“If ya don’t like it no more!” Demetrio replied, gruffly.
“It’s not that, Don Demetrio. I like ya, I like you plenty . . . But ya’ve seen what’s going on . . . it’s that woman!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of her this very day . . . I’ve already thought it all out.”
Camila stopped crying.
Everyone was already saddling their horses when Demetrio approached War Paint and whispered softly to her:
“You’re not goin’ any farther with us.”
“What’re ya sayin’?” she asked, not understanding him.
“That you’re stayin’ here, or you’re goin’ off to wherever ya want, but you’re not comin’ with us.”
“What’re ya sayin’?” She gasped. “Ya mean ya’re gettin’ rid of me? Ha, ha, ha! What the . . . ? I suppose ya believe everythin’ that girl says!”
Then War Paint proceeded to insult Camila, Demetrio, Luis Cervantes—and everyone else she could think of—with such energy and originality that the troops ended up hearing obscenities and insolences they had not even suspected might exist.
Demetrio waited patiently for quite a while. But since she showed no sign of stopping whatsoever, he said very calmly to a soldier:
“Throw this drunk woman outta here.”
“Margarito! My dear towhead! Come defend me from these . . . ! Come on, dear towhead of my heart! Come show ’em that ya’re a real man, and that they’re nothin’ but a bunch of sons of . . . !”
And she kicked and screamed and made obscene gestures as she yelled all this.
Towhead Margarito came forward. He had recently awoken. His blue eyes could barely be seen behind his swollen eyelids, and his voice was hoarse. When he found out what had happened, he approached War Paint and said very seriously to her:
“Yes, I think it is a good idea, it is more than time for you to go! We have all had it up to here with you!”
War Paint’s face turned to stone. She tried to speak, but her muscles were frozen stiff.
The soldiers were all laughing, thoroughly enjoying themselves. Camila, very frightened, held her breath.
War Paint looked carefully all around her. Then everything happened in the blink of an eye: she reached down, unsheathed a sharp bright blade from inside her stockings, and jumped on Camila.
A shrill cry and a body collapses, spurting blood everywhere.
“Kill her,” Demetrio screamed, mad with rage.
Two soldiers went toward War Paint. But she wielded her knife and did not allow them to touch her.
“Not you, damned nothings! You kill me yourself, Demetrio, ” she said as she went forward, handed him her weapon, stuck out her chest, and dropped her arms to her sides.
Demetrio raised the bloodstained knife high in the air. But his eyes clouded over; he wavered and took a step back.
Then, in a choked, hoarse voice, he shouted:
“Get outta here! Outta here now!”
No one dared to stop her.
She walked away slowly, somberly.
The silence and the overall astonishment were finally broken by the sharp, guttural voice of Towhead Margarito.
“Thank goodness! I am finally rid of that pest!”
XIII
Someone stabbed me with a knife,
deep into my body
not knowing why,
nor do I know why . . .
He must’ve known why,
but I never knew . . .
And from that mortal wound
much blood did I lose,
not knowing why,
nor do I know why . . .
He must’ve known why,
but I never knew . . .
With his head drooped down and his hands resting across his saddle, Demetrio kept humming the tune softly, in a woeful tone.
Then he would grow quiet, and remain silent and dejected for long minutes.
“As soon as we get to Lagos I will help you get rid of that melancholy, you will see, General. There are many pretty girls there for us to choose from,” Towhead Margarito said to him.
“The only thing I want right now is to get drunk,” Demetrio replied.
And he took his distance from them again, spurring his horse forward, as if he wished to abandon himself entirely to his sadness.
After many hours of slow riding, he called for Luis Cervantes.
“Listen, curro, now that I think of it, what in the hell am I goin’ to Aguascalientes for?”
“To cast your vote, General, for the provisional president of the republic.”1
“The provisional president? So, then, should I . . . should it be Carranza? Truth is, I don’t understand nothin’ about this politics business . . .”
They arrived in Lagos. Towhead bet that he could make Demetrio laugh in earnest that evening.
Dragging his spurs, with his goatskin breeches drooping below his waist, Demetrio entered El Cosmopolita with Luis Cervantes, Towhead Margarito, and his orderlies.
“Why are you running away, curros? We are not going to eat you!” Towhead exclaimed.
The townsfolk, startled just as they were trying to escape, stopped dead in their tracks. Some, pretending they were simply going about their business, returned to their tables and continued drinking and talking; others hesitated and then went forward to offer their respects to the general and his staff.
“General! Such an honor to meet you! Major!”
“That is better! That is how I like my friends, decent and refined,” Towhead Margarito said.
“Let’s do it, muchachos,” he added, jovially drawing his pistol. “Here go your firecrackers, let’s see your best dance moves.”
A bullet ricocheted off the cement floor and whizzed through the legs of the tables and of the well-dressed young men sitting around them, making everyone jump up, as frightened as a lady who has just seen a mouse crawl under her skirts.
Pale, they smile to appropriately celebrate the major. Demetrio barely parts his lips, while the rest of the staff erupts in uncontrollable laughter.
“Towhead,” Quail observes. “Looks like that one over there who’s leavin’ got stung by a bee, look at the way he’s limpin’.”
Towhead, completely indifferent to what Quail has just said, not even turning around to look at the wounded man, states enthusiastically that he can hit a bottle of tequila at the drop of a hat from a distance of thirty steps.
“Let’s see, friend, stand up,” he says to the waiter of the cantina. Then he leads him by the hand to the front of the hotel patio and puts a full tequila bottle on his head.
The poor, frightened wretch resists and tries to escape, but Towhead draws his pistol and aims.
“Stay in your place . . . you idiot! Or I will really give you a nice little warm one.”
Towhead walks back to the opposite wall, raises his weapon, and aims.
The bottle shatters into pieces, soaking the pale-as-a-corpse youth’s head with tequila.
“Now we are talking!” he exclaims, and runs to the cantina for a new bottle, which he once again places on the young man’s head.
He goes back to his spot, turns suddenly in place, draws, and fires.
Except this time he has shot off an ear instead of the bottle.
And, doubled over, holding his stomach from laughing so hard, he says to the young man:
“Here you go, boy, take these bills. It is really nothing! You can cure that with a little bit of arnica and alcohol . . .”
After drinking many spirits and beers, Demetrio speaks.
“Pay up, Towhead . . . I’m leavin’ now . . .”
“I do not have anything left, General. But do not worry about it . . . How much do we owe you, friend?”
“A hundred and eighty pesos, señor,” the bartender replies amiably.
Towhead quickly jumps up on the counter and swings both of his arms about, knocking over all the cups, glasses, and bottles.
“Go on and send the bill to your Papi Villa, okay?”
The man who has been asked this steps down politely from a stool to let them pass. Towhead stops and looks at him with impertinence and curiosity.
“Listen, friend, you certainly are small and pretty! What do you mean no? Are you calling me a liar, then? Okay then, that is better . . . Do you know how to do the midget dance? What do you mean you do not know? I am sure you know it! I have seen you dancing with the circus! I am sure that you know it, and that you know it really good! We will see now!”
Towhead draws his pistol and starts firing at the tailor’s feet. The very fat, small man jumps with each shot.
“See, I told you that you knew how to do the midget dance!”
Throwing his arms around his friends, he has himself led to the red light district, marking each step along the way by shooting at the corner streetlights and at the doors and the houses. Demetrio lets him go and returns to the hotel, singing under his breath:
Someone stabbed me with a knife,
deep into my body
not knowing why,
nor do I know why . . .
XIV
Cigar smoke, the pungent smell of sweat on dirty clothes, alcohol breath, and the breathing of a multitude, more packed than a car full of pigs. Most wear Texan sombreros adorned with gold galloon, and khaki colors.
“Gentlemen, a well-dressed gentleman stole my suitcase in the station of Silao1 . . . I had my life savings in there. I don’t even have ’nough left to feed my child,” a sharp, whiny voice laments, but is quickly drowned out by the din in the train car.
“What is that old lady saying?” Towhead Margarito asked, entering in search of a seat.
“Somethin’ about a suitcase . . . and a well-dressed boy . . .” replied Pancracio, who had already found the laps of some peasants on which to sit.
Demetrio and the others forced their way in, throwing elbows to make room for themselves. And since the poor men who were holding Pancracio up decided that they preferred to abandon their seats and continue on their feet, Demetrio and Luis Cervantes took them, with pleasure.
A woman with a child in her arms, who had been riding standing up since Irapuato,2suddenly fainted. A peasant rushed forward to catch the baby. But no one else paid any heed: a few women traveling with the soldiers occupied two or three seats each with their luggage, dogs, cats, and parrots. And the men in Texan sombreros, in fact, got a good laugh at the plump thighs and limp breasts of the woman who had fainted.
“Gentlemen, a well-dressed man stole my suitcase in the station of Silao . . . I had my life savings in there. I don’t even have ’nough left to feed my child.”
The old woman speaks quickly, and immediately sighs and sobs. Her jittery eyes look every which way. And she collects a bill here, and another farther down. They shower money on her. She completes a collection and moves forward a few seats:
“Gentlemen, a well-dressed man stole my suitcase in the station of Silao . . .”
The effect of her words is certain and predictable.
A well-dressed man! A well-dressed man who steals a suitcase! It’s unspeakable! It’s enough to awaken a feeling of general indignation. Oh, it’s too bad that the well-dressed man is not on hand so that at the very least each of the generals in the train could have a shot at him!
“Because there’s nothing that makes me madder than a thieving curro,” one man says, full of dignity.
“Stealin’ from a poor old lady!”
“Stealin’ from a poor, defenseless woman!”
And they all express the tenderness in their hearts in words and deeds: an insult for the thief and a five-peso bill for the victim.
“I will tell you, as far as I am concerned, I do not think that it is wrong to kill, because when you kill, it is always out of anger. But stealing?” exclaims Towhead Margarito.
Everyone seems to agree with such serious reasoning. But after a brief silence and a few moments of reflection, a colonel ventures to speak his mind:
“Truth is that everything has its time and place. No one truth is more true than any other, is it now? God’s honest truth is that I’ve stolen . . . and I’d venture to say that everyone in this here train has done the same as well . . .”
“H’m, if you’d only seen the sewing machines that I stole in Mexico City!” exclaimed one major, enthusiastically. “I made more than five hundred pesos from ’em, sellin’ ’em for fifty cents each.”
“In Zacatecas I stole some horses that were so fine, I said to myself: ‘After this you’re all set, Pascual Mata. You won’t have nothin’ to worry about in all the days left in your life,’” said a toothless, white-haired captain. “Problem was that General Limón took a likin’ to my horses, and he stole ’em from me.”
“Okay, okay! Why deny it, then! I too have stolen,” Towhead Margarito agreed. “But let my compatriots here say if I have accumulated any capital. The thing is, whatever I make, I spend it all on my friends. I would rather go on a drinking binge with my friends than send one penny to the women back home . . .”
The subject of “I stole,” although it may seem inexhaustible, eventually peters out, and decks of cards are brought out and spread out on every bench, attracting the generals and the officers like mosquitoes to the light.
The sudden changes of fortune that accompany games of chance absorb everyone’s attention, and the environment heats up even further. It smells of barracks, prisons, brothels, and even of pigsties.
And coming from the next car now, above the general din, can be heard:
“Gentlemen, a well-dressed man stole my suitcase . . .”
The streets of Aguascalientes had become a veritable trash heap. The men in khaki swarmed about like bees at the mouth of their hive, packing into the restaurants, the eating houses, and the taverns, and around the tables full of hotchpotch and the outdoor food stands, where piles of filthy cheese were stacked next to pans of rancid pork rinds.
The smell of fried food made Demetrio and his companions hungry. They pushed their way into one of the eating houses, where an unkempt, ugly old woman served them earthenware plates of pork bones swimming in a clear chili broth, with three leathery, burnt tortillas. They paid two pesos each, and when they left Pancracio said that he was hungrier than when they had gone in.
“Now we’re ready,” Demetrio said, “to consult with General Natera.”
They walked down a street toward the house occupied by the northern commander.
Their progress was blocked by an unruly, agitated crowd at a street intersection. A man lost in the multitude was imploring in a singsongy voice, with an unctuous tone, as if he were praying. They moved in closer to investigate. The man, wearing faded white shirt and trousers, kept on repeating: “All good Catholics who devoutly utter this prayer to Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for us, will be freed of storms, and of plagues, and of war, and of hunger . . .”
“This guy’s sure got it right,” Demetrio said, smiling.
The man waved a handful of papers in the air, saying:
“Fifty cents per prayer to Our Lord upon the Cross, fifty cents . . .”
Then he would disappear for a moment, only to reappear immediately with a snake tooth, a starfish, a fish skeleton. And with the same predicant voice, he would expound the medicinal properties and rare virtues of each item.
Quail, who had no faith in Venancio, asked the vendor to pull out one of his molars for him. Towhead Margarito purchased the black pit of a certain fruit that had the power to protect its owner from lightning or from any such “bad luck.” And Anastasio Montañés bought a prayer to Our Lord upon the Cross, which he carefully folded and put with much piety under his shirt.
“As sure as there’s a God, my friend, the ball just keeps on rolling! Now it’s Villa against Carranza,”3Natera said.
And Demetrio, withou
t replying, opened his eyes very wide as a way to ask for further explanation.
“It means,” Natera insisted, “that the convention won’t recognize Carranza as the leader of the constitutionalist army and is now going to elect a provisional president of the republic instead.4Do you understand, my friend?”
Demetrio nodded to indicate that he did.
“What do you think of that, my friend?” Natera asked.
Demetrio shrugged, and said:
“So it means, apparently, that we’ll just keep on fightin’. Okay then, let’s get to it. You know, General, that as far as I’m concerned, nothin’ can hold me back.”
“Good. So on which side are you going to fight?”5
A perplexed Demetrio buried his hands in his hair, scratched his head for a moment, and said:
“Look, don’t ask me questions like that, I’m not a school-boy here. This little eagle that I wear on my hat, you gave me that . . . So you know that all ya have to do is say: ‘Demetrio, you do such and such,’ and I’ll do it, end of story!”
PART 3
I
El paso, texas, may 16, 19151
MY DEAR VENANCIO:
I am only now able to reply to your pleasant letter of January of this year, since my professional responsibilities have absorbed all my time. As you know, I graduated last December. I was sorry to hear of the fate of Pancracio and Lard; but I am not surprised that they stabbed and killed each other after a card game. Such a pity; they were truly brave! I am sorry from the bottom of my heart that I am unable to communicate with Towhead Margarito to extend to him my warmest congratulations; clearly the most noble and beautiful act of his life was his last one: to commit suicide!
I think it would be difficult, my friend Venancio, for you to obtain the medical degree that you so desire here in the United States, even if you have gathered enough gold and silver to purchase it. I hold you in high esteem, Venancio, and I believe that you are very much deserving of a better fate. Therefore, I have an idea that would be favorable to both of our interests, as well as to the just ambitions that you have for yourself to change your social status. If you and I were to become partners, we could start a very nice business. It is true that I do not currently have any funds saved up, as I have spent everything on my studies and my stay here. However, I count on something that is worth much more than money: my perfect knowledge of this town and of its needs, and of the businesses that can be safely launched here. We could open an all-Mexican restaurant, with you as the owner and both of us splitting the profits at the end of each month. And it would be something related to that which interests both of us so much: a change in your social sphere. I recall that you play the guitar quite well, and I believe it would be a simple matter—through my recommendations and your musical knowledge—to get you admitted as a member of the Salvation Army, a very respectable organization that would give you much character.
The Underdogs Page 13