The Brick People

by Alejandro Morales

  And that night for the first time in months, we slept under a roof. The comadre gave us her room. We slept well that night, dry on that soft earth. Thank God and those women.

  Mrs. Fulgencia Camilo had many goats and donkeys. In the morning she would get up around four. She would milk a goat and she would take milk to my papa. After a few days, Mrs. Camilo told me, “I will teach you how to make money here. Look, take a pick, an ax and a donkey. I will take another donkey to bring a load of firewood to the house, and you sell your firewood near the track or the town.”

  We went and later arrived at a parcel of land. I looked about and saw nothing. “Well, where is the wood around here?” I asked. In Guanajuato, there were large trees where I lived. From them I got firewood, but here, nothing.

  Mrs. Camilo told me, “Look, just pay attention to the earth and you can see that the earth rises. Dig there.”

  I listened carefully and I did what she told me. I began to dig and dry roots came out and I cut them. In a little while I gathered a load, and she did also. And I went off and sold my wood for three-fifty. I did that for about a month.

  One day by the tracks where we had been, a workers’ camp was set up. I spoke with the foreman about a job. He told me, “Yes, yes, come to the railroad car, I will give you a car for all of your family. But there is one thing. If the train goes south, you have to go with it.”

  “No,” I told him. “We are going to the north.”

  “Well,” he said, “that’s the thing. It is not convenient for you, but work is. Come tomorrow.”

  The next day I went with him to work at the Cañon del Diablo to dig up tracks that the water had buried. When we finished, we went to the Ortiz station. One day in the afternoon I was working near the station when the governor of Chihuahua pulled in with a trainload of soldiers and cavalry. Within half an hour, up ahead from where I was, they started shooting.

  “Here come the Villistas!” they shouted.

  I found out later that General Murgia accompanied the governor and they were searching for Villa because Villa had kidnapped a Mr. Knotts, a rich gringo miner. Villa asked for fifty thousand American pesos and he wanted them in gold because he hated the gringo faces on the American bills. Murgia and the governor were savagely killing anyone they suspected was a Villista. I saw that a bridge to the north started to burn. At that hour, General Murgia ordered his soldiers to gather all the residents in the area and put them to work. Screaming, Murgia ordered the foreman, “I swear to you, that if I cannot pass by two in the morning, I will execute every one of you.”

  I worked at the bottom of the bridge. We were scared to death because we knew that Murgia would keep his word. I looked up. The bridge was still burning and we were at the bottom planting wooden pillars and nailing crossbeams so that we could lay track on the top to allow the general to pass. Before two in the morning, the general crossed. When I was resting, the foreman told me, “You know what, my job is to go in front of the train, five, ten meters ahead, inspecting the rails. If you want to, go. You are strong and a good worker.”

  “No,” I said, “I will stay here.”

  Then he gave me a paper. He told me, “When the paymaster comes, he stops at the station. Give him this paper and he will pay you.”

  That is the way it was. I gathered and sold firewood when there was no work at the station. I waited for my family to get well, to get stronger, so that we could forge ahead. It happened that in a moment of carelessness the Villistas burned the bridge again and I worked again on the railroad track. I worked a little less than a year for the railroad.

  My mama and my brothers and sisters went to stay in Chihuahua. When the train would go to the city, my mama would send us tortillas and she would send my papa tobacco or cigarettes. What we would ask for, my mama would send. My papa and I stayed in a boxcar in the outskirts of the city. We heard much about the Revolution: that they killed Zapata, that they executed Felipe Angeles in Chihuahua, that Villa’s army was destroyed, that Villa still roamed the area avenging the death of his friend Felipe Angeles. Suddenly one day, the Revolution calmed down. We found out that the train traveled to Ciudad Juarez, to El Paso. We arrived at the border on the first train that passed through Chihuahua.

  We stayed in Chihuahua for about two weeks. My grandfather sent a message to an uncle of mine who lived near Texas that we were there, that he should go see us. He went and he told my father, “Well, get ready, I will come for you soon, but I am going to take you across through the river.”

  My papa said that was fine. The next day my papa received a telegram from my grandfather who had sent some money. That morning the owner of the place we were staying in came over. “Let’s go,” he said. “I will take you to change the money.”

  The man, his son, my papa and I went to El Paso to change money. In Ciudad Juarez a man approached us and asked if we wanted to work.

  “No,” my papa said. “We are on business.”

  “I want you to help me,” the man said, “only for a day or two. I need help.”

  I told my father to go on, that I would go work with the man. My papa said that was fine and I went. The man took me to a place full of adobe houses on the very edge of Ciudad Juarez. Further on were fields and beyond, desert. There were two houses with doors of the same color and we went inside and I started working. It was only making mud for adobe blocks. At two o’clock the man said, “Let’s go eat.”

  When we finished eating, I returned to the house where I was working. But when we left the house I was working in, I did not pay attention to the number. There were two very similar doors, exactly the same color but I did not know which was mine. I did not remember if it was the first or the second. I went ahead and slightly opened one. I quickly realized that that was not mine because there was a cow and a saddled horse inside. Suddenly I heard a woman scream.

  “Oh! A thief!” she yelled to a man there. “A thief!”

  The man, half-naked, ran out with a gun and shot at me. I screamed and raised my hands that I was not a thief, but he still fired at me. Nearby stood a woman with her daughters and they began to shout that he better not shoot me, and they verbally attacked him because perhaps they did not like him. The cantina was nearby and the man for whom I was working came out and asked the aggressor, “Well, what is happening?”

  I told him that the man wanted to shoot, that he accused me of being a thief. My boss went to the man and insulted him and told him, “What do you accuse him of? Show me, show us what he stole from you.”

  The man went away. And we entered the house we were working at. There was a bucket of water, muddy water that we washed our hands with. That muddy water appeared crystal clear to me. I grabbed the bucket and drank and drank.

  “No!” the man yelled at me. “Wait. I will be right back.”

  He came back with a glass of whiskey and sugar. I felt better with that. After a few days I did not return to work, for the work had finished there.

  At last my uncle came with the man who was going to help us cross. We crossed the river when the current was not strong, when the water was waist deep. I carried Felicitas on my shoulders; Federico carried Rogaciana. After the crossing, the coyote took us to his house where we rested and ate. My uncle had gone ahead and returned the next morning and took us to his house that he had nearby. All the family arrived there and we stayed a few months. My brothers and I often talked about the trip and remembered Julio. We were five brothers, but Julio died; now we were four.

  Octavio observed Arturo set the bundle of wood on the ground. Arturo glanced up and smiled.

  While we were at my uncle’s house, it so happened that some neighborhood boys came by and invited us to go swimming. The water was very near. “Well, let’s go swimming,” I remember them saying.

  We all went. There was beautiful shade. Maximiliano and Jose swam in a ditch. After a while two more boys arrived. They began to break bottles. I told my brothers to get out of the water for they might cut themselves. But
my brothers refused because the water was very cool. It was very hot. When those boys came they began to call us names. They said that we were Germans. What are they? I wondered. Finally I told them that we were not, that we were Mexicans, the same as them.

  “Oh! You didn’t like what I said?” one of them replied.

  “No, I’m just letting you know that we are Mexicans like you,” I said.

  With that he jumped me and the other boy jumped my brother Maximiliano and we started to fight. It happened that I cut the boy’s face, his nose and his cheek very badly. I split his face in half. He ran away to the police and accused me of being a smuggler and said that we crossed without paying. Two policemen came with my uncle. One policeman waited until his partner tired of trying to scare us. He came close to us and told us not to be afraid, that those boys were a bunch of troublemakers and they had many complaints against them. He advised us to cross where we were supposed to.

  “Arrange your documents,” he told us, “and come across the right way.”

  In the morning the family returned to Mexico, to Ciudad Juarez, to arrange our papers. My papa and I were the first to get our legal papers and then the rest of the family. Then the family went to El Paso, where my papa and I waited. A few days after, my papa and I went to a labor contracting office where they signed people on for work across the country. There were plenty of contracts for everywhere. They asked the group of men where they wanted to go. Some said California, others said different destinations, but most people wanted to go to California. In a short while a contractor came.

  “You want to go to California, don’t you?” he asked.

  We were about seventy men who were under contract with that individual. But he forced groups of men to stay at places all along the way. About forty men arrived late at night in Los Angeles and complained that they were hungry.

  “Well, you must wait until we buy some food,” the contractor said. He asked my papa, “Have you been here before?”

  “No,” my papa answered.

  “Let’s go then, come and help me with the provisions,” and he got two other men to go. I spoke up and said that I, too, would go with them. The contractor ordered me to stay. But I insisted.

  “I will go also,” I told my papa.

  “All right, you can help in something,” the contractor told me.

  As soon as we began to unload the provisions, the hungry men bunched up and grabbed food. Then my papa told me, “Let’s go.”

  We left the camp. We traveled, hiding from everyone, and we walked through the night and we arrived in Long Beach. A heavy fog came in and we could barely see. My papa was not familiar with these places. The signs were not what we were accustomed to, so we asked, but no one could help us because we asked for “Simones” and here they knew the place as “Simons.” We walked and walked until we found a man who told us that we were far from our destination. He told us to go to a movie house nearby and talk with a man who knew how to get to Simons. We found that man and my father asked him for Simons. And the man thought for a moment.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I believe I know where. I’m not sure, but I think it’s in that direction. Follow the tracks, the railroad tracks in that direction. Follow them and where you see the houses from where you stand on the tracks, that will be Laguna Road. When you are there, walk on and look to the right. The houses are painted white.”

  Yes, they were whitewashed with lime. As we approached Simons from afar, you could see the houses shine white from the morning sun. Right away my papa ran into a cousin. “Come on, cousin. Come on in,” she said and she invited us to her house and we ate.

  Her husband, who was also a relative, had a horse and buggy. They were ranchers; they planted many vegetables. He told us, “I am going to take you to my uncle.”

  He took us to my grandfather who gave us a room and in about three weeks, my papa and I started working at the brickyard. After five weeks we sent money to El Paso where the family waited. We sent money each week so that my mother, brothers and sisters could come. They sent us telegrams saying that they were on the way and that we should go for them at the central train station in Los Angeles. We received a second telegram indicating the time and date of arrival of the train. My papa and I went to meet them in Los Angeles. When they got off the train we all embraced and I thought of Julio.

  We had finally made it to Simons.

  Arturo had untied the bundle of wood and separated it by lengths. He stood proudly before his father, silently telling him that the wood was ready for cutting and that they should begin building their new home.

  The Brick People is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and people, living or dead, is coincidental.