by Robert Hough
— The music?
— No. You can’t hear it? This time it’s a man talking in English. I think … I think it’s Dr. Brinkley.
— How could that be?
— I don’t know. It comes and goes. I don’t understand it. I think maybe it’s my imagination.
The next day Laura awoke, fixed the molinero his breakfast, and immediately went to do her errands. And while she presented a happy face to the townsfolk, all of whom asked her questions about Saltillo and her trip to the dentist, there were many times when the molinero observed her in quiet moments rubbing her ears and looking as though she was suffering from a low, constant pain. Meanwhile he visited each of his neighbours, a process that involved a full day and several cups of bitter, burnt-tasting coffee. His intent was to ask if any of them listened to Brinkley’s station, and they all told him the same thing: unless Malfil Cruz’s daughter was on, the last thing they’d listen to was those infernal hillbilly jingles that Brinkley always played.
The next day was even worse. Laura began to look haggard with lack of sleep, and she no longer smiled when dealing with the senior citizens under her care. Several times during the day the molinero caught her placing a damp cloth on her forehead, and he noticed that she had taken to sighing, often and loudly. Shortly after lunch, the molinero came to the rare decision that he needed a drink. He put on his hat and boots and ambled across town to Carlos Hernandez’s cantina. As he made his way across the plaza, he was stopped by an old, old man named Jaime de la Roya, who waved from his perch on a wrought-iron bench. Though Señor de la Roya was actually younger than the molinero, he was not blessed with the older man’s health or vigour: his hands shook, his stomach didn’t work properly, his eyes were failing, and he needed help to do most things. As such, he was one of the village elderly that Laura made a habit of visiting.
— Qué onda, primo? asked the molinero.
Jaime didn’t answer. Instead he raised an arm as gnarled as a tree branch. — Your fiancée, compadre. I need to see her.
Again Don Miguel felt as though unseen hands had dumped ice water over him. Laura never, ever missed her rounds. — I’ll tell her, he said.
— Gracias, amigo. It’s not pressing, it’s just that I haven’t had food in my larder for a few days, and the laundry is piling up around my ears …
The molinero walked to the cantina. There he joined the mayor, the hacendero, and Father Alvarez, all of whom seemed preoccupied. The mayor was expressing concern about the changes that had come to the town, the hacendero was worried about his horse, and Father Alvarez … well, he was the worst, noisily obsessing over the death of the Church and the attendant rise of dastardly forces.
— By the way, said the molinero, — Where is Carlos?
— Where else? snapped Father Alvarez, who was slurring his words just a little. — In the back with Margarita. I tell you, I don’t know what’s got into those two. You can’t even order a drink around here anymore without pounding on their bedroom door.
— Ordering another drink, the hacendero observed, — is the last thing you need to be doing, Alvarez.
— And maybe you need to be minding your own business, Antonio.
— Gentlemen, implored the mayor. — Por favor. We are all friends here.
He stood and limped over to the bar himself, where he poured the molinero a respectful tequila. The old man let the drink warm his belly.
— Do you want another? asked the mayor. — It’s good for what ails you.
— Ay no, Miguel. A second mescalito and I’d fall over and hurt myself. Besides, nothing is ailing me these days.
Just then the cantina owner entered the saloon from his room at the back, a shirt tail hanging over his belt, his sizeable moustache topping an equally sizeable grin. The others rolled their eyes as he rushed over to offer his arm to their elderly guest. In this way the molinero was able to rise from his seat.
— Adiós, compadres, he said. — I’ll see you all soon.
Slowly the molinero shuffled home, sticking to the shade thrown by blue and pink adobe walls, his head lost in hard thought and worry. When he reached his little house, he opened the door and stood in the entranceway, his heart breaking. The person he loved most in the world was weeping.
— Roberto, she cried. — Come, come.
He moved towards her and struggled to his knees. She had stuffed her ears with strips of cloth and was holding her head.
— Ay, pobrecita. Is there anything I can do?
— It’s not even in my ears. The noise … it’s in my jaw, in my cheekbones, in my forehead. That horrible racket is inside me.
The molinero wrapped his thin, blue-veined arms around her wracking shoulders. In so doing, his ear brushed against the thin metal wire that wrapped around her mouth, and he finally determined what was tormenting his Laurita. He recoiled, and then leaned in close again, only to hear the most popular song in los Estados Unidos, a song that, to the residents of Corazón de la Fuente, was about as pleasing as an assault of locusts.
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There’s a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky …
{ 22 }
MIGUEL OROZCO, THE MAYOR OF CORAZÓN DE LA Fuente, stood at his window in the town hall, gazing out over the plaza, feeling the pangs of loneliness that are often experienced by those who are liked by everyone and truly loved by no one.
He sighed. The previous night, thieves had broken into his office. As a consequence of this invasion, the mescal bottle he kept in his lower right-hand drawer was gone, the town’s only existing map of Corazón lay in a mound of shreds, and the framed sepia photo of his Oaxacan parents that he kept on his desktop had been snapped in half, presumably over somebody’s knee. Again he shook his head and thought fondly of the days before the tower. Back then, when his morning obligations had proven excessively strenuous and Carlos Hernandez had not yet opened his cantina, Miguel would often take his business to the plaza and sit in the shade of a palo verde. Thus ensconced, he would stretch out his legs and look up at the roofless church, recalling his own little village down south. A cool wind would ruffle his hair, and a feeling of contentment would settle over him like a woollen blanket.
And now.
Look at it, thought the mayor. Just look at it. Every bench occupied by a campesino with nowhere to go. Every square inch of patio covered by the bedding of vagrants. The town’s beautiful wrought-iron bandstand hung with bedsheets. Bare palo verde branches festooned with drying brassieres, work shirts, and underpants. Litter everywhere. Empty bottles. Dirty, pockmarked infants. Every day, it seemed, more of the country’s poor arrived; the rumour that there was still work to be had at the tower site apparently refused to perish. Others came because they’d heard of all the money attracted by Madam Félix’s House of Gentlemanly Pleasures. Naturally, many of these were petty robbers, who carried dull homemade knives in their pockets. Others were roasted-corn vendors, who fought each other for locations closest to the brothel. He couldn’t even blame them. By three o’clock in the afternoon the lineup from Madam’s house extended all the way to the plaza, where it blocked the arched doors of the town hall. To leave his office, the mayor often had to shoulder his way through a line of nervous, unspeaking gringos, all with their hats pulled down over their eyes.
Again the mayor sighed. He limped back to his desk and sat. It was late morning and already he was exhausted; sleep hadn’t been coming easily of late, and when it did it was fractured and shallow. He rested his forehead on crossed arms and brooded about past times and hardship. Soon his thoughts grew disordered and oddly textured, his dreams flavoured with memories of the revolution, when he had served as an indentured cook for Pancho Villa’s army of the north, an experience that had left him with three missing toes and a hatred for conflict in all its festering variations.
He came awake to the sound of boots angrily striking the steps leading up to his office
. They grew louder and louder, culminating in the hacendero’s presence in his doorway. Judging by the red tint of his complexion and the stiffness of his carriage, he was not paying a pleasure call.
— Miguel, said the hacendero. — It’s this damn tower.
The mayor sighed. — What about it, Antonio?
— The signal is so strong it’s broadcasting through anything metal. Fencing wire, wrought iron, anything. I was walking past the cemetery the other day and voices started talking to me from the cross topping a gravestone. I thought the dead had come alive.
— I know. It’s an unforeseen bother.
— Well, it’s driving my horse crazy. Do you have any idea how much I paid for Diamante? Do you have any idea how much Diamante is worth?
— What can I do about it?
The hacendero approached the mayor’s desk and planted his knuckles on the surface that ordinarily supported the mayor’s coffee cup and newspaper.
— You can talk to your amigo Brinkley and tell him to turn the thing down.
— Antonio, he’s hardly a friend.
— You know him better than anyone in this town.
— That’s not true, there’s Violeta …
— Miguel! Don’t dodge the issue.
The hacendero strode off, his lizard-skin boots striking the floorboards as noisily as they had on the way in. The mayor thought about knocking off early and heading to the cantina, where, with any luck, he’d locate peace, quiet, and a frothy mug of cerveza. He was just about to leave when, once again, he heard footfalls on the steps leading up to his office. A few seconds later, Francisco Ramirez was standing in his doorway, looking aggrieved and more than a little dusty.
— Hola, Señor Orozco.
— Hola, Francisco. What can I do for you?
— Earlier today I went to the other side.
— Really? This is getting to be a strange habit of yours. Crossing the bridge, only to come back in a couple of hours? Most people stay awhile. What took you there this time?
— The Del Río library, Don Miguel. I have something to show you.
Had Francisco not been wearing such a bitter expression, Miguel might have laughed out loud. — Dios mío, primo. You really do march to your own drummer. You went to the Del Río library? I didn’t even know they had one. I thought the closest one was in San Antonio.
Francisco ignored the mayor’s facetiousness.
— I had a hunch about something.
— All right, joven. Let’s hear it.
Francisco stepped towards the mayor’s desk and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. He extracted a folded piece of paper.
— It’s all right here, said Francisco.
— What is, joven?
— This, said Francisco, methodically unfolding the paper and placing it on Miguel’s desk.
— It’s from the Fort Worth Chronicle. I waited until a fat man coughed, and then I tore it out.
The mayor regarded the sheet. Surrounded by an ad for an upcoming rodeo was a photograph of none other than John Romulus Brinkley. Miguel read haltingly. Though the bulk of the vocabulary was beyond him, he understood that the write-up was less than favourable.
— Ay, Francisco, you teach English, not me. Could you give me the gist?
— It’s an editorial complaining about medicine in Texas. It’s saying that the State of Texas should join the American Medical Association to keep out all the cheats and frauds. It’s an article, Don Miguel, in which the writer uses this man as proof of his argument.
Francisco leaned over and poked Brinkley’s forehead, the sweat of his fingertip causing the ink in the photograph to smudge slightly. Francisco was now breathing hard with indignation.
— People are complaining over there. They’re saying his operation is a fake. The tax people are looking into him too …
The mayor felt a sudden foreboding. For some reason he’d never noticed how odd Brinkley’s smile was, an irritating blend of cheerfulness and utter pomposity.
— All right, Francisco. All right. I’ll see what I can do.
— Do you promise, Don Miguel?
— Hijo, said the mayor. — I might not know much, but I do know enough to never make promises.
Francisco turned and left, expressing his frustration by pounding the floorboards so hard that an old framed portrait of Benito Juárez fell off the wall, the glass shattering all over a quarter of the mayor’s office. Miguel sighed, waited a few minutes, and was again readying to call it a day when, once more, he heard footsteps. Unlike the previous footfalls, however, these were laboured and irregular, as if their owner was pausing occasionally to rest. After minutes of stop-and-start progress, Roberto Pántelas, the aging molinero, came shuffling into the mayor’s office. The mayor hurried to take his forearm.
— Ay, primo, said the molinero. — Gracias, gracias. Help an old man take a seat. And if it’s not a bother, perhaps you have a little water?
The mayor grabbed the earthenware pitcher he kept on his filing cabinet. He handed the molinero a glass and said: — Roberto. You shouldn’t be climbing those stairs. If you needed to talk to me, you could have just caught up with me on the square.
The molinero took the first in a series of deep, restorative breaths. When his lungs had finally calmed, he said: — Miguel, how long have you been the mayor here?
— Five years.
— And how many times have I bothered you with a complaint?
— Never.
— Then this time, indulge an old man. That radio signal is broadcasting through Laura’s braces. It’s making her crazy. You and I both know if there’s any girl in this town that deserves happiness, it’s her.
— Can’t you just have them taken off?
— I spent all the money I had in the world to have them put on. You know how much she needs them.
The mayor nodded. — I know, amigo.
— So do one thing for me, Miguel.
— Sí?
— Get that gringo to turn that thing off, and save me the trouble of crossing the river and putting a bullet in his head myself. And don’t think I’m joking. I’m eighty-eight years old, so a life sentence isn’t much of a deterrent. Now help me up. You don’t want to get between a crusty old man and his nap time.
After helping the molinero to the front door of the town hall, the mayor returned to his desk and put his head in his hands. Clearly he had to do something. Unfortunately, he hadn’t the faintest idea what that thing might be. Then it occurred to him. If nothing else, the revolution had turned México into a democracy. A democracy with only one party, it was true, and where its rivals tended to disappear just before election day, but a democracy nonetheless. Strictly speaking, a mayor’s job was to represent the interests of his constituency, and he decided that he would devote the remainder of his day to discovering exactly what those interests might be.
His first stop was the store owned by the hirsute Zacatecan, Fajardo Jimenez.
— Hola, Miguel, said Fajardo.
The mayor, dispensing with niceties, asked him straight out.
— Fajardo, what do you think of this radio tower?
— The tower? Are you kidding me? Business has never been better. I’m thinking of applying for membership at the Del Río Golf and Country Club. And if they let me in, I’m going to fight for the inclusion of other Mexicanos. Ay sí, the radio station is the best thing that has ever happened to Corazón de la Fuente.
— But what about …
— The best thing, Miguel.
The mayor left and hobbled along Avenida Hidalgo towards the cantina. There he found Carlos Hernandez cleaning glasses and whistling happily. A few former tower workers were already asleep on the tabletops, snoring into pools of spilled cerveza.
The cantina owner came over to the mayor’s table with a bottle. He set it down, a ring of condensation immediately forming around the base. He sat and poured two measures in glasses that could have used a wash.
— This ra
dio station, said the mayor. — You think that maybe …
— Maybe? Maybe what, primo? It’s the best thing that ever happened to this place.
— But what about all the filth? All the vagrants crowding the plaza?
— You’re worried about a few bums on the streets?
— There’s more than a few.
— I know some people. Friends of friends with pistols. Throw a few dollars their way and the streets could be clean by nightfall.
— Por favor, Carlos. Too many problems are solved that way already.
— Of course you’re right, Miguel. Do you need anything else?
— Not right now.
— Well, if that changes just talk to Ernesto. In the meantime, I’ve got to go. I think, er, Margarita needs me.…
The mayor smiled and ordered a bowl of birria flavoured with drops of habanero salsa from the cantina’s new bartender. He was just about to tuck in, the rich aroma of braised goat exciting his senses, when Father Alvarez marched in and sat beside the mayor. As usual, the father was in a deep gloom.
— What is it? asked the mayor, his appetite retreating.
— What is it? I’ll tell you what it is. I was walking down the street when a weathervane topping one of the houses started talking to me. Don’t smile, Miguel. It was one of those religious shows that Brinkley plays. All six-six-six and the number of the beast. I tell you, Miguel, the philistines have won. The moneylenders have conquered the temple.
The mayor sighed, his appetite now completely vanished.
— Miguel and Roberto want me to do something about the tower as well.
— Did I say I wanted you to do something about it? Did I? The truth is I don’t care what you do, cabrón. The only thing I know is that I’m going to order a bottle of something strong from that hombre behind the counter, I’m going to take that bottle to my ugly little room, and I’m going to drink until I’m no longer conscious. Have a good day, Miguel.