The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories

by Manuel Ramos

  “You must be rich.”

  “Not me. Maybe he was, but you wouldn’t know it. He was always in a beat up sweater smoking a smelly pipe. Once I asked him why my father never called, and he told me it was up to me to call him or whoever I wanted to talk to. I couldn’t wait for the phone to ring. I remembered that in Mexico.”

  “So you called your boyfriend every day?”

  “No. But I wrote every day, even when his letters were late. I didn’t wait for the phone to ring, or for mail to be answered.” She pulled a cigarette from her purse and he lit it for her. She took a long, deep drag. “I miss the old guy. It would’ve been nice to have him around now that I’m moving to Boston. He died last year.”

  There were tears in her beautiful green eyes. They must be for her grandfather, he thought, but he knew that talking with her made him sad and he wished that she would leave for Boston that night, and he hated the idea of falling in love.

  HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY

  I didn’t love her. I made that clear from the jump. For me it was all about the sex. For her too, when she was honest. That first night, after we left the bar and she asked me to walk her home, we clawed and bit at each other like hungry tigers. We liked it so much I stayed in her apartment for a week. We humped, bumped and jumped in those three rooms without caring what we broke or where we landed. We ordered pizza or noodle bowls when our energy lagged. I lost my job, my room at the motel and the junk I kept there, but we didn’t care. We were sexed up and high on lovemaking fumes.

  The morning she told me not to come back, I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” It was all about the sex.

  I punched the fence around the corner from her place and broke a finger. When the doc asked me what happened, I said, “Rough sex.”

  CHICANISMO

  LA VISIÓN DE MI MADRE

  Florence, Colorado 1956

  Tony died in Vietnam when a bullet from a high-powered automatic weapon tore out most of his intestines and stomach. At the instant of death, as his blood flowed into the dark, damp earth of the jungle, the ghost of his grandfather Adolfo walked up to him, cradled his head and murmured something in Spanish. Tony could see the old man smiling, tears in his eyes. The gleam from Adolfo’s gold filling reminded Tony how the light from the dining room lamp reflected off the tooth as the old man told the kids his stories of old Mexico, Pancho Villa, gambling with the devil, and, of course, La Llorona.

  Tony would sit with a glass of pop, listening to Adolfo. The boy took a drink each time the grandfather sipped his bourbon. Adolfo’s voice boomed across the room in a rhapsodic mixture of Spanish and English flowing with poetry, curses, songs and other sounds the children did not understand. They all fit into the story at just the right time.

  When Tony was eight he visited the river for the first time with Johnny, his older cousin, and some of Johnny’s friends. It was a hot, dry summer with days that stretched for miles across the cloudless sky, yellow and lazy. They swam in a deep, still pool. Trees hid the place from the highway that followed the river for a short span outside the town.

  Tony floated for what seemed like hours, forgotten by the other boys. The river was lower than usual, the trees more brittle, but the water was cool.

  He thought of his missing mother and the father who was only a shadow standing over him in the night, tall and dark. He wanted to know why they were gone, why she had given him over to the grandparents, and he brooded in the water, unable to shake the feeling of desertion that engulfed him in the sticky heat of summer.

  Tony drifted, almost asleep, when he noticed the change. The chicharras quit humming. Birds flew from the trees in squawking bunches. Then—silence. Tony opened his eyes but the sun’s glare reflected off the water and blinded him.

  He swam to the rocks, quickly put on his clothes and shivered. Johnny and his friends were gone. No wind stirred the wild grass. Smothering quiet lay on the river.

  “Oh-h-h. . . . Oh-h-h.” From the river, a noise Tony would remember for the rest of his life. The sad, melancholy cry surrounded him, stirred up an emotion he couldn’t understand, and Tony’s eyes filled with tears. The crying came from a woman who wanted something so bad it was killing her not to have it.

  Johnny found him at the river’s edge, softly crying that he wanted to help her. Johnny said it was La Llorona, and it was time to go home. As they walked away, Tony looked back at the river and saw a woman dressed in black, wandering along the bank.

  That night Adolfo listened, nodded his head and declared, “La Llorona, hijo. The woman condemned by God to roam the earth searching for her children, children she threw away years ago.”

  Adolfo held his glass of liquor in small, bony hands. The veins in his arms popped out on his skin. Their gray color deepened to blue as he drank more Jim Beam. His hair was thin and white, his moustache full and gray. Gold glistened from the corner of a smile that stretched from his black, moist eyes to the wrinkled, grizzled chin.

  Jesusita hollered from the kitchen where she stirred a pot of beans. “¡Viejo! ¡Déjalo! These things are not for children. Mira, no más. You will make him afraid to go to sleep, afraid of his own shadow. Quítate con tus mentiras.” Her words were wasted on the old man and boy who were determined that the story be told.

  “She was a young woman, beautiful, of course, with a dark, Indian face framed by long, rich, black hair. Every man wanted her, but she wanted only one—Don Antonio, rancher, richest man in the valley. And he fell for her, hard. They were more in love than two people have a right to expect in this world. They prospered in wealth, influence and happiness. They had three children, one after another, two boys and a girl who mirrored her beautiful mother.”

  Tony had no problem imagining the mother and children.

  “That was where the love story went bad, niño. Don Antonio loved the children with a generosity that bordered on the hysterical. He showered the babies with gifts they couldn’t use for years—fancy mechanical toys, horses, clothes, even money piled up in their rooms. He watched over them with a single-mindedness that caused him to neglect his ranch. He gave them so much love that he had little left for his wife. Oh, he loved her, that was still true. But the feeling he had for the children was overwhelming, all powerful. And the woman could feel the difference.”

  Tony marveled at the love a parent could show for his children.

  “Soon the woman blamed the children for the lack of fire in her husband’s lovemaking. She saw them as rivals. She remembered the early days of her romance with the Don, the greatest love she had ever known, and she hated the children for taking it away. She had to do something, she was desperate, on the edge of losing everything she had ever wanted. She turned to the devil and his ways for help.”

  Adolfo stopped and slowly sipped his drink. He stared into the dark liquid and rolled it in the glass. Tony waited, nervously anticipating the story.

  “Pues, tú sabes, ’jito. In those days it was much easier to deal with the devil than it is now. Brujas were everywhere. A person only had to ask the right one to get what he wanted. My own mother asked one for help for my father because of the illness he suffered for months that made him weak, unable to work or do much else. The witch gave my mother a smelly salve she rubbed on my father and it worked. It only cost my mother a few hours of work por la bruja.”

  The old man whispered the word bruja each time he said it, making it sound sinister and threatening.

  “The woman sought the help of one of the bad brujas. Their plan was to take the children to the river, where the devil would trade Don Antonio’s love for the little ones. On the night of the exchange, driven by jealousy, she threw them into the rushing water.”

  Tony gulped down the last of his drink and tried not to think of drowning babies.

  “Then, son, she learned the lesson all who deal with the devil must learn sooner or later. He doesn’t keep his part of the bargain. Don Antonio never loved her again, con razón. Se murió de sentimiento por sus niños. His
last words were that he hated her and he would see her again in hell. She wasn’t that lucky. She tried to undo her evil but that was impossible. The bruja disappeared, and no other would talk to her, much less give her any help. Priests avoided her. Church doors were slammed in her face. La mujer se volvió loca.”

  Tony heard the words as if they came from God.

  “She convinced herself that the children were alive. She said they floated down the river and were waiting for her to find them and take them home. She followed rivers to their end, crying for her children, but she never found them. To this day she wanders the earth looking for the children, crying for them. And to this day she is despised and hated for what she did.”

  But Tony didn’t hate her; he thought he understood. She was a mother looking for her lost children, a woman like his own mother who regretted giving him away and now wanted him back. She was sorry and he realized he needed to go to her.

  The sounds at the river were heard by others, and soon the small town was caught up in the myth of La Llorona. People parked their cars along the highway and sat on fenders and bumpers, cameras and binoculars pointed at the river. Women fingered rosaries and men had handguns hanging from their belts.

  The older boys treated the story of La Llorona as a joke. They made ugly faces at the younger children and told crude stories about an old woman under the bridge. Johnny coerced his friends into searching for the source of the moaning. He wanted to show everyone that La Llorona was just another fairy story, another fantasy of old Mexicans.

  Tony knew the truth. He spent hours planning how to bring his mother back to him, how to find her and lead her away from the maze she was trapped in by the river. Jesusita saw that he was deep in concentration and she warned, “The boy who spends too much time thinking is the one who ends up with more problems. Get out and play, ’jito, outside, con tus hermanos y no pienses tanto.”

  The night of the search, Johnny wore his best pair of khakis. His hair was brushed back in a ducktail. A gold crucifix hung from his neck. He put a card with a picture of the Virgin Mary in his wallet. He told Jesusita he was going to a movie and then spend the night at a friend’s. She didn’t believe him but she knew at seventeen he was almost a man and could not be told what to do by an old lady. She patted his arm and advised him, “Con cuidao.”

  Tony decided he had to keep Johnny away from the crying woman. After Johnny left, Tony paced nervously, shouting and slapping at the younger children, driving them to tears with his craziness. When the house was finally quiet, all the kids and abuelitos in bed, he sneaked out the back door. He grabbed a bicycle and rode through the dark town to the river.

  The day’s heat lingered. The night had a heavy, stuffy feeling. The air was clean and still. Tony rode under long, gray shadows cast by trees in the moonlight.

  Details stood out. He saw numbers on houses, hopscotch patterns on the sidewalks. Fireflies flitted around the hedge near the library, where he turned onto the street that led to the river. A few bats circled the trees but he ignored them.

  He concentrated on the face of his mother. She was sorry, loving, eager for him.

  Tony parked the bicycle at the edge of the woods and walked into the darkness of the trees. He avoided thick clumps of bushes and weeds.

  Bright stars hung over the hills beyond the edge of the highway. A dog or coyote howled in the darkness. Owls hooted sadly.

  He stared at the river, the moon, the trees. No one appeared to talk to him, to take him home. He threw flat rocks at the river, immediately frustrated with his bad luck. He walked towards the bicycle.

  “Oh-h-h. Oh-h-h.” The suddenness of the crying made him jump. It started low and soft, slowly increasing with intensity.

  The wind stirred the trees and shadows danced on the ground. Tony felt the earth move.

  The moaning was loud, vibrant.

  He thought he saw shooting stars fall behind the trees. A cloud covered the moon and Tony was in darkness.

  He heard footsteps behind him. He turned but there was nothing. He heard other sounds from other directions. Things seemed to move in the bushes.

  The moaning covered the sound of the river. The wind whipped dust in small whirlpools around Tony.

  Tony knew he had made a mistake. He did not belong near the river looking for a woman who drowned children. He tried to calm himself with thoughts of his lost mother but they were not the good ones he needed. He wanted to be home with his grandmother, with the flesh and blood person who loved him and cared for him better than any imaginary mother. He wanted to run but he forgot where he left his bicycle. Sobs came out of his throat in hiccups.

  Then he saw her.

  The woman in black walked to him with open arms. She was beautiful. Coal black eyes pierced into his, asking him to come to her. “Hijo . . . niño. Vente conmigo, tu mamá. Niño-ohh . . . niño-ohh.” Her voice reminded him of the train whistle he heard rushing by every night.

  Dark red lips formed a kiss she blew to Tony. “Niño . . . corazón, niño-ohh.” Her hands beckoned him. Tony stepped towards her, driven by his need to know.

  “Run, Tony, run!” Johnny hollered from a hundred yards away. Tony saw him running, holding a long stick in his hands. He started to tell Johnny it was no sweat, man, this was his mother, his old lady.

  A loud hiss stopped him. His beautiful mother changed into an ugly, grotesque creature. Lumps and oozing pustules covered her skin. Ragged teeth grinned evilly at him. Patches of scalp gleamed beneath strands of wispy hair. The eyes were red-orange balls.

  She lunged at him.

  “Run, Tony, run. Get the hell out of there!”

  Fingernails scraped his back. He dodged her by twisting as he ran to Johnny. “Move, you little shit. Run! Run!”

  It grabbed Tony. He felt a warm, slimy arm wrap around his waist. He smelled the sweet, putrid odor he remembered from the time he found a dead chicken in the coop.

  He screamed.

  He kicked at the thing that had him. He saw a light flash, felt a thud on his back. He fell to the ground and though he tried to stop, he threw up. He sobbed into the earth until Johnny picked him up and carried him to the car.

  Years later, as Tony again lay crying in the dirt, in a place he had not known existed, Adolfo told Tony he knew what had happened, and he was sorry he couldn’t have helped the boy back when he was sick with fear and loneliness. “But hijo, now you can rest. You can come home with me.”

  KITE LESSON

  Florence, Colorado, 1955

  Luis was seven when his father bought a kite and tried to teach him how to fly it. They walked from their house to the baseball field, overgrown with weeds, and waited for the wind to gather.

  Luis stood in silence, away from the action.

  Emilio was all business as he put together the plastic blue and red thing, attached the string and added a tail of old rags. When he finished his preparations the man chased away the dogs that sniffed at the contraption. He watched the sky for a hint of turbulence, a sign that it was time to launch the toy.

  “I learned how to fly kites from my brother Danny. He knew so much about everything, son, so much. He was only nineteen when they killed him in Korea. He would’ve been a great man. Strong, smart. He taught me about life when I was no older than you, Luis. Lessons that a man needs to know to survive. La vida es dura.”

  Luis nodded but, as usual, his father lost him. He had heard the story of Danny many times. Emilio’s eyes filled with sadness as he spoke of his dead brother. The boy was puzzled by the man’s insistence on remembering.

  The wind rose to a level that appeared to be right. Luis grabbed the kite and held it aloft, causing the wind to catch it. His father clutched the string.

  “You should master this art, boy. And it is an art, after all, as well as a science. Kites show the delicate balance between security and the animal urge to let go, to live life in the clouds. ¿Entiendes, chico?”

  He jerked the string and the kite jumped.

>   “Let it go, Luis, let the damn thing go.” He led the kite into the sky.

  It was a beautiful kite. It lazily drifted upward to the full white clouds. Sunlight flashed off the plastic sheen creating red, blue and gold streaks.

  Emilio reeled out yard after yard of string. The kite hungrily accepted the freedom. The man laughed and hollered and jumped among the weeds.

  “There it goes, boy, there it goes! Our kite is now flying with the birds and we did it, we broke the law of gravity. My brother was right.”

  The boy watched the floating, tiny speck of color. He saw birds near the kite, the tail flapping crazily; and he heard his father’s laugh, but Luis couldn’t understand.

  “Hijo, take the string, fly this baby.”

  Emilio offered the ball of string. He laid it in the boy’s hand.

  “Let it drift with the breeze. No need to give it any more slack, it’s plenty high already.”

  Luis never held the ball. He felt it slip from his hand, saw it drag along the ground. Slowly it rose, so slowly that for years when he thought of this day it was in slow motion black and white. He ran after the string but it was above his head. Suddenly it took off with more speed than the boy had experienced in all of his short life.

  Emilio jumped for the string but it was gone. He turned, looked at Luis, then shook his head. He kicked at the dirt with his boot, shrugged weary shoulders and walked back to the house.

  The kite disappeared over the trees. Luis stared at the empty sky. When he looked for his father, the man was blocks away. Luis ran but he couldn’t catch up to him.

  SENTIMENTAL VALUE

  1988

  The Sunday insert, tucked in among the comics and grocery coupons, had a three-page, color, baseball article. Latin American Ball Players. Latin Stars of the National Pastime. The Latin American Connection. Latin?