Ramón’s older brother.
Esabel took off up the steep hillside like a young stallion, leaping over rock and fallen trees. The seventeen-year-old was stripped to the waist, and his arms and back rippled with muscle. Esabel had been taking care of Ramón ever since their father was killed in the mine six years before.
Manos and Flaco raced right behind him, carrying picks and shovels. Landslides were a common part of life in the canyon, and so men were always struggling to help each other.
Running up alongside the waterfall, Esabel was the first one to get to Victoriano and Lupe.
“Where?” screamed Esabel, looking up at the new cut that the landslide had made, bringing down trees and rocks with the huge explosion.
“Up there,” said Victoriano, pointing, “that’s where we set the charge. But I found Don Benito’s hat on that side.”
“By that uprooted tree?”
“Yes,” said Victoriano, showing him the man’s hat.
“Then, maybe, they could still be alive,” said Esabel, and he went to work with power, pulling and digging and chopping, calling his brother’s name. “Ramón! Ramón! I’m coming!”
Rushing up, Manos and Flaco joined Esabel. The amount of earth that they moved in minutes was incredible.
Then the rest of the miners arrived and Victoriano joined them. They all went to work, grabbing, pulling, grunting, using their hands and picks and shovels with all their power. Several women arrived. They had frijoles and tortillas. They made a fire of dry bark and heated the food for the men. Señora Muñoz showed up with the children from the school. She had them build a little altar of stone and light a piece of pine-pitch so they could pray.
When Lupe’s sisters arrived—they’d been below the town doing laundry—they had Angelina with them. The old midwife had her herbs and healing remedies with her. As soon as she arrived, Angelina gave María and Sophia the heart of a special dried cactus to distribute among the working men. The cactus heart was grayish-brown and looked like a dried fig. It tasted bitter, but it relaxed the body, took away the pain of exhaustion and allowed men to work all day and night.
María went up to Esabel and handed him a cactus heart. “Here,” she said. “La curandera wants you to take this.”
Taking the dried cactus heart, Esabel looked into María’s large dark eyes. Esabel was the young man that María had been making eyes at for several months now. He was one of the tallest and handsomest young men in all of La Lluvia.
“Gracias,” he said, popping the heart into his mouth.
“I’m happy to help,” said María, putting her hands on her hips. “I know how much you love your brother.”
“María!” shouted Doña Guadalupe. “Get away from there and let him work!”
“All right,” said María, blushing, “I’m coming, Mama.”
All afternoon the men worked below the towering cliffs. They looked like tiny dark ants alongside the waterfall and cathedral rocks, which climbed for well over five hundred feet above them into the sky.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that they came to Ramón’s hat. Then, digging a little further, they came to a hand, then a leg, and then they found both bodies.
And the way in which they found the bodies told a heart-moving story. The brave, simple boy must have seen the slide coming, so he’d thrown himself over Don Benito, trying to protect him.
Esabel screamed to the heavens. Victoriano fell into his mother’s arms, crying desperately.
Señora Muñoz led the children in a chant and the box canyon filled with sound, echoing off the towering walls down into the village below.
Several young miners kept asking Victoriano where the gold was, and they kept digging further into the debris.
“Keep digging, you fools,” said Manos, “and
we’ll be pulling out your dead bodies, too! Don’t you see that the big tree and boulders are ready to come down any moment?”
Looking up the mountainside, the young miners saw the hanging tree with half of its roots exposed and the rocks behind it. They quit their labor.
The sun was going down behind the mighty cathedral rocks when Esabel carried his brother down the hillside into the plaza at the center of town. They laid out both bodies, placing torches of pine-pitch all around them.
Ramón’s mother knelt down beside the broken body of her youngest son and wailed to the heavens.
There was no priest in town, so Angelina was asked to prepare the dead. She had Sophia and Lupe help her gather vines and flowers. Then she dressed the two bodies with the greenery and flowers, adding healing herbs so their bones would grow back together in the next world.
Lupe and the school children lit small pieces of pine-pitch and they held them in their hands as they prayed in a circle around the two bodies.
The entire pueblo participated in the celebration of the dead. Angelina’s husband, El Borracho, brought out his guitar and sang long into the night.
Señor Jones sent down a case of tequila from the mine, fully realizing that the people wouldn’t be going back to work until they’d completed their mourning, anyway. That night the men got drunk and yelled to the heavens.
The coyotes were still yelping early the next morning when Lupe went out of the canyon with her family joining the long procession of people on their way to the cemetery.
Señor Scott and several of his young American friends came down from the mine. One of them set up a camera to take pictures.
Don Manuel led the people in prayer, and it was said that even Lydia shed tears when Don Benito’s body was lowered into the earth.
Later that day, Don Tiburcio, who owned the second largest store in town, slaughtered a steer and donated a sack of frijoles, and a celebration began. People heard of the mourners ten miles away and came to join the celebration. By late afternoon, the plaza was full of people and the steer was taken out of the ground, filling the air with a wonderful spicy barbecue smell.
Rain of Gold Page 9