by James Wade
We slid off the horses and held blankets over our heads. The horses shifted in the thicket and searched for some comfort that wasn’t there.
“Did you hear that?” Shelby hollered at me through the drumming of the rain.
I turned my eyes out toward the plain and listened.
The storm crawled along overhead en route to the places we’d come from, and through the sheets of water it dumped upon the land I heard first one faint cry and then another.
“You hear it?” Shelby asked again and I held up my hand.
The dull bass of a drum permeated the air around us. We squinted from under our blankets but saw only a faded country masked by rain.
The drumming grew closer and less muted and soon shapes began to move through the curtains of water. Men appeared, maybe seven or eight. They marched in a single column with the drummer at one end and a man carrying a small, crudely sewn Mexican flag at the other. They stood straight, their drenched uniforms sticking to their bodies. They slogged through the mud and the rain as if neither were there, as if they were spirits upon the land, answerable to nothing and no one save the phantom force which commanded them only to march, as if they had been called down by the old gods of this country to turn back these gringos, these intruders who already took too much of the land belonging to their ancestors.
Shelby and I looked at one another and back at the men. They halted, facing the river, fifty yards from where we stood. One of the men stepped forward from the others and turned and shouted something at them. He then spun and again faced the river.
“Rendirse, rebeldes!” the man cried.
There was no answer.
“Rendirse!” he repeated, the men behind him standing motionless, rifles shouldered and faces forward.
“What in the hell do you reckon is happening?” Shelby asked.
“Couldn’t say.”
“What’s he saying?”
“Hush.”
Then from out of the brake more ghosts emerged, these even less human than the last. Three of them, wearing tattered clothing and no hats. Only one had both shoes. They trudged forward, defeated, with their hands in the air.
The shouting man beckoned them to come closer, and they did and he spoke to them at some length and a few times patted them on the shoulder and the back. Then the man lowered his head and shook it in a slow, dramatic fashion, as if some grave disappointment had befallen him. The man returned to the column and stood nearest the drummer and raised his arm in the air. The soldiers brought their guns to the ready and the ragged men stood facing them, their chins in the air.
“Madero!” one of the men screamed into the falling rain.
“Madero!” the other two called.
“Díaz!” answered the leader of the soldiers, and he brought down his arm and the soldiers fired and the three men jerked and twitched and collapsed into the mud and onto one another, and we held tight to our spooked horses as they stomped and tore at the tall canes surrounding us.
The soldiers reloaded, approached the dead men, and fired another round into them. The leader then went about stripping them of what little belongings they had. When it was over, the soldiers marched back out across the plain and east toward La Morita. The flag flapped in the wind and the rain and pulled at the stick it was fastened to. As the soldiers began to fade from our sight, the cloth came loose and whipped into the air and hung there for one stolen moment before it was beaten down into the mud by the relentless rain.
* * *
When at last the storm moved on, I walked out from the river and to the bodies left lying there. I stared down at them. They had fallen in positions unnatural, or at least unnatural to the living.
“Bring me a plate,” I called to Shelby, and while the ground was still soft I dug shallow graves and the digging was slow and, in the humidity, torturous.
“You ain’t making much headway, son,” Shelby said. He was chewing on the last of our dried meat.
“Go quicker if you grabbed that other plate and helped.”
“Shit, we just bought them plates in Tucson,” he replied. “I ain’t as eager as you to go ruining mine on account of some dead Mexicans.”
“They ought to be buried.”
“They ought not have pissed them soldiers off, I reckon.”
“This from the outlaw,” I said.
“Well, then they ought not have got caught. That sit better?”
“I hope that boy got a good burial.”
“It sure as hell wasn’t no open casket,” Shelby said, laughing.
“You’re a real sumbitch, you know that?”
I went back to my work. When I was through, I rolled the bodies into the holes and apologized to the men for not having dug deeper and then I filled in the mud and stacked stones from the river to mark each man. Perhaps I should have spoken some words or a prayer, but I doubted God was listening so instead I just said, “I’m sorry,” and I was.
* * *
We rode out that evening, cutting through the old disputed lands along the border, headed for the San Pedro River and then Agua Prieta. Shelby said he knew some gambler there who could help us get settled. I was forever hesitant but always agreeing in the end.
We rode past the sun as it set behind us and we listened to the coyotes call, and as night began to fall the jackrabbits would dart from one mesquite bush to the next, never quite assured in their own safety, never finished running.
We put the horses into the San Pedro at noon the next day and the cold water was a welcome relief to all involved as the sun continued to tear through October with no sign of slowing. The third day after the river we came to a mature paloverde tree. It grew on a short hill, shading cacti and scrub brush scattered beneath it. Its green bark split near the roots to allow for multiple trunks which rose up and out and splintered into smaller branches. The tree itself was not twenty feet, and any sturdy limbs were much lower still. Yet from one of the branches hung a naked man, his bare feet only inches from the ground. His neck did not look broken, but the rope had strangled him, and in case it hadn’t, he was full of bullet holes, the half-dried blood running down his exposed legs. His face was swollen and his eyes bulged and across his chest hung a slapdash sign written in blood onto a slab of mesquite bark and fastened with a thin string: Viva Madero. Viva México.
Shelby looked around and we saw no one approaching nor anyone fleeing.
“That old boy look familiar to you?” he asked, spitting into the blood which had pooled just below the man’s feet.
“Looks different without his uniform,” I said.
“Wonder where the rest of ’em are at.”
The answer came to us slowly, one rope at a time. The Sonoran Desert was not conducive to hanging trees, but the men who’d killed the soldiers made do. Each tree we passed held a new body and each body held a sign.
“Lord have mercy, son, these boys mean business,” Shelby said as we rode past the seventh tree. The man swung and the branch bent and creaked and then snapped and came crashing down alongside the body.
“You gonna bury all these fellas, too?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
“Something’s going on. And whatever it is, it ain’t good.”
Later in the day we came perpendicular to a road running north and south and upon it a caravan of cart mules and women and children. Pots and pans were nailed to the wooden carts or slung over the mules on long ropes and they rattled and clanged against one another like some distorted wind chime.
There were a few men with the group and one of them rode toward us and unleashed a string of Spanish we couldn’t follow. When we didn’t answer he scowled at us and pointed south and started yelling.
“We’re American,” Shelby said, loud and slow. “Ah-mare-ih-cun.”
A second man rode up and spoke to the first and the first
man threw up his hands and rode away.
“Apologies, my friends,” the second man said. “Rodrigo is, uh . . . angry. His brother is killed on yesterday. He is very angry.”
“Well, shit, I’d be angry, too,” Shelby said.
“What’s goin’ on here?” I asked. “Where’s everybody going?”
The man turned to look at the people passing by as if he hadn’t noticed them, or perhaps to confirm they were still there.
“It’s very, uh, danger. Dangerous. These people have family who fight for Madero.”
“What’s the Madero?” Shelby asked.
The man seemed to think about this. He turned again and looked back at his people.
“Madero,” he said finally. “He is the leader of the, eh, revolución.”
“Revolution?”
“Sí. Yes.”
“Well, hell.”
“We take these people to Estados Unidos. They are safe there. Díaz, the government, cannot reach them.”
“We done rode into a goddamn war, son,” Shelby said, ignoring the man.
“Is it a war?” I asked the man. “Are they fighting everywhere?”
The man shrugged and then nodded his head uncertain.
“What about Chihuahua?” Shelby said.
“Sí,” the man said. “Eh, Chihuahua is, uh, more bad than here. Worse.”
“Well,” Shelby said again. “Hell.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked him.
He spit.
“I’ll tell you this much. I’d sure rather die in America than down here in this shithole,” he said. “No offense, there, compadre.”
* * *
We decided to cross back into our own country but agreed it wise to not venture too far from the border until we made it to Texas. We’d always heard a man could get lost in Texas and we aimed to do just that. New names, new lives, Shelby told me. I did my best to believe him.
We rode alongside the caravan for a while. The sun faded over the Sonoran plains and with its setting the world was cast in colors magnificent: blood orange in the west and all manner of purple and pink projected over the hills in the fading east.
The children chased one another with sticks and the dogs ran with them, not knowing the game but happy to be playing. The older girls watched the two gringos, Shelby flashing them a crooked grin. There were campfires aplenty once the night was irrefutable, and the makeshift village gave me a strange solace. We were all running from something, and there was a certain comfort in that.
An old man sat near us, and three old women and the man who spoke broken English. When the children had quieted and the stars were high overhead, the old man began to speak. No one had inquired but no one interrupted and, as he spoke, the flames seemed to rise in front of us.
Shelby and I were quiet, but the English-speaking man, perhaps not wanting to be rude or perhaps taking upon himself the responsibility to impart an elder wisdom, began to give a somber translation of the old man’s words.
“He says this war will be a good and a bad thing for his people,” the man relayed. “He says many people will die, but perhaps it is for a greater purpose, eh, reasoning.”
“The rebels,” I asked, “are they some sort of freedom fighters?”
The translator paused, thought, then expressed my question. The old man shook his head and threw his hand to the side as if to dismiss my comment. He spoke at length.
“He says all men are free. He says since the great American war, there are no slaves, only free men. Free men, he says, are more dangerous because they are more, eh, fuerte, es, uh, strong.”
“So what then? Why the fighting?” I asked.
The old man heard my question relayed to him and he looked at me and nodded and held both hands to the sky and then to his chest as he spoke.
“He says only free men choose violence because only free men have a choice.”
“No comprende. I don’t understand.”
“Mexican gibberish,” Shelby said. “You ain’t ’sposed to understand.”
The translator smiled, “Is no gibberish. Is meaning, a country cannot exist without its people. The land, sí, yes, the land is only land. The people, they are who makes the country.”
“And Madero is for the people?” I asked.
“Sí. Madero is maybe for the people.”
“Maybe?”
“Madero is picked by the people, but Díaz is not give up his power. Madero is maybe for the people, but that is no matter. The matter is the people choose Madero, yes? The people, maybe they are right or maybe no, but they must be heard.”
“I understand.”
“Sí?”
“Yes.”
4
The hound, its lineage tracked to some of the finest-bred litters in Great Britain, was on its right side, so fat its left feet did not touch the floor. There was a fire in the stove, though the nights had not yet turned cold and bitter, and Randall liked the way it made the house smell. He sat in the great room and looked at the piano and squeezed his hand so hard against his glass of brandy he thought surely it would shatter.
“You don’t have to go,” his mother said. “She will not leave you. It’s only the grief. It will pass.”
Randall rose from his chair and walked to the stove and opened the door. He crouched down and poked at the fire with a long, sharp rod and stared at the wood as it became overwhelmed by flame, and the hound raised its head and grunted. Randall watched the fire until too much of the smoke was escaping and he shut the door to the stove.
He rose, and so too the dog, and both walked past his mother onto the porch and there took stock of the night and its sounds. More than one thousand head of cattle had once belonged to this land, and wild horses roamed the hills above the ranch. He had land and mineral rights, timber too. When he returned from Pennsylvania those many years past there were oil men and miners, cowboys and grifters, all vying for his father’s claim.
He was classically trained in piano and had a deep appreciation for the arts. He studied philosophy, could not hold his whiskey, and still felt uncomfortable atop a horse. His build was slight, his features small, and he knew nothing of cattle or horses or working the land. Such things he left to his hired men, who took advantage of his ignorance and drank and gambled and told false tales to their curious employer.
His father was the smooth talker that Randall was not. Edmund Dawson would have convinced the hired men to work harder, tell no lies, and be loyal to his family. He would have achieved this feat through a modest conversation that held such a warmth and air of sincerity the men would have worked against gravity itself to not let him down. Whereas Randall much preferred the written word, seeing as it gave him time to think and sort out his thoughts, his father needed no tools save his tongue. Though it was not his tongue which was cut off after he was shot in the back by the husband of one of his many lovers. A true statesman, his father once wrote, is willing to please as many people as possible.
So it was that Randall returned to the territory, seeing himself as a prodigal son come back to conquer, and with him his new bride and a hope eternal.
But the West, as it turned out, was indeed wild and the weather ranged from drought to flood and back again. With unreliable men and a lack of the resources made plenty in the East, Randall found this place to be a much harsher reality than the visions in his head. Having never failed before, Randall ignored his wife’s pleas to return to Philadelphia and instead began trying to reshape the world as he wished it to be. It is this curse of irrational confidence that leads a few men to great achievements in history while leading most to the sorrowful understanding that the world cannot be remade by men, as the world is of men.
Nevertheless, Randall made his attempt to modernize Longpine. In the end he succeeded only in replacing the local sheriff, a drunkard, and his
inexperienced young deputy who had shot the town dentist by accident while cleaning his gun.
As he and Joanna failed to produce a living child, Randall turned more to his library and spent even less time on the ranch. The estate was losing money, and the town was being overrun with gamblers and gunslingers and the like.
“And so it is to this end,” he spoke to the dog, and he was at once awash with anger at the murder of his son, the uncivilized nature of the land, and most of all his own failings as a man. The celebrated heroes of history were men of both thinking and action, and he found himself wanting greatly in the latter.
“There is a world removed from the one that birthed me. It is a world unlike the one in which I grew and was molded. It is the real world,” he told the dog, who twitched its ears. “And it is full only of ignorance and evil.”
His brandy gone, Randall felt himself drunk and he cursed his education and societal upbringing and he vowed to harden his heart against evil and become a man and not a dandy, which he knew they called him and he knew they were not wrong.
In a state unfamiliar Randall ascended the staircase clumsily and without manner. Through the darkness he moved to the bed and found Joanna’s sleeping figure and began to grope her and pull at her nightgown. She jerked away and he continued his pursuit and they began to struggle against one another without speaking, and finally Joanna pulled free an arm with which to slap him and she did so with the force of a wasted life and she wept as he pulled up his trousers.
“You think me not a man. I will prove otherwise,” he said and his words were slurred and his body swayed as he stood.
She screamed and laughed and said he knew nothing of life on the trail and would surely die, just as their son had, and leave her alone in this miserable and forsaken land. She heard him in the kitchen and in the stable and then he was gone. The hound followed for a time, but turned back panting and again Joanna wept. And without anyone to tend it, the fire began to die.