by Robert Hough
— Enough, she told him. — You’ve done enough. Here’s your last pay, along with a healthy bonus.
Ramón walked up, took the money, and rapidly counted it, looking neither pleased nor disappointed. He then looked at her and winked.
— I got a better idea, he said. — How’s about we leave when we think the job is done.
He left her office and exited the brothel. — Cabrones! he barked. — Full company, report. Now.
The men all groaned, rose from their bedrolls, tied on their holsters, attached spurs to their boots, and wrapped themselves in the bandoliers worn by soldiers, bandits, and revolutionaries alike. They all mounted horses that, like their owners, had grown lethargic and grumpy with age. The animals expressed their displeasure by whinnying and attempting to bite their riders on the calf. In return they were spurred and smacked hard on the flank and whipped on the rump and in this way were reminded who was boss. Someone opened the gate, and Ramón’s White Shirts clopped onto Avenida Cinco de Mayo.
As the White Shirts lazily rode towards the centre of town, the gringos lining up for the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures all sensed trouble and scattered. As always, Ramón and his men rode slowly around the plaza, one of them exhaling deeply and grumbling Ay, qué feo es éste pueblito. Mostly, however, they were quiet. The sun felt hot on their necks and coat sleeves. The sky was a bleached, cloudless blue. Above them an eagle floated lazily, hunting for mice. There were nine men slowly riding that day, and in their heads ran nine different thoughts — money, food, the past, the future, women they had known, sons and daughters who had gone off to live in los Estados, how nice it would be to leave Corazón, how nice it would be to have a cool bath, how a cerveza might go down well about now. They all grew hot and restless. Two of them even fell into that place halfway between sleep and wakefulness, where the muscles lose their tension and thoughts turn illogical. The only sound was the gentle, rhythmic clop of hooves on packed road dust … that is, until gunshot ricocheted through the plaza, and the head of one of the company members, an older hombre named Pedro, erupted in a funnel of pink.
They heard a second report, and then a White Shirt named Alfredo was holding his upper arm and yelling I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit and the company charged towards the shelter offered by a laneway, where they all drew their pistols and fired madly in the direction from which the bullets had come. This lasted for minutes and minutes. When they finally stopped shooting, the town smelled of gunpowder and the air was clogged with risen dust and the only sound was the groaning of a few innocent transients who had been shot while attempting to flee for safety. The White Shirts all listened for movement; upon hearing nothing they charged back to the corral. There they regrouped. Alfredo, who had suffered a flesh wound only, had his bullet dug out with the heated blade of a camping knife, his only anesthesia a wad of denim clamped between his teeth. When the ordeal was over, he muttered Gracias, amigos, slumped to the earth, and succumbed to the fever that would kill him a few days later.
To the backdrop of the downed man’s delirious groaning, Ramón paced back and forth, his half-arm flopping. His eyes blazed scarlet, a consequence of rage and of having spent the entire afternoon smoking pipefuls of confiscated marihuana. That afternoon played out with nauseating familiarity for those who remembered the revolution. The remaining White Shirts, invigorated by their own interpretation of justice and morality, went from door to door searching for sympathizers. At each house they bullied and interrogated and frightened and spat accusations and struck hombres in the solar plexus with the butts of their rifles and conducted full-body searches on any woman not hiding in the desert.
Dusk came that night with flies and the rotting of flesh. Ramón and his desperados retired to their encampment. This time, Madam was waiting for them outside her place of business, her expression one of abject disgust.
— Ramón! she spat.
The surviving White Shirts stopped.
— I’ve asked you to leave already and this time I mean it! All of you. Pack your things and get out of my sight.
Ramón dismounted. He approached and slowly circled her, his shuffling steps raising dust. From the back of the house, the assembled Marias could hear the spurs on his boots clink. He finally stopped, regarded Madam, and spat onto the ground.
— You ain’t getting this, he said. — There’s an insurrectionary presence out there. Probably some old Villistas who heard we’re still in business. Come to town to make themselves known — just the sorta thing those damn communists would do.
— I don’t care. You work for me. Or you did. I’ve paid you enough. I paid you enough a long time ago. Now leave.
This time, to further communicate her request, Madam unclasped the handbag she was carrying. She reached inside, extracted the small pearl-handled revolver that she used in moments of emergency, and trained it between Ramón’s beady reddened eyes.
— Whatta you gonna do? he challenged. — Shoot us all?
— That would not be possible, said Madam. — But I know you’d be a dead man.
— I would? Well, lemme remind you of something. Anything happens to me and a hell’s gonna rain down on your sluts the likes of which they ain’t never seen.
He then nodded at one of his goons, who was upon Madam in a second. A shot whistled through the air, and then two more of Ramón’s men beset Madam, who screamed and yelled and attempted to kick her assailants in the shins. In response, the biggest of the thugs slapped her hard across the face, a stinging, welt-inspiring attack that converted her screams to soprano whimpers. She was then dragged through the back door of the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, where the goons stopped at a closet filled with brooms, cleaning fluids, and the sadomasochistic toys used by Maria de la Noche. Please, Madam begged, her words falling on ears deafened by years of gunplay. They opened the door, shoved her inside, and turned the key protruding from the lock. The Marias could hear her pleading and pounding against the door, a sound that converted them into a group of cowering schoolgirls.
Ramón walked past them, pleased with the way in which his lackeys had defused the situation. He turned to the Marias.
— Now, all you whores. Get outside and stay there. It ain’t safe for us to camp out there in full view. From now on, we live in here and you do all a your fucking outside, you understand? It’s the war all over again, ladies. You should feel lucky we’re here to protect you against them godless commies.
With that, the Marias were given a few minutes to collect their things and head to the White Shirts’ filthy encampment. That night, word spread on both sides of the river that the famed Marias, owing to some skirmish in Corazón, were now plying their trade from pup tents smelling of sweat, old socks, and seminal emissions. It was news that spurred all but the most faithful of their customers to decamp for bordellos in Sabinas or Piedras Negras.
Ramón and his men spent the early part of the next day indoors, drinking fine amber cognac that, once upon a time, Madam had served to the hacendero Antonio Garcia. As the morning wore on they grew indignant, their instinct for self-preservation overwhelmed by boredom and alcohol-fuelled bravado. Ramón’s men soon started insisting that they rush out and start firing, overwhelming their foes with a combination of surprise and ruthlessness. Ramón thought about this and agreed, his one condition being that they wait until nightfall, when the cover of darkness would also be theirs.
Time slowed. Trigger fingers grew itchy and muscles twitched. By half past two Ramon and his wild dogs could stand it no longer. They ran whooping into the street, forgetting that nightfall and the element of surprise were to have been the cornerstones of their strategy. Firing at everything that moved, they made their way to the central plaza, where shots rained upon them from a rooftop at the southeast corner of the square.
— Take cover! Ramón yelled, and the paramilitaries ducked behind the bandstand. There they dug in.
The ensuing gun battle proceeded languorously, with long periods of inactivity interru
pted by brief, intense moments of bloodletting. Every hour or so, one of the sides would attempt to change positions, resulting in mad scrambling and a consequent loss of life. In time Ramón determined that their enemies wore hats, black shirts, bandanas over the lower half of their faces, and — a sure sign they were communists — the huaraches commonly worn by peasants. This enraged him even further, such that he stopped fighting on behalf of principles, or ideals, or even the desire to acquire material goods. Oh no. When Ramon next ordered his men to charge out from behind the bandstand, guns blazing at everything that moved, he was enraged by the same bitter reciprocity that fuels all war: you have done that awful thing to me, and I have done that awful thing to you, and both of us have done awful things to each other, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on …
Meanwhile, inside his tiny house, a heartbroken molinero named Roberto Pántelas listened to the battle wax and wane outside his window. He was confused, for the revolution had ended long ago, though you would never have known it, not with all the infernal racket outside (Can’t they let an old man expire in peace?). If there was one thing the molinero had learned in his long, long life it was that men will always find something to fight about, the rationale not mattering nearly so much as the fighting itself. This was just one of the reasons he so preferred women, and with this sweet yet sorrowful thought running through his head, he took a laboured breath and lay back, and he placed a hand over the pain emanating from the centre of his chest and he thought Ay, viejo, you’ve had a good run, even if you never had a wife or children, life hasn’t treated you so badly, you always had something about you that attracted the fairer sex like flies to spilled honey, you shouldn’t ever forget that. And as he lay looking at the dim wooden rafters above, he thought of some of the women he had known throughout his long, long life. He thought of women with hair as light as marigold petals and he thought of women with hair as dark as Coahuilan evenings. He thought of women with a scent so sweet you’d swear they were made from honey and he thought of women with a scent so musky it made your mind race with wickedness. He thought of women who liked to laugh and others who behaved as solemnly as widows, and Ay, ay, viejo, remember that time in Saltillo, when a rubia invited you to bed only to be discovered by her best friend, who then asked, using the formal usted no less, if you minded very much if she joined in? Sí, molinero, those were the days, and don’t forget that woman in Monterrey who asked for rope and lanolin and then used them both with the cleverness of a professor.
Of course, those times had meant nothing in comparison to the episodes of real love, for he had been in love so many times, and so many times he had been this close to the altar when, as little as a week before (or, on one shrill and awful occasion, the very day of), someone else had come along, someone a little more charming, a little more beautiful, just a little bit younger. And how could he make them understand that he really did love them all, each and every one of them, be they young or old, pretty or plain, rich or poor, lusty or otherwise? It didn’t matter — if anything, it was their differences that he celebrated, the variation to be found in the world of mujeres (whereas with hombres, ay, so alike, so lacking in nuance, so simplistic in their desires, for which reason he always thought that if he had been born a woman he would have become a lesbian, so that he could still make love to other women even if it did mean burning in hell). In fact, by the age of twelve, when he first discovered the pleasures of the flesh in a brothel in Villa Acuña, he’d known what his grand passion in life would be, knew the manner in which his existence would have purpose. Few men could say that, and if he had some regrets, it is also true that all men have regrets, for what is a life without regrets and mistakes and tumbles taken in the road? And it was not as though he hadn’t been able to settle down and love a single woman, even though for most of his life he had thought it beyond his capabilities. On the contrary, his life had been a funny thing, for in the last year he had met a woman who replaced all women in the depths of his old and irregularly beating heart, a woman who made him forget that other women existed, a woman whom he’d wanted to marry and who, despite his advanced years, was more than happy with their plans to have as many children as they could manage (and you could have managed plenty, couldn’t you have, you old rooster, you old rascal, you feverish old billy goat). So how could she have gone before him? How was it that God — who couldn’t possibly be upset by his years of giving pleasure to others, who couldn’t possibly begrudge the way He had made the molinero — could have taken away the grandest love he had ever known?
To show his displeasure, the molinero committed his first and final act of Catholic betrayal. He closed his eyes and did not think of the countless miracles that God provides, from sunsets to flowers to animals, from days spent resting to the taste of a well-made flauta to the dense, spongy feel of a young woman’s tetas, from the wonder of light over the desert to the dusty pine taste of tequila to the shock that is thunder to the mystical sound of wind blowing over sand. Instead he just let himself go, he just let himself drift away, and as he did, it was with the spiriting thought that he would soon be joining his amor, his mujer, his Laurita.
He then took his final breath, his soul becoming air, his blood the moisture of clouds, his thoughts the presence felt in the shadow of ancient places.
{ 32 }
THE FOLLOWING DAY, RAMÓN DISPATCHED A RIDER into the surrounding countryside. A few days later, the rider returned with a half-dozen more fighters sympathetic to their old cause, all of whom yearned for the excitement of days gone by. They were offered lodgings in the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, the new recruits laying out their bedrolls in small rooms with dark red walls and ceilings. They unpacked changes of clothing and found a place to spit their chewing tobacco. Cigarillos were lit and guano-encrusted boots placed on fine furniture. Soon Madam’s previously well-kept brothel was littered with old saddle blankets, half-empty bottles, and underpants. Having lost its scent of rosewater and fine tobacco, the house now smelled like the whiff one gets upon passing the partially opened door of a public latrine.
For a few days Ramón’s army ruled the town, the enemy now outmanned, outgunned, and not daring to engage the opposite side. This hesitant peace lasted until the Villistas sent away a rider of their own, who promptly returned with his own posse of gunslingers sympathetic to their old cause. For those townsfolk who dared leave their houses, it was common to glance up and notice men in dark bandanas and bandoliers taking cover behind chimneystacks. Now that the two armies were on even terms, the fighting continued with a renewed vigour, one side firing up into the sky, the other firing down into the streets. The plazas and avenidas of Corazón de la Fuente refilled with gunfire, shouted orders, and the groaned misgivings of men who not only lay dying but had chosen that moment to understand the ways in which they’d squandered their time on earth. The people of Corazón de la Fuente, meanwhile, responded in a manner that had become second nature during the throes of the revolution. They gave a depressed communal sigh, formed groups of volunteers, and, to avoid an outbreak of cholera, dutifully cleared the streets of bodies whenever there was a lull in the fighting.
One night, as the street cleaners performed their grisly duties, Francisco Ramirez climbed out his bedroom window. He stood for a moment, peering in either direction, and then headed towards the molinero’s tiny house. It had been days since anyone had seen Roberto Pántelas, and with Laura Velasquez gone there was nobody who routinely visited the old man. Francisco was concerned.
He moved along the rear walls of houses, conscious that, despite the apparent calm, he was nevertheless putting himself at risk. Still, it was after midnight, and there was a good chance that any White Shirts or socialists who happened to be out would be drunk; Francisco was confident that he would detect them before they detected him. Sticking to shadows wherever possible, he darted across the plaza and reached the Pozo de Confesiones. He knocked quietly on the molinero’s door, looking quickly in every direction to ensure he�
�d not been heard.
When there was no answer, he tapped again, this time daring to softly call out the molinero’s name. There was still no answer, so he moved to the window of the one-room house and gazed in. He could see the old man on his bed, hands clasped over his chest, a look of frozen contemplation on his face. Francisco smelled the faint odour of decaying flesh seeping through the pores of the adobe walls, and he noticed that the molinero barely made any impression on the mattress beneath him. Francisco rapped daringly on the window, despite knowing full well that a combination of heartache and cancer had swept the courtly old man to heaven.
My old amigo, he thought. I should have come earlier.
Francisco’s eyes dampened. He moved along the façades of the houses, finding a tiny alley leading to the rear of the homes. As in most dwellings in Corazón, the molinero’s kitchen extended from the back of the house, protected only by a wooden awning. Francisco tried opening the back door, only to find that it too was locked. With a single kick, the door splintered and flew open, smashing against the wall on which it hung. Again Francisco froze, alert to possible reprisals. He heard the far-off call of a coydog and the faint signal of Brinkley’s damnable station and a rustling of desert breezes, and that was all.