by Geff Moyer
His pa tossed him an old rag and said, “Cover yer mouth and nose with this and grab the other leg!”
Under the yellow glow of a single lump oil lamp hanging on a wooden post Billy saw two legs sticking out of their milk cow’s womb. His pa had hold of one of them. He froze.
“Come on, boy! We gotta do this pronto!”
Billy edged towards the standing cow, but the stench again stopped him.
“No time to upchuck, Billy! Grab the other leg!”
Billy tied the rag around his face and gingerly reached for the leg. He was instantly kicked in the chest and thrown backwards.
“Damn, boy! Muscle up! Grab the goddamn leg! We can’t afford ‘nother milker!”
“Will it hurt the calf?” asked Billy with tears welling in his eyes from the pain in his chest, the foul smell, and simply the terror of the moment.
“I’d rather lose the calf then its momma. Now grab it, son!” Billy did as he was ordered. “Now right with me, pull! Ya ready?”
Trembling and panting Billy replied, “Ya!”
“Pull!”
In a flash the calf slid from the womb. Billy fell backwards and the slime-coated newborn landed on top of him. As he rolled from under the slick animal his pa whooped in joy.
“Look at that, Billy Boy! We got ourselves a bull.”
“It’s a boy?” Billy asked as he struggled to stand. His clothes were drenched in a smelly, sticky substance.
“Sure is! Got yer pocket knife with ya?”
Billy groped at his pants pockets. “Ya. Why?”
“Git it out and cut the feedin’ cord.”
With his eyes wide and his body frozen in place all he could stammer was, “Huh?”
“Right here!” his pa ordered. “Right ‘tween my hands.”
Billy slowly pulled the knife from his pocket and freed the small blade. “Will it hurt him?”
“Hell, no! It’s just a long flume that carries food from the momma to the calf.”
“But ifin I cut it, how will he eat?”
“With his mouth, Billy. How the hell ya ‘spect him to?”
“But you said...”
“Cut the damn cord, boy! I can’t hold this forever!”
Tears were now streaming down Billy’s face as he pushed the blade down on the cord.
“It’s too hard.”
“Cut from ‘neath it, slice upwards! Put some muscle ‘hind it! Ya ain’t gonna harm him, son.”
With his pa tightening his grip, Billy pushed up and severed the strong cord. A liquid shot from it and he almost passed out then and there. He watched his pa tie the end of the cord attached to the calf in a knot.
“That’s it! That’s all we can do.” His pa stood, walked over to a bucket of water and began to wash his hands and forearms. “Clean yerself up, Billy. Better take them clothes down to the creek.”
“Is Missy okay?”
“She looks okay.” Right then Missy mooed.
“I think that was a thank you,” his pa said with a smile as he pulled out his ivory pipe and lit it.
After a few comical attempts to stand, the calf finally gained his footing and wobbled over to its mother’s teats.
“See, he’s eatin’.” He put his arm around Billy’s shoulder and said, “It’s all up to his momma from here. Ain’t nothun we can do now.”
Date unknown
Billy figured the Indians would circle back to find the missing squaw. As he started to return to Orion and Captain a movement caught the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was the hot breeze shuffling the mesquite.
Then he saw the infant’s toes twitch.
“Just a muscle jerk,” he told himself. Then the toes wiggled and another foot began to emerge from the womb. Again the breath left his lungs as he stepped back and shuddered. He watched more of the second leg struggle to leave its confinement. “Walk away,” he told himself. “Ain’t nuthun ya can do now.”
He decided this was something he would keep dry, never tell anyone. No one ever needed to know. As he climbed back on Orion he thought, “We stink when we die and we stink when we’re born.”
Date unknown
Four empty canteens clanging against each other with every step Captain took was a taunting reminder of how thirsty they all were, yet he didn’t dare discard them. Their pace was dangerously slow. His urine had turned to a deep yellow shade that he knew would eventually lead to the death of his kidneys, and then him. Shade was as rare as a virgin in a whorehouse. He wondered if the lack of water created the same headaches and dizziness in Orion and Captain as it did in him. Even his sweat had almost stopped, and he knew that wasn’t good.
“Man no sweat,” he recalled Feather Yank once saying, “man die.”
He thought he was hallucinating when he spotted the cliff dwellings. They were far up the side of a mesa running parallel to them to the north. At precisely the same time, the heads of Billy, Orion, and Captain all turned to the right.
“Ya smell it, fellas?” Billy asked in a gravelly voice through the pain of split and peeling lips. “I think I hear it.”
If his ears weren’t playing tricks on him there could be a stream running along the base of that mesa. Because of the high, dry brush between him and the cliff he couldn’t see if salvation was really there or it was just another of Mother Nature’s tricks. As he turned Orion and Captain towards the sound, five Yaqui children slowly and cautiously emerged from the dead thicket, each holding out their hands.
“Por favor,” they pleaded over and over.
They reminded him of the stick figures he used to draw when he was a kid, except he never included rib bones, swollen bellies, and dark, sunken eyes. He pulled a large strip of mule deer jerky from his saddlebag and tossed it to them. As he watched them scurry back into the brush to divide up the feast, death filled his nostrils. The threesome strode deeper into the high brush towards the cliff. A small village became visible and the foul odor became even stronger. It was a few dozen crude huts, an empty corral, and a couple of disintegrating stone structures that were too old to have been built by their current occupants. To the east he noticed an untended field from a former harvest.
It wasn’t a trick. A small creek ran along the base of the mesa separating the village from its rocky wall, just beyond some stunted mesa oaks. As he slowly rode through the village toward the wet salvation he saw that many of the adults were so weak they couldn’t even stand. Most were naked or wearing tattered tilmas. They were also too feeble to bury their dead. A stack of bodies was piled against the high cliff wall on the other side of the small creek. No smoke rose from any of the huts. There were no animals in the corral. The few Yaquis that didn’t inhabit the pile across the creek would very soon become occupants. He had never seen such wretched helplessness. This was simply a place for dying.
He slipped off Orion and knelt by an old Yaqui braced against a rotting corral post. When he asked the man how the village got in such a bad state the Indian told him that a group of Mexican soldiers had come through and seized all of their harvest and animals to feed their troops. What little food that was left had been given to the children, but even that was gone. Then the old man showed Billy a piece of paper that said, in Spanish, “We owe you one thousand pesos, signed, Captain Flores Attendo.”
Holding up the paper the old man said, “No podemos comer papel!”
He was right. They couldn’t eat paper.
Kneeling at the stream, Billy filled his four canteens under the pleading stare of several children. When he glanced at them he could see beyond the hunger in their eyes to the point of the grey emptiness that welcomes death. The smell was even worse being that close to the pile of decaying bodies. With canteens filled and Orion and Captain watered he began to lead the animals back out of the barrio. The villagers who could still stand tried to walk towards him, hoping for any kind of handout. Many could only force a few steps before they’d simply collapse. It would’ve been more merciful if those soldiers woul
d have put a bullet in the heads of every man, woman, and child in this village. He knew it wouldn’t do him or the people here any good to share the very few supplies he had left, but he also knew he couldn’t leave them in their current state.
He gave them Captain.
When he tossed his few remaining supplies and the filled canteens across Orion’s rump, the horse didn’t do his usual complaining about the extra weight. He just hung his head. The two weren’t a hundred feet from the grotto when they heard Captain squeal as a few of the stronger villagers cut his throat. Not wanting to look back, Billy hoped they’d at least have the decency to cook him. He also knew it would be a far stretch of life before he stopped hearing that squeal. If ever.
The water helped shake his brain back into a calmer state and the dusty tabletop map slowly refocused. He recalled at least two small towns in their current direction, but when he arrived at each of their locations both had vanished from the earth. Either his map was wrong or the land had swallowed them up. The way his plan had gone so far he figured it was the former. A few beans and a handful of oats were all that was left of his supplies. Maybe a day’s worth of each. The pain in his jaw was lingering longer before hiding away, but always returning with brain piercing jabs. Even his flask was down to only a few drops of mescal. Orion struggled to find any type of edible vegetation. When Billy could catch one, he would eat scrawny hare or rattlesnake. On a few occasions he was lucky enough to spot a chuckwaller. The lizard was chewy but large enough to fill his belly.
His clothing was turning into rags, weathered from the heat and slashed by the swirling dust and blowing sand that cut like little knife jabs. His Levi Strauss’ and chaps had dozens of small rips and slices courtesy of the wicked underbrush. His cotton shirt had lost all but two buttons and the fabric in its underarms was rotting. The hole in his John B, courtesy of Tomas Amador, had weathered away to the size of a half dollar. Only his Justins seemed to be surviving. He guessed, or rather hoped, they were somewhere between Sonoita and Los Indios. They could be north of the two towns, or south, or east, or west. Far ahead he could see the waves of heat rising from the sandy ground. Behind him he could see the waves they had just passed through.
“Funny,” he mumbled. “Why can’t I see them when I’m in them?” He sure as hell felt them.
Even Orion’s keen sense of direction seemed to be muddled by the unchanging landscape. Every time they’d pass a tall, distinctive cactus, both man and horse would stop and study it, worried that it was the same one they had passed the day before. He knew they wouldn’t last much longer like this. If he was right about their current location, the border town of El Papalote should be to the north. He hoped he was. He convinced himself that he had to be. He turned Orion north. The horse didn’t balk. Three days later, hungry, tired and filthy, the two lumbered in to El Papalote. The way people gaped at him he figured he must look like death on a dead horse. But to his surprise he was also greeted by colored lights and nativity scenes everywhere. The fronts of tiendas displayed them, even small adobe homes had miniature ones in front. Pastorelas—little religious skits—were being performed in the streets. It was Christmas Eve. He had been wandering Sonora for close to a year.
“Some fuckin’ plan!” he mumbled.
After stabling Orion in the livery he treated himself to a hotel room and a bath, his first since soaking in the Rio Yaqui. The steaming slate-colored bathwater quickly turned black. When he rose from the tub he took a peek at the full length mirror leaning against an empty rain barrel. It took him a moment to suck in the fact that the gaunt and gut-shrunk body in the mirror was his own. He wondered if his friend would’ve put his body through this kind of torture for him, then cursed himself for even thinking it because he knew Jeff would. As he stood there naked, dripping wet, he looked at his clothes then cursed himself again.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he grumbled. Putting on the same duds made the entire bath a waste. “Fuckin’ knothead,” he said aloud as he climbed back into the flea-ridden rags.
He bought new clothes at a well-stocked tienda then took a second bath. Its water also turned black. After donning his new outfit he again stood in front of the bath house’s mirror. It bothered him that he looked more like a vaquero than a Ranger, but he wanted and needed to better fit the surroundings. The new attire felt strange, especially the sombrero. It was awkward and unbalanced. The serape looped around his neck and over his left shoulder. Though it neatly hid his shoulder holster it was heavy. Fortunately the tienda also had a small selection of Levi Strauss jeans. But his most expensive purchase was a pair of calfskin chaparajos. He thought about getting some with silver studs down the legs like those worn by the Rurales back in...he forgot where...but decided they were too fancy for his taste. There was one item that he simply could not get used to: shirts with a collar. Every shirt he had owned before had no collar. It surprised him when he saw this new style of clothing. It also scratched and chafed his neck. Before the day was over he had cut off the irritating hunk of cloth.
A local restaurante was serving traditional Mexican holiday dishes. He indulged. It was a feast: deep-fried bunuelos drenched in brown sugar and guava; a large mug of warm champurrado that relaxed his jittery tooth; and, of course, many, many tamales. The people were friendly, the music was festive, but for the first time in years, he was alone on Christmas Eve.
As he sipped his second mug of champurrado and tapped his foot to the music, he longed to hear Freddie playing carols on his harmonica before his little friend caught the last train up to Bisbee to spend Christmas with his daughter and folks, and probably his “little dressmaker with the huge udders.” He had dubbed her that because her breasts were the most ample he’d ever handled and she was barely any taller than his ten-year-old daughter. Being just a smidgen over five feet, it wasn’t easy for Freddie to find a woman he could look in the eyes. But the idea of a little woman with large breasts seemed to fascinate Sparky the most.
“Just how big are they?” Sparky asked Freddie early one Christmas Eve afternoon in the barracks.
“More than a handful?” inquired Billy.
“They’re big, that’s all I can say,” replied Freddie, obviously a little embarrassed, but still proud to let everyone know just who he was courting and what he was fondling. He pulled his harmonica from his pocket, tapped it on his jeans a few times and started to lift it to his lips.
“Size of a ripe tomato?” asked Jeff.
“Bigger,” smiled Freddie.
“A big tomato?” chuckled Sparky.
“Bigger.”
“Head a cabbage?” asked Billy.
“Bigger.”
“Musk melon?” asked Jeff.
“Bigger,” Freddie repeated and began playing “The First Noel” on his harmonica.
“Bigger than a musk melon?” an astonished Sparky repeated. “I ain’t ne’er seen teats that big.”
“They’re tits, Sparky,” responded Billy. “Woman have tits, cows have teats.”
“Kiss yer grandma’s butt. I was bein’ polite.”
“Preciate that, Sparky,” Freddie said to his big friend. Then he returned to his harmonica and continued “The First Noel.”
Besides the two years Billy had spent with Anna, all the other Christmases were celebrated with Jeff, who would try to teach him the words to some carols. The only one Billy could ever recall was “Silent Night,” and that was just the first few lines. Then they’d break out a bottle of bug juice, get drunk, and go to the whorehouse. Even though it was Christmas Eve, whores worked. Whores survive by numbers.
That night Billy lay on the bed in his El Papalote hotel room listening to the singing voices and popping fireworks outside. “Only one man dead,” he thought. Tomás Amador. If that was the way it was going to be, one man a year, could he keep it up? He knew he had to. He had promised his friend.
“Ya got it.”
He had no idea where he was going from here. The plan he scratched out on that dusty ta
ble in San Moise had cost him at least ten pounds. His lean six-foot frame could not afford losing anymore. A familiar tune drifted up from the streets and into the hotel window. It was “Silent Night,” but sung in Spanish. Thinking the soft music would soothe him into a nice, restful sleep, he settled back, but sleep wouldn’t come. He finally got out of bed, dressed, and walked down to the livery. Orion was munching hay when Billy opened the door to his stall.
“Merry Christmas, Shithead.”
He curled up in the hay next to his friend and slept.
Orion was running so fast Billy felt like they were flying, but he could still smell the giant lizard’s hot, rank breath close behind them. Its yellow teeth were a foot long and dripping with green drool. Its head was the size of two large rain barrels. Its tongue shot out and slashed across Billy’s back, stinging like a bullwhip in the hands of a muleskinner. The monster smiled as it lowered its head, mouth wide open, ready to chomp Billy right out of his saddle. Suddenly a loud hee-haw exploded from the left. Captain was charging at full speed. A speed Billy didn’t even know mules could reach. It was like his hooves weren’t even touching the ground. The brave mule slammed its head into the monster’s jaw, knocking it sideways before its teeth could clamp down on Billy and Orion. Then Captain hee-hawed loudly and ran off into the desert with the angry lizard hot on his tail.
He must been making noises in his sleep because Orion snorted and rudely nudged him awake.
January, 1910
He welcomed in the New Year at El Papalote and decided to stay through the month of January. Not only would it give him time to regain some strength, but it also felt good to be around friendly people for a change. And the town featured two inviting whorehouses. But before attempting to unload some baggage, he had to do something about his tooth.
Again, the local dentist was a barber. Again, he decided to risk it. He entered the shop and told the man his problem. The barber/dentist poked around in Billy’s wide open mouth then, like the previous one, made an angle gesture with his hand.