Then, suddenly, a car drove up behind Juan and the other mejicanos, and four big men with shotguns got out. Juan hadn’t expected this. He glanced around and saw that the other workmen hadn’t expected this, either.
“Don’t no one move,” said Rodolfo. He took up ground, and the schoolteacher truly did look like a colonel in Villa’s army at this moment. “We’re mejicanos!” he shouted proudly.
“That’s right,” said Julio. “Keep calm. And everything will be asshole okay!”
The four men raised up their weapons like professional soldiers, and they came toward them. At this same moment, Jack and the other Anglo workmen got to their feet and picked up bars and shovels and came marching on them, too, from behind. But seeing the situation, Rodolfo still didn’t panic. He shouted, “Let the armed men pass! Don’t do anything! Remember, this isn’t the Revolution! Just step back and let them pass. They’re scared of us! That’s why they called in these pistoleros!”
The workmen did as told, and the four armed men passed through them without incident. The powder men quit their march, stopping in mid-yard, and the armed men went up to the office. One went inside and the other three stationed themselves by the door. Juan’s heart pounded. He was so proud of his countrymen. They’d held themselves well. Just as good as he’d seen the Greeks do up in Montana.
He glanced over at the powder men, and his and Jack’s eyes met once more. The big Anglo raised up his right hand, pointing his index finger like a pistol at Juan, but Juan only grinned. They were going to break these Anglos’ backs, after all. No one was taking them for granted anymore. Then Juan heard his people start talking. They were saying that they really hadn’t expected all this trouble and maybe they weren’t going to gain anything.
“And why did they bring those men with guns?” asked one man.
“To bring us tacos for lunch,” said Julio, laughing.
Everyone burst out laughing. Juan could feel that something was happening. They were losing it. Then the office door opened and Doug and the other armed man came out.
“All right,” said Doug, “we have everything settled. Jim just bought us a brand new horn. It will get here tomorrow, so today we don’t do any dynamite work.” He opened his clipboard. “Now line up! And let’s see who gets to work today.”
A dozen men stepped forward, just like that, wanting to be the first ones to be called back to work. Juan was flabbergasted. He turned to Rodolfo. The colonel saw the rage in his young friend’s eyes.
“No, wait!” yelled the teacher. “How about the families of the men who died? And the list of points that we drew up last night?”
Just then the front door of the office opened wide, and the big, beefy man named Jim came out along with Kenny and all the other foremen. They quickly lined up on the porch in front of the office door, facing Juan and the other men below them. Juan and Kenny’s eyes met, but then Kenny looked away.
Juan felt his heart wanting to hide, he felt so embarrassed. He’d just seen a good man lose all honor. But that’s the way it went, and this was the moment of truth. It had all been a little testing game up until now. Now was when things were really going to happen, and his countrymen were truly going to show these gringos what they were made of.
Juan took a big breath, trying to keep himself calm. He’d learned with the Greeks that it was much easier for a man to fight a war, compared to the guts it took to hold a line and do nothing. To grab up a machete and attack with your heart pounding was natural, but to hold still and think when your heart was going so fast your head felt like it was going to spin off, was more difficult.
“All right, Rochín,” said Jim, “so I understand you have a list you want me to see. Well, that’s fine. You just turn in that little list to my office, after these men get back to work, and I’ll read it and see what can be done. But the main thing here, Rocheee, is that I’ve ordered a new horn and you’ll all get plenty of warning in the future.”
Juan almost burst out laughing. Why, this gringo son-of-a-bitch thought they were just children. The issue wasn’t the horn. The issue was that good men had been killed three different times this year. The issue was the dead men’s families and the injured men’s hospital bills. And the issue was all the damned conditions of the quarry. Places had to be built for the men to go during an explosion. And water needed to be put near where they worked. Men needed to be given time to put their tools away in the evenings. And also, simply, they needed toilet facilities. There was a whole list of things that needed to be attended to. Hearing what they had just offered, the Greeks would have laughed in their face and sat down, not moving, until the bosses were ready to talk seriously and get down to business.
But, what happened next took Juan totally by surprise.
As Rochín began to talk and make their point, one man said something and walked past the teacher toward the men on the porch. At first, Juan hadn’t understood what the man had said. But he figured that he’d cursed at the men standing in front of the office and now he was threatening them with their lives because one of his friends had been killed yesterday.
But then another man went forward and said something. This time Juan heard what he had said. He said, “Okay!” Just like that, and then he’d walked past the teacher and past the office, going back into the yard.
“NOOOO!” screamed Juan, rushing up to the schoolteacher. “Not that way! Don’t you see? They’ll have us by the tanates from now on if you give in!”
Everyone looked at Juan, except for the two men who’d just crossed the line. And then there went a third, and a fourth. They were all going past Juan, back to the quarry as fast as they could, when Juan screamed. For no Greek would have ever done this. The other Greeks would have killed him.
“All right, Rocheee,” said Jim, “turn in your list and get back to work before all the jobs are taken.”
Juan turned to the schoolteacher and their eyes locked. But only for a moment. For what Juan saw happen next, told him everything. The ex-colonel was just too tired and old to fight anymore. And so he stepped across the line, turned in his list, and continued across the yard to go to work, too.
Juan went wild. Rodolfo Rochín had been their best. Screaming and bellowing, Juan ripped the shirt off his back and threw it on the ground, stomping it with his boots. Julio tried to calm him down, but Juan knocked him away like a paper doll. The men on the porch watched, and Juan continued screaming. He was crazy. Totally loco. All these years that he’d been away from his people—up in Montana among the Greeks and Turks—he’d missed them so much, but now he hated his people from the bottom of his soul.
“¡Cabrones pendejos!” he screamed at his fellow countrymen, who were filing into the quarry. “You don’t deserve the shit a dog leaves in the streets! These gringos tricked you worse than children! They have no more respect for you than pieces of dried-out horse shit!” He grabbed his crotch, pulling up on it. “I piss on you! DO YOU HEAR ME? I piss on you for all eternity! ¡Mejicanos pendejos!”
And Juan’s bellowing screams echoed across the entire quarry. He was that mad, that crazy, that wild. And then he began to bite himself.
The men on the porch couldn’t believe what they were seeing. They’d always heard that Mexicans had to let blood. But they didn’t know that they’d eat the flesh off their very own bones, too.
Blood was coming off Juan’s arms and shoulders with each bite. And he spat the blood at the Anglos on the porch. “Shoot!” he screamed at the Anglos. “Shoot, you sons-of-a-bitch!”
And he pulled at his crotch again, showing them his tanates, and the muscles on his body rippled like fish in fast water.
Julio and the two other men who hadn’t crossed the line tried grabbing Juan to turn him around before the armed men shot him. But Juan threw them like children. He was at that human place from which a man could go through a wall of bullets and kill five men with a machete before he died. He was at that human place where a mother could grab a car and throw it off her dying chil
d. He was crazy, insane, hating the Mexican flesh he had on his bones.
Giving witness, Kenny signaled the men with shotguns to go on inside and leave the rabid man alone.
Juan and Julio ran most of the way back to town together. They were just too excited to walk. Juan couldn’t calm down. He was flying, reeling, a million thoughts were flashing through his mind. He was going crazy. His body was exploding with power. They bought a bottle of that terrible bootleg whiskey, and they drank all morning long.
“Shit,” said Juan, “let’s go across the border and get some real tequila! This gringo crap is killing me!”
“You’ve got it!” said Julio.
They found a guy with an old truck, gave him a few drinks, borrowed his truck on a handshake, and they took off. Neither Juan nor Julio knew how to drive, and so they almost went off the road several times.
They got to Mexicali the next morning and got drunk on good tequila and ate tacos and chased women. Juan got an idea, and they bought fifteen gallons of excellent tequila for three dollars. They drove around in the desert until they found a dirt road going around the Border Inspection Station, back into the United States.
Back in Corona, they sold the liquor for a dollar a quart, making a huge profit. They paid the man for the use of his truck, and split the remaining money. Juan now had money in his pocket once again and felt much better. He’d never work for another son-of-a-bitch gringo bastard again.
In the following year, Juan grew a full beard and he followed the crops, setting up poker games wherever his people were. He made good money and bought an old car, keeping a constant eye out for the two men who’d stolen his money and left him for dead.
And many times, when Juan got into a new town, he’d find out that the Filipino and his formidable friend had just left. Juan bought a .45 automatic and two extra clips and he practiced shooting until he could hit the center of a fifty-cent piece at twenty yards. His reputation grew and spread until, finally, he came to be known as the man who couldn’t die.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was springtime, and Saint Peter closed the floodgates of heaven and the fields of cutting flowers blossomed into a wondrous rainbow of color, dazzling even the birds and the bees.
Lupe awoke, all wet with perspiration. She’d had that awful dream again. She got up and rearranged the layers of newspaper on the bed of box springs and laid back down, looking out the flap of their rented tent. The moon was out. She breathed deeply, trying to relax and go back to sleep.
But finally, not able to stand it anymore, she got up and went outside. She sat down on the cool earth. It was a clear night, except for a few white clouds. The mosquitoes were out by the hundreds. Lupe slapped her legs and naked arms, trying to keep them away.
Looking at the blue-wrinkled moon, Lupe fully knew what was troubling her. The day before, they’d come into the north county of San Diego, from having worked the fields down in the Imperial Valley and, in a few weeks, they’d be going back up the coast to Santa Ana, and she still hadn’t told anyone why she’d quit school.
“What is it, mi hijita?” said her mother from inside the tent.
“Oh, nada, Mama,” said Lupe, quickly wiping her eyes and straightening up. “Please, go back to sleep. I’m fine, Mama.”
“Yes,” hissed Carlota from inside the tent, too, “she’s fine, so please keep still so we can all sleep!”
“Ssssshh!” said their mother, getting up and going out into the star-filled night. “It’s a beautiful night, eh?” she said.
Lupe tried to smile. “Yes, Mama.”
“We have so much to be grateful for but . . . ooh, these mosquitoes!” said her mother, slapping her arm.
Lupe laughed. Her mother laughed, too, sitting down alongside her. Neither one of them said anything for a while. They just sat there, brushing off the mosquitoes and giving warmth to each other.
“You know,” said Doña Guadalupe, watching the moon slide behind a soft laced cloud, “my father Leonides always told me how the moon gave him a pathway of light on those nights that he rode from the authorities, saving my life. He said that the moon came down from the heavens and sat down on his right shoulder like the eye of God, guiding him through the terrible arroyos as we rode night and day like the wind.” The old woman breathed deeply. “The full moon has always been my special friend, mi hijita, giving me hope even in my darkest moments. And now look, here above us, we have the very same moon smiling down upon us that we had back in Mexico. The full moon is Our Lady of the Universe, mi hijita, giving God the Father a steady hand as He reigns the heavens.”
Then she said it, right there, as she spoke to Lupe of the moon. “Mi hijita, why is it that every time we get ready to return to Santa Ana you become troubled?”
Lupe was stunned. She hadn’t realized that it was so obvious. She glanced around at the lines of tents sitting like upside-down paper bags in the moonlight.
“Is it,” continued her mother, “that you want to return to school, mi hijita?”
“Oh, no,” lied Lupe quickly, “it’s not that at all!”
“Mi hijita,” said her mother, “are you telling me the truth?” she asked gently.
“Oh, Mama,” said Lupe, and she didn’t want to, but she began to cry. “Even if we could afford for me to go back to school, I’m too old!” she said.
Suddenly, Lupe realized what it was that the teacher had yelled at her: “You dirty little Mexican prick-tease! Who do you think you’re kidding? You’re too old to be in school!” Oh, the horror, the shame that she’d felt.
Breathing deeply, Doña Guadalupe reached out, touching her daughter’s cheek which was glowing with wetness in the moonlight.
“Mi amor,” said the old woman, “but what’s gotten into you? You’re not too old to reach up for the stars. Don’t you remember the night you helped us give birth to the twins? The power that we women felt, sitting under the light of the full moon . . . the strength, the feeling of life being so strong that it made us feel immortal!
“Well, querida, we’ve come too far and suffered too much to lose hope now, especially of our dreams. But you must open your heart and be strong! And then the full moon will always be your special friend.”
“But that’s not it, Mama,” said Lupe, shaking her head. “The teacher . . . he told me that I was too old.”
“What teacher?” asked her mother. “I thought that that woman, Mrs. . . . ”
“Mrs. Sullivan.”
“Yes, Mrs. Sullivan, was your teacher.”
“She was, Mama,” said Lupe, her eyes double-crossing her and filling with tears. “And she was wonderful. She helped me after school and I learned so fast that I was able to skip three grades.”
She stopped, not able to go on.
“Yes, but go on,” said her mother, “what about this other teacher?”
Lupe shook her head.
“Lupe,” said the old woman, “tell me. I’m your mother, I want to know.”
“Well, I was in the seventh grade and Mr. Horn, my new teacher, was real nice to me, too, helping me after school; but then one day he, he, he grabbed me from behind while I was writing on the blackboard.”
Doña Guadalupe looked up at the blue-wrinkled moon playing hide-and-seek among the clouds. “Did he hurt you?” asked the old lady, her hands clawed into fists.
Lupe shook her head. “No, not really. I screamed so loud that I scared him away. But he called me names, Mama, and the way he’d looked at me, oh, it was awful!”
“But you’re okay now?”
Lupe nodded. “Yes, except when I think of school and how much I’d wanted to learn bookkeeping so I could get a job in an office. I could scratch his eyes out, I get so mad.”
Seeing her daughter’s anger, Doña Guadalupe felt better, safer, and she held Lupe in her arms, watching the moon skipping from cloud to cloud.
“But you know,” said Doña Guadalupe, “who says that you can’t go back to visit… what’s your first teacher’s name
again?”
“Mrs. Sullivan.”
“Yes, her, and ask her if you can’t maybe borrow books and study as we travel? Eh, you tell me!”
Lupe’s whole mind went spinning. She’d never thought of that. Why, yes, maybe she really could go and visit Mrs. Sullivan and do as she’d done when Señora Muñoz had left their canyon and she’d left Manuelita and her an outline of what to study for the next five years!
“Oh, Mama, I’d love to do that!” she said excitedly.
“Good!” said Carlota from inside the tent. “So now keep quiet and let us all go back to sleep.”
“You keep quiet, too, Carlota!” snapped Victoriano.
“What’s the racket?” said their father, waking up.
They all laughed. Their old father was getting so deaf lately, he must not have heard anything until now.
And so for the rest of the night, Lupe laid in bed, thinking of how she could complete her studies and one day work in an office and do figures, as Don Manuel had done back in La Lluvia de Oro, and she’d be able to help support her parents in their old age.
It was mid-morning and Juan was at the pool hall in the barrio of Carlsbad in the north part of San Diego County. Several card sharks were in town, following the crops, and he wanted to make a deal with the owner of the pool hall, a big half-breed American Indian named Archie Freeman, so that he could control the poker games while the people were in town.
“There’s no need to cheat these workmen,” Juan explained to Archie. “All we do is charge ’em five percent of every pot and, hell, at the end of the evening we got most of everybody’s money-winners and losers alike.”
“Sounds good,” said Archie. “But then what do I need you for?”
Archie was also the deputy sheriff, and so Juan had to go very easy with him.
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