by Manuel Ramos
He cleaned up the best he could in the bar’s restroom. No soap, only a few paper towels.
His pickup started right up and he sped through the streets. He stomped the pedal when he swerved into the dirt road. The cab suffocated him. He kept the windows up because of the dust. His hands sweated on the steering wheel. Blood and sweat stained his T-shirt and pants.
He couldn’t stop thinking about what happened between the Claxton brothers. And his money. He thought so hard and deep that he didn’t see the red truck until he was about a hundred yards from the house.
Then he saw Juanita hunched over in the doorway. She didn’t look right.
OUTPOST DUTY
The mountain air stimulated Corporal Martínez and it dawned on him that every sound, every smell was intense and vibrant. A reflection of the importance of his job, he thought. “Outpost duty is not so bad,” he said to himself as he huddled near the campfire. “Except for the pig private.”
He stared at the lump on the other side of the fire. The man infuriated him, almost made him physically sick. He was filthy, grotesque, and he smelled. Martínez knew the private was in the federal army only because these were desperate times. Revolutions popped up in the countryside almost every month, or so the newspapers reported, and the government conscripts were men who had little value except that they could serve as bodies, numbers to swell the ranks, ineffective as soldiers. “Private Santos should count for two. Ha!” Martínez muffled his laughter, not because of fear that he would wake the private, the man could sleep through an earthquake, but because he was, after all, on outpost duty and bandits were in the area.
His task was to watch for them. He had been selected for duty in the most advanced position the government controlled and he believed that was an honor, an opportunity created by the turbulent times that would not have come his way in peace time. He was a professional soldier, a man who thought to make the army his life’s work, if only the private didn’t sabotage his efforts. The private was lazy and obviously a coward. The corporal believed that only his superior military skills would save them if, indeed, they had to confront the bandits.
Martínez knew exactly what he would do when he faced the enemy. He excelled at planning. Military strategy was a specialty of his. He mapped out vast maneuvers and campaigns in his head or scratched them in the dirt. His chance would come with the clouds of dust kicked up by the bandits’ horses when the historic showdown happened between the federales and the bandits. Martínez would make a wild dash back to the division headquarters, where he could give his valuable information to the colonel and help plan the counterattack. Martínez would impress the colonel with his well-developed military knowledge. He would be given command of a squad of crack troops, the main thrust of the offensive, and his men would shout his name in glory as he led them to victory, fame and his own promotion to colonel.
Yes, he was blessed with the gift of planning.
The routine had been the same for weeks for Martínez. He watched and waited for the enemy. He moved his outpost to avoid discovery. The days passed slowly in the worn-out countryside. The private was his first companion since the assignment had been given to him.
The mountains were unchanging, gloomy mounds of earth that reminded him of the graveyard in his home town. Impatience for action played on his concentration, and his thoughts wandered to memories of his home and family. When he thought of Antonia, her soft skin and long, thick hair, he felt a loss, a pang of homesickness. He abruptly shook his head, made the unwelcome feelings disappear. He thought again about the importance of his duty.
Where are they? Even I am tired of waiting. Why don’t they come? They have to move through this valley. Maybe through one of the other arroyos. Then Hernández or García will see them, report them to headquarters, and here I’ll be, stuck in nowhere with this miserable slob. That can’t happen! They have to come this way! They have to!
The private snored, growled in his sleep and then rolled over like a fat bear in the zoo. Bugs crawled from under his hulk. The glow of the fire lighted up his mud-encrusted beard, testimony to his hard riding the past few days to get to the outpost. He had been in the attack at Zacatecas and then ordered to help Martínez. He dreamed of a naked woman, wanton and coarse.
Private Santos hated the army. He was a peón, a poor country boy with no special allegiance to the government or the rebels. He was forced to join the army and he accepted that as his fate, just as his poverty and struggle to survive were all part of life, part of the hand he had been dealt. He was taught in a week how to shoot, how to march and how to take orders and then thrown into battle against Villa’s men. He killed to survive, without hatred or patriotic fervor. Now he waited in the desert, asleep and content that he would live another day.
The corporal did not affect him. The man had insane ideas about war. He obviously was ambitious, he talked high and mighty, and Santos knew that they had nothing in common. But that was life. One had to survive, that was one’s obligation, one’s duty.
Martínez kicked Santos’ boot. “Wake up, you lazy ass! Your watch. Wake up!” He kicked the sleeping man again.
The larger man woke, slowly, and then stretched his cramped legs and arms. He leaned close to the fire in an attempt to warm his chilled bones. He grabbed his rifle and stared off into the night. He asked for coffee. “I feel like I haven’t eaten for days. What I wouldn’t give for some lamb mole, cabrito, ay, anything except beans.”
Martínez threw a piece of wood on the fire. “We’re lucky to have beans. If we cooked anything other than beans you can bet we’d have every bandit and coyote within ten miles sniffing around. With beans we’re like every Indian around here. Anything else would be too suspicious. We have to manage with what we’ve got.”
Santos snorted and moved his fat rear end off a rock. “You really think Villa is coming this way? You’ve been out here for how long, two, three weeks? Villa is long gone. He packed his men on the train and headed back north. They’re probably in Juárez, maybe even the States. Long gone from around here.”
“Don’t say that! They’ll come this way, I know it. They have to. They need to make a show of force to keep the peasants in line. If they retreat now they lose face and what little support they have. No, they’ll come this way. They have to engage our troops one more time before they head north. They have to!”
“If you say so, corporal. I’ll let you know if I see anything. You’ll be the first to know.”
Martínez could not see his smirk—the broad, toothy smile—in the darkness.
“I’ve got to relieve myself. I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour. Watch for me.” Martínez walked into the desert. The fire gave enough light for him to be seen for ten yards beyond the camp, then he was swallowed by the night.
“What an idiot!” Santos let the fire warm him. He drew a blanket tight around his shoulders and soon his eyes were heavy. He tried to focus on the horizon, but all he saw was darkness, and he fell asleep. He dreamed again of the naked woman.
Bushes hid Martínez as he squatted over the earth. Plans for elaborate military exercises filled his head as he waited for his bowels to move. He imagined leading an attack on Villa’s camp. He saw himself wrestling the bandit leader to the ground and forcing him to surrender. “Mexico’s savior. Long live Martínez!”
“Look at this, boys. A federale, bare-assed out here where the snakes and lizards could bite his balls off!”
The laughter of men surrounded Martínez before he knew he was captured. He tried to jump to his feet but he fell backwards, tripped by his pants. His naked legs clawed the air.
Martínez squealed, “What? Who? How did you?”
The men laughed again. One of them stood with a boot on the corporal’s quivering belly. “How pretty this one is. It will be a shame to shoot such a handsome soldier.” He poked at Martínez with his rifle. “Hey, pretty one. Want to have some fun?”
The laughter was rough and strained. The men knew they ha
d a short time to enjoy the game, then it had to end. The war had to be fought.
Martínez tried to make sense out of what had happened. Maybe he should try to make a run for it. But the boot heel dug into his guts and he was forced to squirm in his excrement. He tried to explain. “You can’t do this. You have to ride in. I have to tell the colonel. It can’t be this way, my squad, the offensive, don’t you see, don’t you see?”
The men were silent. The time had come.
The leader handed his rifle to one of the others. He pulled a handgun from his holster and placed the barrel next to Martínez’ ear. “Too bad, pretty one. We can’t use crazy prisoners, we can’t take any prisoners. Mother of God! What a war!”
He squeezed the trigger and Martínez died trying to make sense of it all.
Santos thought he heard a shot but his dream was too vivid to turn loose. He was deep in sleep thinking that it was one of life’s unexplained ironies, and, therefore, regrettable, that dreams did not come true.
WHITE DEVILS AND COCKROACHES
González made a living representing crazies, weirdos, misfits, losers and plain folks who got taken. A damn good legal aid lawyer, ace attorney for the underdog, a craftsman in the courtroom with a bit of magician in his blood. That image had kept him at legal aid past the usual tour of duty.
Each morning he reminded himself he was not a burned out liberal who took up space on legal aid’s payroll.
Joey and Pauline Maldonado had given the manager of a run down apartment building fifty dollars to hold a place for them for the beginning of March. On February 20th they showed up with a truckload of furniture. The rooms were filthy. The walls needed paint, two windows were busted, the refrigerator was broken and the lights were out. Rose, the manager, gave them a break, even though they were more than a week early. She was new. She let them unload their boxes and plastic bags in the empty rooms.
Rose later maintained they were only to store their things until the rooms were ready, but Joey and Pauline settled in without lights, windows, a refrigerator or paint. Joey and Pauline stalled Rose on the rent for a few days. Joey found a job as a dishwasher at the White Spot on Colfax and he swore he would be paid in a week. He told Gary, the owner, that the check for the first month’s rent was in the mail and Gary, who should have known better, let him slide. Two weeks later Gary ordered Rose to evict the couple.
Pauline tried to explain their problem to González as he sat across the desk from her, bored with a story he had heard too many times.
She was a skinny, pockmarked white woman of twenty-three. Her lips twitched and her fingers scratched at the insides of her elbows as she described the conditions in which she was living. Yellow eyes peered through thick glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“See, me and Joey knowed they wasn’t going to do what they said about the windows, so we told them they wasn’t going to get the rent until we got them fixed. That really pissed off Rose, so she turned off the electricity, and ya know how cold it gets here at night. We even had some snow a few days ago and me and Joey almost froze our asses off, excuse me, but ya know what I mean, Mr. González?”
The lawyer tried not to believe her. Even so, he knew enough about Capitol Hill landlords that he was tempted to tell the wasted gabacha he would represent her and her old man.
“Joey’s in jail, I told ya, huh? Some mistake about some old traffic tickets or somethin’, I don’t even know how it could happen, we only been in town a few months. We came from California, ya know? He’ll get out in a few days.”
He nodded and told her he would call the manager, talk to her about the heat, and then decide if he would prepare a defense so that Joey and Pauline could have their day in court.
González did not learn anything more from Rose. She insisted he had to speak with Gary but she refused to tell González how to reach the owner. González had been through this routine before and it tipped the scales in favor of Joey and Pauline. He cut and pasted together a pleading that raised issues of implied covenants, express promises, invasion of privacy and constructive eviction. He demanded not only the return of the original fifty dollars but punitive damages as well. González could be creative when landlords tried to fool with him.
He filed the document with the court clerk, convinced Judge Kerso to waive the filing fees and set the trial for the next week. In eviction cases the wheels of justice did not turn as slowly as González preferred.
Pauline called a few days later and asked about the trial. He told her what to expect and made another appointment to prepare them. “I need to talk to Joey so he’ll know what I want from him when he testifies. Make sure you bring him.” She promised.
Gary Donley, a young man with plenty of money, owner of several apartment buildings, knew the eviction process better than most attorneys. He was enraged when he read the pleading González served on him.
He called legal aid and demanded to speak to González. He was on hold for almost five minutes. The receptionist was working on the bugs in the new system and Donley was one of the unfortunate souls lost in the limbo of the legal aid telephones.
“This answer is a goddamned lie! How in the hell could you sign this piece of shit! I ought to have you and those two assholes arrested for putting a fraud on the court!”
González interrupted Donley in the middle of a string of epithets that alluded to the unsavory nature of Joey’s ancestry. “Look, Donley. If you can’t be civil, I don’t think we can discuss this. Just tell me what you know about the situation and maybe we can work something out.”
And Donley did. He told González about the all-night fights between Pauline and Joey. He talked about screams from the apartment, blood on the door, and the cops who took Joey away for chasing people down the hallway with an axe. He told him about the lousy fifty bucks and that the two had knowingly moved in without any lights. He said they had heat and gas and cooked something that smelled up the building like burnt horseshit. He ended by telling González he would see him in court and they would learn then who was awarded punitive damages and “attorney fees, González. How would legal aid like to pay me a couple of thousand because one of their smart ass lawyers defended a frivolous case?” González knew legal aid would not like it, not one damn bit.
He visited Joey Maldonado in the City Jail. Joey was a short, pale Chicano with greasy hair. His eyes were dull and he talked with a slight stutter. González had a hard time picturing him chasing anybody, especially with an axe.
“Man, those p-people are crazy in that place. They barge in whenever they w-want, they threaten me and Pauline, they cut our damn extension cord we had plugged in to the outlet in the hall so we could have some f-fuckin’ lights. They’re animals, man. I hope we can just let the judge know about all the shit that goes on in that p-place, because I know a lot, man. That bitch, Rose, ya know the manager, she’s a damn dealer. She’s always tryin’ to sell some shit to us, ya know, grass or some snort, even some m-m-meth. That’s half the reason why they’re f-fuckin’ with us, ya know, we wouldn’t b-buy any of her crap.”
González tried to get details about the arrangement with Rose when they moved in, but Joey wanted to talk about the manager’s criminal activities. González left not knowing any more than when he walked to the jail from his office.
The day before the trial Pauline called to let him know she could not make the appointment. She did not feel very well.
“And what about Joey, Pauline? Where is he?”
“He was out but he got busted again. I don’t even know if he’ll be out by the trial tomorrow.”
“What he get arrested for?”
“Some mix-up, I don’t know.”
Her words were slurred. She lost her train of thought. González decided she was drunk or high on drugs. She cried. “But I’m going to fight this time, they can’t push us around like this. I want a trial and I want you to be there. Okay?”
“Donley told me Joey chases people with axes, that he beats people up an
d that he’s been trashing the place.”
“No way, man. Joey ain’t like that. Joey was arrested for domestic abuse. You know how it is in Colorado now. They take away the husband for domestic abuse, throw him in jail. I told them I was all right.” Something burned in González’s stomach. “But he don’t bother nobody, except me. Gary’s lying if he says Joey was arrested for hasslin’ other people. Joey’s only into domestic abuse, and that’s all.” Her words trailed off.
González heard someone murmur in the background. A woman’s voice urged her to continue.
He asked her again about the axe.
“It wasn’t no axe. It was just the head, it didn’t have no handle, ya know what I mean?”
Pauline walked into the courthouse in the same dress she had worn when she met González. She was drunk, disheveled and smelled like sour wine—vomited wine, thought González when he talked to her in the hallway.
“I’m going to fight this one. You with me?”
She leaned on González for support. He held his breath to keep from gagging.
“You don’t have a chance. The judge is going to tell you to move and he’ll give you forty-eight hours.”
“I want my money then. They owe me fifty bucks, and they cut my cord. I want the money for that.”
“You’ll be lucky if you walk away from this without owing Donley a couple hundred dollars.”
Lines of worry creased her forehead. She did not want to owe anybody any money. She had no idea what would happen if the judge said she had to pay Donley and she did not want to learn.
“What can I do then?”
“How much time do you need to move?”
“Jeez, I don’t have no money, and I don’t know when Joey’s gettin’ out. I don’t even have a place yet. Two weeks, at least two weeks.”
“I’ll get you a week. But if you don’t leave, Donley can have the sheriff out there to move your stuff, you understand?”