by J. L. Jarvis
Six bodies hung from thick beams jutting out from the building, one of them a small child.
“No,” Ana sobbed.
Carlos was already there, lifting the small, lifeless body. He pulled out a knife and cut the rope. Jaime’s body fell into his arms. There he sat on his horse with his son in his arms, and he rocked him and clutched him to his chest. Ana closed her eyes and turned from the bodies still hanging, but she still saw her father hanging from the carriage house rafter of their Galveston home.
She needed to feel solid ground under her feet. She slipped down from her horse and held onto the reins and the edge of the saddle. Her head swam.
A deep, hollow cry brought her back. Carlos knelt on the ground with his son in his arms, and he cried. Ana looked at the bodies. Maria, her friend, the ranch owners, hired hands—all dead.
“Who did this?” she asked, coming to him and kneeling beside him.
Carlos smoothed the boy’s hair from his forehead and stroked his soft cheek. Without looking, he said, “Rurales. Federales. Colorados. But a child?”
The mountain was dark by the time Carlos shaped the last mounded grave and hurled the shovel away. He sat at Jaime’s grave with his hand on the marker.
Ana’s footsteps ground against the rocky soil as she approached, but Carlos seemed not to hear.
“Come inside. I’ve made something to eat.” She touched his shoulder. “Come inside. It’s dark.”
Carlos said, “He should be in bed now.”
Ana pulled her shawl about her and waited. “Come in by the fire.”
Despair choked off the words. “I don’t want to leave him out here in the cold.”
Ana offered her hand and he took it and followed her into the ranch house.
Inside, the fire that Ana had prepared was now embers. Carlos added logs until it was blazing. He leaned against the mantle and smelled the mesquite burn and watched until it was too hot to stand near. Ana sat in a rocker. Carlos settled on the floor by her feet.
“It feels like he’s out there somewhere, and he needs me.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. He took it and pressed it to his cheek.
“Ana, I can’t—” His voice broke.
“But you will. And I’ll be here with you.”
She slid from the chair to her knees and slipped her arms about him from behind. She leaned her head on his shoulder.
“The sight of him—I want to forget how he looked. How will I?” He turned and saw tears, and he knew that she was remembering her father. “I won’t, will I?”
Tears spilled to her cheeks as she shook her head.
He hid his face in his hands. A mournful sob from deep within sounded in his throat. “My God, what have I done?”
Ana touched his cheek, but he turned away as though her touch pained him.
He said, “Death touches everyone that I love.”
“I’m here, and I’m not going to leave you.”
“You will.”
“Shh…” said Ana. She reached out to hold him.
“I would have paid for my sins. But my son?”
“I don’t understand. You don’t think—”
“I know,” Carlos told her.
“Carlos, you can’t blame yourself for this.”
“Ana, don’t. You don’t know.”
“I know the kind of man you are.”
“I have killed.”
“So have I. It was war. There was something greater at stake. We were fighting for freedom—”
“Ana!” he shouted and gripped her shoulders.
She was stunned most of all by his anguished expression.
He said, “I killed your father!”
The words made no sense.
Carlos pushed his fingers through his hair and coiled his fingers into fists. “God help me,” he said and repeated.
“Carlos, look at me.”
He turned to face her.
Ana reached out and held his face in her hands. “My father took his own life.”
Carlos turned and stared into the fire.
Fear rose up inside. Ana insisted, “My father’s death has nothing to do with what happened here.”
Carlos could only stare into the fire, slowly shaking his head.
“It’s just—with the fighting, with all you’ve been through—you’re not thinking clearly. You’re tired. After some sleep—Carlos, please look at me. Listen. Eduardo was there. He told you what happened. I’m sure he must have told you.”
“Ana, I was there, too.”
Chapter 17
Carlos fixed his gaze on the fire. “We needed arms and ammunition to prepare for revolution. So we smuggled things over the border to barter for what we needed. Eduardo was writing for a newspaper called the Partido Liberal Mexicano, or PLM, to spread the truth about the Díaz government. They would print them in the U.S., and then we would bring them into Mexico, and the people would read them. That’s how it started. But we started smuggling other things—mostly by ship—your father’s.”
“My father? You knew him?”
“No, we used his ships—your uncle’s ships, really.”
“They were partners.”
“No. Your uncle bought him out. Your father got into some trouble. You know that he gambled?”
“Not until afterward.”
“Don Felipe was always bailing him out of one situation or another. But it got to a point where he had to protect his own interests. The last time your father needed money, Don Felipe advanced some funds. In exchange, he took your father’s interest in the ships.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Eduardo.”
“Of course.”
“We used the ships to move goods back and forth.”
“But my father was against revolution.”
Carlos flashed a troubled look and nodded. “He didn’t know about it.”
“And my uncle?”
“He knew. We hid the goods in a hidden compartment beneath the livestock pens. The customs inspectors never waded through manure to inspect the flooring too closely.”
“On one trip, we were docked in Galveston.”
“You were there once?”
“Many times.”
“We might have met.”
Carlos looked strangely sad.
“Your father left for the day. We paid off the stevedores and were ready to unload the cargo. This time it was dynamite—crates of it. On the way, we met up with a German ship north of Veracruz. It was easier to do it that way than in port. We loaded some Luger guns and ammunition. We’d made plans to sell some to a small group of anarchists. The rest we were taking back with us to Mexico. It was getting late. The anarchists were late picking up their shipment, so we stacked the newspapers and left them by the door, ready to load up. We’d done this so many times, we were too relaxed. If we’d watched better, we might have seen your father returning. I had gone outside to, well—I think you can guess. I was just coming back and I nearly walked in, but I heard voices and stopped.
“‘Wait a minute.’ It was Eduardo.
“‘What is this?’ I did not know this voice.
“I heard paper being crumpled. It landed in the doorway. A piece of twine landed beside it.
“Eduardo said, ‘I work for don Felipe.’
“‘So you’re one of his revolutionist friends?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Well, you tell my brother I don’t want any part of this.’
“Eduardo was calm. ‘We’ll take care of it. You don’t have to be involved.’
“‘I am involved. If the government—U.S. or Mexican—finds out about this, it’s my neck in the noose—not yours. This is my ship.’
“‘Your brother’s ship.’
“‘His ship. Well then, to hell with his ship, and to hell with him, too.’
“I heard a match strike and catch fire.
“Eduardo said, ‘No!’
“I looked around the doorway
and saw him, his back to me, holding a match. He was going to drop it. All around him were newspapers, hay, horse manure, and underneath, inside the compartment, were crates and crates of dynamite.”
Carlos shut his eyes. “If he’d dropped the match, the whole ship would have blown up.”
“My father and Eduardo and you…” Ana could not absorb it. “So you…?”
“A knife would have left blood.”
Carlos could not look at her. “Maybe it was what he said. I don’t know. But I saw the twine from the newspapers there in the doorway. I picked it up.”
He did not need to finish. Ana’s shoulders sank. She was shaking her head.
Carlos reached for her hand. It hung limply in his. “With that match, he’d have died by his own hand.” The expression drained from her face.
Ana said, “But he didn’t.”
He looked into her eyes until he could not bear it. “No.”
“What could I do? He would have killed himself and taken us with him.”
“But I found him—”
“That was Eduardo’s idea—”
“No,” she pleaded.
“—to take him home. He had the rope mark on his neck, so it would look like…”
Ana nodded numbly. “He let me believe that my father had condemned himself to die outside of God’s grace, damned forever.”
“I doubt Eduardo was thinking about eternal souls.”
“And you?”
“I knew God would know the truth. It was better this way—for the cause.”
“For the cause?”
“I didn’t know you—that I’d hurt you. Ana, please—”
“And then what did you do?”
“We each hooked an arm around our neck and walked him to his carriage, like a friend who’d passed out.”
“Like a drunk.”
Carlos nodded. “We took him home.”
“You were there in my home?”
“The back alley was blocked by a delivery truck. There was no way to get out without being seen. Your housekeeper—”
“Elena?”
“Elena was spending more time with the gardener than the laundry. A basket full of clothes sat by the back steps, with the hedge clippers there on the ground. Elena and the gardener were busy on the side of the house, and we slipped inside.”
“In my house?”
“With Eduardo. No one was there. We got to the front door. Eduardo went out onto the porch, and I heard someone’s voice—your voice. I started back down the hall, but your maid came back in. I ducked into a room.”
“I heard the front door open. Eduardo was talking to someone—to you.”
“You passed by. I was hiding behind a door. Then it happened. You ran out the back door and I left through the front.”
“You killed my father. Came into my home.”
“It was for the revolution. We were looking beyond—to something greater. We couldn’t stop to think about each person who got in our way.”
“Like Jaime?”
He closed his eyes. His jaw clenched. His head moved with one tormented nod.
“My uncle lied to me?” It was a whisper.
“No. We never told him. The pressure from the debts; it all made sense that your father would….”
“It all worked out so nicely.”
Carlos abruptly stood and walked to the window. He leaned and stared out at the night. “I owed you the truth before this.”
Her eyes flashed toward him, but she could not look at him, not yet.
Carlos said, “You once asked me if I’m ever afraid. My greatest fear has been the look on your face at this moment.”
Ana stared at the bowed slats of worn wood flooring. “I will never forget the sight of him hanging.”
Carlos turned from the window and slid his back down the wall until he reached the floor, crying.
“You let me love you while you lied to me.” Ana bit off the words.
“I loved you more than I hated the lie.”
In the morning the desert looked more beautiful than she had ever seen it. Its rich colors mocked her as she rode.
Carlos said, “That’s it up ahead.”
His words broke a silence that had lasted for miles. The Nazas River shimmered like a mirage. Carlos insisted on seeing her to Torreón, where she would board a train bound north to the border, to what once was her home. She had no home now, but if she kept moving she might stave off the numbness that made her feel dead. Closer to home, she might feel closer to life.
“We’ll rest the horses by that tree.”
Ana followed Carlos to the riverbank. It was a place much like the one where they had kissed for the first time. Ana sank down beneath a willow and watched the horses lap up the water. She pushed strands of hair from her damp forehead. Carlos filled a cantina and brought it to her. She lifted her eyes and looked at him, but it hurt just to look. She drank the water and leaned back against the tree. The gentle sound of moving water was soothing.
Carlos sat down beside her, taking care not to touch, and rested his eyes. He could almost imagine that the revolution had never touched them. They had only just met, and their love was everything.
Rings of water rippled out from the mouths of the horses as they drank. Ana watched them. Tears came without warning, like grief came to her life. She hid her face in her hands and, sobbing, wilted into the grass, giving way to great anguished cries that would not be contained. She lay with her face to the ground and cried into the earth, wretched cries.
Carlos stared at the water and listened. She suffered. He suffered beside her, for her, for his family, for ideas gone wrong. Perhaps this was justice, to suffer the same sort of loss he himself had inflicted. Grief lingered long after weeping.
He looked at Ana, lying still on the ground, having sobbed herself into exhaustion. Sleep brought peace back to her. Had he done the right thing? Truth was right, and the truth had cleared his conscience, but Ana now paid the cost. He deserved what he got. But what about Jaime? What did he deserve? “He was only a boy.”
“He was proud of you.”
Ana’s words landed hard. He looked helplessly at her, breathless from the pain.
She looked back blankly. “He was.”
He had misunderstood her. “What did I give him to be proud of?”
“You gave him a father.”
“And took away yours.”
Ana closed her eyes and said, “I can’t hate you.”
Carlos looked at her, but she looked away, at the water.
She went on slowly, “I think that my father’s real killer was the revolution, but your hands did the work. How can I stand for those hands to touch me now? So I’ve lost my father, and now I must lose my husband.”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the trunk of the tree.
Ana said, “Why can’t love die with people? It wouldn’t hurt so much then.” Ana turned and looked at him with eyes rimmed in red.
He closed his eyes. Tears escaped from the corners.
Sounds of gunfire and the cries of men being wounded grew closer. Ana looked in their direction, then climbed up the riverbank to look.
“Carlos.”
He looked up, resigned.
Ana scrambled down to him and tugged at his arm. “Come on! We have to go now.”
He heard her, but did not seem to care.
Ana brought him his horse. “Carlos, you have to come with me. I need you to help me.”
Her words seemed to get through to him, for he turned toward the sound of the gunfire. Distant smoke curled toward the sky in ribbons. Screams grew louder. They rode off.
Horse hooves rumbled from over a hill, gaining strength as they came closer. Ana and Carlos rode hard toward Torreón, but they were spotted. Four riders took off after them.
“Our horses are rested. We’ll outrun them,” said Carlos.
Rifle shots ripped through the air.
“Faster, Ana. Stay out of thei
r range.”
Ana urged her horse onward. They rode on until, minutes later, the gunfire stopped. The soldiers gave up and circled back to join up with their men on the way to a more worthy battle. Ana and Carlos kept up their pace until they were sure no one followed.
Torreón was all dusk and streetlights when they arrived at General Madero’s headquarters. The city was under martial law, with guards posted everywhere. They went inside to look for Eduardo. Two guards dragged a prisoner past them. Ana gasped. It was the man who raped Su Ling and got away. His face was covered with welts and bruises, but Ana knew him at once.
Ana cringed as he looked first at her, then at Carlos. He sneered, “My friend.” Then a look of cold pleasure came over his face. He turned to the guard. “He was there! Hey! Did you hear me? He did it, too.”
A soldier seized Carlos by the arm.
“What! You can’t believe him,” he protested, but another guard joined them and took Carlos’s other arm.
“You’ll need to be questioned.”
“Can’t you see? It’s a lie!” said Carlos.
“He’s innocent!” cried Ana.
“We’re all innocent,” said the prisoner.
They dragged Carlos away.
Chapter 18
Carlos stood with some thirty others before the military tribunal. War crimes and atrocities had been committed, and these men would pay. The penalty was death.
Ana testified, but who could trust a woman not to lie for her man, especially when other witnesses contradicted her testimony?
His face was like stone as they led him from the hearing room. Death by firing squad was the sentence. He looked at Ana with the fearless expression of one who accepted the consequence of guilt, if not for this then for other acts for which he had found no forgiveness. A guard prodded him to move on. He looked once more at Ana, and then walked away.
“No, look. Please, you must help me. I must see señor Guerra Peña—Eduardo Guerra Peña.”
“No one will be seen today. General Madero’s orders.”
“Just go ask someone. Please!”
The man behind the desk looked up at Ana. “The General is very busy.” His eyes swept over her figure. “Come back tomorrow afternoon.” He pressed his palms to the desk and stood up.